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iOS 9 months ago
parent 59d2831f04
commit 1273437d17
217 changed files with 6256 additions and 1830 deletions
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1
.obsidian/community-plugins.json
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@ -47,7 +47,6 @@
"obsidian-rich-links",
"auto-card-link",
"obsidian-dialogue-plugin",
"obsidian-account-linker",
"cmdr",
"obsidian-tasks-plugin",
"obsidian-lineup-builder",

2
.obsidian/plugins/cron/data.json
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@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
"601d1cc7-a4f3-4f19-aa9f-3bddd7ab6b1d": {
"locked": false,
"lockedDeviceName": "iPhone",
"lastRun": "2024-04-05T07:47:29+02:00"
"lastRun": "2024-04-15T07:37:38+02:00"
}
}
}

46
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-account-linker/data.json
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@ -1,46 +0,0 @@
{
"websites": [
{
"name": "Twitter",
"color": "#3e9cec",
"urlTemplate": "https://farside.link/nitter/{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "@{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
},
{
"name": "Facebook",
"color": "#3b5998",
"urlTemplate": "https://www.facebook.com/{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
},
{
"name": "Instagram",
"color": "#dc2477",
"urlTemplate": "https://imginn.com/{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "@{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
},
{
"name": "GitHub",
"color": "#0a0c10",
"urlTemplate": "https://github.com/{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "@{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
},
{
"name": "Mail",
"color": "#e7e7e7",
"urlTemplate": "mailto:{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
},
{
"name": "Linktree",
"color": "#3ea195",
"urlTemplate": "https://linktr.ee/{{NAME}}",
"labelTemplate": "{{NAME}}",
"doesReverseResolution": false
}
]
}

408
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-account-linker/main.js
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@ -1,408 +0,0 @@
/*
THIS IS A GENERATED/BUNDLED FILE BY ESBUILD
if you want to view the source, please visit the github repository of this plugin
*/
var __defProp = Object.defineProperty;
var __getOwnPropDesc = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor;
var __getOwnPropNames = Object.getOwnPropertyNames;
var __hasOwnProp = Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty;
var __export = (target, all) => {
for (var name in all)
__defProp(target, name, { get: all[name], enumerable: true });
};
var __copyProps = (to, from, except, desc) => {
if (from && typeof from === "object" || typeof from === "function") {
for (let key of __getOwnPropNames(from))
if (!__hasOwnProp.call(to, key) && key !== except)
__defProp(to, key, { get: () => from[key], enumerable: !(desc = __getOwnPropDesc(from, key)) || desc.enumerable });
}
return to;
};
var __toCommonJS = (mod) => __copyProps(__defProp({}, "__esModule", { value: true }), mod);
var __async = (__this, __arguments, generator) => {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
var fulfilled = (value) => {
try {
step(generator.next(value));
} catch (e) {
reject(e);
}
};
var rejected = (value) => {
try {
step(generator.throw(value));
} catch (e) {
reject(e);
}
};
var step = (x) => x.done ? resolve(x.value) : Promise.resolve(x.value).then(fulfilled, rejected);
step((generator = generator.apply(__this, __arguments)).next());
});
};
// main.ts
var main_exports = {};
__export(main_exports, {
default: () => AccountLinker
});
module.exports = __toCommonJS(main_exports);
var import_obsidian3 = require("obsidian");
// src/settings/AccountLinkerSettingTab.ts
var import_obsidian2 = require("obsidian");
// src/control/utils.ts
function replaceTemplateText(beforeText, ctx) {
return beforeText.split("{{NAME}}").join(ctx.text).replace(/\{\{[^}]*\}\}/g, "");
}
function isColor(code) {
return /^#[0-9A-Fa-f]{6}$/.test(code);
}
function isURL(link) {
return true;
}
function selectFontColor(backgroundColor) {
if (!isColor(backgroundColor)) {
return "#000000";
}
const brightness = parseInt(backgroundColor.substring(1, 3), 16) * 0.299 + parseInt(backgroundColor.substring(3, 5), 16) * 0.587 + parseInt(backgroundColor.substring(5, 7), 16) * 0.114;
return Math.floor(brightness) >= 140 ? "#000000" : "#FFFFFF";
}
// src/drawing/drawAccountLink.ts
function drawAccountLink(a, config, text) {
a.empty();
a.classList.add("frontmatter-accounts");
const linkText = replaceTemplateText(config.urlTemplate, { text });
if (isURL(linkText)) {
a.href = linkText;
} else {
a.href = "";
}
const siteNameDiv = a.createEl("div");
siteNameDiv.classList.add("frontmatter-accounts-sitename");
siteNameDiv.innerText = config.name;
siteNameDiv.style.backgroundColor = isColor(config.color) ? config.color : "#ffffff";
siteNameDiv.style.color = selectFontColor(config.color);
const labelText = replaceTemplateText(config.labelTemplate, { text });
if (labelText != "") {
const labelDiv = a.createEl("div");
labelDiv.classList.add("frontmatter-accounts-label");
labelDiv.innerText = labelText;
}
}
// src/settings/WebsiteEditModal.ts
var import_obsidian = require("obsidian");
var descriptions = {
name: "Website name",
color: "Website image color(HEX)",
urlTemplate: "URL Replace Pattern",
labelTemplate: "Account Name Replace Pattern",
doesReverseResolution: "If on, it will reverse the account from the URL entered in the `accounts` field of the front matter",
previewBox: "",
saveButton: ""
};
var WebsiteEditModal = class extends import_obsidian.Modal {
constructor(plugin, config, closeCallBack) {
super(plugin.app);
this.plugin = plugin;
this.config = config;
this.closeCallBack = closeCallBack;
}
onOpen() {
const config = this.config;
this.titleEl.setText("Website Config");
const settings = {
name: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setName("Name").setDesc(descriptions.name).addText((cb) => {
cb.setValue(config.name).setPlaceholder("Twitter").onChange((value) => {
config.name = value;
this.updateText("name", settings);
this.updateDisplay(settings);
});
}),
color: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setName("Color").setDesc(descriptions.color).addText((cb) => {
cb.setValue(config.color).setPlaceholder("#3e9cec").onChange((value) => {
config.color = value;
this.updateText("color", settings);
this.updateDisplay(settings);
});
}),
urlTemplate: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setName("URL Template").setDesc(descriptions.urlTemplate).addText((cb) => {
cb.setValue(config.urlTemplate).setPlaceholder("https://twitter.com/{{NAME}}").onChange((value) => {
config.urlTemplate = value;
this.updateText("urlTemplate", settings);
this.updateDisplay(settings);
});
}),
labelTemplate: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setName("Label Template").setDesc(descriptions.labelTemplate).addText((cb) => {
cb.setValue(config.labelTemplate).setPlaceholder("@{{NAME}}").onChange((value) => {
config.labelTemplate = value;
this.updateText("labelTemplate", settings);
this.updateDisplay(settings);
});
}),
doesReverseResolution: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setName("Reverse Resolution(Unimplemented)").setDesc(descriptions.doesReverseResolution).addToggle((cb) => {
cb.setValue(config.doesReverseResolution).onChange((value) => {
config.doesReverseResolution = value;
this.updateText("doesReverseResolution", settings);
this.updateDisplay(settings);
}).setDisabled;
}),
previewBox: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setDesc(descriptions.previewBox).setName("Preview"),
saveButton: new import_obsidian.Setting(this.contentEl).setDesc(descriptions.saveButton).addButton((b) => {
b.setButtonText("Save").setDisabled(true).onClick((evt) => {
this.closeCallBack(config);
this.close();
});
})
};
["name", "color", "urlTemplate", "labelTemplate", "doesReverseResolution"].forEach((key) => {
this.updateText(key, settings);
});
this.updateDisplay(settings);
}
checkConfig(key) {
switch (key) {
case "name":
if (this.config.name == "") {
return "The name length must be greater than zero";
} else if (["aliases", "alias", "tags", "tag", "cssclass", "publish", "accounts"].includes(this.config.name.toLowerCase())) {
return "The name must be something other";
} else {
return "";
}
case "color":
if (!isColor(this.config.color)) {
return "The color must be represented by `#` and a six-digit hexadecimal number";
} else {
return "";
}
case "urlTemplate":
if (!isURL(this.config.urlTemplate.replace(/\{\{[^}]*\}\}/g, ""))) {
return "URL is invalid";
} else {
return "";
}
case "labelTemplate":
return "";
case "doesReverseResolution":
return "";
}
}
updateText(key, settings) {
if (this.checkConfig(key) != "") {
settings[key].descEl.innerHTML = descriptions[key] + `<br><span class='mod-warning'>${this.checkConfig(key)}</span>`;
} else {
settings[key].descEl.innerHTML = descriptions[key];
}
}
updateDisplay(settings) {
let f = false;
["name", "color", "urlTemplate", "labelTemplate", "doesReverseResolution"].forEach((key) => {
if (this.checkConfig(key) != "") {
f = true;
}
});
settings.saveButton.setDisabled(f);
const linker = document.createElement("a");
drawAccountLink(linker, this.config, "example");
settings.previewBox.descEl.innerHTML = linker.outerHTML;
}
};
// src/control/websiteConfig.ts
var websiteConfig = class {
constructor() {
this.name = "";
this.color = "#FFFFFF";
this.urlTemplate = "";
this.labelTemplate = "";
this.doesReverseResolution = false;
}
};
// src/settings/AccountLinkerSettingTab.ts
var AccountLinkerSettingTab = class extends import_obsidian2.PluginSettingTab {
constructor(app, plugin) {
super(app, plugin);
this.plugin = plugin;
}
display() {
const { containerEl } = this;
containerEl.empty();
const siteDiv = containerEl.createDiv();
this.drawSites(siteDiv);
}
drawSites(div) {
div.empty();
const websites = this.plugin.settings.websites;
websites.forEach((website, i) => {
const s = new import_obsidian2.Setting(div).setDesc(website.name).addButton((button) => {
button.onClick(() => {
const modal = new WebsiteEditModal(this.plugin, website, (config) => {
this.plugin.settings.websites[i] = config;
this.plugin.saveSettings();
this.drawSites(div);
});
modal.open();
});
button.setIcon("pencil");
button.setTooltip("Edit");
}).addButton((button) => {
button.onClick(() => {
this.plugin.settings.websites.remove(website);
this.plugin.saveSettings();
this.drawSites(div);
});
button.setIcon("cross");
button.setTooltip("Remove");
});
const linker = document.createElement("a");
drawAccountLink(linker, website, "example");
s.descEl.innerHTML += linker.outerHTML;
});
new import_obsidian2.Setting(div).addButton((button) => {
button.onClick(() => {
const modal = new WebsiteEditModal(this.plugin, new websiteConfig(), (config) => {
this.plugin.settings.websites.push(config);
this.plugin.saveSettings();
this.drawSites(div);
});
modal.open();
});
button.setIcon("plus-with-circle");
button.setTooltip("New");
});
}
};
// src/settings/AccountLinkerSettings.ts
var DEFAULT_SETTINGS = {
websites: [
{
name: "Twitter",
color: "#3e9cec",
urlTemplate: "https://twitter.com/{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "@{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
},
{
name: "Facebook",
color: "#3b5998",
urlTemplate: "https://www.facebook.com/{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
},
{
name: "Instagram",
color: "#dc2477",
urlTemplate: "https://www.instagram.com/{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "@{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
},
{
name: "GitHub",
color: "#0a0c10",
urlTemplate: "https://github.com/{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "@{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
},
{
name: "Mail",
color: "#e7e7e7",
urlTemplate: "mailto:{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
},
{
name: "Linktree",
color: "#3ea195",
urlTemplate: "https://linktr.ee/{{NAME}}",
labelTemplate: "{{NAME}}",
doesReverseResolution: false
}
]
};
// src/drawing/frontmatterProcessor.ts
var frontmatterProcessor = (plugin) => (el, ctx) => __async(void 0, null, function* () {
const frontmatter = el.querySelector(".frontmatter");
if (frontmatter !== null) {
const embed = el.querySelector(".internal-embed");
if (embed !== null) {
return;
}
if (ctx.frontmatter) {
const siteDict = {};
plugin.settings.websites.forEach((config) => {
if (!Object.keys(siteDict).includes(config.name.toLowerCase())) {
siteDict[config.name.toLowerCase()] = [];
}
siteDict[config.name.toLowerCase()].push(config);
});
console.log(siteDict);
const accountList = [];
Object.keys(ctx.frontmatter).forEach((key) => {
if (Object.keys(siteDict).includes(key.toLowerCase())) {
const lk = key.toLowerCase();
siteDict[lk].forEach((config) => {
frontMatterRecursion(ctx.frontmatter[key], config, accountList);
});
}
});
const target = el.querySelector(".frontmatter-container");
if (accountList.length) {
target.innerHTML += `
<div class="frontmatter-section">
<span class="frontmatter-section-label">Accounts</span>
<div class="frontmatter-section-accounts">
</div>
</div>
`;
const section = target.querySelector(".frontmatter-section-accounts");
accountList.forEach((a) => {
const linkTag = section.createEl("a");
drawAccountLink(linkTag, a.config, a.value);
});
target.style.display = "block";
}
}
}
});
function frontMatterRecursion(value, config, accountList) {
if (typeof value === "string") {
accountList.push({
config,
value
});
} else {
value.forEach((v) => {
frontMatterRecursion(v, config, accountList);
});
}
}
// main.ts
var AccountLinker = class extends import_obsidian3.Plugin {
onload() {
return __async(this, null, function* () {
yield this.loadSettings();
this.registerMarkdownPostProcessor(frontmatterProcessor(this));
this.addSettingTab(new AccountLinkerSettingTab(this.app, this));
});
}
onunload() {
}
loadSettings() {
return __async(this, null, function* () {
this.settings = Object.assign({}, DEFAULT_SETTINGS, yield this.loadData());
});
}
saveSettings() {
return __async(this, null, function* () {
yield this.saveData(this.settings);
});
}
};

10
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-account-linker/manifest.json
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@ -1,10 +0,0 @@
{
"id": "obsidian-account-linker",
"name": "Account Linker",
"version": "1.0.1",
"minAppVersion": "0.12.0",
"description": "Plugin for describing external service accounts in the front matter",
"author": "qwegat",
"authorUrl": "https://github.com/qwegat",
"isDesktopOnly": false
}

30
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-account-linker/styles.css
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@ -1,30 +0,0 @@
.frontmatter-section-accounts{
display: inline-flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
align-items: center;
}
.frontmatter-accounts {
background-color: var(--background-secondary-alt);
border-radius: 30px;
font-size: 0.9em;
border: 1px solid transparent;
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
margin: 2px 4px;
display: inline-flex;
padding: 0;
}
.frontmatter-accounts-sitename {
display: block;
padding: 2px 8px 2px 8px;
line-height: 19px;
margin: 0;
}
.frontmatter-accounts-label {
display: block;
padding: 2px 8px 2px 8px;
line-height: 19px;
margin: 0;
}

46
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json
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@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
"checkpointList": [
{
"path": "/",
"date": "2024-04-05",
"size": 14639155
"date": "2024-04-15",
"size": 15130670
}
],
"activityHistory": [
@ -3278,7 +3278,47 @@
},
{
"date": "2024-04-05",
"value": 1282
"value": 2056
},
{
"date": "2024-04-06",
"value": 4498
},
{
"date": "2024-04-07",
"value": 1316
},
{
"date": "2024-04-08",
"value": 1418
},
{
"date": "2024-04-09",
"value": 4720
},
{
"date": "2024-04-10",
"value": 29302426
},
{
"date": "2024-04-11",
"value": 242676
},
{
"date": "2024-04-12",
"value": 3000
},
{
"date": "2024-04-13",
"value": 1278
},
{
"date": "2024-04-14",
"value": 1754
},
{
"date": "2024-04-15",
"value": 230107
}
]
}

4
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-advanced-uri/main.js
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@ -4787,8 +4787,8 @@ var AdvancedURI = class extends import_obsidian13.Plugin {
if (file instanceof import_obsidian13.TFile) {
const fileData = await this.app.vault.read(file);
const cache = this.app.metadataCache.getFileCache(file);
if (cache.sections[0].type == "yaml" && cache.sections[0].position.start.line == 0) {
const line = cache.sections[0].position.end.line;
if (cache.frontmatterPosition) {
const line = cache.frontmatterPosition.end.line;
const first = fileData.split("\n").slice(0, line + 1).join("\n");
const last = fileData.split("\n").slice(line + 1).join("\n");
dataToWrite = first + "\n" + parameters.data + "\n" + last;

2
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-advanced-uri/manifest.json
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@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
"isDesktopOnly": false,
"js": "main.js",
"fundingUrl": "https://ko-fi.com/vinzent",
"version": "1.40.0",
"version": "1.40.1",
"author": "Vinzent",
"authorUrl": "https://github.com/Vinzent03"
}

812
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json
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@ -490,7 +490,7 @@
"links": 4
},
"05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": {
"size": 7513,
"size": 8333,
"tags": 4,
"links": 13
},
@ -1570,7 +1570,7 @@
"links": 1
},
"01.02 Home/Household.md": {
"size": 7053,
"size": 7818,
"tags": 2,
"links": 4
},
@ -2659,11 +2659,6 @@
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
},
"02.03 Zürich/Le Mezzerie.md": {
"size": 1392,
"tags": 2,
"links": 2
},
"02.03 Zürich/Polo Park Zürich.md": {
"size": 1575,
"tags": 4,
@ -5616,7 +5611,7 @@
},
"02.03 Zürich/Puro.md": {
"size": 1581,
"tags": 2,
"tags": 3,
"links": 2
},
"02.03 Zürich/Napa Grill.md": {
@ -6271,7 +6266,7 @@
},
"03.03 Food & Wine/Cauliflower Salad with Dates and Pistachios.md": {
"size": 4289,
"tags": 2,
"tags": 0,
"links": 2
},
"03.03 Food & Wine/Matar Paneer.md": {
@ -10362,7 +10357,7 @@
"00.02 Inbox/The House of Doors.md": {
"size": 889,
"tags": 3,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Soldier Sailor.md": {
"size": 863,
@ -11545,9 +11540,9 @@
"links": 7
},
"03.01 Reading list/Invisible Man.md": {
"size": 885,
"size": 981,
"tags": 4,
"links": 2
"links": 3
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-07.md": {
"size": 1412,
@ -11576,7 +11571,7 @@
},
"02.03 Zürich/Kafi Freud.md": {
"size": 1542,
"tags": 3,
"tags": 2,
"links": 2
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/Events/2024-03-10 ⚽️ PSG - Stade Reims (2-2).md": {
@ -11697,42 +11692,37 @@
"00.02 Inbox/East Goes West.md": {
"size": 887,
"tags": 1,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Their Eyes Were Watching God.md": {
"size": 889,
"tags": 1,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Catch-22.md": {
"size": 880,
"tags": 1,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Mumbo Jumbo.md": {
"size": 934,
"tags": 1,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/The Dog of the South.md": {
"size": 893,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Kindred.md": {
"size": 867,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
},
"00.02 Inbox/American Psycho.md": {
"size": 891,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.02 Inbox/Underworld.md": {
"size": 880,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
"links": 2
},
"00.03 News/The Great American Novels.md": {
"size": 24469,
@ -11787,7 +11777,7 @@
"03.01 Reading list/The Catcher in the Rye.md": {
"size": 886,
"tags": 1,
"links": 2
"links": 3
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-24.md": {
"size": 1567,
@ -11817,7 +11807,7 @@
"03.01 Reading list/Nightwood.md": {
"size": 864,
"tags": 1,
"links": 2
"links": 3
},
"04.03 Creative snippets/Project 1/Character1.md": {
"size": 0,
@ -11867,7 +11857,7 @@
"03.01 Reading list/Portnoy's Complaint.md": {
"size": 873,
"tags": 3,
"links": 2
"links": 3
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-30.md": {
"size": 1412,
@ -11932,15 +11922,175 @@
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-05.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 5
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-06.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 6
},
"02.03 Zürich/Bei Moudi.md": {
"size": 1392,
"tags": 2,
"links": 2
},
"03.04 Cinematheque/The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).md": {
"size": 2130,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-07.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 5
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-08.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 7
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-09.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 5
},
"03.04 Cinematheque/Arrested Development (2003-2019).md": {
"size": 2571,
"tags": 0,
"links": 1
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-10.md": {
"size": 1412,
"tags": 0,
"links": 6
},
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-11.md": {
"size": 1392,
"tags": 0,
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Dear Caitlin Clark ….md\"> Dear Caitlin Clark … </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/Events/2024-03-10 ⚽️ PSG - Stade Reims (2-2).md\"> 2024-03-10 ⚽️ PSG - Stade Reims (2-2) </a>",
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],
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@ -12245,11 +12397,10 @@
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.02 Travels/Skiing in Switzerland.md\"> Skiing in Switzerland </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-12-03.md\"> 2023-12-03 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"01.02 Home/Household.md\"> Household </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/Vernon Subutex 1.md\"> Vernon Subutex 1 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-11-17.md\"> 2023-11-17 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-11-16.md\"> 2023-11-16 </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/Vernon Subutex 1.md\"> Vernon Subutex 1 </a>"
],
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/How a Case Against Fox News Tore Apart a Media-Fighting Law Firm.md\"> How a Case Against Fox News Tore Apart a Media-Fighting Law Firm </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/‘Yo Soy la Mamá’ A Migrant Mother’s Struggle to Get Back Her Son.md\"> ‘Yo Soy la Mamá’ A Migrant Mother’s Struggle to Get Back Her Son </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"04.03 Creative snippets/Drafts/Draft 1/Introduction.md\"> Introduction </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice 1.md\"> How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice 1 </a>",
@ -12299,167 +12450,166 @@
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Meet the World's Top 'Chess Detective'.md\"> Meet the World's Top 'Chess Detective' </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Bad Faith at Second Mesa.md\"> Bad Faith at Second Mesa </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How the Record Industry Ruthlessly Punished Milli Vanilli for Anticipating the Future of Music.md\"> How the Record Industry Ruthlessly Punished Milli Vanilli for Anticipating the Future of Music </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/True Grit.md\"> True Grit </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Who Will Remove My IUD.md\"> Who Will Remove My IUD </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/True Grit.md\"> True Grit </a>"
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How Jesse Plemons Came to Star in, Well, Pretty Much Everything.md\"> How Jesse Plemons Came to Star in, Well, Pretty Much Everything </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-29.md\"> 2024-03-29 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-29.md\"> 2024-03-29 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-27.md\"> 2024-03-27 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"04.03 Creative snippets/Project 2/@@Project2.md\"> @@Project2 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-27.md\"> 2024-03-27 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"04.03 Creative snippets/Project 2/@Draft1.md\"> @Draft1 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"04.03 Creative snippets/Project 2/@Meta Data.md\"> @Meta Data </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"04.03 Creative snippets/Project 2/@@Project2.md\"> @@Project2 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-25.md\"> 2024-03-25 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice 1.md\"> How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice 1 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/What Happens to Harlem When It’s White.md\"> What Happens to Harlem When It’s White </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/As Italy depopulates, wilderness is back.md\"> As Italy depopulates, wilderness is back </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-03-24.md\"> 2024-03-24 </a>"
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Dog of the South.md\"> The Dog of the South </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Their Eyes Were Watching God.md\"> Their Eyes Were Watching God </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Catch-22.md\"> Catch-22 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Kindred.md\"> Kindred </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The House of Doors.md\"> The House of Doors </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Mumbo Jumbo.md\"> Mumbo Jumbo </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Underworld.md\"> Underworld </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.05 Vinyls/Exile on Main St (by The Rolling Stones - 1972).md\"> Exile on Main St (by The Rolling Stones - 1972) </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-15.md\"> 2024-04-15 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-12.md\"> 2024-04-12 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-14.md\"> 2024-04-14 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The soft life why millennials are quitting the rat race.md\"> The soft life why millennials are quitting the rat race </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The last days of Boston Market.md\"> The last days of Boston Market </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Welcome to Northwestern University at Stateville.md\"> Welcome to Northwestern University at Stateville </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/This is how reporters documented 1,000 deaths after police force that isn't supposed to be fatal.md\"> This is how reporters documented 1,000 deaths after police force that isn't supposed to be fatal </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/They came for Florida's sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war..md\"> They came for Florida's sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Cabaret’s Endurance Run The Untold History.md\"> Cabaret’s Endurance Run The Untold History </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Who Is Podcast Guest Turned Star Andrew Huberman, Really.md\"> Who Is Podcast Guest Turned Star Andrew Huberman, Really </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor An American Tragedy.md\"> Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor An American Tragedy </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-11.md\"> 2024-04-11 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-10.md\"> 2024-04-10 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.04 Cinematheque/Arrested Development (2003-2019).md\"> Arrested Development (2003-2019) </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-09.md\"> 2024-04-09 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-09.md\"> 2024-04-09 </a>"
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Templates/Template Music.md\"> Template Music </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.03 Food & Wine/Finca Racons.md\"> Finca Racons </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.03 Food & Wine/Sidamo Bio.md\"> Sidamo Bio </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Inside the Meltdown at CNN.md\"> Inside the Meltdown at CNN </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/This Maine Fish House Is an Icon. But of What, Exactly.md\"> This Maine Fish House Is an Icon. But of What, Exactly </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India.md\"> Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Miseducation of Maria Montessori.md\"> The Miseducation of Maria Montessori </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Rape, Race and a Decades-Old Lie That Still Wounds.md\"> Rape, Race and a Decades-Old Lie That Still Wounds </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How a Sexual Assault Case in St. John’s Exposed a Police Force’s Predatory Culture.md\"> How a Sexual Assault Case in St. John’s Exposed a Police Force’s Predatory Culture </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Source Years.md\"> The Source Years </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.03 Food & Wine/Msakhan Fatteh.md\"> Msakhan Fatteh </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville.md\"> Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"01.02 Home/Bandes Dessinées.md\"> Bandes Dessinées </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/VC Investments.md\"> VC Investments </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/QED Naval.md\"> QED Naval </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Ocean Protocol.md\"> Ocean Protocol </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Thalès.md\"> Thalès </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Le Miel de Paris.md\"> Le Miel de Paris </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Crypto Investments.md\"> Crypto Investments </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Helium creates an open source, decentralized future for the web.md\"> Helium creates an open source, decentralized future for the web </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/@Investment master.md\"> @Investment master </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Equity Tasks.md\"> Equity Tasks </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Airbus.md\"> Airbus </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/33 Best Open-Source Software For MacOS In 2023.md\"> 33 Best Open-Source Software For MacOS In 2023 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Configuring Caddy.md\"> Configuring Caddy </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-01-24.md\"> 2022-01-24 </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/The Fran Lebowitz Reader.md\"> The Fran Lebowitz Reader </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/Civilizations.md\"> Civilizations </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/Tous les Hommes n'habitent pas le Monde de la meme Facon.md\"> Tous les Hommes n'habitent pas le Monde de la meme Facon </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/La Prochaine Fois que tu Mordras la Poussière.md\"> La Prochaine Fois que tu Mordras la Poussière </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"03.01 Reading list/Sérotonine.md\"> Sérotonine </a>",
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/How to migrate your Nextcloud database-backend from MySQLMariaDB to PostgreSQL.md\"> How to migrate your Nextcloud database-backend from MySQLMariaDB to PostgreSQL </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/How to sync Obsidian Notes on iOS.md\"> How to sync Obsidian Notes on iOS </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/GitHub - stefanprodandockprom Docker hosts and containers monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana, cAdvisor, NodeExporter and AlertManager.md\"> GitHub - stefanprodandockprom Docker hosts and containers monitoring with Prometheus, Grafana, cAdvisor, NodeExporter and AlertManager </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/GitHub - RunaCapitalawesome-oss-alternatives Awesome list of open-source startup alternatives to well-known SaaS products 🚀.md\"> GitHub - RunaCapitalawesome-oss-alternatives Awesome list of open-source startup alternatives to well-known SaaS products 🚀 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/GitHub - postalserverpostal ✉️ A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & outgoing e-mail.md\"> GitHub - postalserverpostal ✉️ A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & outgoing e-mail </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-07-01.md\"> 2023-07-01 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-09-02.md\"> 2023-09-02 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-02-11.md\"> 2024-02-11 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-05-15.md\"> 2023-05-15 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-09-02.md\"> 2022-09-02 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-05-15.md\"> 2022-05-15 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-05-21.md\"> 2022-05-21 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-02-25.md\"> 2024-02-25 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-05-21.md\"> 2023-05-21 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-04.md\"> 2023-01-04 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-03-10.md\"> 2023-03-10 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-10.md\"> 2022-03-10 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-12-06.md\"> 2023-12-06 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-12-06.md\"> 2022-12-06 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-12.md\"> 2022-10-12 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-10-12.md\"> 2023-10-12 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-24.md\"> 2022-03-24 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-03-24.md\"> 2023-03-24 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-30.md\"> 2023-01-30 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-11-28.md\"> 2023-11-28 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-01-30.md\"> 2022-01-30 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-11-28.md\"> 2022-11-28 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-10-26.md\"> 2023-10-26 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-26.md\"> 2022-10-26 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-12-12.md\"> 2022-12-12 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-12-12.md\"> 2023-12-12 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-10-06.md\"> 2023-10-06 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-10-06.md\"> 2022-10-06 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-11-08.md\"> 2023-11-08 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-10.md\"> 2023-01-10 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-11-08.md\"> 2022-11-08 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-04.md\"> 2022-03-04 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-03-04.md\"> 2023-03-04 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-12-26.md\"> 2023-12-26 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-12-26.md\"> 2022-12-26 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-03-30.md\"> 2023-03-30 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-30.md\"> 2022-03-30 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-01-24.md\"> 2022-01-24 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-24.md\"> 2023-01-24 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-08-18.md\"> 2022-08-18 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-08-18.md\"> 2023-08-18 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-07-15.md\"> 2023-07-15 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-15.md\"> 2022-07-15 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-05-01.md\"> 2022-05-01 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-09-16.md\"> 2022-09-16 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-05-01.md\"> 2023-05-01 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-02-05.md\"> 2024-02-05 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-09-16.md\"> 2023-09-16 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-09-22.md\"> 2023-09-22 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-09-22.md\"> 2022-09-22 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-21.md\"> 2022-07-21 </a>"
]
}
},

5
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-icon-folder/data.json
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@ -26,7 +26,10 @@
"iconsBackgroundCheckEnabled": false,
"iconsInNotesEnabled": true,
"iconIdentifier": ":",
"iconsInLinksEnabled": true
"iconsInLinksEnabled": true,
"iconInFrontmatterFieldName": "icon",
"iconColorInFrontmatterFieldName": "iconColor",
"debugMode": false
},
"02.03 Zürich": "TpZurichCoatOfArms",
"02.01 London": "TpCoatOfArmsOfTheCityOfLondon",

273
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-icon-folder/main.js
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2
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-icon-folder/manifest.json
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@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
{
"id": "obsidian-icon-folder",
"name": "Iconize",
"version": "2.11.5",
"version": "2.11.11",
"minAppVersion": "0.9.12",
"description": "Add icons to anything you desire in Obsidian, including files, folders, and text.",
"author": "Florian Woelki",

25
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-memos/data.json
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@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
"OpenDailyMemosWithMemos": true,
"HideDoneTasks": false,
"ShowTaskLabel": false,
"AppendDateWhenTaskDone": false,
"MobileAndDesktop": "All",
"OpenMemosAutomatically": false,
"ShowTime": true,
@ -32,6 +33,8 @@
"SetCustomMemoFooter": false,
"DefaultLightBackgroundImage": "",
"DefaultDarkBackgroundImage": "",
"DefaultLightBackgroundImageForClean": "",
"DefaultDarkBackgroundImageForClean": "",
"DefaultMemoComposition": "{TIME} {CONTENT}",
"CommentOnMemos": false,
"CommentsInOriginalNotes": false,
@ -58,18 +61,6 @@
"value": "DAILY",
"target": "ProcessEntriesBelow",
"insert": "InsertAfter"
},
{
"value": "CANVAS",
"target": "MemoDefaultCanvasPath"
},
{
"value": "MULTI",
"target": "MemoDefaultMultiFilePath"
},
{
"value": "FILE",
"target": "MemoDefaultSingleFilePath"
}
],
"DeleteThinoDirectly": false,
@ -94,7 +85,7 @@
"MomentsIcon": "https://images.pexels.com/photos/256514/pexels-photo-256514.jpeg",
"MomentsQuote": "Share your thino with the world",
"DefaultThemeForThino": "classic",
"LastUpdatedVersion": "2.3.61",
"LastUpdatedVersion": "2.4.23",
"ShareToThinoWithText": false,
"ShareToThinoWithTextAppend": "",
"ShareToThinoWithTextPrepend": "",
@ -103,5 +94,11 @@
"DifferentInsertTarget": false,
"InsertAfterForTask": "",
"ProcessContentTarget": "custom",
"InsertType": "custom"
"InsertType": "custom",
"ShareAppendType": "preset",
"SharePrependType": "preset",
"SetFileNameAfterCreate": false,
"TagForFileTypeFiles": "thino/file",
"TagForMultiTypeFiles": "thino/multi",
"MinHeightForShare": "200px"
}

336
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.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-memos/manifest.json
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@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
"id": "obsidian-memos",
"name": "Thino",
"description": "Capturing ideas and save them into daily notes.",
"version": "2.3.61",
"version": "2.4.23",
"author": "Boninall",
"authorUrl": "https://github.com/Quorafind/",
"isDesktopOnly": false,

2
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-memos/styles.css
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151
.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json
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@ -3,41 +3,41 @@
"reminders": {
"05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": [
{
"title": ":floppy_disk: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for FV|Folder Vault]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05",
"rowNumber": 184
"title": ":cloud: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-10",
"rowNumber": 191
},
{
"title": ":iphone: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for iPhone|iPhone]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09",
"rowNumber": 179
"title": "Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for Anchor|Anchor Wallet]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-04",
"rowNumber": 174
},
{
"title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-11",
"rowNumber": 194
"title": ":floppy_disk: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for FV|Folder Vault]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 185
},
{
"title": ":cloud: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-10",
"rowNumber": 189
"title": ":iphone: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for iPhone|iPhone]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-09",
"rowNumber": 179
},
{
"title": "Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for Anchor|Anchor Wallet]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-04",
"rowNumber": 174
"title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-11",
"rowNumber": 196
}
],
"06.01 Finances/hLedger.md": [
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update Price file %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05",
"time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 418
},
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update current ledger %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05",
"rowNumber": 423
"time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 424
}
],
"05.02 Networks/Server Cloud.md": [
@ -332,50 +332,50 @@
}
],
"01.02 Home/Household.md": [
{
"title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-16",
"rowNumber": 84
},
{
"title": "🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-08",
"rowNumber": 102
"time": "2024-04-22",
"rowNumber": 103
},
{
"title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09",
"time": "2024-04-23",
"rowNumber": 75
},
{
"title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-13",
"rowNumber": 118
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"rowNumber": 131
},
{
"title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-16",
"rowNumber": 83
"time": "2024-04-27",
"rowNumber": 121
},
{
"title": "🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30",
"rowNumber": 97
"rowNumber": 98
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Winter tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-15",
"rowNumber": 132
"rowNumber": 137
},
{
"title": ":ski: [[Household]]: Organise yearly ski servicing ([[Ski Rental Zürich]]) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-31",
"rowNumber": 139
"rowNumber": 144
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Renew [road vignette](https://www.e-vignette.ch/) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-12-20",
"rowNumber": 133
"rowNumber": 138
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-15",
"rowNumber": 135
}
],
"01.03 Family/Pia Bousquié.md": [
@ -393,11 +393,6 @@
}
],
"01.01 Life Orga/@Finances.md": [
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09",
"rowNumber": 116
},
{
"title": ":bar_chart: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Re-establish financial plan for 2024",
"time": "2024-04-30",
@ -406,7 +401,12 @@
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Swiss tax self declaration %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30",
"rowNumber": 122
"rowNumber": 123
},
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-14",
"rowNumber": 116
},
{
"title": ":moneybag: [[@Finances]]: Transfer UK pension to CH %%done_del%%",
@ -416,7 +416,7 @@
{
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Close yearly accounts %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-01-07",
"rowNumber": 120
"rowNumber": 121
}
],
"01.01 Life Orga/@Personal projects.md": [
@ -454,27 +454,27 @@
}
],
"06.02 Investments/Crypto Tasks.md": [
{
"title": ":chart: Check [[Nimbus]] earnings %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-08",
"rowNumber": 89
},
{
"title": ":ballot_box_with_ballot: [[Crypto Tasks]]: Vote for [[EOS]] block producers %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-07",
"rowNumber": 72
},
{
"title": ":chart: Check [[Nimbus]] earnings %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-13",
"rowNumber": 89
}
],
"05.02 Networks/Configuring UFW.md": [
{
"title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]] Get IP addresses caught by Postfix %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-06",
"time": "2024-04-20",
"rowNumber": 239
},
{
"title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]]: Update the Blocked IP list %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-06",
"rowNumber": 303
"time": "2024-04-20",
"rowNumber": 305
}
],
"01.03 Family/Amélie Solanet.md": [
@ -687,7 +687,7 @@
"01.07 Animals/@Sally.md": [
{
"title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-10",
"time": "2024-05-10",
"rowNumber": 142
},
{
@ -735,7 +735,7 @@
"01.07 Animals/2023-07-13 Health check.md": [
{
"title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing",
"time": "2024-04-09",
"time": "2024-04-23",
"rowNumber": 53
}
],
@ -789,20 +789,20 @@
}
],
"01.01 Life Orga/@Family.md": [
{
"title": ":stopwatch: [[@Family|Family]]: Réparer l’oignon Lip",
"time": "2024-06-20",
"rowNumber": 96
},
{
"title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore civil procedures to change names (+whether in 🇨🇭 or 🇫🇷)",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"time": "2024-09-15",
"rowNumber": 94
},
{
"title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore maintaining in the ANF books",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"time": "2024-09-15",
"rowNumber": 95
},
{
"title": ":stopwatch: [[@Family|Family]]: Réparer l’oignon Lip",
"time": "2024-06-20",
"rowNumber": 96
}
],
"01.03 Family/Armand de Villeneuve.md": [
@ -813,15 +813,10 @@
}
],
"02.03 Zürich/@@Zürich.md": [
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Sechseläuten %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"rowNumber": 118
},
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :runner: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Marathon %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-21",
"rowNumber": 128
"rowNumber": 129
},
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Book a restaurant with terrace for the season: [[Albishaus]], [[Restaurant Boldern]], [[Zur Buech]], [[Jardin Zürichberg]], [[Bistro Rigiblick]], [[Portofino am See]], [[La Réserve|La Muña]] %%done_del%%",
@ -846,7 +841,7 @@
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Pride Festival %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-15",
"rowNumber": 119
"rowNumber": 120
},
{
"title": ":sunny: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out programmation of the [Zurich's finest open-air cinema | Allianz Cinema -](https://zuerich.allianzcinema.ch/en) %%done_del%%",
@ -856,22 +851,22 @@
{
"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Seenachtfest Rapperswil-Jona %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-01",
"rowNumber": 122
"rowNumber": 123
},
{
"title": ":sunny: :runner: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out tickets to Weltklasse Zürich %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-01",
"rowNumber": 129
"rowNumber": 130
},
{
"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Street Parade %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-10",
"rowNumber": 120
"rowNumber": 121
},
{
"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Openair %%done_del%%",
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"rowNumber": 121
"rowNumber": 122
},
{
"title": ":maple_leaf: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Zürich Film Festival %%done_del%%",
@ -912,6 +907,11 @@
"title": ":snowflake: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: ZüriCarneval weekend %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-02-15",
"rowNumber": 116
},
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Sechseläuten %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-15",
"rowNumber": 118
}
],
"03.02 Travels/Geneva.md": [
@ -1013,6 +1013,13 @@
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],
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{
"title": "12:27 :iphone: [[Email & Communication]]: Buy a Touch charger for iPhone",
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]
},
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@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
{
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
{
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"authorUrl": "https://twitter.com/kepano",

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@ -61,14 +61,14 @@
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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-05.md
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Water:
Coffee:
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@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
📺: [[The Sea Beyond (2020–)]]
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-06.md
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---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-06
Date: 2024-04-06
DocType: Note
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CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
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Stress: 25
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Water: 2.5
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Steps: 9024
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-05|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-07|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-06Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-06NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-06
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-06
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-06
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
- [ ] 12:27 :iphone: [[Email & Communication]]: Buy a Touch charger for iPhone 📅2024-04-21
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📺: [[The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-06]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-07.md
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@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-07
Date: 2024-04-07
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3
Coffee: 2
Steps: 6747
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-06|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-08|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-07Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-07NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-07
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-07
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-07
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🍴: [[Spicy Coconut Butter Chicken]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-07]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-08.md
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@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-08
Date: 2024-04-08
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 8
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2
Coffee: 6
Steps: 10863
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-07|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-09|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-08Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-08NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-08
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-08
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-08
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[American Psycho]]
📺: [[Arrested Development (2003-2019)]]
🍽️: [[Spicy Szechuan Noodles with Garlic Chilli Oil]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-08]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-09.md
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@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-09
Date: 2024-04-09
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 8
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.5
Coffee: 4
Steps: 10418
Weight: 94.3
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-08|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-10|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-09Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-09NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-09
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-09
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-09
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[American Psycho]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-09]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-10.md
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@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-10
Date: 2024-04-10
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.5
Coffee: 5
Steps: 10496
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-09|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-11|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-10Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-10NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-10
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-10
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-10
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[American Psycho]]
🍴: [[Spicy Szechuan Noodles with Garlic Chilli Oil]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-10]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-11.md
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@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-11
Date: 2024-04-11
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 4
Coffee: 5
Steps: 11680
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding: 1
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-10|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-12|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-11Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-11NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-11
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-11
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-11
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[American Psycho]]
🐎: [[2024-04-11 First exercice|40 min conditioning exercise]] with [[@Sally|Sally]] at [[Polo Park Zürich|PPZ]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-11]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-12.md
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@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-12
Date: 2024-04-12
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 1.75
Coffee: 4
Steps: 8352
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-11|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-13|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-12Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-12NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-12
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-12
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-12
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[American Psycho]]
🍴: [[Big Shells With Spicy Lamb Sausage and Pistachios]]
🚗: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]] to [[@France|Colmar]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-12]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-13.md
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@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-13
Date: 2024-04-13
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 1.5
Coffee: 1
Steps: 7968
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-12|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-14|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-13Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-13NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-13
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-13
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-13
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-13]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

136
00.01 Admin/Calendars/2024-04-14.md
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@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-14
Date: 2024-04-14
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.91
Coffee: 1
Steps: 11120
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-13|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-15|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-14Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-14NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-14
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-14
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-14
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🚗: Visite du Haut Koenigsberg & [[@France|Colmar]] to [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]
🍹: [[Albishaus]]
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title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-15
Date: 2024-04-15
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 1
Coffee: 3
Steps:
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
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%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-14|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-16|🗓 Next >>]]
---
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```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-15Edit
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name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-15NSave
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# 2024-04-15
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> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-15
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```toc
style: number
```
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---
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### ✅ Tasks of the day
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```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-15
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
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---
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### 📝 Memos
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This section does serve for quick memos.
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%% --- %%
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### 🗒 Notes
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📖: [[Their Eyes Were Watching God]]
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Table from [[2024-04-15]]
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Alias: [""]
Tag: ["🏕️", "🇳🇿", "🚫"]
Date: 2024-04-15
DocType: "WebClipping"
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp: 2024-04-15
Link: https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/missing-family-kids-tom-phillips-new-zealand-true-crime.html
location:
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&emsp;
# A Family’s Disappearance Rocked New Zealand. What Came After Has Stunned Everyone.
![Cartoon images of a missing poster with three kids, footage of two bank robbers, loose bank notes flying through the air, a pickup truck parked on the beach, and two people on a motorbike.](https://compote.slate.com/images/cdc9afab-22a6-4479-a15f-b67a2a10a410.jpeg)
Illustration by Toby Morris
The waves were already crashing over the Toyota’s hood when they found it.
It was a blustery September Sunday in 2021, and the Hilux pickup sat far down the gray sand in a remote cove on the wild west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. The Māori men who noticed the car live in mobile homes and cabins up by the road, on ancestral land near Kiritehere Beach. The truck was parked below the high-tide line, facing the sea, and was nearly swamped by the waves pummeling the shore. The men found the keys, tucked under the driver’s-side floormat, and backed the car up the beach. They couldn’t help but notice empty child seats strapped into the back. If any kids had gotten close to the sea on a day like this, they were long gone.
The truck, it would turn out, belonged to Tom Phillips, the son of a prominent Pākehā—white—family with a farm nearby in Marokopa. Phillips, 34, spent much of his time on the farm, where he home-schooled his three kids, Jayda, 8, Maverick, 6, and Ember, 5. He’d separated from his wife three years before and had custody of the kids. Locals heard she was down on the South Island, struggling with her own problems.
Now here was his truck, marooned. The next morning, Tom’s brother Ben drove down to the beach. He’d last seen Tom and the kids on Saturday, Sept. 11, when they’d left the farm, heading, everyone thought, back to Ōtorohanga, the inland town where Tom kept a house. Now it was Sept. 13. Ben inspected the Toyota, then called the police.
Soon photos of the missing father and his three smiling children were in every newspaper and on every TV channel in New Zealand. Police and volunteer searchers fanned out over the area, knocking on doors. Helicopters, planes, and heat-detecting drones flew over the deep bush surrounding the beach. Rescue boats and jet skis buzzed through the roaring waves, looking for bodies. On days the sea was calm, swimmers from surf rescue teams explored caves along the shoreline. The local hapū, or Māori clan, cooked hot meals for the searchers in a shed near the beach. Three days into the search, Phillips’ ex-wife [released a careful statement](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126382867/mum-holding-out-every-hope-for-children-missing-on-stormy-waikato-beach?rm=a) through the police, thanking the searchers for their efforts. “We are holding out every hope that my children Jayda, Maverick, and Ember are safe,” she said.
But the stark facts—the lonely car on the beach, the 8-foot waves, Tom and the children vanishing completely—were daunting. “I do fear the worst,” Tom’s sister, Rozzi Pethybridge, told a reporter. “I am worried a rogue wave has caught one of the kids and he’s gone in to save them.” Phillips’ uncle seemed to be hinting at something even darker when he told another reporter that in some ways he hoped it *had* been a rogue wave: “If something has happened to the children, the best-case scenario is that they were washed out to sea,” he said. “That way it’s an accident.”
September in New Zealand, the height of Southern Hemisphere spring, is whitebaiting season, when locals set up nets at the river mouth to capture the shoals of immature fish headed back to their freshwater home. But during the search operation, authorities placed a rāhui, a ban, on fishing. Some Marokopa residents grumbled about halting what had been a boom season. But others put things in perspective. “That’s the end of the whitebaiting,” one local [told a reporter](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300408397/the-mystery-of-the-missing-family--whats-become-of-tom-phillips-and-his-kids), “but that’s small-time compared with losing a family.”
On social media and on Reddit, observers seized on rumors of a custody dispute and [spun out dark theories](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/puhmqz/missing_family_daily_searches_for_family_last/) of an abduction or staged disappearance. Phillips was an experienced bushman, camper, and hunter. In passing, locals told reporters that if Phillips *had* taken the kids out into the wild for some reason, they were confident he could last for weeks or months out there, even with three children in tow. A week into the search, family members seemed to be pinning their hopes on this idea. “We’re looking on the bright side,” the uncle [told Radio New Zealand](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/451509/family-hope-missing-dad-and-children-are-in-hiding-uncle-says). “We’re hoping he’s just gone and hidden in the bush.”
After 12 days of active searching, the [police stood down](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300415580/missing-family-daily-searches-for-family-last-seen-in-marokopa-suspended). The whitebaiting rāhui was lifted. Emergency services personnel moved out of the Marokopa community building on the banks of the river. Other than the Toyota, not a single sign had been found of the four missing Phillipses. The media continued covering the case, but there wasn’t much to say—everyone understood that until bodies washed up somewhere, it was unlikely there would be any further news.
No one knew that the disappearances were just the beginning of an ordeal that has not yet ended—a case that has only grown stranger and more ominous in the two and a half years since, prompting pleas from family, increasing public astonishment, online speculation, a shocking crime, and a community’s closing ranks around one of its own.
Back in September 2021, the real mystery started when the first one was solved. Because 17 days after they had been reported missing, Tom Phillips and his three children walked through the front door of his parents’ farm.
The Tom Phillips disappearance captivated New Zealand. But the incident never reached the 24/7 fever pitch of blanket coverage that would have characterized the story if it had happened in the United States. In part that’s because there’s no CNN-style 24-hour news channel in New Zealand, though pretty much every outlet in the country sent a reporter to the west coast in hopes of digging something up. But no one had much to say. Phillips’ uncle spoke to press during the search, but other members of the Phillips clan stuck to the farm and stayed away from television cameras. The police delivered a daily briefing most afternoons, which never offered any new information. The children’s mother remained unnamed. Reporters were unable to reveal details of the couple’s custody disputes, because family courts in New Zealand strictly prohibit media from reporting on their proceedings.
Even after Phillips and his children returned, there [was no footage](https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/09/family-missing-in-south-waikato-found-safe-and-well.html) of the happy family waving from the front porch, no soft-focus newsmagazine interviews, no morning-show feature. Phillips never spoke to the press. The family issued a statement—“Tom is remorseful, he is humbled, he is gaining an understanding of the horrific ordeal he has put us through”—and Pethybridge gave a brief interview to the New Zealand Herald in which she [seemed shell-shocked](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/marokopa-mystery-family-of-missing-kids-on-weeks-in-dense-bush-didnt-do-it-hard-at-all/FGZYKWO6KWPJ4QPBHOQ6WXRRIY/?utm_campaign=nzh_tw&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=nzh_tw#Echobox=1633037862-1) by the situation. “Hope dwindled and we became more and more resigned and sad,” she said. Now, she added, she could “smile and laugh for the first time in three weeks, and not feel bad if you have a little smile.”
![A triptych of the three missing kids.](https://compote.slate.com/images/60367ead-248c-48c6-964b-81d75dba9c70.png?crop=1400%2C840%2Cx0%2Cy0)
The Phillips kids: from left, Maverick, Jayda, and Ember. Courtesy of NZ Police
She did not, however, smile once in the entire interview. The family closed ranks, and reporters were stuck combing social media for clues. (“Pethybridge also shared a song [titled ‘Hey Brother’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cp6mKbRTQY) by Swedish DJ Avicci,” one report noted.)
The residents of Marokopa, too, had little to say once the children were safe, one reporter told me. “After he was found, no one wanted to talk,” [said Karen Rutherford](https://newsroom.co.nz/2021/10/04/man-found-mystery-continues/) of Newshub. “He has put people through the wringer, to be honest.” After all, what had all that work been for? They’d served meals to rescuers, opened the community center 24/7. Many residents had tramped along the shoreline, looking for bodies. Even after the police had called off the search, members of the local hapū went out every day. Then it turned out that Phillips simply had not bothered to tell anyone he was taking the children to the deep bush, pitching a tent 15 kilometers south of the beach where his car was found. “He’s done this before. It’s not the first time,” a [local farmer said](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/300420778/from-joy-to-frustration-over-marokopas-lostthenfound-family). “We’re glad to have him back, but he should be held accountable. What was he thinking?”
And why had he left the car there, anyway? Though one friend suggested that the pickup had been stolen by joyriding kids, most everyone assumed that Phillips had parked on the beach to throw searchers off the trail. But for what purpose? Some [noted Pethybridge’s comment](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452625/missing-marokopa-family-found-safe-and-well) that Phillips was in “a helpless place” and wanted to “clear his head.” A [Reddit user mused](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/py73jy/missing_marakopa_family_found_safe_and_well/): “It’s one thing for him wanting to clear his head but what about the kids? Hope they’re OK, might need some therapy stat.” Others leaped in to assure everyone that a trip to the bush was just what any kid needed: “Going camping with dad and forgetting about the rest of the world would be pretty sweet.”
Indeed, there’s a long tradition in New Zealand of valorizing backcountry adventure—getting lost in the bush for a while—shared by parents and children. “It’s a [*Man Alone* thing](https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/29-04-2021/locked-down-and-far-from-home-with-man-alone),” the Auckland education researcher Stuart McNaughton told me, referring to the 1939 novel by John Mulgan still viewed by many as essential to understanding the “Kiwi character.” “Getting on with stuff, taming a difficult environment, getting hurt in the process.” To many New Zealanders, a proper father figure is a guy who knows how to handle the wilderness, a place where increasingly citified Kiwi kids seem less and less comfortable. McNaughton summarized the attitude: “If they’re gonna have an accident, they’re gonna have an accident—it’ll probably do them good.”
The modern urtext on this subject is Taika Waititi’s 2016 comedy [*Hunt for the Wilderpeople*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_for_the_Wilderpeople), still the most successful locally produced film in the nation’s history. In the movie, a troubled Māori kid from the Auckland streets bonds with a brusque Pākehā outdoorsman in the deep bush. The movie’s villain is a maniacal child protection officer who hunts them down—the overweening nanny state, in the flesh. It’s based on a book by the late Barry Crump, famous for his reputation as a rugged bloke; New Zealanders know him best for [his long-running ads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyHBKX29_Q8) for the Toyota Hilux ute, the official truck of bushmen—unsurprisingly, the truck Tom Phillips owned and parked on Kiritehere Beach.
After he returned, [Phillips was charged](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126656040/man-charged-over-search-for-father-and-children-in-marokopa-waikato?rm=a) with wasting police resources and ordered to appear in court. He was “reckless as to whether wasteful deployment of police resources would result,” the charges read. He “behaved in a manner that was likely to give rise to serious apprehension for the safety of himself, Jayda Phillips, Ember Phillips and Maverick Phillips, knowing that such apprehension would be groundless.” The charges carried a maximum penalty of three months in jail or a $2,000 fine.
In neighborhood Facebook groups and on playgrounds across New Zealand, parents debated the news. How dare this screw-up risk the lives of searchers and terrify his family because he hadn’t bothered to tell anyone where he was going. Shouldn’t he at least pay the government back for what it spent on that search plane? Or: How dare the government charge a parent for going camping with his children! Wasn’t he the kind of throwback dad we didn’t see enough of anymore, as modern kids become coddled and soft?
I was certainly sympathetic to this second argument. I’d taken my own family to New Zealand to live for a period in 2017, specifically to capture that spirit of adventure, something that felt sorely lacking in our suburban American lives. Our daughters—just a little older than Phillips’ kids were when they disappeared—rarely left their comfort zones, and no one we knew let their children roam our neighborhood freely. We hoped that New Zealand might help shake us up. I was no bushman like Tom Phillips, but the four of us [did go tramping](https://longreads.com/2019/09/17/tramp-like-us/) across graywacke streams, into the forest primeval, even along a remote shore that looked quite a bit like the Marokopa coast. Unlike Phillips, I told my friends where we were going, but still: Were the police really charging this guy for giving his kids what might have been a wondrous adventure?
Reporters, struggling to [advance the story](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126543524/the-marokopa-mystery-what-we-still-dont-know-about-the-phillips-familys-disappearance-and-survival), asked experts what they thought about it all. One family lawyer admitted he knew nothing about the children’s custody arrangement but said, “If there was no parenting order, and he was just going on holiday, legally he’s done nothing wrong.” The same outlet asked a “human rights lawyer” what she thought about a parent taking children out into the deep bush without letting anyone know. “It’s not best practice,” she replied, in a tone I could almost hear from the page.
![A balding white man in his 30s wearing a gray sweater.](https://compote.slate.com/images/0eae91df-9f97-4395-9e92-8daaec890b6e.png?crop=1086%2C1086%2Cx0%2Cy0)
Tom Phillips. Courtesy of NZ Police
Then, in December, as summer vacation season began, the New Zealand Herald found a Facebook post—seemingly from someone close to the children’s mother—stating that Phillips had once again [taken his kids](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/marokopa-family-missing-again-tom-phillips-and-his-children-havent-been-seen-for-a-week/FJCUY5RR5MG7NTVX6Z4L6NHWZU/) on walkabout. “He notified family of where he was going,” the local police commander said in response. “In terms of current court restrictions of what he can and can’t do, he’s doing nothing wrong.” Commenters online were aghast that the paper had [pursued the story](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/rk40i0/marokopa_family_missing_again_tom_phillips_and/). “So this is just literally a man taking his kids camping?” one wrote. “Correct,” replied another. “His ex-missus has gone to NZH and they’ve run with it.”
Phillips’ scheduled court date was Jan. 12, 2022. That morning, reporters packed the tiny wooden courthouse in Te Kūiti, lured by the chance to finally ask questions of the enigmatic father who had made news and driven debate across the country for months. More media spilled onto Queen Street outside, pacing in the warm summer sun.
Tom Phillips [never showed up](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/127475663/marokopa-dad-thomas-phillips-a-noshow-in-court-on-charge-of-wasting-police-time). Appearing via video, his lawyer told the judge that he’d informed his client of the appearance date and never spoken to him again. He also asked to withdraw as counsel in the case.
The judge issued a warrant for Phillips’ arrest. But the police couldn’t locate Phillips or his three children. They had disappeared into the bush. And this time, they didn’t come back.
When I spoke to New Zealanders in the months after the second disappearance of Tom Phillips, it was clear that some in the country still viewed him as a kind of quirky folk hero who’d taken his kids out into the wilderness to avoid the oppressive, overreaching government. “There was a lot of talk like that,” said Max Baxter, the mayor of Ōtorohanga, where Phillips’ house sat empty, weeds growing over his fence. “He felt that his personal protection of the children was paramount, and the result was that he was opening them up to experiences that kids nowadays don’t get. He’s teaching them to be bushmen.” He laughed. “My grown children probably couldn’t survive two weeks in the bush!”
“A lot of people are like, ‘Leave him alone, those kids are probably having the time of their lives,’ ” said Karen Rutherford, the New Zealand reporter who got the [only on-camera interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0e5AT4EhTw) with Phillips’ ex-wife. But others, she told me, felt that “now he’s skipped court he’s stuffed all his chances of being a good dad.”
In the United States, I felt my admiration of Phillips wash away like the road to Marokopa [as heavy rains](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/300516303/marokopa-locals-caught-off-guard-as-rain-dump-floods-the-village) [swept through the region](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/128843903/marokopa-cut-off-as-floods-make-road-unpassable). Was he really hiding his kids in the bush during *this* kind of weather? The children’s mother made a public [appeal for assistance](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/468228/desperate-mum-pleads-for-safe-return-of-missing-phillips-children-from-marokopa) in May, as New Zealand winter approached. Other relatives on the mother’s side [launched an online petition](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/128560653/adult-sisters-of-missing-marokopa-children-launch-petition-asking-authorities-to-do-more-to-find-them) urging police to do more. They complained that Phillips’ parents were refusing to let anyone onto their enormous Marokopa compound to search the wilderness around the farm—or the baches, the guesthouses the family [used to rent out](https://www.oocities.org/marokopa2002/Accommodation.htm) to tourists.
The Phillips family remained silent objects of fascination for the news media. On the day of Phillips’ courthouse no-show, his mother had told reporters assembled outside the gates of the family farm, “I am trespassing all media from this property.” According to one outlet, asked if she knew where her son was, “Julia Phillips simply answered with a shrug and a smile.”
“They’re real sort of rugged, coast-y people who don’t come into town much,” a local reporter told me. “They’re kind of unusual. You’d call them rednecks, I think.” (Being “coastal” has a very different connotation in New Zealand than it does in the U.S.) Tony Wall, a reporter for the newsmagazine Stuff, told me that Phillips’ parents have been “very uncooperative. If you read between the lines, it definitely seems like they know something but they’re not telling us.”
Someone, everybody assumed, was shopping for supplies and ferrying them out to Phillips, wherever he was hiding out. “It’s almost unfathomable to think a father could survive with three small children without someone buying them supplies,” Baxter told me. “But what’s the endgame? I’m looking out my window now, and it’s pouring down rain.”
The lack of urgency on the part of Waikato police was often commented upon. “It’s very strange,” one reporter who’s been covering the case said. “The cops are not pouring any resources into looking for him and those children. I think they are of the view that he’s not going to hurt them and he’ll eventually come out.” The department responded to press requests with a not-particularly-inspiring statement: “Police continue to make enquiries to establish the whereabouts of Tom Phillips, who we believe is currently with his three children. While Police understand the ongoing interest in this matter, we will not be disclosing the details of the enquiries that are under way.”
Whatever enquiries were under way, that cold and wet winter passed with no sign of Tom Phillips. As 2022 turned into 2023, Phillips and his children had been missing without a trace for more than a year. Then came the bank robbery.
The two figures were dressed in all black—motorcycle helmets, puffer jackets, and boots—when they walked into the ANZ bank branch less than half a mile from the courthouse in Te Kūiti, just before noon on May 16, 2023. When the bank’s anxious staff asked them to take their helmets off, the pair displayed guns and demanded money. Tellers quickly gave them cash and, within moments, the pair ran out the front door.
As the robbers hurried down Rora Street, one witness later said they were dropping cash out of their pockets, “heaps of $50 notes.” The street was strewn with money. The confused passerby asked one of them, a slight figure whom they described as “a girl,” if she needed help picking up the money. Up ahead, the girl’s companion—a man, it seemed—turned back to look at what was happening. Right then, he was tackled to the ground by the owner of the SuperValue supermarket they’d been hurrying past.
![Surveillance camera footage of two figures, one an adult and the other a child, in face masks and camo gear walking down a sidewalk.](https://compote.slate.com/images/55de22c4-4326-457e-9cc8-b1bedc3ddfea.png?crop=602%2C360%2Cx0%2Cy0)
Courtesy of NZ Police
Suddenly, the girl brandished her gun. The passerby backed away. Someone called, “Fire the gun!” No one’s quite clear who did what, or whom they were aiming at, but someone did fire, more than once. The passerby froze in their tracks, and the supermarket owner retreated.
The robbers ran past a vape shop and around a corner to a parking lot, where they climbed onto a motorbike and rode off to the north. Behind them, bank notes littered the pavement, 20s and 50s—as much as $1,000, one witness estimated.
The armed robbery shocked the town, which bills itself as the nation’s sheepshearing capital. A week later, the robbery led a Waikato Times feature about growing [youth crime concerns](https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/a/nz-news/350015252/very-country-robbery) in Te Kūiti, full of nervous quotes from residents and shop owners about meth, burglary, and car thefts broadcast on TikTok.
Yet on the subject of the bank robbery itself, one Maōri warden had only to say that he reckoned locals already knew who did it. It wasn’t some wayward Te Kūiti youth or a more organized criminal element. Even in those early days, speculation was running rampant among residents that the bank robbers were, in fact, Tom Phillips—and one of his children.
It took four months for police to [officially name Phillips](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300964573/arrest-warrant-issued-for-missing-marokopa-dad-tom-phillips-over-alleged-bank-robbery) for the crime, charging him with aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding, and unlawful possession of a firearm. They believe that he was the larger of the two robbers, the one who seemed to be leading things, and have not identified the second, smaller robber, other than to say that they think she is “female.” At the time of the robbery, Jayda was 10.
The September 2023 charges in the Wild West–style bank robbery—guns blazing, bank notes blowing in the wind—eliminated any residual goodwill Phillips had accumulated in his long months on the run. They capped off an eventful winter, Phillips’ second on the run with his children.
The month before, Phillips had stolen a truck—naturally, a Toyota Hilux—and driven to Hamilton, the biggest city in the Waikato region, about 40 miles north of Ōtorohanga. An acquaintance recognized him in the parking lot of Bunnings, a Home Depot–type home improvement store, where Phillips, [wearing a surgical mask](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/police-reveal-items-marakopa-father-bought) and a woolen hat, used a large amount of cash to buy headlamps, batteries, seedlings, buckets, and gumboots.
That evening, Phillips got into an altercation on a road about an hour up the coast from Marokopa. The owner of the Hilux—who had also realized that winter clothing had been stolen from his property—fought with Phillips, then chased him along the winding highway, reportedly attempting to run him off the road. Eventually multiple vehicles were pursuing Phillips, who switched off the Hilux’s headlights and turned sharply into the parking lot of the Te Kauri Lodge, driving through a gate and into a paddock. “He went in there and he hid,” a lodge custodian told [Radio New Zealand](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495109/tom-phillips-father-of-missing-marokopa-children-evaded-multiple-pursuers-residents-say). “These fullahs drove straight past.” The police sent out a search helicopter, to no avail. A few days later, the [Hilux was found](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300943316/stolen-ute-driven-by-tom-phillips-found-by-police-in-marokopa-bush) deep in the undergrowth, about 25 meters off Marokopa Road, not far from the Phillips farm.
A few weeks later, a private investigator—he tells reporters he “follows the case on his own time”—tipped off Tony Wall, the reporter at Stuff, that the property to which the Hilux was returned had hosted Phillips for a visit the year before. (The P.I. says he reported the sighting to the police but nothing came of it.) According to an informant, Phillips had been receiving help from a network of local residents “since day one.”
Wall chronicled his visit to the steep, densely wooded property near Ōtorohanga in a hair-raising story [published last August](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300957682/marokopa-mystery-police-knew-of-possible-fugitive-sighting-last-year-at-property-where-he-later-stole-a-ute). A neighbor, who was reportedly also present when Phillips visited the property in 2022, launched into a coy, taunting conversation about the disappearance. “I can’t say if I have or haven’t seen him in the last few years,” the man said. “It’s like a good game of hide-and-go-seek. He’s fucking good at it. Never, ever play hide-and-go-seek with him because you’ll give up, and he won’t come out.” When Wall asked the man how someone like Phillips could simply vanish, the man scoffed. “It’s easy in New Zealand. The justice system is shit, the court system is shit, the police are shit, the media is shit. That’s the facts of it.”
As Wall drove away, his car was overtaken by two other drivers, who boxed him in and forced him to pull over to the side of the road. One of the vehicles was driven by the owner of the stolen Hilux, who accused Wall of “snooping around” and “causing havoc.” “You’re in the wrong fucking place for this, man,” he said. “You want to come and harass us out here, on my own turf?” He tried to force open Wall’s car door, telling him, “I’m gonna fuck you up, mate.”
Wall finally managed to drive away, but the ute’s owner had one last thing to say. “You’re fucking lucky we’re letting you out of here, cunt. You want the truth about the whole fucking scenario, mate, you’d better be on your game, ’cause you’re pushing shit uphill now.”
After the police named Phillips in the bank robbery, [residents phoned in](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/missing-marokopa-fugitive-tom-phillips-police-reveal-12-more-sightings/IVMXVESFAZFMNPHP4I72R5NAKQ/) more than a dozen sightings, but the police could never seem to catch him. Late one night in November, Phillips and one of his children rode a stolen quad bike to the town of Piopio and smashed the window of a superette in an attempted burglary, police say. [Security footage showed](https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/350110471/missing-marokopa-dad-tom-phillips-allegedly-used-stolen-quadbike-smashed) a pair dressed in full camo gear approaching the store’s camera with a spray can. When an alarm sounded, they fled south.
This January, the two-year anniversary of Phillips’ second flight passed with just another wan police announcement—this time that [they had narrowed](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350155353/police-narrow-marokopa-search-phillips-family) Phillips’ hiding place to the Marokopa area, a development that surprised absolutely no one who’s been following the case. Yet I feel for the police, who are looking in an area spanning hundreds of square miles, where a number of residents clearly still have no desire to share information with them. (The owner of the stolen Hilux—a guy who disliked Phillips enough that he tried to run him off the road—nevertheless referred to the police as “fucking pigshits.”) “If a plane crashed in this bush, you’d be fortunate to find it,” Max Baxter told me. “It’s really, really hard to begin somewhere, unless there’s someone who knows and decides it’s time to come forward.”
Few New Zealanders still believe that Phillips and his kids—now 10, 8, and 7—are roughing it, stalking game in the deep bush like the wilderpeople of old. Most everyone thinks that he’s hiding on or near his family farm, aided by a network of friendly locals that may or may not include his parents. (That’s certainly what Wall, still trying to [crack the case](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350166823/could-wanted-man-tom-phillips-be-or-near-his-family-farm), believes.) On social media, it’s been a long time since anyone has called Phillips a good dad merely fighting authority. “He’s just a piece of shit human being with anger and control issues who is subjecting his children to child abuse,” went [one typical comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/17upm0f/missing_marokopa_family_in_piopio_tom_phillips/).
And few anticipate any ending to this story that feels happy at all. In the worst-case scenario, Phillips and his kids are injured, or killed, robbing another bank or battling it out with the cops. But even the best-case scenario at this point feels grim. Phillips’ children have spent the past two and a half years with a father who’s surely told them that everyone is out to get them, that they can trust no one but him, that the only way to stay safe is to hide out far from the rest of the world. He’s relayed to them that their future depends on smashing windows, stealing cars, waving guns.
Someday those children will be found, and their father will almost certainly be sent to jail. Every news report about the case—a dwindling number, as the months go on—features the same photos of the children: the girls in fairy dresses, all three of them grinning widely. In the next photos we see of Jayda, Maverick, and Ember, they won’t be smiling. I once thought perhaps their father was giving them a gift, the adventure of a lifetime. Instead, he stole their childhoods. When it’s all over they’ll be as alone as that truck was, parked on the gray sand, the implacable sea rushing up to meet it.
- [Crime](https://slate.com/tag/crime)
- [Family](https://slate.com/tag/family)
- [Parenting](https://slate.com/tag/parenting)
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# Cabaret’s Endurance Run: The Untold History
A**s director Rebecca** Frecknall was rehearsing a new cast for her hit London revival of *Cabaret,* the actor playing Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer living in Berlin during the final days of the Weimar Republic, came onstage carrying that day’s newspaper as a prop. It happened to be *Metro,* the free London tabloid commuters read on their way to work. The date was February 25, 2022. When the actor said his line—“We’ve got to leave Berlin—as soon as possible. Tomorrow!”—Frecknall was caught short. She noticed the paper’s headline: “Russia Invades Ukraine.”
*Cabaret,* the groundbreaking 1966 Broadway musical that tackles fascism, antisemitism, abortion, World War II, and the events leading up to the Holocaust, had certainly captured the times once again.
Back in rehearsals four months later, Frecknall and the cast got word that the Supreme Court had overturned *Roe v. Wade.* Every time she checks up on *Cabaret,* “it feels like something else has happened in the world,” she told me over coffee in London in September.
A month later, as Frecknall was preparing her production of *Cabaret* for its Broadway premiere, something else *did* happen: On October 7, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages.
The revival of *Cabaret*—starring [Eddie Redmayne](https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/careert-timeline-vf-career-timeline-eddie-redmayne) as the creepy yet seductive Emcee; Gayle Rankin as the gin-swilling nightclub singer Sally Bowles; and Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider, a landlady struggling to scrape by—opens April 21 at Manhattan’s August Wilson Theatre. It will do so in the shadow of a pogrom not seen since the *Einsatzgruppen* slaughtered thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe and in the shadow of a war between Israel and Hamas that continues into its fifth month, with the killing of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Nearly 60 years after its debut, *Cabaret* still stings. That is its brilliance. And its tragedy.
R**edmayne has been** haunted by *Cabaret* ever since he played the Emcee in prep school. “I was staggered by the character,” he says. “The lack of definition of it, the enigma of it.” He played the part again during his first year at Cambridge at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where nearly 3,500 shoestring productions jostle for attention each summer. *Cabaret,* performed in a tiny venue that “stank,” Redmayne recalls, did well enough that the producers added an extra show. He was leering at the Kit Kat Club girls from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m. and then from 11 p.m. till two in the morning. “You’d wake up at midday. You barely see sunshine. I just became this gaunt, skeletal figure.” His parents came to see him and said, “You need vitamin D!”
In 2021, Redmayne, by then an Oscar winner for *The Theory of Everything* and a Tony winner for *Red,* was playing the Emcee again, this time in Frecknall’s West End production. His dressing room on opening night was full of flowers. There was one bouquet with a card he did not have a chance to open until intermission. It was from [Joel Grey](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/cabaret-joel-grey-donald-trump-cautionary-tale-nazis), who originated the role on Broadway and won an Oscar for his performance alongside Liza Minnelli in the 1972 movie. He welcomed the young actor “to the family,” Redmayne says. “It was an extraordinary moment for me.”
*Cabaret* is based on *Goodbye to Berlin,* the British writer Christopher Isherwood’s collection of stories and character studies set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis are clawing their way to power. Isherwood, who went to Berlin for one reason—“boys,” he wrote in his memoir *Christopher and His Kind*—lived in a dingy boarding house amid an array of sleazy lodgers who inspired his characters. But aside from a fleeting mention of a host at a seedy nightclub, there is no emcee in his vignettes. Nor is there an emcee in *I Am a Camera,* John Van Druten’s hit 1951 Broadway play adapted from Isherwood’s story “Sally Bowles” from *Goodbye to Berlin.*
The character, one of the most famous in Broadway history, was created by [Harold Prince](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2016/1/hal-prince)​​, who produced and directed the original *Cabaret.* “People write about *Cabaret* all the time,” says [John Kander](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/11/two-men-and-a-star), who composed the show’s music and is, at 96, the last living member of that creative team. “They write about Liza. They write about Joel, and sometimes about us \[Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb\]. None of that really matters. It’s all Hal. Everything about this piece, even the variations that happen in different versions of it, is all because of Hal.”
In 1964, Prince produced his biggest hit: *Fiddler on the Roof.* In the final scene, Tevye and his family, having survived a pogrom, leave for America. There is sadness but also hope. And what of the Jews who did not leave? *Cabaret* would provide the tragic answer.
But Prince was after something else. Without hitting the audience over the head, he wanted to create a musical that echoed what was happening in America: young men being sent to their deaths in Vietnam; racists such as Alabama politician “Bull” Connor siccing attack dogs on civil rights marchers. In rehearsals, Prince put up Will Counts’s iconic photograph of a white student screaming at a Black student during the Little Rock crisis of 1957. “That’s our show,” he told the cast.
A bold idea he had early on was to juxtapose the lives of Isherwood’s lodgers with one of the tawdry nightclubs Isherwood had frequented. In 1951, while stationed as a soldier in Stuttgart, Germany, Prince himself had hung around such a place. Presiding over the third-rate acts was a master of ceremonies in white makeup and of indeterminate sexuality. He “unnerved me,” Prince once told me. “But I never forgot him.”
Kander had seen the same kind of character at the opening of a [Marlene Dietrich](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1997/9/dietrich-lived-here) concert in Europe. “An overpainted little man waddled out and said, ‘*Willkommen, bienvenue,* welcome,’ ” Kander recalls.
The first song Kander and Ebb wrote for the show was called “Willkommen.” They wrote 60 more songs. “Some of them were outrageous,” Kander says. “We wrote some antisemitic songs”—of which there were many in Weimar cabarets—“ ‘Good neighbor Cohen, loaned you a loan.’ We didn’t get very far with that one.”
They did write one song *about* antisemitism: “If You Could See Her (The Gorilla Song),” in which the Emcee dances with his lover, a gorilla in a pink tutu. At the end of the number, he turns to the audience and whispers: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewishhh at all.” It was, they thought, the most powerful song in the score.
The working title of their musical was *Welcome to Berlin.* But then a woman who sold blocks of tickets to theater parties told Prince that her Jewish clients would not buy a show with “Berlin” in the title. Strolling along the beach one day, Joe Masteroff, who was writing the musical’s book, thought of two recent hits, *Carnival* and *Camelot.* Both started with a *C* and had three syllables. Why not call the show *Cabaret*?
To play the Emcee, Prince tapped his friend Joel Grey. A nightclub headliner, Grey could not break into Broadway. “The theater was very high-minded,” he once said. When Prince called him, he was playing a pirate in a third-rate musical in New York’s Jones Beach. “Hal knew I was dying,” Grey recounts over lunch in the West Village, where he lives. “I wanted to quit the business.”
At first, he struggled to create the Emcee, who did not interact with the other characters. He had numbers but “no words, no lines, no role,” Grey wrote in his memoir, *Master of Ceremonies.* A polished performer, he had no trouble with the songs, the dances, the antics. “But something was missing,” he says. Then he remembered a cheap comedian he’d once seen in St. Louis. The comic had told lecherous jokes, gay jokes, sexist jokes—anything to get a laugh. One day in rehearsal, Grey did everything the comedian had done “to get the audience crazy. I was all over the girls, squeezing their breasts, touching their bottoms. They were furious. I was horrible. When it was over I thought, This is the end of my career.” He disappeared backstage and cried. “And then from out of the darkness came Mr. Prince,” Grey says. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Joely, that’s it.’ ”
*C**abaret*** **played its** first performance at the Shubert Theatre in Boston in the fall of 1966. Grey stopped the show with the opening number, “Willkommen.” “The audience wouldn’t stop applauding,” Grey recalls. “I turned to the stage manager and said, ‘Should I get changed for the next scene?’ ”
The musical ran long—it was in three acts—but it got a prolonged standing ovation. As the curtain came down, Richard Seff, an agent who represented Kander and Ebb, ran into Ebb in the aisle. “It’s wonderful,” Seff said. “You’ll fix the obvious flaws.” In the middle of the night, Seff’s phone rang. It was Ebb. “You hated it!” the songwriter screamed. “You are of no help at all!”
Ebb was reeling because he’d learned Prince was going to cut the show down to two acts. Ebb collapsed in his hotel bed, Kander holding one hand, Grey the other. “You’re not dying, Fred,” Kander told him. “Hal has not wrecked our show.”
*Cabaret* came roaring into New York, fueled by tremendous word of mouth. But there was a problem. Some Jewish groups were furious about “If You Could See Her.” How could you equate a gorilla with a Jew? they wanted to know, missing the point entirely. They threatened to boycott the show. Prince, his eye on ticket sales, told Ebb to change the line “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all” to something less offensive: “She isn’t a *meeskite* at all,” using the Yiddish word for a homely person.
It is difficult to imagine the impact *Cabaret* had on audiences in 1966. World War II had ended only 21 years before. Many New York theatergoers had fled Europe or fought the Nazis. There were Holocaust survivors in the audience; there were people whose relatives had died in the gas chambers. Grey knew the show’s power. Some nights, dancing with the gorilla, he’d whisper “Jewish” instead of “meeskite.” The audience gasped.
*Cabaret* won eight Tony Awards in 1967, catapulted Grey to Broadway stardom, and ran for three years. Seff sold the movie rights for $1.5 million, a record at the time. Prince, about to begin rehearsals for Stephen Sondheim’s *Company,* was unavailable to direct the movie, scheduled for a 1972 release. So the producers hired the director and choreographer [Bob Fosse](https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/bob-fosse-biography-review), who needed the job because his previous movie, *Sweet Charity,* had been a bust.
Fosse, who saw Prince as a rival, stamped out much of what Prince had done, including Joel Grey. He wanted Ruth Gordon to play the Emcee. But Grey was a sensation, and the studio wanted him. “It’s either me or Joel,” Fosse said. When the studio opted for Grey, Fosse backed down. But he resented Grey, and relations between them were icy.
A 26-year-old [Liza Minnelli](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2002/03/happyvalley200203), on the way to stardom herself, was cast as Sally Bowles. The handsome Michael York would play the Cliff character, whose name in the movie was changed to Brian Roberts. And supermodel [Marisa Berenson](https://www.vogue.com/article/marisa-berenson-a-life-in-pictures) (who at the time seemed to be on the cover of *Vogue* every other month) got the role of a Jewish department store heiress, a character Fosse took from Isherwood’s short story “The Landauers.”
*Cabaret* was shot on location in Munich and Berlin. “The atmosphere was extremely heavy,” Berenson recalls. “There was the whole Nazi period, and I felt very much the Berlin Wall, that darkness, that fear, all that repression.” She adored Fosse, but he kept her off balance (she was playing a young woman traumatized by what was happening around her) by whispering “obscene things in my ear. He was shaking me up.”
Minnelli, costumed by Halston for the film, found Fosse “brilliant” and “incredibly intense,” she tells *Vanity Fair* in a rare interview. “He used every part of me, including my scoliosis. One of my great lessons in working with Fosse was never to think that whatever he was asking couldn’t be done. If he said do it, you had to figure out how to do it. You didn’t think about how much it hurt. You just made it happen.”
Back in New York, Fosse arranged a private screening of *Cabaret* for Kander and Ebb. When it was over, they said nothing. “We really hated it,” Kander admits. Then they went to the opening at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The audience loved it. “We realized it was a masterpiece,” Kander says, laughing. “It just wasn’t our show.”
The success of the movie—with its eight Academy Awards—soon overshadowed the musical. When people thought of *Cabaret,* they thought of finger snaps and bowler hats. They thought of Fosse and, of course, Minnelli, who would adopt the lyric “Life is a cabaret” as her signature. Her best-actress Oscar became part of a dynasty: Her mother, [Judy Garland](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2000/4/till-mgm-do-us-part), and father, director [Vincente Minnelli](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2000/4/till-mgm-do-us-part), each had one of their own. “Papa was even more excited about the Oscar than I was,” she says. “And, baby, I was—no, I *am* still—excited.”
By 1987—in part to burnish *Cabaret*’s theatrical legacy—Prince decided to recreate his original production on Broadway, with Grey once again serving as the Emcee. But it had the odor of mothballs. The *New York Times* drama critic Frank Rich wrote that it was not, as Sally Bowles sings, “perfectly marvelous,” but “it does approach the perfectly mediocre.” Much of the show, he added, was “old-fashioned and plodding.”
I**n the early 1990s,** [Sam Mendes](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/03/sam-mendes-rules-for-directors), then a young director running a pocket-size theater in London called the Donmar Warehouse, heard [the novelist Martin Amis](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/martin-amis-is-dead-at-73) give a talk. Amis was writing *Time’s Arrow,* about a German doctor who works in a concentration camp. “I’ve already written about the Nazis and people say to me, ‘Why are you doing it again?’ ” Amis said. “And I say, what else is there?”
“At the end of the day,” Mendes tells me, “the biggest question of the 20th century is, ‘How could this have happened?’ ” Mendes decided to stage *Cabaret* at the Donmar in 1993. Another horror was unfolding at the time: Serb paramilitaries were slaughtering Bosnian Muslims, “ethnic cleansing” on an unimaginable scale.
Mendes hit on a terrific concept for his production: He transformed his theater into a nightclub. The audience sat at little tables with red lamps. And the performers were truly seedy. He told the actors playing the Kit Kat Club girls not to shave their armpits or their legs. “Unshaved armpits—it sent shock waves around the theater,” he recalls. Since there was no room—or money—for an orchestra, the actors played the instruments. Some of them could hit the right notes.
To play the Emcee, Mendes cast [Alan Cumming](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2014/4/alan-cumming), a young Scottish actor whose comedy act Mendes had enjoyed. “Can you sing?” Mendes asked him. “Yeah,” Cumming said. Mendes threw ideas at him and “he was open to everything.” Just before the first preview, Mendes suggested he come out during the intermission and chat up the audience, maybe dance with a woman. Mendes, frantic before the preview, never got around to giving Cumming any more direction than that. No matter. Cumming sauntered onstage as people were settling back at their tables, picked a man out of the crowd, and started dancing with him. “Watch your hands,” he said. “I lead.”
[Cumming’s Emcee was impish](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/alan-cumming-is-a-fountain-of-youth-unto-himself), fun, gleefully licentious. The audience loved him. “I have never had less to do with a great performance in one of my shows than I had to do with Alan,” Mendes says.
When Joe Masteroff came to see the show in London, Mendes was nervous. He’d taken plenty of liberties with the script. Cliff, the narrator, was now openly gay. (One night, when Cliff kissed a male lover, a man in the audience shouted, “Rubbish!”) And he made the Emcee a victim of the Nazis. In the final scene, Cumming, in a concentration camp uniform affixed with a yellow Star of David and a pink triangle, is jolted, as if he’s thrown himself onto the electrified fence at Birkenau.
“I should be really pissed with you,” Masteroff told Mendes after the show. “But it works.” Kander liked it too, though he was not happy that the actors didn’t play his score all that well. Ebb hated it. “He wanted more professionalism,” Mendes says. “And he was not wrong. There was a dangerous edge of amateurishness about it.”
The Roundabout Theatre Company brought *Cabaret* to New York in 1998. Rob Marshall, who would go on to direct the movie *Chicago,* helped Mendes give the show some Broadway gloss while retaining its grittiness. The two young directors were “challenging each other, pushing each other,” Marshall remembers, “to create something unique.”
Cumming reprised his role as the Emcee. He was on fire. [Natasha Richardson](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/07/micheal-richardson-pays-sweet-homage-to-late-mother-natasha), the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, played Sally Bowles. She was not on fire. She’d never been in a musical before, and when she sang, “There was absolutely no sound coming out,” Kander says.
“She beat herself up about her singing all the time,” Mendes adds. “There was a deep, self-critical aspect of Tash that was instilled by her dad, a brilliant man but extremely cutting.” He once said to her out of nowhere: “We’re going to have to do something about your chin, dear.” As Mendes saw it, she always felt that she could never measure up to her parents.
Kander went to work with her, and slowly a voice emerged. It was not a “polished sound,” Marshall says, but it was haunting, vulnerable. Still, Cumming was walking away with the show. At the first preview, when he took his bow, the audience roared. When Richardson took hers, they were polite. Mendes remembers going backstage and finding her “in tears.” But she persevered and through sheer force of will created a Sally Bowles that “will break your heart,” Masteroff told me the day before I saw that production in the spring of 1998. She did indeed. (Eleven years later, while learning how to ski on a bunny hill on Mont Tremblant, she fell down. She died of a head injury two days later.)
The revival of *Cabaret* won four Tony Awards, including one for Richardson as best actress in a musical. It ran nearly 2,400 performances at the Roundabout’s Studio 54 and was revived again in 2014. And the money, money, money, as the song goes, poured in. Once Masteroff, having already filed his taxes at the end of a lucrative *Cabaret* year, went to the mailbox and opened a royalty check for $60,000. “What the hell am I supposed to do with *this*?” he snapped.
R**ebecca Frecknall grew** up on Mendes’s Donmar Warehouse production of *Cabaret.* The BBC filmed it, and when it aired, her father videotaped it. She watched it “religiously.” But when she came to direct her production, she had to put Mendes’s version out of her mind.
Mendes turned his little theater into a nightclub. Frecknall, working with the brilliant set and costume designer Tom Scutt, has upped the game. They have transformed the entire theater into a Weimar cabaret. You stand in line at the stage door, waiting, you hope, to be let in. Once inside, you’re served drinks while the Kit Kat Club girls dance and flirt with you. The show’s logo is a geometric eye. Scutt sprinkles the motif throughout his sets and costumes. “It’s all part of the voyeurism,” Scutt explains. “The sense of always being watched, always watching—responsibility, culpability, implication, blame.”
Mendes’s *Cabaret,* like Fosse’s, had a black-and-white aesthetic—black fishnet stockings, black leather coats, a white face for the Emcee. Frecknall and Scutt begin their show with bright colors, which slowly fade to gray as the walls close in on the characters. “Color and individuality—to grayness and homogeneity,” Frecknall says.
As the first woman to direct a major production of *Cabaret,* Frecknall has focused attention on the Kit Kat Club girls—Rosie, Fritzie, Frenchie, Lulu, and Texas. “Often what I’ve seen in other productions is this homogenized group of pretty, white, skinny girls in their underwear,” she insists. Her Kit Kat Club girls are multiethnic. Some are transgender. Through performances and costumes, they are no longer appendages of the Emcee but vivid characters in their own right.
Her boldest stroke has been to reinvent the Emcee. She and Redmayne have turned him into a force of malevolence. He is still sexy and seductive, but as the show goes on, he becomes a skeletal puppet master manipulating the other characters to, in many cases, their doom. If Cumming’s Emcee was, in the end, a Holocaust victim, Redmayne’s is, in Frecknall’s words, “a perpetrator.”
U**nwrapping a grilled** cheese sandwich in his enormous Upper West Side townhouse, Kander says that his husband had recently asked him a pointed question: “Did it ever occur to you that all of you guys who created *Cabaret* were Jewish?”
“Not really,” Kander replied. “We were just trying to put on a show.” Or, as Masteroff once said: “It was a job.”
It’s a “job” that has endured. The producers of the Broadway revival certainly have faith in the show’s staying power. They’ve spent $25 million on the production, a big chunk of it going to reconfigure the August Wilson Theatre into the Kit Kat Club. Audience members will enter through an alleyway, be given a glass of schnapps, and can then enjoy a preshow drink at a variety of lounges designed by Scutt: The Pineapple Room, Red Bar, Green Bar, and Vault Bar. The show will be performed in the round, tables and chairs ringing the stage. And they’ll be able to enjoy a bottle (or two) of top-flight Champagne throughout the performance.
This revival is certainly the most lavish *Cabaret* in a long time. But there have been hundreds of other, less heralded productions over the years, with more on the way. A few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, *Cabaret* was running in Moscow. Last December, Concord Theatricals, which licenses the show, authorized a production at the Molodyy Theatre in Kyiv. And a request is in for a production in Israel, the first since the show was produced in Tel Aviv in 2014.
“The interesting thing about the piece is that it seems to change with the times,” Kander says. “Nothing about it seems to be written in stone except its narrative and its implications.”
And whenever someone tells him the show is more relevant than ever, Kander shakes his head and says, “I know. And isn’t that awful?”′
- [Anne Hathaway](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/anne-hathaway-cover-story) on Tuning Out the Haters and Embracing Her True Self
- And the [MAGA Mutiny](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/steve-bannon-maga-mutiny-mccarthy-gaetz-trump) That Brought McCarthy’s House Down
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00.03 News/Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor An American Tragedy.md
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# Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy
At the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, the last Sunday of October 2023 was Pastor Appreciation Day. The church was festive, the service well attended. There was strawberry cake, Pastor Copeland’s favorite, and special music in his honor by two of his closest friends, who sang a program of Baptist hymns, accompanying themselves on piano. Bernard Vann, the church’s elder statesman, spoke from the pulpit on behalf of the congregation, testifying as to how blessed they all felt that Bubba Copeland had entered their lives and bestowed his gifts, bound them together as a spiritual community. After reading a very long list of duties that make up a churchman’s life, Vann ribbed Bubba that he sure was getting a lot of attention that day for a job that’s just “one day a week.” Then he turned to Bubba and said, “We as a church love you, and we appreciate you for everything you’ve done,” with the true feeling of an old man, as he embraced his pastor.
Once Vann took his seat, Bubba stepped up to the pulpit. “I am so undeserving,” he said. “I don’t come from a background of being a pastor. I come from a background of loving people. And I believe there’s a giant difference between being a Christian and being Christlike. I try my best to be Christlike. There’s a lot of Christians that hurt people. What we should strive to do is go out of our way to love people unconditionally, despite who they are, what they are—because you know why? Jesus loves *me*.”
Bubba would often talk about how his life had been suffused with a grace that was beyond his comprehension. He believed that was the essence of God, and today he was telling his congregation that if God could love *him*—of all people—it was a sure sign that God loved everyone created in His image.
That last Sunday of October 2023 would be the last Sunday of Bubba Copeland’s life.
---
![a man standing on train tracks](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-012-660c5f120c86f.jpg?resize=980:* "a man standing on train tracks")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Copeland was forty-nine and the mayor of his hometown. In his corner of the world, he was needed, and he loved being needed.
We all have things that we don’t want other people to know about us. Things that might be hard to explain, even to ourselves. The world can be an unforgiving place, quick to judge, and friendships can be fleeting. Would the people whose regard means the most to us look at us differently if they learned of our hidden selves? Would they abandon us? Surely God knows our secrets. What does He think of us?
This is a story about just that—what God thinks. It’s also a story of identity and exposure, of revenge and public humiliation. Of deep love and senseless loss, and the unending grief of a small town.
And secrets. It is a story about secrets.
Bubba Copeland had many secrets. And as a servant to both God and man, the judgments of heaven and earth were the alpha and omega of Bubba’s existence. What God thinks of anything, much less any of us, is difficult to discern, if we are honest. But the people of the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, unabashedly adored Bubba.
He was empathetic and industrious and always seemed to be doing something for somebody. By last fall, he had been the senior pastor at First Baptist for four years and the church’s youth minister for fifteen years before that. Bubba was not seminary trained and was not what you might call an intellectual from the pulpit, but what he lacked in academic theology he made up for in his eagerness to answer to the spiritual and material needs of others, no matter the time or expense. According to the people in his church family who knew him best and loved him most, Bubba possessed an enormous capacity to serve, and his sermons were personal, compassionate, and often funny. As a Christian and as a pastor, he thought that in a pinch the Sermon on the Mount was just about all the Bible a man would ever need, and his favorite verse was Matthew 7:1—“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” All he knew about the ministry he had learned by the side of his first father-in-law, Dr. Eugene Langner, who pastored to the souls of the congregation at First Baptist Church for thirty years until his death in 2013. Even after Bubba and Merrigail, Langner’s daughter, got divorced, the two men maintained a loving friendship. Bubba and Merrigail had given Langner a grandson, after all. Young Carter Copeland would grow up underfoot at the church, singing hymns from the pulpit with a poise that would make his father cry. Grandfather, father, and son remained exceptionally close, their relationships unburdened by the strain that often comes with divorce.
By the last Sunday of October 2023, not only were Bubba and his second wife, Angela, and his two stepdaughters the first family of First Baptist Church, but the Copelands were also the first family of nearby Smiths Station, Bubba’s hometown, where he was finishing his second term as mayor. He was renowned for bringing a Love’s truck stop to the main highway through town, a feat of economic development that most mayors of towns the size of Smiths Station (population: 5,470) can only dream of—to hear the awe with which the people there talk about that truck stop, you’d think Bubba had brought IBM to town. When a tornado struck Smiths Station in 2019, killing twenty-three East Alabamians in the neighboring community of Beauregard, he was a twenty-four-hour one-man rescue crew—removing debris, providing supplies and reliable information to his people, and offering hugs when nothing else would do. That same year, when a high school senior in Smiths Station named Lexi Webb took her own life, Bubba initiated #SSNotOneMore, a suicide-prevention campaign. On the night before school started, without telling anyone they were doing it, Bubba and a group of volunteers scattered hundreds of signs all over town: YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE. YOUR MISTAKES DO NOT DEFINE YOU. YOU MATTER. DON’T GIVE UP. He had Post-it notes printed with the same affirmations and had volunteers pass them out at all the schools.
In his spare time, Bubba also owned and operated the Country Market over in Salem, where he had a reputation for employing local folks who might have trouble finding work elsewhere. His social-media feed was always full of cheerful posts about the latest specials on pork butts and paper towels. Life was good, if maybe a bit hectic.
In his corner of the world, Bubba Copeland was needed, and he loved being needed.
David White, a retired doctor and chairman of the First Baptist Church board of trustees, was always urging Bubba to take a break, get out of town with Angela and the girls on vacation, disconnect for a while. “My only concern for Bubba was that he was spread too thin,” White says. “But his idea of a vacation was thinking up new outreach programs for the church.”
The Reverend Ralph Wooten, who for several years was pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Phenix City, says he first saw Bubba “emerging from a cloud of barbecue smoke” at the First Baptist annual cookout, and the two men became dear friends. “Bubba was a father of a blended family. He was a husband. He was a pastor. He was a successful small-business owner. And he was the mayor of a town that he loved,” says Wooten. “Any one of those things is enough for one human being, and yet he was all of those things. I knew it was a lot and encouraged him to take care of himself. He seemed to be taking it all in stride.”
![carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-007-660c69ee5b85b.jpg?crop=0.670xw:1.00xh;0.114xw,0&resize=2048:* "carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland")
Andrew Hetherington
Carter Copeland, Bubba’s son, is a student at Auburn and was asleep when the story about his father broke. He awoke to a text from his best friend: “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
Daniel Windsor, a dentist in Phenix City and a longtime member of Bubba’s church, says that Bubba was a “five-finger friend”—that is, he was one of a small group of cherished people in Windsor’s life so vital that you can count them on one hand. “He was an indispensable friend—and I loved him dearly,” Windsor says.
Jay Jones, the sheriff of Lee County, Alabama, says that “Bubba was hard not to like. He was that selfless and that reliable, the sort of person who rushes toward need, no questions asked. There aren’t that many people like Bubba in this world.”
The sign on the lawn in front of Bubba’s church read ALL ARE WELCOME. And all were welcome. For Bubba, that was how God worked in people. You might call it the essence of the Copeland theology. “Ain’t God good?” he would say to friends and strangers alike. And with Bubba, you were never a stranger for long.
Dan Elkins became a member of First Baptist Church in 2018. He was himself a Baptist minister and for ten years had successfully tended his own flock in an “itty-bitty” town in southern Alabama. Married with two kids, Elkins had tried to make his marriage work even though he had known for years that he was gay. After he and his wife divorced in 2003, he resettled in Phenix City, where he would meet his husband, Jason Price. Their first date was at the Home Depot. “In case it didn’t work out, you always need something at Home Depot, right?” Price says with a laugh.
Both Elkins and Price have a deep faith and struggled to find a church that would be a true spiritual home for them, where they would be welcomed as full-fledged members, not “as lesser than.” “There’s churches that will cash our checks and let me and my husband sit in the back pew, but we didn’t want that. We feel that we have a lot to give and love being involved in a vibrant community,” Elkins says. They had heard good things about First Baptist in Phenix City, but Price had serious reservations about committing to a Baptist church. “I thought, *I ain’t going to no Southern Baptist church*,” he says. “Been there, done that.”
![text, letter](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq1-660c11de22767.png?resize=2048:* "text, letter")
Elkins first wanted to talk to the pastor, have a frank conversation, and manage everyone’s expectations from the start. Elkins called the mayor’s office in Smiths Station, and Bubba said to come on by. “We sat there across from each other, and I told him that Jason and I wanted to be members of a church where we would be treated with dignity and respect and welcomed without reservation.” Instantly, Bubba responded, “Dan, you are my brother. God has blessed our church by sending you to join us.” Bubba added that his son was gay and that he was “not sure how to relate to him. God has brought you into my life to be Carter’s gay stepdad.”
“So we joined First Baptist and never looked back,” Elkins says. “It’s hard for me to express the depth of my gratitude for what Bubba gave us.”
It’s not that Bubba’s friends idealized him or thought he was perfect—they didn’t, and he wasn’t. For one, he had to keep a laminate of the Lord’s Prayer in a right-hand corner of the pulpit at First Baptist, as he sometimes forgot the words. A bigger problem for Bubba was that he worried too much about what people thought of him. And he spent way too much time looking at his phone. These days, of course, there is a direct correlation between those two things. Bubba felt an unending sense of responsibility to the people of his church family and to the people of Smiths Station. An unkind comment on Facebook could keep him up at night. If this is a common modern affliction, Bubba had an acute case.
It would be his undoing.
At the end of the Pastor Appreciation Day service, Bubba joined Dan Elkins and Daniel Windsor at the piano on the altar to sing a favorite song. The Lord did not bless Bubba with much of a singing voice, but what he lacked in talent he made up for in effort. The song was “Sweet Beulah Land,” and the second verse goes like this:
*I’m looking now, just across the river*
*To where my faith shall end in sight*
*There’s just a few more days to labor*
*Then I will take my heavenly flight*
Three days later, on the morning of Wednesday, November 1, an online news site called 1819 News, which states as its mission the promotion of “Alabama values,” published a story about Bubba Copeland and all his secrets. Titled “The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F. L. ‘Bubba’ Copeland as a ‘transgender curvy girl,’ ” the story was about Bubba’s hidden online life and featured pictures of him in makeup and a blond wig, wearing women’s underwear and clothes. He had posted the pictures to Reddit subgroups, including one called TransLater, where they would collect comments such as “Sister you look beautiful. Cute outfit,” and Bubba would reply, “Thank you doll!”
![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-011-660c6a1719b88.jpg?crop=0.800xw:1.00xh;0.0743xw,0&resize=2048:* "bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip")
Andrew Hetherington
Dan Elkins and David White at White’s dinner table, where a somber group gathered the morning after Bubba’s death to plan the future of First Baptist Church.
When the 1819 News correspondent, Craig Monger, had called for comment, Bubba had begged him not to publish the story, fearing that news of his private life exploding into public view would embarrass his family, his town, and his church. Dressing up was something he and his wife had done on a lark, he told Monger. He then went further, saying that cross-­dressing was something he had done on occasion since he was a young man, a hobby to relieve stress. “I have a lot of stress,” he told Monger. “I’m not medically transitioning. It’s just a bit of a character I’m playing.”
“The more I talked to them, the more turned around it got,” Bubba would tell a friend.
When the story hit the next morning, Bubba’s son Carter, a junior at Auburn, was still asleep. He woke up to a text from his best friend that read, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.”
“I had no idea what she was talking about,” Carter says. “I called her, and she told me what had happened. Immediately, I looked up my dad’s name online and saw it everywhere. It was early in the morning, and every news outlet I’d never heard of had already jumped on it, like piranhas. I watched the whole world tear him down almost instantaneously.”
Carter and his father were extremely close. Over the years, each had confided in the other about their innermost struggles—in high school, Carter had come out to his father, and Bubba had shared his secrets with his son. Carter was shocked at the meanness of the story and was overcome with a visceral fear that he had never known before. In a panic, he called his dad.
“He picked up and said, ‘Good morning, buddy.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about, *Good morning?!*’ Trying to calm me down, he again slowly said, ‘*Good morning*, buddy.’ And I said, ‘Okay, good morning.’ And then I said, ‘Dad, we have to talk.’ And he said, ‘No, we don’t. I need to get into a meeting. I have people I need to take care of. We’ll talk later.’ ”
![text, letter](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq4-660c120cca464.png?crop=1.00xw:0.919xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text, letter")
Afraid, and not knowing what else to do, Carter wrote to the story’s author, whose email address was posted on the 1819 News website. He received no response. The next day, Thursday, November 2, he wrote to him again:
*Mr. Monger,*
*. . . I am Bubba Copeland’s son. What you have done is not by any means journalism. You have hurt the man who has been here for me my entire life. My father is my hero, always has been, and always will be. I have seen some awful things in this world and experienced a great deal of hatred myself as a gay man. You have fueled a fire of hatred and bigotry unlike any other I have ever seen in my life. I have over the last 24 hours watched my father completely break down. I truly wish I could express to you the emotions and the feelings I feel towards you and your colleagues, but I am unable at this time. My only wish now is that you are able to carry on with your life and have the peace which you have so heartlessly taken from countless lives by writing this article. . . .  If you find time in your day to step aside from your \[duties\] I would greatly appreciate a call. More than anything else I would like to tell you the kind of person my father really is. You should truly be ashamed of yourself.*
By that day, Bubba’s family, his church family, and several of his closest friends in Smiths Station had become concerned that he might harm himself. The 1819 News story was all anybody was talking about. And another story—more lurid, more humiliating, harder to explain—was on the way and would reveal the last of Bubba’s secrets to the entire world. He was in disbelief at the coverage, and the brutal anonymity of the hate pouring onto the First Baptist website and Facebook feed beggared belief.
*Hypocrite!*
*HAHA faggot.*
*You should kill yourself.*
Jason Price and Dan Elkins were the administrators for the church accounts. Along with another volunteer from the church, they would stay up all night taking down the comments so that Bubba wouldn’t see them. But Bubba couldn’t sleep and was fixated on the velocity and reach of the Internet and its lacerating judgments. As the calendar turned from Thursday to Friday, the community of people who knew him best and loved him most—the people you have just met, and many more besides—desperately tried to form a bulwark between him and the ugliness of the world.
*Bubba, hold your head high. You are so loved and have so much support.*
*Bubba, you are going to get through this—we are going to get through this, together.*
*Bubba, just hold on, brother—get out of town for a few days, this will blow over.*
Bubba responded: *These are dark days.*
Sensing his growing despair, his friends and family began sending more urgent messages:
*Bubba, where are the guns?*
*Bubba, we can’t do this without you. How are we going to live our lives without you?*
When the world comes at you, though, it comes *at you.*
The story had gone global, and Bubba couldn’t look away from his phone. *Have you seen the* *New York* Daily News*?* he would ask friends, obsessing over the latest headline.
This article appeared in the April/May 2024 issue of Esquire
[subscribe](https://shop.esquire.com/esquire-all-access-membership-price.html)
Elizabeth White, a WRBL News 3 crime reporter based in Auburn, Alabama, who reported on Bubba in his capacity as mayor of Smiths Station, says that “Bubba was down, and they just kept kicking and kicking and kicking. It wasn’t enough for them to just expose him. They wanted to hurt him. It’s devastating to know that for all the good he did, he spent his last days and moments in unbearable anguish.”
On the afternoon of Friday, November 3, feeling all but destroyed, Bubba Copeland finished the job and killed himself.
The Lee County coroner, Daniel Sexton, would write in his report that the cause of death was a .38 slug to the right side of Bubba’s head, just above the ear. But no clinical description of what a handgun can do to flesh and bone will ever capture the true cause of Bubba Copeland’s death.
The next morning, Bubba’s son again wrote to Craig Monger:
*I hope if you ever have children, they never have to face what I am now going through. I hope that they never have to find out that their father caused another man’s death by his own hand. You and your colleagues took my father from me. . . . I hope the Lord’s judgment for you is swift and deliberate.*
Carter Copeland is still waiting for a reply.
---
When a stranger comes to a small town asking painful questions of a grieving community, the third degree is not only understandable, it’s to be expected.
“You like coffee?” David White asks me. “Well, if you’re in Phenix City anyway, then I guess you should come by so we can look each other in the eye and size each other up.”
The doctor and his wife, Lori, live across the street from First Baptist Church. He is quick to point out that on Easter Sunday in 1865, Union general James H. Wilson began one of the last battles of the Civil War from his yard, staging his attack on Confederate fortifications across the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia, before going on to capture Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. White is bemused at his proximity to this history. In fact, he seems to wear a bemused expression as his face’s default setting. The staging area used by Wilson’s Raiders is now used to stage White’s beehives; his family’s annual “canning kitchen,” in which they put up thousands of jars of fruit preserves and jellies and pickles to give away to friends and strangers far and wide at Christmas; his own small vineyard, where he cultivates grapes for a wine that’s “best served in Dixie cups”; and the pits for the church barbecue on the last Saturday in April, where they’ll smoke two thousand pounds of pork.
![a person with blonde hair](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-001-660c5fd75ef2a.jpg?resize=980:* "a person with blonde hair")
Courtesy of family
Bubba would describe his cross-dressing as “a hobby I do to relieve stress.”
White is from Phenix City, fifth generation, and grew up in this house, which was built in 1906. During the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, as there were no hospitals, the house was made into a flu infirmary, with the sick and dying in the front and concerned family members coming and going from the back, the two halves separated by a heavy curtain that no one was allowed to cross except for the nurse. The doctor would come once a day to leave morphine and aspirin, pronounce the dead, and figure out where to put the new arrivals. “There’s a Black community a quarter mile that way,” White says. “We all grew up together. That’s the way it was. And in those days, nobody had anything, so there was no economic distinction between neighbors. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good, but it was a lot of people striving together to get by. It wasn’t all Ku Klux Klan.”
Per the census, Phenix City has a population of thirty-eight thousand, spread out along the Chattahoochee River, straddling Lee and Russell counties. But it has the feeling of a smaller town, essentially a modest suburb of Columbus, Georgia, directly across the river. Roughly half Black and half white, the diverse population is reflected in First Baptist’s congregation.
White’s father was born in this house in 1917 and was a newborn when both of his parents became gravely ill with the flu. The nurse was caring for White’s grandparents, who were laid out in the front of the house, and the baby was quarantined on the back porch. The need was so great, and the nurse was doing the best she could, but at one stretch she forgot about the newborn and went forty hours straight without crossing the curtain. When she realized what she’d done, she just knew that the baby was dead. She rushed through the curtain to the rear of the house only to find a six-year-old Black boy named Roy Pierson—who had sick family in the front of the house, too, and had himself been lost in the shuffle—caring for the baby, who was quite alive. “Roy was not big enough to pick him up. So he would sleep under the cradle and rock him, and he did his best to keep him clean, but he couldn’t figure out how to feed him. So he would get food and he would chew it up, and he would take it from his mouth and put it into my father’s mouth,” White says. “So when I came along in the South in the early sixties, my Uncle Roy was a Black man. He was my father’s brother, as much of a brother as my father would ever have, and they could not have been any closer had they been related by blood. That’s kind of the weave of the history here.”
He is wearing that bemused expression, but just the night before, White had been on the phone for half an hour, sternly interrogating me about why I had come to Phenix City. “We are hurting, our friend is gone, and we don’t need more salaciousness and scandal,” he said. “The press—so-called—did this to Bubba. Why would we talk to the press? People are concerned.”
He pours the coffee and says, “The people you are here to meet are still in shock at what happened and feel a profound sense of failure at not being able to save our friend. But if we are talking to you, it’s because we don’t want 1819 News to be the last word on Bubba Copeland.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq2-660c123caaf8a.png?crop=1.00xw:0.653xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
The people who exposed Bubba’s secrets said they presumed several things about him, chiefly that he was a hypocrite, preaching hate publicly for the life that he led privately. Bryan Dawson, the founder of 1819 News, would say publicly the week after Bubba’s suicide that Copeland was “pretending to be one thing—uber-conservative, Baptist, Trump, Christian, all of that”—while living a life that made a lie of those claims. Maybe Dawson was making broad assumptions about what it means to be a Baptist preacher in Alabama, but if he and his editorial team had known more about Bubba Copeland, they would have known that that assertion was far from accurate. Dawson would also admit that not only had he never heard of Bubba Copeland before receiving “a tip” about his online life, he had also never heard of Smiths Station.
The story of the Internet is of tribes hurling rocks over the horizon at targets they cannot see, doing damage that they do not care to measure. In this case, those assumptions and that ignorance would make Bubba less a human being than an ideological target in a raging culture war, and the damage radiating through these towns is now plain for all with eyes to see. And it’s not just these towns. Coinciding with the breakdown of our social order and abetted by technology of astonishing power, we find ourselves in a conflict over rapidly changing conceptions of gender and sexual difference. In the backlash to this upheaval, the casualties are mounting.
To learn about Bubba, who he actually was and what he cared about, it’s important to meet his church family, and the best place to do that is here, at David White’s dinner table. Here is where so many people have broken bread and laughed and carried on. Here is also where the trustees and deacons held an emergency meeting the Saturday morning after Bubba died to figure out if and how the church would continue. Lori White made biscuits and coffee, and a somber group sat around this table to plan the next day’s service, which is about all they had in them to do. One service at a time. Get through Sunday, then give some thought to the funeral.
It was decided White would lead the service the next day. He is an easy public speaker with a deep familiarity with scripture, and it was not unusual for him to offer a sermon. Bubba was eager to share his pulpit with speakers he saw as more talented than himself, and White had already been scheduled to do the talk that Sunday. But his sermon would need to be very different now. From there, he and Dan Elkins would share pastoral duties, and other area clergy—even including a Methodist pastor named Laura Eason—would be invited in to help keep the church going.
![a building with a flag on the roof](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b14be07d0c.jpg?resize=2048:* "a building with a flag on the roof")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
The evening of November 1, after the 1819 News story had broken, Bubba led his last Bible study at First Baptist. He chose a fateful passage to teach: Psalm 23:1-6, which had him walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
To keep going is the point of a church. Just as White and his family are fed at this table, so too are they fed at the church across the way. The need for spiritual sustenance doesn’t explain why we believe what we believe, but the two are intimately related, as with common purpose comes community. Coming together in awe and doubt in the face of eternity might be the last human feeling that AI can’t take from us. If a religion splits over a breach in heavenly doctrine or earthly politics or a combination of the two—as the Baptist church did in 1845, cleaved down the middle due to the belief held by what would become Southern Baptists that slavery was an “institution of heaven”—then the community splits, too, profoundly and perhaps irrevocably. The Southern Baptists are no longer confined to the South and now have churches in forty-one states, which makes them the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. In 1995, church leaders apologized for the faith’s racist origins and at the same time repented for the church’s opposition to the civil-rights movement and interracial marriage.
There have been other fault lines more recently, involving the enduring Old Testament penchant of more-conservative Christians to take it upon themselves to cast people into hell, as well as contemporary social issues—whether women can preside over services (an emphatic *no* in Southern Baptist churches) and whether God loves gay people (the Southern Baptist position might best be described as “hate the sin, love the sinner”).
What they all seem to agree on is that the Bible is a well-worn daily instruction manual and not some ancient relic. It is important to White that I understand the First Baptist ethos and the mark that Bubba left on the church in Phenix City.
“Our philosophy is this: We open those doors,” he says. “You can read your whole Bible, and nowhere in it does the Bible give you permission to judge your fellow man. But time after time after time, it tells you to love your fellow man. No matter what. That was Bubba’s attitude. It’s the attitude our church shares.”
It seems an uncontroversial point and a handy distillation of the foremost of the Christian commandments, familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the New Testament. All of the gospels enunciate a version of this basic tenet of Christianity, and the Gospel of Mark makes clear that there is “no commandment greater” than to love God and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
“It’s not that complicated,” says White, “although because we are human, we keep pretending not to understand how this is supposed to work. We keep pretending that God intended for us to rough each other up using his Word. Buddy, there but for the grace of God go I. Maybe we don’t cross-dress and that kind of stuff, but we all have our faults, and none of us deserve the harsh judgment of other flawed humans. First and foremost, Bubba Copeland was my friend. I don’t fully understand what was going on with him, in his life and in his home, but I also don’t know that I’m supposed to. I don’t think it’s my business.”
The evening of November 1, after the 1819 News story had broken, Bubba led his last Bible study at First Baptist. He chose a fateful passage to teach: Psalm 23:1–6, which had him walking through the valley of the shadow of death. After the session, he walked into a very tense meeting of the church’s board of trustees that began in anger and ended two hours later in tears and hugs. The trustees, led by White, had, like everyone else, been blindsided by the story and just wanted to know one thing: Bubba, is it true?
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq3-660c12656d0c6.png?crop=1.00xw:0.938xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
*He maketh me to lie down in green pastures . . .*
Yes, the pictures were real, he told them. They were private and never meant to be public. It was dumb to post them on the Internet. He was abjectly sorry for the embarrassment he would cause, adding that he would never purposely do anything to hurt the church or his friends.
*He restoreth my soul . . .*
“We did not suspend him. We did not reprimand him. We did not fire him,” White says. “We talked to him frankly. We expressed our shock and disappointment, and then we replaced that with our concern and our love and our support for our brother, who was suffering. The church would be fine. Now it was Bubba we were worried about.”
*I will fear no evil, for thou art with me . . .*
The next morning, one of the trustees from First Baptist who had been in the meeting the night before received a call from a man from the Russell County Baptist Association. The caller wanted to know what First Baptist planned to do to punish its pastor and why it hadn’t done so already.
*Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies . . .*
The First Baptist trustee told the caller from the Baptist Association that as First Baptist had not been aligned with the Southern Baptist Convention for decades, the situation with Bubba Copeland was none of the association’s business.
*Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over . . .*
The trustee added that just as the New Testament instructs in the books of Matthew, Luke, and Galatians, when a brother goes astray, as Paul wrote in his letter to the early Christians of Galatia, “you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”
*Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.*
Matthew emphasizes that this counseling should be done privately; Luke, the importance of forgiveness after repentance. And that, the trustee told the caller, was how First Baptist planned to address the situation with its brother Bubba Copeland. *Thank you for calling.*
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![carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240226-ah2-bubbacopeland-4841-dig-660b150175705.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.154xw,0&resize=980:* "Carter Copeland son of deceased Mayor and Pastor Bubba Copeland")
Andrew Hetherington
Phenix City is roughly half Black and half white, and the town’s diversity is reflected in the First Baptist congregation. “Our philosophy is this: We open those doors,” says David White. “You can read your whole Bible, and nowhere in it does the Bible give you permission to judge your fellow man.”
“We haven’t been Southern Baptist for twenty years,” White says. “And you’re probably not going to find another Baptist church in a small town anywhere that has gay couples that come to church every Sunday. Of course, you have to be sensitive, because we have members that are old-school, in their eighties and nineties, and they might not be ready for all of that, but they’re accepting. After Gene Langner died, we started looking for a pastor. I was on the search committee that brought the next pastor here, and we had people in church that were gay. It was generally known but not discussed. And the older members, some of them—the staunchest, most Republican, redneck guys, I mean—I grew up around them and I watched God change them, but they’re still very conservative. And more than one of them came up to me and said, You’re looking for a pastor, but, you know, so-and-so sits over there in the third row. They’re kind of different. Don’t you bring anybody here that’ll hurt them or turn them away.”
The Southern Baptist Convention still regards sexual difference as an abomination against God, and even homosexual desire not acted on is “always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent and perverted,” according to the denomination’s “Resolution on Homosexual Marriage.” As a remedy for impure thoughts, the SBC endorses sexual reorientation.
When Dan Elkins had his country church in southern Alabama and was struggling to reconcile his ministry with his sexuality, he came out to his then wife. That was 1996, and it would be seven years before they would divorce. “We did counseling, and I was told, *You can beat this with prayer and fasting,* and I prayed, and I fasted, for *years*—ever the good little Baptist boy—but I was earnestly trying to change something that simply can’t be changed,” Elkins says. “I had come out to a confidant at church, and that person betrayed my trust and it got out in the community, but I didn’t know it. We showed up for church one Wednesday night and the parking lot was full, and I’m like, *Something’s going on*. This was January 2002. Oh my word. If Facebook had been around then, I’m not sure I’d be here. I’m not sure that I would have seen the way out. Like Bubba couldn’t see the way out.”
In this pocket of East Alabama, though, the church doors are open, and the Bibles say that God loves everybody. “That’s how this church has evolved,” says White. “We have members who are gay and married and accepted, and that’s relatively new. And we have older members who are accepting even if they don’t understand. It’s been a long trip for them. You cannot fail to recognize how far they’ve come.
“And that’s Bubba’s legacy,” White adds. “I can tell you that his legacy is not defined by that week. His legacy is defined by the friends he leaves, by the people that he led to the Lord, by the life and values he lived. *That’s* his legacy. *Not* 1819 News. 1819 News is to journalism what a quack is to the practice of medicine.”
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Bryan Dawson believes in redemption narratives. Especially his own. The founder of 1819 News (so named because 1819 is the year Alabama became a state) has a compelling personal story that he has honed into a performance piece on various podcasts and pulpits across Alabama for the past several years, although he is not from the state or even the South.
![a man speaking into a microphone](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-003-660c604d2af65.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.245xw,0&resize=980:* "a man speaking into a microphone")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
When a high school student in Smiths Station took her own life, Bubba started a suicide-prevention campaign, putting up affirmations all over town.
As a young man, Dawson lived in Colorado Springs, and it’s there that his life of crime gave him the material for his story. He trafficked in weed, cocaine, and meth; was the kingpin of a “motorcycle, automobile theft ring”; and in spring 2007 beat a “snitch” over the head with a chain with a padlock at the end of it, for which he would be charged with attempted murder, among other felonies. (He would eventually plead to reduced charges and receive a sentence of sixteen years in prison.) These experiences have been memorialized numerous times in the press, in stories such as “From Breaking Bad to Redemption: The Story of Bryan Dawson” in *Newsweek* and in an interview on his own website titled “From Tragedy to Triumph, the CEO of 1819 News Shares His Story.”
In his story, he tells of a sad and lonely young man with no self-esteem raised in a broken home, who is always put in the “friend zone” by young women and who only ever feels comfortable as himself when he is high or drunk. And then he becomes a violent criminal, faces hundreds of years in prison, is extended grace and kindness over and over again by strangers and the state, finds God, and is ultimately salvaged by a community that forgives him seventy times seven (Matthew 18:21–22). In the details and framing of his story, Dawson is pleading for understanding, and his adoring interviewers give it to him; one even adds at the end, “I think if you had been born way back, you would be in the Bible.”
Yes, you might say that Dawson’s Colorado Springs redemption epic is like Saul on the road to Damascus, if Saul had attempted to murder a man with a padlock on a chain, causing “permanent disfigurement,” according to the attending physician in a police report, who added that “the victim was lucky to be alive.”
Saul of course repents, calls himself the “foremost of sinners,” and becomes Paul, the greatest writer of the New Testament. In his redemption narrative, Dawson also becomes a different person, but when he tells his story this new person doesn’t mention the man he tried to kill, doesn’t indicate how he feels about him or whether he ever thinks about how he might be getting on with his permanent disfigurement. Instead, in his redemption story, Dawson occasionally shines a little light on his supporting cast—his wife, his mother—but mostly he finds satisfaction in the power of his own narrative. His interviewers feel the same way, and they interrupt him to say things like *It’s just like in the movies!*
![a man speaking into a microphone](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b167b16c37.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.371xh;0,0.629xh&resize=2048:* "a man speaking into a microphone")
SARA PALCZEWSKI/OPELIKA-AUBURN NEWS/AP (COPELAND). MARK WARREN (SIGN). JULIE BENNETT/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX (MEMORIAL)
Left: The memorial in front of the church in the days after Bubba killed himself. Right: One of the signs with affirmations that Bubba put up around Smiths Station after a local high school student took her own life.
Which brings us to his fresh start in Alabama, where he grew an apostolic beard, started to allow the slightest bit of a twang in now and then, joined a Baptist church in Wetumpka where he sometimes preached from the Old Testament and where just ten days before his life intersected with Bubba Copeland’s he delivered a sermon that revealed him to be an aspiring theocrat. Preaching from Deuteronomy and Samuel, he refers to “God’s government”; is entranced by the “rod of correction,” the “power of the sword,” and offenses against God that are “punishable by death”; warns of the consequences that will come when a church “neglects to use the sword properly”; and says things like “We’ve done a great job of rooting out the rubbish and the refuse of the Philistines in our church. We’ve done a phenomenal job” and “Right now in the state the fear of God is not before their eyes, so they just do whatever they want.”
Appearing on a podcast this past January about the “Dangers of Progres­sive Christianity,” Dawson said that “progressive Christianity comes from feminism creeping into the church” and that the one true faith had fallen victim to “soccer moms” and their tendency to be more welcoming and less judgmental. In the same broadcast, he trained particular fire on a prominent evangelical minister who had sparked controversy by advocating that churches be more supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. For this, Dawson called the minister an “apostate” and a “full-blown heretic” and then went on to improvise that the man was gay and was cheating on his wife, and to finish the point he said, “I wish there were Old Testament lightning strikes that happen to people when they blaspheme the Lord the way that he does.”
The Lord did not bless Bryan Dawson with a talent for public speaking, but what he lacks in fire he makes up for in brimstone. His Christianity seems somewhat unfamiliar with its namesake. In that, he is a familiar figure, older than time, and not only among Christians—a religious enforcer who knows just enough of a holy book to be dangerous. You might say that he put down his padlock, picked up his Bible, and didn’t skip a beat.
Dawson then merged his brutal version of the Christian faith with the often brutal politics of Alabama on the always brutal platform of the Internet and in late 2021 founded 1819 News to counter the most prominent news site in Alabama, AL.com, which is, he says, “communist propaganda.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq5-660b1700bc04d.png?crop=1.00xw:0.880xh;0,0.120xh&resize=2048:* "text")
These details of Dawson’s story are important, because in the moral calculus of 1819 News, Bryan Dawson is allowed a redemption narrative sanitized of victims, but Bubba Copeland is not. Perhaps that is because Dawson’s violent felonies were manly crimes, just like in the movies, whereas Bubba Copeland’s transgressions were of thought and behavior that Dawson could not square with his version of the faith and would not tolerate, and rather than extend Copeland the grace that he himself had been the beneficiary of so many times, he ignored Bubba’s plea for mercy and leveled him instead. He and his editor in chief, Jeff Poor—an alum of the Daily Caller and a regular contributor to Breitbart—would make the case that it was Bubba Copeland, who did not preach violence from his pulpit, who was the dangerous one. After his death, they would assert publicly that he was a troubled man, that he had victims, that it was their duty to expose him, and that, as Poor would say, “the people at First Baptist Church, Phenix City, had a right to know what their worship leader was doing.”
On the day that Bubba Copeland took his own life, 1819 News published its second feature on his fantasy life online. This story was even more lurid than the first, detailing pieces of erotic fiction that Bubba had posted as his alter ego. Some of the fiction was gruesome—one story in particular dealt with a trans protagonist who stalked and killed a woman so that she could have a relationship with her victim’s husband. The story was titled “Dangerous Obsession”: “In my cubicle I scanned her page. She posted a new picture! Excited I screenshot it to add to my ever-growing collection. To say I was a stalker would be a bit of an understatement. Every post she made I studied it, analyzing and taking notes of her daily routine. What she ate, what she drank, from her favorite coffee to her favorite alcoholic drink. Her life had become my obsession.”
In the two days since 1819 News had posted its first story, it had been alerted that Bubba had used pictures of at least two real people from the Phenix City area in at least one of his posts—a meme about transitioning. The two were a brother and sister, and people from the community have confirmed for me that the brother was a minor when the picture that Bubba used was taken. In his second feature, correspondent Craig Monger wrote that the father of the children pictured had called 1819 News, informed the site that the pictures were of his children, and asked them to remove the images. (The photo of the boy was taken from the father’s social-media account.) In his posts, Bubba seemed to use photos from the Internet both purposefully and indiscriminately, once including an image of a teenage girl who was not from the area.
![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240225-ah2-bubbacopeland-0440-dig-660b172b441e2.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.164xw,0&resize=980:* "bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Lisa Deason worked with Bubba in the Smiths Station mayor’s office. She engaged in a physical strug­gle with him in a vain effort to keep him from ending his life.
A local woman had contacted the site to say that Bubba had used pictures of her in some of his posts. Monger also discovered that Bubba had used the name of another local woman in “Dangerous Obsession.” I reached out to the father of the brother and sister but did not hear back, and also to both of the women. One did not reply, the other wrote back, “No need to bring all of that back up as those . . . families heal.”
When Dawson and Poor had published their exposé on Bubba two days earlier, the 1819 News editorial team had apparently not been aware that he had used the names and images of people he knew in posting to his online community. But in the days after his death, his poor judgment would become their justification for having published the stories in the first place. 1819 News’s initial imperative—to expose a cross-dressing pastor that its editorial team had assumed to be a hypocrite—would no longer be enough.
The week after Bubba’s suicide, Dawson and Poor released a thirty-­four-minute video podcast on which they outlined all that had gone into their decision to publish their exposé. The timeline, they say, is that they received a tip about Bubba’s online life on Monday, October 30. They called him for comment. They published on Wednesday morning after deliberating for three hours the night before on whether to go through with it.
In the video, the two strike a sober pose. “It’s a tragic situation where no one wins,” says Dawson. They grant themselves absolution for doing the right thing and say that they feel besieged by criticism on social media that 1819 News had acted irresponsibly. Dawson does not allow himself to understand the reaction in anything other than ideological terms. “This story,” he says, “has shaken things up in the leftist community!”
Poor wears the look of a man surprised to find himself in the middle of a matter of such consequence and bristles at the suggestion that decisions he was party to might have contributed to the death of a man. Don’t assume that Bubba Copeland killed himself because of those stories, he says. “We may never know, but don’t assume that.”
As they hash out their reasons, Dawson and Poor repeatedly refer to “Dangerous Obsession,” acknowledging that the story is fantasy while nonetheless treating it as if it were evidence of real conduct. Poor becomes exercised and shouts, “What if people don’t ever find out about this? What if it just is allowed to continue on into the future?” And then, with no apparent basis in fact for saying so, he adds this: “We don’t know what else is out there—don’t assume that there’s nothing else out there. This behavior does raise a lot of unanswered questions. . . . I think maybe a little caution here is warranted.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq6-660c12b0e2cba.png?crop=1.00xw:0.969xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
Six days after Bubba Copeland killed himself and his family and community had been devastated, the editor in chief of 1819 News began to urge caution while continuing to assassinate his character.
Near the end of their podcast, Poor says that although he was “not celebrating the death of Bubba Copeland,” he was “at peace” with the decision to publish.
It’s easy to see that Bubba was wrong and crossed an ethical line in using the names and images of people he knew in his fiction and other posts. One can only assume that it must have been an awful experience for those two women and the father of that brother and sister to be unexpectedly swept up in this story. But in this Alabama skirmish in a hellish culture war—over gender and speech and objective reality itself—with its dehumanized politics and competing conceptions of heaven, suffused with rage and loss and bereft of much clarity, two things are clear: First, 1819 News wanted the whole world to see Bubba’s posts, without fully understanding what they contained. Before posting its stories, the editorial team there also didn’t seem to know much beyond the few facts they had discovered, things they saw as sensational and repugnant. And second, Bubba Copeland was desperate for his hidden life to remain hidden and never intended for anyone other than perhaps his wife and the other pseudonymous members of his online community to see his posts. He was shattered at the sudden collision of his private and public identities and killed himself.
The last story 1819 News published about Bubba Copeland came on November 11, eight days after his death. It was a short essay in support of the editorial decision to run the stories, and its conclusion was that Bubba had completed “his rejection of God’s laws” because he had “murdered himself.”
I wrote to 1819 News four times, asking to discuss the stories it published about Bubba Copeland. I did not receive a reply.
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He gave himself the nickname, as he didn’t much care for “Fred Copeland Jr.” and thought that “Bubba” sounded friendly. He was a standout linebacker for the Smiths Station high school football team, but his real passion in school had been acting in drama productions, because, as he would tell his son, “you can become someone else for a moment.”
When he and his first wife, Merrigail, were dating, Bubba sat her down one night and said he had something to tell her. “Have you heard of transgender?” he asked her.
“Bubba, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she answered. He explained it as best he could, and then Merrigail asked, “Why are we talking about this?”
“Well, I dabble in that,” he said. “There have been times that I have dressed up.”
The news threw Merrigail, but the attraction between them was so strong that she thought their relationship could withstand anything. The couple were married in 1997, and she would soon come to believe that Bubba had a compulsion that he couldn’t control. When they’d been married for a year or so, they decided to buy a dog. When the day came to pick up the dog, Bubba was working, and so Merrigail and her father, Pastor Langner, walked out to the garage to get some rope to secure a large crate. When she opened up the tool chest on Bubba’s truck, she found that it was full of women’s clothes. Merrigail turned to her father. “Dad, I don’t want to embarrass him,” she said.
“I won’t,” her father said.
A few years later, when she was pregnant with their son Carter, she discovered some “transgender stuff” on his computer one afternoon. When Bubba got home from work, he found Merrigail crying. He apologized profusely, saying that the stress at work was too much for him and that dressing up was an escape. “I’ll try to do better,” he told Merrigail. She knew how bad her husband’s stress was. Bubba worked with his father, who, she felt, “talked to him like he was a dog.” Fred Sr. was a hard man, a combat veteran who had returned from Vietnam and made his fortune in the grocery business in Georgia and Alabama. Bubba would often come home saying that he wanted to do something different with his life.
Merrigail’s father told her, “Sweetheart, he can’t help it. This is who he is.” Langner would counsel his son-in-law with compassion, saying, “Bubba, Christ didn’t come into this world for us to be two people. You can only live one life. You need to decide which life you’re going to lead.”
![a wooden bench in a park](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b17c8baa46.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.958xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "a wooden bench in a park")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Mechanics­ville Cemetery, where Bubba would often go to meditate when he was troubled and needed to “calm down.”
In East Alabama, though, Bubba couldn’t imagine a world where he could be himself in a way that people would accept. The marriage broke down, and when the couple divorced in 2009, Bubba was so despondent that he seriously contemplated suicide. One morning, when Carter was eight years old, he found his father sitting on the floor in the shower, sobbing. “I said, ‘Dad, are you okay? I love you,’ ” Carter remembers. “And he said, ‘I’m okay, buddy. I just need a second.’ ” There’s a nineteenth-century cemetery—Mechanicsville Cemetery, it’s called—near the grocery store Bubba owned, and he would sometimes go there to think when he was troubled. After dropping Carter off with the babysitter, Bubba went to the cemetery, intending to kill himself. He had the barrel of a handgun in his mouth when his phone rang. It was an old friend from town, who told Bubba, “Hey, buddy. The Lord put you on my heart, and I just wanted to tell you I love you.”
The call stopped Bubba. But his torment would continue.
After the divorce, Carter lived mostly with his father and attended the Glenwood School in Smiths Station, a private Christian academy. Bubba was a devoted father, and in the years before he met Angela, his life revolved around Carter. Two things happened in the years before Bubba remarried that would define the relationship between father and son. When he was twelve, Carter came across a digital camera in his father’s closet full of pictures of Bubba dressed in women’s clothes. “This is not something that I ever wanted you to find out,” Bubba told his son.
“I just need to know if you’re doing something really wrong, Dad,” Carter replied.
“Absolutely not,” Bubba answered. “This has been a hobby of mine for a while. It’s my escape.”
When Merrigail found out that her son had discovered his father’s secret, she said, “Your dad is an incredible man. Don’t let this change the way that you feel about him.” It didn’t. In fact, it gave Carter the feeling that he could talk to his father about anything.
Two years later, when Carter was a freshman in high school, he told his father that he was gay and that he was struggling with how to live honestly at school and in the world. He wanted to be free to be himself. God had made him this way. Why would he hide who he was? His father was afraid for Carter and angry that he couldn’t talk him out of coming out publicly. He knew what would happen to him, doing so at such a young age in such a small town, and the two fought bitterly. Bubba wanted him to wait until college to come out, wanted him to go far away, be happy, live his life. Carter decided instead to come out to a cherished teacher who betrayed him to a school administrator, who called Carter into his office and told him that he was going to hell. Once the news spread, Carter experienced what felt like torture. Students would spit on him in the bathroom, throw food at him in the lunchroom, and threaten to physically attack him. The teachers were of no help, as they now hated him, too. There was no safe harbor for the gay kid at the Christian school.
There is nothing like being the singular locus of a compounding hatred, in a closed system that justifies the hatred and calls it good. After school one day, Carter went home, his head full of monsters, and he swallowed a bottle of pills. And then he walked into his favorite room, the family library with its cathedral ceilings, and lay on the floor and looked up and watched the ceiling fan turn. His father found him there, saw the empty pill bottle, and dragged him to the bathroom, where he put his fingers down Carter’s throat.
It would be the first of several suicide attempts for Carter. Time after time, his father would save him. And the last time, Bubba just held Carter and told him, “God loves you, Carter. And I love you, too. Don’t listen to those people at school. There’s nothing wrong with you. The only thing wrong with you is the judgment of the world.”
“And then he said this: ‘Carter, if I can survive this, you can survive this, too.’ And we made a pact with each other that day that we would live. We would make ourselves happy, we would make others happy, we would live fulfilled lives. And as long as one of us had to do it, the other had to do it, too. ‘No suicides. Promise?’ ”
Carter says now that he realizes that by coming out when he did, he was trying to show his father that it’s okay, that you can be who you are. *It’s all right*.
“I had reached a point in my life where I had begun to accept myself,” he says. “I had finally gotten to that point, and now my own father had to go through it. And the people that hated me and wanted me to be morally punished were the same people that took my dad from me.”
---
![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240225-ah1-bubbacopeland-3222-660b1834a7556.jpg?crop=0.900xw:0.899xh;0.0190xw,0.101xh&resize=2048:* "Bubba Copeland former mayor and pastor RIP")
Andrew Hetherington
A memorial to Bubba, which was unveiled on March 26, 2024. Part of the Smiths Station memorial sidewalk, the marker is located in front of the Historic Jones Store Museum, a local heritage project that he had championed and that opened in 2019.
It was the afternoon of Friday, November 3, 2023. The last hour of Bubba Copeland’s life. For days, those who knew him best and loved him most had encircled him, lifting him up, trying to hold tight to keep him from slipping away. Their efforts had seemed to be working. Earlier that day, Bubba had gotten a couple new tires for one of his cars, he’d stopped by the government center in Smiths Station to pick up his new city credit card, he’d checked in at the country market. He’d also sent a long and heartfelt letter to the congregation of First Baptist, thanking them for Pastor Appreciation Day, in which he seemed to see a future. “I look forward to continuing our journey of faith, growth, and service together,” he’d written. Now he’d gone missing. In Auburn, Carter Copeland received a call from his stepmother, Angela. “Your dad just called me. And he said that he loves me and that he’s always loved me and to go to my parents’ house. And then the call dropped off, and now every time I call him, it goes straight to voicemail. I don’t know what to do, Carter. You know him better than anybody. Where is he?”
By then, the Lee County sheriff’s department had fanned out all over the county to find Bubba and make sure he was okay. It wasn’t just law enforcement, either—Bubba’s friends and family had also begun searching for him, and as Carter ran to his car to make the drive from Auburn, Lisa Deason, who had worked as Bubba’s communications director in Smiths Station, had gone looking for him, too, and was pulling up at Bubba’s house. Deason had helped him draft letters of resignation as mayor and pastor just the day before. The letter resigning from his position as pastor read, in part, “Admittedly, there have been instances where my wife and I have taken private pictures within the confines of our home, which should have never been shared online. I realize this was a significant lapse in judgment and a personal failure, for which I bear complete and absolute responsibility. . . . I apologize for any distress or humiliation my actions may have caused. Love to all, Bubba.” The letter would never be sent.
Like many of his other friends, Deason had been urging Bubba to get out of town for a few days, let the Internet find somebody else to destroy, let things blow over. That morning, though, 1819 News had dropped its second feature on Bubba and, mesmerized by the coverage on his phone, he had started telling people that he didn’t know if he could go on. The night before, Dan Elkins and Jason Price had had a long talk with Bubba about his growing despair, and Elkins had asked him, “Bubba, where are your guns?” Bubba said that he had surrendered his handgun to a safety officer in Smiths Station. As several of his friends would say, though, he lives in the South and his name is Bubba—he’s got more than one gun.
The latest 1819 News piece seemed to break something in Bubba, unleashing a lethal shame, and by that afternoon his phone was as dangerous a weapon as his gun.
Not finding Bubba at home, Deason stood in the driveway of his house and called 911, saying that her friend was suicidal, and at that moment, his Tahoe pulled up in front of the house on Oakhurst Drive. He got out and left the motor running. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I came to check on you.”
“Who’s with you?”
“I’m by myself.”
“Do not tell Angela where I am. *I mean it*. Don’t you tell a soul where I am.”
Bubba went into the house for no more than thirty seconds, and when he came out he was walking fast and moved to get back in his truck. “I love you,” he told Deason, “but I got to go.”
She said, “No, I’m not going to let you do this, Bubba! *Please* don’t do this. You have way more people that love you than you can even imagine. Don’t do this. Don’t do this to your family. *Please. Don’t.”* Deason was sobbing now and trying to hold on to Bubba, with her arms wrapped around him. *No, I’m not letting you leave*. Realizing she couldn’t restrain him, she let go, ran around him, jumped into the driver’s seat, turned off the ignition, and grabbed the steering wheel. *I’m not going to let you leave.*
“I’m going to do it in front of you if you don’t move,” he said. Bubba pulled her out of the truck, and in desperation, she was thinking, *What the hell can I do?* In that instant, 911 called back, and instead of the operator, it was Jeff Pitts with the sheriff’s department on the line.
“What’s going on?” Pitts asked.
“He’s trying to leave and he won’t listen to me! He’s adamant. He says he’s got to end it.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Bubba, it’s Major Pitts, Jeff Pitts.”
“Jeff, man, I love you,” Bubba said. “But I’m done. I can’t do this no more.”
Bubba handed the phone to Deason, got in his truck, and peeled away.
As he drove, a cousin who had joined the search pulled up behind him. Bubba told him, *If these deputies make me stop, you’re going to see something that I do not want you to see.*
Carter was driving 100 miles per hour toward Mechanicsville Cemetery, because he knew his father might be there. He called his father’s number over and over. Nothing. And then his father called him.
“I love you, buddy,” Bubba said. “I’ve lived my whole life to make sure that you are successful and that you have what you need. And I just want you to know that I love you more than anything in this world.”
“I knew immediately what that meant,” Carter says. “And I just said, ‘Please, Dad, please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing. Please, we can get through this.’ ”
“It’s too late, son. I love you. I’m so sorry.”
“I told him, ‘You have nothing to be sorry about. There’s nothing to be sorry for. I love you. You’re my hero. Always will be. This is going to be horrible. We’ll get through it.’ ”
“I’m sorry. This is what I have to do. This is the only way out.”
Carter remembers feeling desperate to hold on, desperate to find the words that would make his father stay, desperate. He screamed at the top of his lungs and felt a rush of emotion such that he thought his vocal cords might explode. *I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!* “I screamed it as loud as I could for as long as he was on the line, because I knew he was listening. I knew. I could see he was still on the call. I kept screaming. That’s all I knew to say was, *I love you! It’s okay. I love you. It’s okay!”*
And then silence.
---
In the immediate aftermath of Bubba’s death, along a country road in the town of Beulah, Lee County sheriff Jay Jones took possession of his electronic devices, and his office searched them for evidence of criminal conduct. They found none. “In my view, Bubba Copeland would never intentionally do anything to harm anyone,” Jones told me. “I just don’t think that he was that type of person.”
David White would write a new sermon for the Sunday after Bubba’s death, staying up well past midnight the night before, sitting at his dinner table, writing in longhand. He would preach Psalm 23:1–6, just as Bubba had in his last service. And he wanted to make sure the world knew that the church had remained true to its pastor and always would. “Despite what may have been implied in the media,” he wrote, “members of this church have been steadfast in their love and concern for our pastor.”
We all have things that we don’t want other people to know about us. Things that might be hard to explain, even to ourselves. The First Baptist Church of Phenix City did not abandon Bubba Copeland, even after learning the secrets that he might not have been able to explain even to himself.
Bubba’s body would be turned away by the two Baptist cemeteries in Smiths Station, his hometown, the town that he loved. He is buried in a private family plot many miles away.
As I finished my reporting for this story, I took to asking the people in Bubba’s life what they might say to the people at 1819 News if they had the chance. Several told me that they are required to love them and will be praying for them. As Bubba Copeland always said, “God loves you, and so do we.”
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# Russia, Ukraine, and the Coming Schism in Orthodox Christianity
## Clash of the Patriarchs
A hard-line Russian bishop backed by the political might of the Kremlin could split the Orthodox Church in two.
![Two patriarchs sitting opposite each other at base of Orthodox-cross-shaped photo of Vladimir Putin, all on red background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/phTZN8253ohj6us2-C8OXHzRN3Q=/0x115:2055x2684/648x810/media/img/2024/04/02/Worth_1_VERT/original.png)
Photo-illustration by Cristiana Couceiro. Sources: Sefa Karacan / Anadolu Agency / Getty; Getty; Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty.
![Two patriarchs sitting opposite each other at base of Orthodox-cross-shaped photo of Vladimir Putin, all on red background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/MkxvFHtuLFocHJXw0bTdyREcL6U=/438x0:1563x1125/80x80/media/img/2024/04/Worth_1_HP/original.png)
Listen to this article
Listen to more stories on [curio](https://curio.io/l/66v0gi9v?fw=1)
In late August of 2018, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, flew from Moscow to Istanbul on an urgent mission. He brought with him an entourage—a dozen clerics, diplomats, and bodyguards—that made its way in a convoy to the Phanar, the Orthodox world’s equivalent of the Vatican, housed in a complex of buildings just off the Golden Horn waterway, on Istanbul’s European side.
## Explore the May 2024 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
[View More](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/)
Kirill was on his way to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the archbishop of Constantinople and the most senior figure in the Orthodox Christian world. Kirill had heard that Bartholomew was preparing to cut Moscow’s ancient religious ties to Ukraine by recognizing a new and independent Orthodox Church in Kyiv. For Kirill and his de facto boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin, this posed an almost existential threat. Ukraine and its monasteries are the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church; both nations trace their spiritual and national origins to the Kyiv-based kingdom that was converted from paganism to Christianity about 1,000 years ago. If the Church in Ukraine succeeded in breaking away from the Russian Church, it would seriously weaken efforts to maintain what Putin has called a “Russian world” of influence in the old Soviet sphere. And the decision was in the hands of Bartholomew, the sole figure with the canonical authority to issue a “tomos of autocephaly” and thereby bless Ukraine’s declaration of religious independence.
When Kirill arrived outside the Phanar, a crowd of Ukrainian protesters had already gathered around the compound’s beige stone walls. Kirill’s support for Russia’s brutal behavior—the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the bloody proxy war in eastern Ukraine—had made him a hated figure, and had helped boost support in Kyiv for an independent Church.
Kirill and his men cleared a path and ascended the marble steps. Black-clad priests led them to Bartholomew, who was waiting in a wood-paneled throne room. The two white-bearded patriarchs both wore formal robes and headdresses, but they cut strikingly different figures. Bartholomew, then 78, was all in black, a round-shouldered man with a ruddy face and a humble demeanor; Kirill, 71, looked austere and reserved, his head draped regally in an embroidered white *koukoulion* with a small golden cross at the top.
The tone of the meeting was set just after the two sides sat down at a table laden with sweets and beverages. Kirill reached for a glass of mineral water, but before he could take a drink, one of his bodyguards snatched the glass from his hand, put it aside, and brought out a plastic bottle of water from his bag. “As if we would try to poison the patriarch of Moscow,” I was told by Archbishop Elpidophoros, one of the Phanar’s senior clerics. The two sides [disagreed on a wide range of issues](https://orthodoxia.info/news/exclusive-the-dialogue-between-the-patriarchs-of-constantinople-and-moscow-during-their-meeting-at-the-phanar/), but when they reached the meeting’s real subject—Ukraine—the mood shifted from chilly politeness to open hostility. Bartholomew recited a list of grievances, all but accusing Kirill of trying to displace him and become the new arbiter of the Orthodox faith.
Kirill deflected the accusations and drove home his central demand: Ukraine must not be allowed to separate its Church from Moscow’s. The issue was “a ticking time bomb,” he said, according to a leaked transcript of the meeting. “We have never abandoned the notion that we are one country and one people. It is impossible for us to separate Kyiv from our country, because this is where our history began.”
Bartholomew explained that “the Ukrainians don’t feel comfortable under the control of Russia and desire full ecclesiastical independence just as they have political independence.” He added that he had been receiving petitions and pleas for years from Ukrainians at all levels, including members of Parliament and the country’s then–president and prime minister. Kirill replied that those pleas were meaningless because Ukraine’s political class was illegitimate. The people, he said with a disquieting certainty, “will overthrow them and expel them.” Bartholomew, shocked by the implied violence in Kirill’s words, called on the Russians “not to issue such threats, neither for schism nor for bloodshed in Ukraine.” When the meeting concluded, Kirill and his men were so angry that they skipped lunch and headed straight back to their private plane, I was told by an adviser to Bartholomew.
In the end, the threats proved unavailing: Bartholomew approved the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and Kirill [issued an order](https://apnews.com/article/68834e730fb448afa4b2cfe909c71a7d) to cut the Russian Church’s ties with the Phanar. (Confusingly, the Moscow-linked Church is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.) The clash of the patriarchs—they have not spoken since—now looks a lot like a prelude to the Russian war in Ukraine. Just after Bartholomew announced his decision, Putin [convened a meeting of his security council to discuss it](http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58813). Putin later cited the Church schism as part of his justification for the 2022 invasion, and he and Kirill continue to speak of the breakaway Church as an assault on Russia’s national identity.
But the struggle between Bartholomew and Kirill is bigger than Ukraine. It is a battle for the soul of Orthodox Christianity, a faith with 300 million believers around the world. The divide has drawn comparisons to the Great Schism, which a millennium ago separated the Orthodox East and the Catholic West.
On one side, Bartholomew has spent three decades trying to make Orthodoxy more compatible with the modern liberal world. He openly urges the faithful to accept evolution and other scientific tenets. He has been a passionate advocate for environmental protection. And, like Pope Francis, he has quietly promoted a more accepting attitude toward homosexuality. But Bartholomew’s power is more limited than the pope’s. There are eight other Orthodox patriarchs, each of whom presides over a national or regional Church, and Bartholomew’s role is that of “first among equals.”
Kirill, who heads by far the largest national Church, has made it into a bastion of militancy. He has given the war against Ukraine his full-throated support, and [some of his priests go further](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-church-war-orthodox-ukraine-/32354081.html), preaching about the glory of firing Grad rockets and dying in battle for Russia. Kirill’s tediously Manichaean tirades—about saintly Russia defending “traditional values” against the gay-pride parades of the decadent West—are much more than a justification for Putin’s autocracy. His anti-modern ideology has become an instrument of soft power that is eagerly consumed by conservatives across the Orthodox world as well as by right-wing figures in Europe (such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán). It has even [won adherents in the United States](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1096741988/orthodox-christian-churches-are-drawing-in-far-right-american-converts), where some evangelicals and right-wing Catholics seek a stronger hand in the culture wars.
[Peacefield: Putin’s unholy war](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/russia-ukraine-invasion-religion-holy-war/676408/)
Kirill has also [launched an aggressive effort to capture Orthodox parishes allied with Bartholomew](https://ecfr.eu/article/propaganda-in-holy-orders-africa-ukraine-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/), allegedly with the help of the FSB, Russia’s intelligence apparatus, and of the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary arm. The Russian Orthodox Church has used bribery and blackmail, threatening to undermine churches that do not adopt its policies and requiring newly converted (and well-paid) clerics to sign documents renouncing all ties with Bartholomew’s Church. The goal of this campaign is a very old one. Five centuries ago, after Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans, a Russian monk famously wrote that Moscow was now the world’s great Christian capital: “Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there shall not be a fourth.” Kirill and Putin seem determined to make this declaration of a “third Rome”—Moscow—come true.
The spiritual heart of Orthodox Christianity is on Mount Athos, a densely forested peninsula in northern Greece. It is a community of 20 ancient monasteries, and pilgrims must receive written permission to visit. No women are allowed, and the peninsula—sealed from the mainland by fences—can be reached only by boat, as if it were an island. I got my entry paper stamped just after dawn at a waterside kiosk in Ouranoupoli, a Greek beach town full of restaurants and bars that is the main gateway to Athos. The waitress who had brought my coffee would be the last woman I saw for three days. At the pier, I climbed onto a battered old ferry that gradually filled with bearded monks, construction workers, and a smattering of pilgrims. A heavy funk of unwashed male bodies mingled with the sea breeze. As I looked out at the gorgeous blue-green water, I pitied the monks, who must also renounce swimming here.
Not much has changed on Athos since the monks first arrived, more than 1,000 years ago. They have followed the same candle-lit rituals of prayer and chanting even as the Christian world around them—once contained in a single empire—split and transformed over the centuries like a slow detonation. The Great Schism occurred in 1054. Around that same time, Mount Athos saw the arrival of Slavic monks, recently converted from paganism, who became an important presence on the peninsula and remain so today.
The ferry trawled alongside the western coast of Athos. After half an hour, we saw a cluster of buildings topped by the distinctive onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Church: the St. Panteleimon Monastery. It is the most Russia-friendly monastery on Athos, and its monks have [posted a video of one of their priests chanting a prayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arbrYjFV8l4) for “President Vladimir Vladimirovich, the government, and army of our God-protected fatherland.” After the Ukraine invasion in 2022, the monastery’s abbot sent Putin a birthday letter expressing the belief that “Russia under your wise guidance will overcome all difficulties and become a world power.” The monastery had not responded to my request for a visit. Still, my translator—a Macedonian named Goran who speaks fluent Russian as well as Greek—and I were hoping to persuade the monks to chat.
As we walked uphill from the pier, it became apparent that some of the monastery’s buildings were brand-new. Others were still under construction or being renovated, tall cranes hovering above them. Starting in the late 1990s, wealthy Russians, including a coterie of oligarchs close to Putin, [began investing huge amounts of money in St. Panteleimon](https://www.ft.com/content/a41ed014-c38b-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9). It is now the largest and most opulent compound in all of Athos. The finances of the monasteries are opaque, and little supervision was introduced even after an abbot with ties to Russian oligarchs was jailed in Greece for embezzlement and fraud in 2011 over a lucrative land deal. (He was acquitted six years later.)
For all the new buildings, I found St. Panteleimon almost empty. Near the main sanctuary, we tried to have a word with a monk who was hurrying past. The man grimaced and brushed us off. We spotted a second monk, and he, too, refused to speak. Goran, who has been to Athos many times, seemed amazed by this rudeness. There is an ancient tradition on Athos of hospitality for pilgrims, and Goran told me he had been warmly received at St. Panteleimon before the war in Ukraine. Not anymore.
Our next stop was the Monastery of Simonopetra, a little farther down the coast. The reception could not have been more different. In the main building, a young monk from Syria named Seraphim escorted us into an anteroom with a magnificent view over the sea. He vanished, reappearing a minute later with a silver tray bearing coffee, water, and tiny glasses of cherry liqueur made by the monks. When we described our experience at St. Panteleimon, Seraphim nodded sadly. He then began telling us about a Russian plot to capture and annex Athos. It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about something that had occurred in the 19th century.
The past is very close on Athos. Clocks there still run on Byzantine time, with the day starting at sunset rather than midnight. The monks live surrounded by frescoes depicting events that happened centuries or even a millennium ago. Most of the clerics have little contact with the outside world, and must seek approval from their superiors to use the internet. Some current events do penetrate. The Ukraine war has had a profound impact, and not just for the Russian monks who gave me the silent treatment; it has begun to erode what the monks call a shared “Athonite consciousness.”
“It’s like a huge scar, this war between two Orthodox nations,” I was told by Elder Elissaios, the abbot of Simonopetra, who met with me the morning after our arrival. “Even if the war ends, the scars will still be painful … We cannot protect against this kind of thing.” I asked him what he meant. He paused for a moment, sipping his coffee and looking out at the blue expanse of the Aegean. “We don’t know how to separate the Church from the nation,” he said. “This is a problem of the Orthodox tradition.”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/Ud2rHBoysjDSoaJ34mc9nT26ZEw=/0x0:2360x1549/655x430/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_2/original.png)
The Monastery of Simonopetra, on Mount Athos (Yves Gellie / Gamma-Rapho / Getty)
That problem has its origins in the fourth century C.E., when Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and then imposed it on his subjects. For more than 1,000 years afterward, Church and state in Constantinople “were seen as parts of a single organism,” according to the historian Timothy Ware, under a doctrine called *sinfonia*, or “harmony.” The echoes of this fusion can be seen today in many of the symbols of Orthodox authority, including the crown worn by Bartholomew on formal occasions and the throne on which he sits.
One of the paradoxes of modern Orthodoxy is that its rigidity has become a selling point in the West. Many conservatives complain that mainstream churches—Catholic and Protestant alike—have grown soft and spineless. Some in Europe and the United States openly yearn for a more explicitly Christian political sphere. Conversions to Orthodoxy are on the rise, and most of the converts are not looking for a tolerant message like Patriarch Bartholomew’s. According to Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a scholar of Orthodoxy who teaches at Northeastern University, in Boston, the new converts tend to be right-wing and Russophile, and some speak freely of their admiration for Putin’s “kingly” role. In the U.S., converts are concentrated in the South and Midwest, and some have become ardent online evangelists for the idea that “Dixie,” with its beleaguered patriarchal traditions, is a natural home for Russian Orthodoxy. Some of them [adorn their websites with a mash-up of Confederate nostalgia and icons of Russian saints](https://www.dissidentmama.net/).
Patriarch Kirill is keenly aware of his [rising status among American religious conservatives](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/steve-bannon-american-evangelicals-russian-orthodox/519900/), and he and his deputies have been welcomed warmly during visits to the U.S. (These visits took place before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.) During a visit to Moscow in 2015, Franklin Graham—the son of the late Southern Baptist leader Billy Graham—[told Kirill that many Americans wished that someone like Putin could be their president](https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/unexpected-relationship-between-us-evangelicals-and-russian-orthodox).
[Read: Steve Bannon’s would-be coalition of Christian traditionalists](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/steve-bannon-american-evangelicals-russian-orthodox/519900/)
Russian Orthodoxy looks very different to many who grew up inside it. On my last day on Mount Athos, I had a conversation with a young man named Mykola Kosytskyy, a Ukrainian linguistics student and a frequent visitor to Athos. He had brought with him this time a group of 40 Ukrainian pilgrims. Kosytskyy talked about the war—the friends he’d lost, the shattered lives, the role of Russian propaganda. I asked him about the Moscow-linked Church that he’d known all his life, and he said something that surprised me: “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church”—meaning the Church of Kirill and Putin—“is *the* weapon in this war.”
All through his childhood, he explained, he had heard priests speaking of Russia in language that mixed the sacred and the secular—“this concept of saint Russia, the saviors of this world.” He went on: “You hear this every Sunday from your priest—that this nation fights against evil, that it’s the third Rome, yes, the new Rome. They truly believe this.” That is why, Kosytskyy said, many Ukrainians have such difficulty detaching themselves from the message, even when they see Kirill speaking of their own national leaders as the anti-Christ. Kosytskyy told me it had taken years for him to separate the truth from the lies. His entire family joined the new Ukrainian Church right after Bartholomew recognized it, in 2018. So have millions of other Ukrainians.
But religious ideas die hard, Kosytskyy said. The Russian message lives on in the minds of many Ukrainians, especially older ones. Among the hardest messages to unlearn is that the West represents a threat to Christian values, and that the vehicle for this threat is the humble-looking patriarch in Istanbul.
I first glimpsed Bartholomew on a rainy evening in late November. From where I stood, in the dim and damp recesses of St. George’s cathedral, in Istanbul, the patriarch appeared as a distant figure in a red-and-gold cape, framed by a high wall inset with a dense golden filigree of angels and dragons and foliage. Bartholomew walked forward, clutching a staff, and ascended his patriarchal throne. To anyone who was raised, as I was, on threadbare Protestant rituals, Orthodox services are a bit like dropping acid at the opera. The cathedral was as deep and shadowed as a canyon, full of drifting incense and the thrilling sound of low choral chanting. Sparkling eyes gazed down from icons on the sanctuary walls.
That evening, the church was packed with people who had come from all corners of the Orthodox world for the annual Feast of Saint Andrew, the Phanar’s patron saint. I heard shreds of multiple languages in the crowd—Greek, Serbian, French—and saw three East African priests in brown robes that were cinched with a rope at the waist. As the service came to an end, Bartholomew delivered the traditional blessing for a new archon, a layperson being honored for service to the Church. “*Axios!* ” he called out three times (“He is worthy”), and each time the faithful repeated after him in unison: “*Axios!* ”
When the service ended, we filed out into a small flagstone courtyard that underscores the peculiar status of the Phanar. It is revered as the ecclesiastical capital of the Orthodox world, but it is crammed into a space no bigger than a midsize hotel, and surrounded by a Muslim society that has treated it with undisguised hostility. The compound is overshadowed by the minaret of a neighboring mosque, whose PA system loudly proclaims the Islamic call to prayer five times a day. The clergy must change out of their clerical garb every time they leave the compound, lest they offend Muslim sensibilities.
I had a chance to speak with Bartholomew at an evening reception after an electric-violin concert in his honor at a Greek school in Istanbul. It was surprisingly easy to thread my way through a thicket of fawning diplomats, visiting Catholic bishops, and waiters balancing trays of wine and hors d’oeuvres—and there he was, seated in an armchair. He beckoned to me, and as I sat down he gave my forearm a paternal squeeze. Up close, Bartholomew has a rosy, patchy complexion, and his white beard looks almost like a rectangle of smoke spreading south from his chin. He spoke excellent English; when we were interrupted a few times by well-wishers, he conversed with them in French, Greek, and Turkish. He seemed very much at ease, answering my questions about the Church and its traditions as well as about his two highest priorities as patriarch—fostering greater openness to other sects and religions, and protecting the environment. As for the Ukraine war, he said bluntly that “Kirill is allowing himself to be a tool, to be an instrument of Putin.”
I asked him about the political inconvenience of being based in Istanbul. Bartholomew conceded that the Turks were difficult hosts, but added: “It’s better for us to be in a non-Orthodox country. If we were in Greece, we would be a Greek Church. If we were in Bulgaria, we would be a Bulgarian Church. Being here, we can be a supranational Church.” This larger role is the reason the Istanbul Church is known as the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Broadening the Church’s mission has been a hallmark of Bartholomew’s career. He was born Demetrios Archondonis on the Aegean island of Imvros in 1940, just two decades after Turkey’s Greek Christian population had been decimated by violence and forced exile in the aftermath of the First World War. A local bishop saw his potential and paid for him to go to secondary school. He continued on to seminary and then to study in Rome, where he arrived in 1963 amid the theological ferment of the Second Vatican Council. Bartholomew had a front-row seat, meeting with council delegates, theologians, and other prominent Catholic figures. The Orthodox Church was, if anything, more rigidly traditional than the Roman Church, and Bartholomew seems to have been inspired by the Vatican reformers’ efforts to clear away the cobwebs.
He was no firebrand. But he spoke consistently in favor of modernizing the Church and fostering greater openness. Despite the Church’s overall conservatism, he had a few role models in this, including his godfather, Archbishop Iakovos, who was the Phanar’s representative in North and South America from 1959 to 1996—and one of the only non-Black clerics to accompany Martin Luther King Jr. on his march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery in 1965.
Bartholomew’s most distinctive effort to “update” the Church is [his commitment to environmentalism](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/bartholomew-i-of-constantinoples-bold-green-stance.html?login=email&auth=login-email). In the press, he is sometimes called the Green Patriarch. When, in 1997, he declared that abusing the natural environment was a sin against God, he became the first major religious leader to articulate such a position. Perhaps more controversial—at least to some Orthodox Christians—is Bartholomew’s emphatic call for believers to accept unreservedly the findings of modern science and medicine. He believes in evolution, and regularly reminds his followers that the first life forms emerged on the planet some 4 billion years ago.
Bartholomew and Kirill have at least one thing in common: Both grew up as Christians in the shadow of rigidly secular rulers. But the Turkish republic was mild compared with the Bolshevik regime, whose Marxist faith decreed that religion was illusory and backward—the “opium of the people.” The Bolsheviks were especially keen on destroying the Orthodox Church, because of its deep ties to czarist tradition. In the decade following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the new rulers imprisoned and executed thousands of Orthodox priests and bishops.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/YBfGuoIMIZ9MPH-IwCBUu0Kgen8=/0x0:1532x2298/655x983/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_3/original.png)
In early 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew signed a “tomos of autocephaly” blessing the religious independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. (Onur Coban / Anadolu Agency / Getty)
By the time Kirill was born, in 1946, Joseph Stalin had changed tack, feeling that he needed religion to shore up popular support. He revived the Church in zombified form, an instrument of the state that was massively surveilled and controlled by the security services. When [some of the KGB’s archives were exposed in 2014](https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/7/5877797/mitrokhin-archive-kgb-documents-open-to-public)—thanks in part to the brave efforts of the late Gleb Yakunin, a dissident Russian priest who spent years in prison—the collusion of the Church’s leaders was revealed. One of the collaborating clerics, whose code name in the files is Drozdov (“The Thrush”), [is alleged to be Patriarch Alexy II](https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1), Kirill’s immediate predecessor. Kirill’s name did not come up in the files, but he was the product of a system in which advancement was impossible without the approval of the regime.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Church faced a crisis of identity. Kirill was one of its most visible and charismatic leaders, and for a brief moment, he seemed to urge a new and more democratic direction for the Church. But as Russian society descended into chaos and gangsterism, Kirill staked out much more conservative and autocratic views.
By the time Putin came to power, in 1999, some of his old KGB friends had already started getting religion. It made a certain kind of sense that the most devout and pitiless Communists were those who most needed a new faith, and many of them had already spent years collaborating with Church figures. Putin [made his first visit to Mount Athos](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/putin-makes-pilgrimage-to-greece) in 2005, attending services at St. Panteleimon and climbing the monastery’s bell tower. A year later, one of his old confidants from the KGB helped found the Russian Athos Society to organize donations to the monasteries there. Putin’s own religious feelings are hard to discern, though he is [rumored to have been brought into the Orthodox faith in the ’90s by a priest named Tikhon Shevkunov](https://www.ft.com/content/f2fcba3e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a), who ran a monastery not far from the FSB’s Moscow headquarters.
In 2008, a documentary called *The* *Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium* was broadcast on Russian state television, not once but three times. The director and star was the same Tikhon Shevkunov. The movie’s thesis was that Byzantium had been irrevocably undermined even before Ottoman armies conquered it in 1453, its religious culture and resolve eroded by the individualism of the encroaching West. Russia was held up as Byzantium’s heir, the natural vehicle of its holy mission. Historians pilloried the show as historically illiterate, but they were missing the point. It wasn’t really about the past. It was a blueprint for the future.
Kirill became patriarch in 2009. Soon afterward, Putin began invoking Orthodoxy when talking about Russia and its role in the world. Thousands of churches have since been built throughout the country, and Putin has made very public visits to Church elders. Kirill “inspired Putin to a great extent, to make him think in civilizational terms,” I was told by Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian-born theologian who spent 10 years as a personal assistant and speechwriter to Kirill before resigning in 2012, unhappy with the Church’s direction. Putin’s loyalists quickly began aping their president’s talk of “Holy Russia” and [her “satanic” enemies](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/russian-media-warns-of-satanist-conspiracy-at-the-top-in-ukraine/378836/).
[Read: Are Ukraine’s leaders in league with Satanists? On Russian TV, yes](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/russian-media-warns-of-satanist-conspiracy-at-the-top-in-ukraine/378836/)
Putin’s decision to restore Orthodoxy to its old public role was a shrewd one, whatever his personal religious feelings. The Russian empire had collapsed, but its outlines could still be seen in the Russian Orthodox religious sphere, which extended beyond Russia’s borders and as far afield as Mount Athos and even Jerusalem. For a ruler seeking to revive his country’s lost status, the Church was a superb way to spread propaganda and influence.
If Kirill had any illusions about who stood higher in the new *sinfonia* between Church and state, they were quickly snuffed out. In 2011, he [endorsed criticism of corrupt parliamentary elections in Russia](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/world/europe/kirill-putin-russian-orthodox-church.html). Reports soon appeared in the state-controlled media about luxury apartments belonging to Kirill and his relatives. Other stories began to circulate about billions of dollars in secret bank accounts. One website published a photograph from 2009 in which Kirill could be seen wearing a Breguet watch worth about $30,000. Kirill denied ever wearing it, but after a bungled effort to airbrush it out of the photo, the Church had to admit that the watch was his and make a humiliating apology. Kirill has shown abject loyalty ever since. At a celebration in honor of his first decade as head of the Russian Church, in 2019, he [appeared alongside Putin and thanked God and “especially you, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”](http://www.patriarchia.ru/en/db/text/5369391.html) (My request for comment from Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate went unanswered.)
For Kirill and Putin, it was not enough to restore the Church’s status in Russia. To reclaim the “Russian world,” they had to wage a much wider battle for influence and prestige, one that would include tarring Bartholomew.
The Russian campaign started in Greece, where there is a natural well of sympathy formed by ancient religious ties and shared enemies. In the mid-2000s, Russian oligarchs began building churches and doling out cash for favors. Bishops who lent holy relics for tours in Russia could make a tidy profit for themselves or their parishes. The Russian investments were followed by a systematic effort to denigrate Patriarch Bartholomew on hundreds of new Greek-language websites, blogs, and Facebook groups, an online offensive documented by Alexandros Massavetas, a Greek journalist, in his 2019 book, *The* *Third Rome*. “The message was that Bartholomew is being manipulated by the Turks or the U.S. or the Vatican,” Massavetas told me, “and that only Russia represents the true Orthodox spirit, with Putin as its protector.”
The Phanar overlooked these attacks for years. Bartholomew was working hard to maintain unity at all costs, because he was planning to convene a historic pan-Orthodox gathering that he saw as the crowning achievement of his tenure. The Church had not held a Holy and Great Council for more than 1,000 years, and the planning for this one had begun in 1961. Bartholomew was so keen on making the synod succeed that he accommodated the Russians at every turn. During a preparatory meeting, the Russians objected to proposed language about the Church’s opposition to discrimination and insisted that all references to racial and sexual minorities be deleted. (Kirill seems to see the language of human rights as a tacit endorsement of homosexuality and other supposed sins.) They also demanded that Ukraine’s calls for religious independence be kept off the agenda. Bartholomew caved on it all, even the seating plan.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/FBgsUUs4PSCmg48pdBzkwgUIcwc=/0x0:1609x1189/928x686/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_4/original.png)
St. Panteleimon Monastery; monks of Mount Athos (Photo-illustration by Cristiana Couceiro. Sources: Vlas2000 / Shutterstock; Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy; Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto / Getty; Royal Geographical Society / Getty; Library of Congress selected manuscripts in the Monasteries of Mount Athos)
Then, just a week before the synod’s start date, in 2016—with all the villas booked and ready at a Cretan resort town—[the Russians pulled out](https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/63954). They defended their decision by pointing to three much smaller Orthodox bodies (Bulgaria, Georgia, and Antioch) that had withdrawn just beforehand. Although there appear to have been some genuine disagreements about the documents prepared for the meeting, the three smaller Churches have close ties with Moscow, and the Russian move came off as yet another effort to humiliate Bartholomew.
Kirill, though, appears to have miscalculated. His public snub laid bare the divisions in the Church and removed Bartholomew’s incentive to compromise. Archbishop Elpidophoros, who is now the Phanar’s senior bishop in the United States, spoke with me about this episode during a conversation in his Manhattan office, on the Upper East Side. Perhaps the most important consequence of Kirill’s move, he explained, was that it opened the door to giving the Ukrainians what they wanted. “That was the green light,” he said.
The movement for religious independence in Ukraine had been stirring for decades, and it had grown in tandem with the country’s political confrontations with Moscow. As early as 2008, the head of Ukraine’s Moscow-linked Church at the time, Metropolitan Volodymyr, was declaring that the Church and state should be separate—a position that would be unthinkable in Russia. When Viktor Yanukovych, an instrument of the Kremlin, became president of Ukraine in 2010, he made clear that he wanted the Orthodox Church—the faith of 72 percent of Ukraine’s people—back in its cage. A Ukrainian bishop, Oleksandr Drabynko, told me he was called into the ministry of internal affairs one morning in 2013 for a meeting. One of Yanukovych’s officials delivered a blunt message, Drabynko said: “We must push out Volodymyr because we need someone loyal to us.” The official added that with the next Ukrainian election approaching in 2015, “the Church must support our candidate.”
The landmark events of 2014, known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity, were more than just a civilian movement to overthrow a corrupt autocrat. The uprising bred a new sense of independence among Ukrainians, thanks in part to the role played by the Orthodox Church. Though some priests supported Yanukovych and his government, many others openly backed the revolt. When police attacked protesters in Kyiv’s central square, one bishop [allowed them to shelter from the police in his nearby cathedral](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-church/once-an-outcast-ukrainian-patriarch-ready-to-lead-church-split-from-russia-idUSKCN1M82CR/).
Russia’s brazenly neocolonial response to the 2014 revolution—the seizure of Crimea—infuriated Ukrainians and supercharged the movement for a religious divorce from Moscow. In October 2018, just weeks after his tense meeting with Kirill in Istanbul, Bartholomew [dissolved the 1686 edict that had given Moscow religious control over Ukraine](https://www.vox.com/2018/10/17/17983566/russia-constantinople-ukraine-eastern-orthodox-schism-autocephaly). He also set in motion the process that would lead to recognition of a new Ukrainian Church, one that would be under Bartholomew’s—not Moscow’s—jurisdiction.
The Russians were furious, and Kirill [severed ties with the Phanar](https://apnews.com/article/68834e730fb448afa4b2cfe909c71a7d). Worldwide, Moscow began behaving as if it had already become the third Rome. A vivid illustration was provided by events in Africa, where one of the most ancient Orthodox patriarchates is based (in Alexandria, Egypt). Kirill founded a new branch of the Russian Orthodox Church and began targeting the existing Orthodox parishes there, whose leader had aligned himself with Bartholomew. “Through Facebook and Instagram they approach our followers,” Metropolitan Gregorios, a Greek bishop who has been based in Cameroon since 2004, told me. “They begin by sending money. They attach everyone to them, show that Russia is rich, show that they can get more money.”
Gregorios, who is 62, spent two hours with me in the lobby of an Athens hotel as he described Russia’s religious efforts across Africa, which he said are funded by the Wagner mercenary force. Orthodox priests are more vulnerable to bribery than their Roman Catholic peers, Gregorios explained, because they are allowed to marry, and many have large families to provide for. “So the Russians say, ‘We’ll give education for your kids.’ They bring a motorcycle, a car. They say, ‘The Greeks just give bicycles.’ And they double the salaries we pay.” Last year, he said, he lost six priests in his jurisdiction: “They got approached by the Russians and offered 300 euros a month.” Gregorios later shared with me some of the documents that priests under Russia’s thumb must sign, swearing loyalty to the patriarch of Moscow “to my dying day.”
The Russian Church has made similarly aggressive moves in Turkey, the Balkans, and elsewhere. Russia’s secret services appear to be involved in some of these operations. In September, the North Macedonian government [expelled a high-ranking Russian priest and three Russian diplomats](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/high-ranking-russian-priest-expelled-from-bulgaria/), accusing them of spying. A week later, the same priest, Vassian Zmeev, was expelled from Bulgaria. According to Nikolay Krastev, a journalist in Sofia, Zmeev appears to have been organizing efforts to divide the Balkan Orthodox Churches and shore up opposition to the new Ukrainian Church. All of this bullying has had its effect: Only four Orthodox branches (out of about 17, depending on how you count) have recognized the new Ukrainian Church approved by Bartholomew.
In late 2021, weary of the conflict and worried that it was damaging all of Orthodoxy, Bartholomew reached out to the Russians—and was rebuffed. The Moscow Patriarchate “sent us a message saying that there is no way we will engage in any dialogue,” Archbishop Elpidophoros recalled. The Russians, he went on, declared that “the wound is so deep that we will need at least two generations to overcome.” The message may not have been entirely sincere. Russia was already planning what it believed would be a much quicker resolution to its Ukraine problems, one that did not include dialogue.
The Monastery of the Caves, in Kyiv, may be the most important Christian site in the Slavic world. Founded around 1050 C.E. by a monk from Mount Athos, it is a large complex of golden-domed churches, bell towers, and underground tunnels, ringed by stone walls and set on a hill overlooking the Dnieper River, in the center of the city. In the early days of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, there were rumors of a plan to parachute Russian special forces into the monastery grounds. Welcomed by friendly Orthodox priests, the invaders would quickly move on to the government buildings nearby and gain control of the capital.
The rumors were false, but they sounded plausible to many Ukrainian ears. The Russian military and its proxies had begun using Orthodox monasteries and churches as bases as soon as they arrived in eastern Ukraine in 2014, and have continued to do so over the past two years in occupied areas. They have even publicized the fact, in an apparent effort to show that the Church is on their side. Many priests, including prominent figures, did support Russia. The senior cleric at the Monastery of the Caves, Metropolitan Pavel, [was well known for his pro-Moscow sympathies](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65148386).
But the violence of the 2022 invasion united Ukrainians, and Kirill’s efforts to sprinkle it with holy water—describing those who opposed the Russians as “evil forces” and praising the “metaphysical significance” of the Russian advance—made him a widely hated figure. Many Ukrainians now view the Moscow-linked branch, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with deep suspicion. The Ukrainian security services have carried out regular raids on its churches and monasteries over the past two years, including the Monastery of the Caves. Dozens of priests have been arrested and charged with espionage and other crimes. This past October, Ukraine’s Parliament [approved a measure that could ban the Russia-backed Church altogether](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/ukrainian-parliament-votes-to-ban-orthodox-church-over-alleged-links-with-russia#:~:text=Ukrainian%20parliament%20votes%20to%20ban%20Orthodox%20Church%20over%20alleged%20links%20with%20Russia,-This%20article%20is&text=The%20Ukrainian%20parliament%20gave%20initial,Russia%20following%20last%20year's%20invasion). That Church still has more parishes in Ukraine than its newer, independent rival, but its long-term prospects appear grim.
The loss of all of Ukrainian Orthodoxy would be a serious blow for Kirill. At its peak, Ukraine accounted for about a third of the parishes claimed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukraine also has a much higher rate of churchgoing than Russia, where actual piety seems to be rare—a fact that sits awkwardly with Kirill’s broadsides against the moral depravity of the West. Barely two months after the invasion, a well-known Russian priest and blogger named Pavel Ostrovsky—who was not ordinarily a regime critic—unleashed a tirade on Telegram: “Some argue that Russia is a stronghold of everything noble and good, which is fighting against world evil, satanism, and paganism,” he wrote. “What is all this nonsense? How can one be a noble stronghold with a 73 percent rate of divorce in families, where drunkenness and drug addiction are rampant, while theft and outright godlessness flourish?”
It is tempting to conclude that Russia’s efforts to capture world Orthodoxy will prove to be a losing bet. Religious leaders of all kinds have denounced Kirill’s embrace of the war, including [Pope Francis, who famously told him not to be “Putin’s altar boy.”](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/04/patriarch-kirill-pope-francis-russian-orthodox-church-ukraine/) It may even be, as Archbishop Elpidophoros told me, that “the Patriarchate of Moscow is not a Church” so much as a convenient vehicle for nationalist ideology. The Russian people, he assured me, are the foremost victims of this religious tyranny.
The archbishop may be right about the Moscow Patriarchate: that it’s not a Church, not in the sense that we have long accepted in the West. That said, it’s not just an arm of the Kremlin. It is something more dangerous, a two-headed beast that can summon ancient religious loyalty even as it draws on all the resources of a 21st-century police state: internet trolls, abundant cash, the tacit threat of violence. Perhaps the most troubling possibility is that Kirill’s Church, with its canny blend of politics and faith, turns out to be better adapted to survival in our century than mainstream Churches are.
There are certainly dissenters from Kirill’s jingoistic line among the 40,000 Orthodox priests in Russia. But most clerics are pliant, and a vocal minority are even more extreme than their patriarch. Andrei Tkachev, an archpriest who was born in Ukraine and now lives in Moscow, has [become notorious for sermons in which he asserts that “a warrior’s death is best of all.”](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-church-war-orthodox-ukraine-/32354081.html) He has millions of followers on social media. Other priests have reinterpreted Christian doctrine in ways that recall the Crusades. Online, you can easily find videos of Igor Cheremnykh, another well-known priest, asserting that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is meant to apply to the behavior only of civilians, not of soldiers. Cyril Hovorun, Kirill’s former assistant, knows many of these priests personally. He calls them “turbo‑Z Orthodox.” (*Z* is used as a symbol of Russia’s war.) Some of them were aligned with or even personally close to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late oligarch and leader of the Wagner Group. “This monster has outgrown its creators,” Hovorun told me. “It’s a Frankenstein.”
The day after I met Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul, I went for a walk near the Phanar. The Feast of Saint Andrew was over, and the ancient streets were no longer full of pilgrims. A cold drizzle fell. As I walked past the relics of dead civilizations—Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman—I found myself wondering if Orthodoxy would ultimately split into two religions, or just weaken itself through bickering, like the Christians who once ruled Constantinople.
It may be that Kirill and his angry zealots represent the last sparks of a dying flame. This is what Bartholomew has been assuring his flock: that he is bringing the Church into the future, while Kirill is holding on to the past. But as a patriarch in Istanbul, he must also know that the arc of history doesn’t always bend the way we want it to.
---
*This article appears in the* [*May 2024*](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/) *print edition with the headline “Clash of the Patriarchs.”*
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# The Butterfly in the Prison Yard
*Editor’s note: On April 8, 2024, as part of* [*a mass amnesty ahead of the holiday of Eid*](https://en.irna.ir/news/85436585/Supreme-Leader-pardons-commutes-sentences-of-over-2-000-prisoners)*, conservationist Niloufar Bayani was released, along with three of her colleagues, after spending six years in a notorious Iranian prison. In the preceding months, journalist Lucy Sherriff and The Sunday Long Read team had been working on an account of how she got there and once there, how she survived.*
*This is her story.*
---
Imagine your job is to deliver water to some of the last remaining wild individuals of a critically endangered species. The Asiatic [cheetah](https://felidaefund.org/news/general/the-asiatic-cheetah-a-subspecies-on-the-brink-of-extinction), which lives only in the arid deserts of eastern Iran, hiding among rocky, rugged mountains that stretch 10,000 feet skyward, competes with local livestock for limited water resources. You might be its best hope of survival. 
You’re dressed head to toe in khaki, binoculars swinging from your neck, laden with the kind of gear wildlife conservationists need not just to do their jobs, but to survive in the wilderness. You’ve hauled water from Tehran, hours away, to this gnarled terrain near the Afghanistan border, placing the buckets in areas where game cameras indicate the animals might be present. You crouch behind coarse bracken and hold your breath. Time slows as you hold your position, hoping to blend in seamlessly with the sandy landscape. At last, you spot her: long-legged, agile, fearsome. An *acinonyx jubatus venaticus,* one of only a handful of Asiatic [cheetahs](https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-says-only-12-asiatic-cheetahs-left-in-the-country/) left on the planet, has come to drink.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/I__02359.jpg?resize=1024%2C789&ssl=1)
Photo courtesy of Iranian Cheetah Society/DoE/SPOTS
This is the kind of moment, the kind of magic, that Niloufar Bayani, a Tehran-born, Canadian-educated conservationist, moved home for. She worked for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a Tehran-based conservation organization, whose goal was to bring the cheetahs back from the brink of extinction. 
Bayani had joined the foundation, run by fellow Iranians Morad Tahbaz and Kavous Seyed-Emami, after five years working for the United Nations in Geneva. At 31, she had a promising career ahead of her, but had decided to return home to Iran to save her country’s threatened wildlife.
The future of one of the rarest cats in the world, which once stalked plains stretching from Russia to Pakistan to Yemen, had been left entirely to Iran. The population had drastically declined thanks to shrinking habitats, restricted resources, and poaching. The only likely remaining wild population [lives in the eastern-central arid region of Iran](https://web.archive.org/web/20191221205021/http://www.wildlife.ir/Files/library/IranianCheetah_Farhadinia2004.pdf), where there are very few humans. It was near impossible to conduct research on the cheetahs.
But the group’s painstaking efforts to save the cheetahs would soon come to a halt. Even though they operated in the open, with the full permission of the Iranian government, their freedom would be stripped away by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary group that operates independently from Iran’s regular military and answers only to the country’s supreme leader. Established by Iran’s religious leaders as an extrajudicial tool after the 1979 revolution whose name it bears, the IRGC frequently advances the supreme leader’s agenda [inside the country](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards#chapter-title-0-2) and [abroad](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/iran-us-war.html). 
In November 2017, the IRGC placed Tahbaz, the foundation’s co-founder, under a travel ban, [unable to leave the country](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/morad-tahbaz-five-year-arrest/index.html#:~:text=Morad%20Tahbaz%2C%20who%20is%20a%20US%2C%20UK%20and%20Iranian%20citizen%2C%20was%20arrested%20in%20January%202018%20on%20charges%20of%20espionage%20while%20on%20a%20trip%20to%20Iran.%20Prior%20to%20his%20arrest%2C%20both%20he%20and%20his%20wife%20had%20been%20blocked%20by%20an%20exit%20ban%20from%20leaving%20the%20country.%20In%20November%202019%2C%20he%20was%20sentenced%20to%2010%20years%20in%20prison.). And by January 2018, he and eight of his colleagues, including Bayani, would be arrested, and according to family members, thrown in solitary confinement and subjected to torture, with several charged with “[sowing corruption on earth](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/actions/niloufar-bayani-iran/#Case%20Information),” a charge that can carry the death penalty. After two weeks in prison, Kavous Seyed-Emami [would be found dead](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/world/middleeast/kavous-seyed-emami-iranian-environmentalist-evin-prison.html) – with prison authorities claiming he had hung himself inside his cell.
Following years in prison, forced confessions, and a closed-door trial, Tahbaz, an American, British, and Iranian citizen, was released from prison in September 2023 and allowed to fly home to the United States as part of a political prisoner swap and a [$6 billion deal](https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/19/us-iran-prisoner-swap-connecticut-morad-tahbaz#) with the US government. 
Their arrests were “completely out of the blue,” says a family member of one of those arrested, who did not want to be identified because of safety concerns. “They were doing everything by the book. …We still don’t really know the reason why they were taken.”
For this story, the Sunday Long Read spoke with family, friends, and associates of the imprisoned individuals. Many of them did not want to be identified for security reasons. These interviews, along with international media coverage and the efforts of academic advocacy groups, paint a picture of Niloufar Bayani’s longtime dedication to science, her not-always-quiet defiance, and her efforts to preserve her humanity – and that of others – in dark circumstances.
Six years passed after Bayani was arrested by the IRGC. Apart from a five-day period [when she was released on furlough](https://council.science/current/blog/un-international-day-of-solidarity-bayani/), she spent the entire time behind bars.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/cropped-simpler-slr-logo-copy.png?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1)
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##### **Act I: “If only we had known what was to come”**
Bayani grew up in Iran’s capital Tehran with her parents Marmar and Yousef and sister Narges. She developed an adoration of animals from an early age and had a particular affinity for insects. She realized, however, that if she wanted to become a conservationist she would have to pursue her education abroad – there were far more opportunities outside her home country. When Bayani was 18, she left home to study biology at McGill University in Montreal.
At university, Bayani was enthralled by all the new, interesting people from all over the world, coming together in one place. Daniel Hoops, a shy student in the same biology course as Bayani, was one of those people. “We never would have been friends if it weren’t for her personality,” Hoops recalled. “She is just such a warm and wonderful person.” Hoops remembers Bayani as tall, elegant, and graceful, thanks to the years she spent studying ballet. Her tight, dark curls framed her face, and her warm brown eyes sparkled with life.
“She loved Iran. She would go on and on about how it’s not what we hear about in the media,” Hoops recalled. Bayani was willing to argue for hours about how everyone misunderstood her beautiful Iran, with its classical poetry and colorful cuisine. She encouraged Hoops to visit her after graduation.
Bayani and Hoops grew closer during a semester-long program called Canadian Field Studies in Africa. A group of 37 biology students were dispatched to East Africa in January 2008, moving across the region from Kampala to Tanzania, Hoops remembered. There was a fraught moment when the group, none of whom had a visa for the country, arrived at Arusha Airport in Tanzania. Thirty-three Canadians, one Singaporean, and two Europeans were waved through immigration. Bayani was stopped and taken aside for questioning. The group waited at the airport for news of Bayani, who was eventually let through after hours of questioning – about what, Hoops doesn’t know. But Bayani smiled her way through it all, despite her friend’s worry for her.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DSCN2822.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
Photo courtesy of Daniel Hoops
On the way back from one field excursion, the group’s van was traveling on the winding road that wrapped around the base of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano, sticky with mud after a particularly heavy bout of rain. The wheels churned in the thick mud and the van ground to a halt, tires spinning.
In the near distance, the volcano spewed ash. Just hours prior, it had begun erupting. The group emptied out of the van, terrified, watching the lava ooze out of the vent. Suddenly, Bayani dropped to the ground, hands and feet squelching in the mud as she moved her body back and forth, hips arched high to the sky. “Oh my god,” Hoops thought, “Nilou’s doing yoga.” Other students joined in, Bayani leading the impromptu yoga class. Yoga progressed to acrobatics, and Bayani was soon turning aerial cartwheels. 
Bayani threw her head back and laughed. Her laugh was infectious, and soon, the whole group was laughing too.
After she graduated from McGill, Bayani spent the next two years studying conservation biology at Columbia University. In 2012, she applied for an internship at the United Nations Environment Program, based out of Geneva, working on ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere.
Bayani was inducted to the job with the usual security training the UN required all of its employees to take – something that would come back to haunt her.
Colleague Karen Sudmeier was instantly impressed with the intern, who always dressed well, and whose laughter could be heard echoing down the office corridors. Bayani landed a full-time job after her internship finished, and threw herself into Genevan life. Every year, Bayani would get a team together for the l’Escalade race, a lengthy run through Geneva in freezing December. “That’s Nilou,” Sudmeier says. “Always making the most of life.”
Bayani traveled to the DRC regularly, accompanied by videographer Armando Guerra, whom Bayani met for the first time boarding a flight bound for DRC’s chaotic airport of Kinshasa. The pair, who had been assigned to film a video for the UNEP, had instant chemistry, cracking jokes just minutes into the packed flight.
The poverty in the DRC shocked Bayani and sparked a conversation about how one’s place of birth defines one’s life. “I have never met anyone who has a worse passport than me!” the Cuban-born Guerra told Bayani. Guerra took a photo of their passports, both as a symbol of how far they had come, and a reminder that, despite all of their progress, they were still restricted by their nationalities.
Guerra looks back on those conversations as bittersweet. “If only we had known what was to come,” he says.  
In the spring of 2017, Sudmeier remembers, the UNEP project’s funding was drying up, and Bayani was tired of the red tape and lack of career opportunities at the UN. “She wanted to move on,” says Sudmeier. “What she really got excited about was the prospect of going home. She wanted to contribute to her country and rediscover her culture.”
Through friends in Iran, Bayani heard about the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, co-founded by Morad Tahbaz, a London-born iranian businessman who lived in Connecticut and was passionate about conservation, and Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian-Canadian sociology professor who taught at a Tehran university. The pair founded the organization in 2008 after Tahbaz fell in love with the Asiatic cheetahs during trips back to his home country. At the time, there were less than 30 left in the world, and they were all in Iran. Tahbaz partnered with his friend Seyed-Emami to launch the foundation and they began hiring staff to save the country’s cheetahs. The foundation worked closely with the environmental department of the Iranian government, which even assigned the nonprofit projects.
Bayani was offered a job with the foundation in 2017 as a conservation biologist. She was excited about the prospect of returning home, though some of her friends questioned her decision.
“I’ll be safe,” she told Guerra over beers in Geneva. But Guerra was concerned she was being naive about the dangers of working in Iran. Perhaps, Guerra wondered, she had been shielded from the injustices of her country because she had been away for so long.
“Wouldn’t you go back to Cuba, Armando?” she asked him. “No!” he replied. But Bayani was adamant: she wanted to go home to work to save the Asiatic cheetah from extinction. There were few opportunities to fundraise, and organizations from abroad cannot easily transfer money due to sanctions imposed on Iran. “We have been living for so long abroad,” Guerra mused, “that the chance to go back to one’s home country…it is just so tantalizing.”  
Returning home to make a difference in the very place where she first fell in love with animals made perfect sense. Bayani left Geneva for Tehran in May 2017. Weeks later, she was driving the remote mountains of Iran’s central plains, stalking cheetahs, laying camera traps, and hauling water.
“Come visit!” Bayani eagerly WhatsApped Guerra, who began reading travel blogs about Iran. “I could use my Cuban passport,” he joked. “It’ll be less suspicious, considering they’re both axis of evil countries.”
“Is it safe?” Guerra asked. “Yes, it’s safe,” Bayani replied, with a smile emoji.
Bayani and Guerra stayed in touch, but sometimes weeks would go by before she would reply. “Hey, I’m worried about you, where are you?” Guerra wrote to his friend after a particularly long period of time had passed. “Ahhh thank you,” Bayani replied, “Please always worry about me.”
Guerra felt foolish for his concern. “I’m sorry, I’ll shut up now.”
“Bye bye byeeee,” came Bayani’s response.
##### **Act II: “Intolerable anxiety never ceased”**
On the morning of January 10, 2018, the IRGC arrested Tahbaz at his home. Although Bayani’s colleague had been under a travel ban since November of the previous year, nobody had thought it too unusual. Iran places individuals under bans for a variety of reasons. But six weeks later, the IRGC came to Tahbaz’s house and took him away, refusing to tell even Tahbaz’s wife, Vida, why. Bayani was concerned, but there was nothing she, or her colleagues, could do.
The foundation staff was still in the dark when, [on January 24](https://iranhumanrights.org/2019/01/iran-is-using-false-confessions-to-manufacture-cases-against-detained-conservationists/), an unknown number of soldiers from the IRGC, clad in fir-green uniforms with gold embroidered insignia displaying the black *pasdaran* logo of the corps—a raised fist clutching an assault rifle—stormed their homes, arresting eight more of the foundation’s staff, including Bayani, over two days.
As Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who once shared a cell with Bayani, [wrote in her memoir about her imprisonment](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/opinions/iran-evin-prison-fire-inmate-kylie-moore-gilbert/index.html), “The Uncaged Sky,” Bayani would have found herself blindfolded and bundled into a car, headed into Evin Prison, [a notorious detention center in northern Tehran](https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iran0604/5.htm). Bayani would finally have her blindfold removed once alone and locked in a dark cell. The exact details of the raid remain largely shrouded by an aura of secrecy and fear – no one connected to the group will publicly discuss it, and those behind bars are not accessible – but it resembles the regular extrajudicial detention of foreigners that [has led to international criticism and sanctions for the IRGC](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1444).
Shortly after the group’s arrest, then-President Hassan Rouhani appointed a special investigation to look into the charges, and even publicly declared the group not guilty. But the IRGC [insisted the group were spies](https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-mps-call-on-rouhani-to-intervene-detention-environmentalists/29223937.html), and claimed the president’s intelligence ministry was “not qualified to identify acts of espionage.”
The IRGC is a separate entity from Iran’s regular armed forces, operating as [one of the most powerful](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards) paramilitary organizations in the Middle East and a [locus of power](https://www.csis.org/analysis/iranian-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps-irgc-iraqi-view-lost-role-or-bright-future) that has control over much of Iran’s politics. 
Iran’s regime has a history of arresting scientists, academics, and artists, “to the extent that the Evin prison is jokingly called the ‘Evin University,’” says Ali Arab, a statistics professor at Washington DC’s Georgetown University and Amnesty International board member who campaigns to raise awareness of human rights violations against academics. Crackdowns on academics are becoming more frequent around the globe. “Since the early 2000s, there has been an increasing and systematic trend in arresting scholars that travel to Iran for different reasons but almost always with the same charge of spying and collaboration with a hostile state,” he says. “Most of these cases are tangled with Iran’s hostage diplomacy.” 
There are many ways the arrests of Bayani and her colleagues could be interpreted, including the regime’s paranoia over NGOs with international links. 
Just a couple of months before Bayani and her colleagues’ arrests, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation wrote a [letter](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/iran-wildlife-conservationists-jailed) to Panthera, an international big cat charity whose co-founder Thomas Kaplan had made a [surprise public appearance](https://theintercept.com/2019/11/27/iran-environmentalists-panthera-thomas-kaplan/) in September 2017 at the annual conference of United Against Nuclear Iran, held in New York. Kaplan described Iran as a “reticulated python” devouring the other countries in the Middle East. He also publicly discussed his role as one of United Against Nuclear Iran’s major funders, which came as concerning news to the foundation’s staff. In their letter, the foundation’s staff told Panthera that Kaplan’s public comments had caused them “alarm and consternation.” “We are very sorry to see personal politics have a negative impact on conservation, but these are unusual times,” the letter continued.
Panthera had donated cameras–cash donations aren’t possible, due to sanctions–to Tahbaz’s foundation, and the cameras were a major piece of evidence for the prosecution, a source who did not wish to be named told The Sunday Long Read. The IRGC argued that the cameras had visibility of the country’s nuclear weapons that were being developed, although [one expert told The World](https://theworld.org/stories/2019-08-29/they-wanted-save-endangered-cheetahs-iran-their-work-landed-them-jail) in 2019 that low-resolution camera traps, like the ones used to track the cheetahs, likely couldn’t see much beyond the targeted animals.
Arab believes the main factor may have been the element of detaining the conservationists for diplomatic leverage. One former Evin prisoner told The Sunday Long Read that the regime’s agents believed Bayani was a dual citizen of Iran and Canada, only to find out later that was not the case – Bayani only held permanent residency in Canada.
Bayani, recalling her treatment in letters to then-Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that were later [translated and published](https://iranhumanrights.org/2020/02/conservationist-niloufar-bayani-iran-torture-and-sexual-threats-detailed-in-letters-by-jailed-former-un-environment-consultant/) by the Center for Human Rights Iran, was subjected to months of solitary confinement and psychological and physical torture. She was questioned for “9-12 hours day and night” during that period, she wrote, estimating she faced a total of 1,200 hours of interrogation.
“I was interrogated blindfolded while standing, spinning, or sit-and-standing,” Bayani wrote in the letters, also published by [BBC Persia](https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-features-51549394). “Threatened with the arrest and torture of my 70-year-old mother and father… threatened with physical torture by being shown images and descriptions of torture devices…\[and\] heard hours of detailed descriptions about the suffering and pain caused by torture.”
Bayani became increasingly terrified that if she didn’t write whatever her interrogator wanted, he would violently sexually assault her. “Because of his inexplicable sudden appearances and disgusting behavior in various places like dark passages and in the detention yard, I didn’t feel safe anywhere,” she wrote. “Intolerable anxiety never ceased.”
She was forced to mimic the sounds of wild animals by agents who threatened to inject her with hallucinogenic drugs. Sepideh Kashani’s husband Houman Jokar [was beaten](https://www.iranintl.com/202206098290) and paraded in front of Kashani covered in blood. Interrogators reportedly [traveled to New York to film Morad Tahbaz’s daughter](https://www.iranintl.com/en/202206214952) Tara at a cafe, so they could show her father they had the ability to kill his daughter if he did not agree to sign scripted “confessions.”
> “I was interrogated blindfolded while standing, spinning, or sit-and-standing…threatened with the arrest and torture of my 70-year-old mother and father… threatened with physical torture by being shown images and descriptions of torture devices…\[and\] heard hours of detailed descriptions about the suffering and pain caused by torture.”
>
> Niloufar bayani in letters to then-Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
The paramilitary’s goal was to force each individual to sign a confession saying they were guilty of espionage, a crime punishable by the death penalty. All nine staff members, including Bayani, resisted until one freezing February 2018 morning, a few weeks after their arrest.
The guard assigned to Bayani for the day showed his prisoner a photograph. It was Seyed-Emami, lying on a steel table.
He committed suicide, Bayani remembered interrogators barking at her, as she described her experience in her letter to Khamenei. “That’s going to be your fate and the fate of all of your colleagues and family members unless you write whatever we want.”
The 63-year-old academic had been found dead in his Evin Prison cell sometime around February 9, two weeks after he had been taken in for interrogation. Officials claimed the academic and father of two had committed suicide, but a [preliminary autopsy report that omitted his cause of death](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/04/revealing-preliminary-autopsy-report-omits-cause-of-death-of-iranian-canadian-who-died-in-iranian-prison/) showed “bruises on different parts of the body and evidence of an injection on his skin,” according to his family’s lawyer. Four days after the conservationist’s death, a short film was aired on state-funded television [accusing him of espionage](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/02/kavous-seyed-emamis-family-lawyers-issue-statement-countering-smear-campaign-aired-on-state-tv/). The guards stuck with their story of suicide, and the news trickled through to the outside world, causing a media storm. 
His family and friends were adamant: Seyed-Emami would [never have committed suicide.](https://www.instagram.com/p/BfBV7dYBwzH/) 
Their lawyer demanded to know whether Seyed-Emami had died by suffocation, stroke, or drug poisoning, but the authorities [refused to release further information](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/iran-authorities-refuse-to-release-canadian-iranian-academics-body-for-independent-autopsy-in-callous-coverup/) and [pushed the family to bury him without a full autopsy](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/04/revealing-preliminary-autopsy-report-omits-cause-of-death-of-iranian-canadian-who-died-in-iranian-prison/). Had he not died, the arrest of the conservationists “wouldn’t have snowballed into such a thing,” a source close to the prisoners, who did not wish to be named due to safety concerns, observed. There was almost no media coverage of the group’s arrest at the beginning; Iran imprisoning academics was becoming commonplace. “If Kavous hadn’t died in custody, their arrests wouldn’t have become such huge global news. And I think once that happened, the \[guards\] had to double down on their cases against these environmentalists.”
Shortly after Seyed-Emami’s death, Bayani signed the false confession. The guards were triumphant–their prisoner’s trial could begin. However as Bayani outlined in her letter to the judiciary chief, the inhumane treatment would continue for months. 
On October 24, the group’s eight members were told of their alleged crimes. Four, including Bayani and Tahbaz, would be tried for *fasad fil-arz*  or “sowing corruption on earth.” The others faced lesser charges: espionage and cooperating with a foreign enemy state. The IRGC’s evidence was [based on a claim](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/22/iran-environmentalists-sentenced) the conservationists were “seeking proximity to military sites with the cover of the environmental projects and obtaining military information from them.” The charge of sowing corruption could carry the maximum sentence—the death penalty.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4536177373_c43f80d1ec_o.jpg?resize=1024%2C681&ssl=1)
The exterior of Evin Prison. Photo from سبزفوتو Iran via [Flickr/Creative Commons](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sabzphoto/4536177373/in/photolist-7UR6uH-9hnYVw-ndtrnM-nKonsE-7UR6qr-7UR6z8-7UUm9m-7UR6oP-7UUmg7-9CXv74-7UR6x6-o2KMzw-nsVvVh-4og8bn-7UBsac-o2M51h-2MSkgC-9D1oXQ-9hjT7r-aiu6Fc-9CXt9a-9CXv8D-o2KMBW-7UR6Cv-7UEH1C-7x8RUG-deNKhy-59d4vC-8zfHkL-dqJoCE-8nAfT8-cdMAc3-3c6ffP-59d4y7-598SzX-2Usx9L-bgADzK-pHYeM-dvuNnV-6zoAip-2nbHiFM-6zozKX-2UnQXe-6zsEKm-o2SMja-o4E8bB-9hnXJh-9CXtVa-nKpbGB-eHcr96/) 
Hard-line judge Abolqasem Salavati, then-chief judge of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, was assigned the trial. [Those opposing the regime in Iran](https://mek-iran.com/2023/09/30/judge-abolqasem-salavati-irans-controversial-judge-of-death/) nicknamed Salavati the “Judge of Death,” which reflected his reputation for using trumped-up charges to sentence defendants to disproportionately long sentences or even the gallows.
Bayani was devastated, though she rarely broke down in tears, Moore-Gilbert wrote in her memoir, recalling Bayani’s instinctive rage at injustice. Sometimes, when Bayani really lost control, she would pull the telephone receiver, used for occasional, brief calls to the guards, out of the wall and smash it, sending shards of plastic flying across the room. She would shriek and wail and scream. When the guards intervened, they became the target of her anger.
After hearing the news that Salvati would be overseeing her trial, Bayani wept in her cell. The forced confession would be used as evidence against her, even though she had retracted it immediately after signing. 
Following Bayani’s confession, she and Kashani, who were being held in the same block, were granted a little more freedom. Less time in the tiny box, a shared cell with other inmates, brief trips, known as *hava khori,* to the small, caged courtyard. 
That is when Bayani would meet Moore-Gilbert, who had been arrested after attending a conference in Tehran. Moore-Gilbert recalled Bayani hatching a plan to communicate with her, during a time when her frantic screams and desperate weeping echoed through the dingy cells.
During her next *hava khori,* Bayani, using a sharp twig, carved “*LOVE”* in English onto the stubbly surface of a cactus, one of the only living things that grew in the dismal courtyard space. She hoped Moore-Gilbert would see it during her next outing and know she wasn’t alone.
Bayani and Moore-Gilbert swapped messages of hope and encouragement by hiding notes in the cactus pot and scrawling messages on the walls of the courtyard. Bayani hid walnuts, dates, raisins and almonds for Moore-Gilbert, until at last, the two had an opportunity to converse.
“Hallelujah!! Hallelujaaaaah!” the Australian-accented voice rang out early one morning, waking Bayani, who immediately recognized it as Moore-Gilbert’s. “Hallelujah, hallelujah,” she sang back.
“Kylie!” Bayani called out, speaking quickly before any guards arrived. “Come back here tonight after they dim the lights!”
“No problem,” Moore-Gilbert replied, knocking on the prison wall. 
Later that night, in a scene Moore-Gilbert recounted in her memoir, Bayani whispered to Moore-Gilbert through the small vent in their cell wall that connected to her fellow inmate’s. It was the only blind spot in her cell; cameras surveilled every part of the room, apart from the area where the filthy cistern sat. Here there was a small, dusty opening, and Bayani crouched by the toilet to speak with Moore-Gilbert.
“Kylie, this is Niloufar,” Bayani said. “Listen, you are in a detention center called ‘Du Alef,’ 2A, inside a prison called Evin. 2A is run by the Revolutionary Guards, whom we call Sepah. Sepah will try to get you to confess to whatever bullshit they are accusing you of. Don’t do it. It’s a trap. Believe me, I know.”
“I don’t know how you’re still here, Niloufar,” said Moore-Gilbert, who remembered she was beginning to cry in panic. “I couldn’t hold on for nine months!”
“Kylie, you won’t be here long,” Bayani replied. “My case is…complicated. But you’re a foreigner, you don’t even speak Farsi. Once they get the information they want out of you, they’ll send you home.”
As usual, Moore-Gilbert recalled in her book, Bayani was looking out for others. Moore-Gilbert refused to sign a false confession. “In the end, interrogators gave up trying to extract one,” Moore-Gilbert later wrote. “For this, I was indebted to Niloufar.”
Moore-Gilbert was eventually released in 2020 after spending 804 days in Iranian detention and returned to Australia. 
Bayani, alongside her other colleagues, meanwhile, was headed to court, to be represented by lawyers appointed by Abolqasem Salavati. There would be no fair trial.
There are no specific figures relating to scientists, but a [recent study](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/resources/free-to-think-2023/) by Scholars at Risk documented 409 attacks on scholars, students, and their institutions in 66 countries. Tahbaz and Seyed-Emami served as “valuable bargaining chips for the regime,” says Arab, the Amnesty International board member, thanks to their dual nationalities. Moore-Gilbert, though not Iranian, was released as part of a prisoner exchange, for [a trio of Iranians](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-26/kylie-moore-gilbert-iran-prisoner-swap-what-we-know/12922198) imprisoned in a terror plot in Thailand.
In January 2019, a year after their arrest, Bayani and her colleagues [finally stood trial](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/05/iran-environmentalists-flawed-trial). They were read part of the 300-page indictment, which based most of the charges around Bayani’s false confession. At one point, a judiciary official of Evin offered to downgrade Bayani’s charges in exchange for a guilty plea. She refused. 
Each time she spoke out during [the closed-door trial](https://iranhumanrights.org/2019/01/eight-conservationists-tried-in-iran-on-basis-of-retracted-false-confessions/) in court, she risked a harsher sentence. But she continued to interrupt the reading of the indictment, objecting that her forced confessions had become the base of the IRGC’s case against the group. “If you were being threatened with a needle of hallucinogenic drugs (hovering) above your arm, you would also confess to whatever they wanted you to confess!” [she reportedly told the court.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/05/iran-environmentalists-flawed-trial)
Her protests didn’t matter. On November 23, 2019, authorities sentenced Bayani to 10 years imprisonment on charges of “contacts with the US enemy state” and “gaining illegitimate income” from her previous employer, the United Nations, according to Scholars at Risk. The IRGC had found Bayani’s security training from her UNEP induction on her computer, Sudmeier said,  and used it as evidence that she was an Israeli spy, claiming the software was developed by Israeli secret intelligence. Bayani was also asked to pay the Iranian government all of the funds she received from the UN during her five-year career there. “We think she was given especially harsh treatment because she was working for the UN,” Sudmeier said. By this point, Bayani had been in prison for 20 months, none of which would count towards her sentence.
Tahbaz also received a 10-year sentence, Taher Ghadirian and Houman Jokar got eight years, and Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Sam Rajabi, and Sepideh Kashani received six. Abdolreza Kouhpayeh received four. Bayani and Sepideh Kashani appealed the ruling, but [the appeals court confirmed the verdict](https://women.ncr-iran.org/2020/02/20/environmental-activists-interrogated-for-1200-hours-with-severe-torture/) on February 18, 2020.
Speaking last year, Arab predicted that pressure from international science communities, as well as Iranians living abroad could increase the chances of Bayani being freed early. “There is a trend in Iran that they release prisoners before completing their full prison sentence based on \[a\] pardon from the Supreme Leader as a fatherly gesture,” he explains.
Arab believes that holding on to Bayani and her colleagues no longer serves a purpose for the regime. “In my opinion, there’s a strong chance that Bayani and other conservationists may be freed in the next pardoning occasion.”
The UN [repeatedly called](https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/statements/unep-renews-plea-release-environmental-conservationist-niloufar-bayani) for Bayani’s release. “We have only one earth and those that seek to protect the planet should not be prosecuted for doing so,” UNEP head Inger Anderson [tweeted](https://twitter.com/andersen_inger/status/1533125789885124610?lang=en) in 2022.
The families of Bayani and her colleagues have been limited in their ability to publicly campaign for their release. Many were too concerned about their safety to speak openly to The Sunday Long Read or worried that doing so could backfire for their loved ones who are still in prison. Organizations like [Scholars at Risk](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/actions/niloufar-bayani-iran/) had continued to raise public awareness about the prisoners’ plights and urged the public to put pressure on Iranian authorities to release Bayani – or at least grant her access to legal counsel and medical care.
Any terms or conditions on Bayani’s pardon were not immediately available. And if she sought to leave the country, seeking asylum is also complex for Iranians; there are [thousands in Turkey](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/20/iranian-activists-at-increasing-risk-in-former-haven-turkey) and other countries waiting for their cases to be processed. In Bayani’s case, academic organizations may be able to help, especially those within the Iranian diaspora such as the [International Community of Iranian Academics](https://icoia.org/) in collaboration with organizations like [Scholars At Risk](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/), who have raised awareness of Bayani’s plight.
Years later, Guerra still texted his friend. “Hey, I know you cannot read this,” he wrote to Bayani in a recent message. “But I miss our silly conversations. Back then I was very angry. Very very angry that you are in jail. I should have told you not to go back home. But you made everything sound so possible and safe. I’m very angry, but I will not stop talking about you. Not until you are released.”
##### **Act III: “Freedom is a state of mind!”**
Despite her captivity, or in defiance of it perhaps, Bayani’s spirit seemingly remained unbroken, Moore-Gilbert said. She staged numerous hunger strikes, resulting in multiple visits to the hospital, to demand better conditions for her fellow inmates. “Freedom is an attitude, freedom is a state of mind!” she reminded Moore-Gilbert during one dark moment. Her ability to find joy in the bleakest of times persisted. During *hava khori,* she occasionally broke into dance-a-thons with all comers, Moore-Gilbert recalled, energetically leaping into African dance, which she studied during her student days abroad, gracefully executing pirouettes thanks to the ballet classes she took as a child, or gleefully whirling around her narrow cell singing at the top of her lungs.
As her prison sentence wore on, she contemplated her calling as an environmentalist. Here she was, stuck behind bars with some of Iran’s brightest minds; yet, Bayani had the sense they understood little about the impact and causes of climate change in Iran, even though some of them were in prison for protesting about water shortages and pollution.
She decided to conduct a survey of her fellow inmates about their awareness of climate change. In March 2022, she asked the women a series of questions and studiously gathered the results. The project took almost a year, turning into an essay touching on her life in Evin, climate change in Iran, potential reforms, and a warning to the country’s leaders. Simultaneously, Bayani developed a nine-week climate change syllabus for her fellow inmates, featuring other prisoners as guest speakers.
The group became so engaged in the course’s content they wrote an open letter calling on the Iranian government to take climate action. “We, the female political prisoners and prisoners of belief in Evin, social, environmental, and political activists in diverse fields, mothers and grandmothers of future generations, express our deep concern about the future of our children and our country,” the letter, signed by 20 inmates, read. 
After weeks of painstaking work on the manuscript, Bayani passed it on to her former colleagues at UNEP, to edit and publish in 2023. That year, Bayani was temporarily released for Nowrouz, the two-week Persian New Year festival, and was able to work on the project until she was summoned back to prison.
[![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1712950432212-3c7a2b91-8e50-4ee1-a6b3-d068a52e3357_1.jpg?resize=724%2C1024&ssl=1)](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Climate-Literacy-in-the-Land-of-Oil.pdf)
The full 23-page manuscript, [“Climate Literacy in the Land of Oil,”](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/2023/06/niloufar-bayani-manuscript/) was published on the Scholars at Risk website on June 2, World Environment Day.
“It is May 2022, more than 1,580 days since my arrest,” Bayani begins. “The future is dystopian from my barbed-wire view.”
“The sudden visit of a small blue butterfly in the prison yard distracts me from my dystopian thoughts. It has been a long time since I’ve last seen such colors, radiant blue with purple shades. Its beauty is doubled by the bland background of asphalt and bricks. It must be a rare species. Its presence has calmed down my anxiety. It reminds me that rare does not mean impossible.
“As I follow the swift movements of my visitor, my mind is pulled towards a possibility: a colorful surge of people from all corners of the world coming together and demanding a future in which the climate of our planet does not imperil our existence, or that of other species. I come to think that it is possible. As possible as the first encounter with a rare blue butterfly in a notorious prison.”
*By April 2024, Niloufar Bayani, Morad Tahbaz, Houman Jokar, Sam Rajabi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Taher Ghadirian and Sepideh Kashani had all been released from prison.*
---
*This story was made possible by the support of **Sunday Long Read subscribers** and publishing partner **Ruth Ann Harnisch**. Header illustration by **Tara Anand for The Sunday Long Read.** Edited by **Kiley Bense** and* ***Peter Bailey-Wells****. Designed by **Anagha Srikanth**.*
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_20240412_210326-3347944858-e1712981497857-1024x1024.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1)
## Lucy Sherriff (she/her)
Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist based in Los Angeles. When she is not working for the BBC as a climate reporter, she is hosting and producing a true crime podcast called “Where’s Dia?” for Pushkin/iHeartRadio, and writing narrative nonfiction stories.
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# The Great Serengeti Land Grab
![photo of boy in red shawl with goats and sheep on grass with large mountain in background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/y6GpbXD2ezG4My_httBYZraPMJ0=/0x347:3672x2413/1440x810/media/img/2024/04/02/NZTZA_240307_Maasai216_/original.jpg)
A Maasai boy herds goats and sheep in the shadow of Ol Doinyo Lengai—known to the Maasai as the Mountain of God—in northern Tanzania. Government plans call for the removal of the Maasai from this region, the latest in a long series of evictions.
## ‘This Will Finish Us’
How Gulf princes, the safari industry, and conservation groups are displacing the Maasai from the last of their Serengeti homeland
![photo of boy in red shawl with goats and sheep on grass with large mountain in background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/EVCpyu8KC0Y0LgFSUQmzpke5a2Y=/325x0:3078x2753/80x80/media/img/2024/04/NZTZA_240307_Maasai216_/original.jpg)
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It was high safari season in Tanzania, the long rains over, the grasses yellowing and dry. Land Cruisers were speeding toward the Serengeti Plain. Billionaires were flying into private hunting concessions. And at a crowded and dusty livestock market far away from all that, a man named Songoyo had decided not to hang himself, not today, and was instead pinching the skin of a sheep.
“Please!” he was saying to a potential buyer with thousands of animals to choose from on this morning. “You can see, he is so fat!”
## Explore the May 2024 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
[View More](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/)
The buyer moved on. Songoyo rubbed his eyes. He was tired. He’d spent the whole night walking, herding another man’s sheep across miles of grass and scrub and pitted roads to reach this market by opening time. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. He’d somehow fended off an elephant with a stick. What he needed to do was sell the sheep so their owner would pay him, so he could try to start a new life now that the old one was finished.
The old life: He’d had all the things that made a person such as him rich and respected. Three wives, 14 children, a large compound with 75 cows and enough land to graze them—“such sweet land,” he would say when he could bear to think of it—and that was how things had been going until recently.
The new life: no cows, because the Tanzanian government had [seized every single one of them](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/urgent-tanzania-government-cattle-seizures-maasai). No compound, because the government had bulldozed it, along with hundreds of others. No land, because more and more of the finest, lushest land in northern Tanzania was being set aside for conservation, which turned out to mean for trophy hunters, and tourists on “bespoke expeditions,” and cappuccino trucks in proximity to buffalo viewing—anything and anyone except the people who had lived there since the 17th century, the pastoralists known as the Maasai.
They were the ones tourists saw through their windshields selling beaded key chains at the gates of Serengeti National Park, or performing dances after dinner at safari lodges. They were famous for their red shawls and recycled-tire sandals. They grazed their cattle with zebras and giraffes, and built mud-and-dung houses encircled by stick fences barely distinguishable from the wild landscape. They were among the lightest-living people on the planet, and yet it was the Maasai who were being told that the biggest threat to conservation and national progress was them. Their whole way of life had to go.
[From the April 2020 issue: Ed Yong on the last giraffes on Earth](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-tackle-a-giraffe/606787/)
And so Songoyo, after considering his alternatives, had devised a last-ditch plan for his own survival, one that had brought him to a town in Kenya called Aitong, where a cool wind was slapping sand and dung into his face as he scanned the market for buyers. He was far from home, roughly 65 miles north of the village in Tanzania where he had been tear-gassed and shot at for the first time in his life. He had seen elderly men beaten and guns fired at old women, and now it was down to this: He was a herder for hire, working for a distant relative, trying to make enough money to buy one single cow.
“Come!” he called to the buyers who kept passing his herd and weaving through the bleating mass. “You will not find any better!”
This was his plan: one cow, because that was the starting point of what it meant to be a Maasai man, which was what he still wanted to be.
The forces arrayed against Songoyo, whom I met in the course of two long trips to Tanzania late last year, include some of the world’s most powerful people and interests. (I have not used Songoyo’s last name out of concern for his safety.) What these people and interests want is what the Maasai are trying to keep: the land they live on.
Global leaders are seeking what they consider to be undeveloped land to meet a stated goal of [conserving 30 percent of the planet’s surface by 2030](https://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/news-updates/2022/12/19/countries-follow-u-s-lead-and-set-global-goal-to-protect-at-least-30-of-lands-and-waters-by-2030/). Corporations want undisturbed forests in order to offset pollution. Western conservation groups, which refer to the Maasai as “stakeholders” on their own land, exert great influence, as does a booming safari industry that sells an old and destructive myth—casting the Serengeti as some primordial wilderness, with the Maasai as cultural relics obstructing a perfect view.
The reality is that the Maasai have been stewards, integral to creating that very ecosystem. The same can be said of Indigenous groups around the world, to whom conservation often feels like a land grab. In the past two decades, [more than a quarter million Indigenous people have been evicted](https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Cornered-by-PAs-Brief_RRI_June-2018.pdf) to make way for ecotourism, carbon-offset schemes, and other activities that fall under the banner of conservation. That figure is expected to soar.
For all its accomplishments, the cause of saving the planet has become a trillion-dollar business, a global scramble in which wealthy nations are looking to the developing world not just for natural resources, but for nature itself. The wealthy players include not only Europeans and Americans but Arabs and Chinese and others. On the African continent, political leaders are enthusiastic about what so-called green foreign investment might mean for their own economies (and, maybe, their bank accounts).
Such are the pressures being brought to bear on northern Tanzania, where the Maasai migrated with their cattle 400 years ago, settling in an area encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles of grassy plains, acacia woodlands, rivers, lakes, snowcapped mountains, salt flats, forests, and some of the most spectacular wildlife on the planet. They called it Siringet, which in the Maa language means “the place where the land runs on forever.” The Maasai see their recent history as a struggle to save that land from those who claimed it needed saving.
First came the British colonial authorities, who established the 5,700-square-mile Serengeti National Park, pushing the Maasai to an adjacent zone called the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, with its famous crater, where they were promised they could live. Then came UNESCO. It declared both Serengeti and Ngorongoro to be World Heritage Sites, which came with new restrictions. Western tourists began arriving, seeking an experience of Africa that a thousand movies promised—one of pristine beauty and big game, not people grazing cattle. Tanzanian authorities began leasing blocks of land to foreign hunting and safari companies, many of which promoted themselves as conservationists—a word the Maasai have come to associate with their own doom. Spread among the villages that dot the northern tourist zone, the Maasai have meanwhile been growing in number—their population has doubled in recent decades, to about 200,000. Inevitably, the clash of interests has led to bitter and occasionally violent conflict.
Still, the threat unfolding now is of greater magnitude. It emerged soon after President Samia Suluhu Hassan took office, in 2021. “Tourism in Ngorongoro is disappearing,” she declared during one of her first major speeches. “We agreed that people and wildlife could cohabitate, but now people are overtaking the wildlife.” The Maasai listened with alarm, realizing that the people she was referring to were them.
Not long after Hassan’s speech, officials announced [plans to resettle the roughly 100,000 Maasai](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/22/tanzania-should-halt-plan-relocate-maasai-pastoralists) who were living in and around Ngorongoro to “modern houses” in another part of the country. Meanwhile, in a region north of Ngorongoro, bordering Serengeti National Park, government security forces began rolling into Maasai villages. They were carrying out another part of the plan: [annexing 580 square miles of prime grazing land](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/tanzanian-government-violent-repression-maasai-loliondo-worldwide-condemnation) to create an exclusive game reserve for the Dubai royal family, which had long hunted in the area. The government characterized the move as necessary for conservation. Traditional Maasai compounds, known as *bomas*, were burned. Park rangers began seizing cattle by the tens of thousands.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/kgR5dV6wedtsywlKu6-HltjvKFo=/0x0:2038x1529/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240303_Maasai219_/original.jpg)
Songoyo at an abandoned boma in the village of Ololosokwan. It lies within a tract now placed off-limits except for the use of the Dubai royal family. (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
And more was coming: [a $7.5 billion package with the United Arab Emirates](https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/business/samia-efforts-pay-off-as-uae-firms-troop-in-4122942), of which Dubai is a part, that included new plans for tourism and conservation. A $9.5 million deal with the Chinese for a geological park that overlapped with additional Maasai villages. An offer from Tanzania to make Donald Trump Jr.—an avid trophy hunter—an official “tourism ambassador.” [New maps and proposals from the government](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/pdfpreview/mlum-final-oct-2019.pdf) indicated that further tracts could soon be placed off-limits, including a sacred site that the Maasai call the Mountain of God.
[Read: What trophy hunting does to the elephants it leaves behind](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/elephant-trophy-hunting-psychology-emotions/546293/)
“This is 80 percent of our land,” a Maasai elder told me one evening during a meeting with other leaders in northern Tanzania. “This will finish us.” They had tried protesting. They had filed lawsuits. They had appealed to [the United Nations](https://ictnews.org/news/global-indigenous-will-the-un-step-up-to-help-in-tanzania), [the European Union](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/22/tanzania-maasai-appeal-to-west-stop-evictions-due-to-conservation-plans), the East African Court of Justice, and [Vice President Kamala Harris](https://pingosforum.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-March-PF-Open-letter-to-VP-Harris.pdf) when she visited Tanzania in 2023. They’d unearthed old maps and village titles to prove that the land was theirs by law, not just by custom. They’d written a letter to John and Patrick McEnroe after hearing that the tennis stars were hosting a $25,000-a-person safari-and-tennis expedition in the Serengeti. People made supportive statements, but no one was coming to help.
This is what Songoyo understood as he paced the market in Aitong. It was closing soon. Buyers were filtering out through the wire fence, and he still had 12 sheep left to sell, one of which was lame. A man tapped it with a stick.
“A cow stepped on his leg; that’s why he walks like that,” Songoyo said, bracing the animal with his knees.
The man walked away. Another came and tapped his stick on the lame sheep, and then on the rest of them. They agreed on a price, and the buyer pulled out a roll of bills.
“Please, can you add 500?” Songoyo said, asking for the equivalent of an extra $3.60 in Kenyan shillings. “I need 500. Please.”
The man added 200, and Songoyo brought the day’s earnings to the relative who had hired him. They sat under a tree, and he counted out Songoyo’s share for a week of work, roughly $10. One cow would cost about $200.
“See you next week,” the man said.
“May God give you favor,” Songoyo replied, putting the money in the pocket of his blue track pants. His cellphone rang, a battered plastic burner.
“I am coming,” he told one of his wives, who was waiting for him at their home in Tanzania.
He’d had options other than this. There had always been Maasai who’d given up traditional ways to reinvent themselves, shedding their red shawls for all kinds of lives. Now many more of them, having lost their cattle, were moving to cities, where the Maasai reputation for bravery and rectitude meant there was always work as a security guard—I saw them everywhere in Arusha and Dar es Salaam, in front of shops and banks. Others had taken a government offer to resettle in a town called Msomera, far to the south, only to return home with stories of loneliness and conflict with locals. Still others were falling apart. Songoyo had seen them, drunk men hobbling along the road or passed out on their red shawls under trees in the daytime. That would not be him.
“Never,” he said, and began the long walk back to his village in Tanzania, a tall man wrapped in a pink-and-purple plaid shawl passing cinder-block taverns where he would not drink, and motorbikes he would not hire, because the point was to save money for the cow. *No cows, no life*, he told himself, picking up the pace along an orange dirt road stretching into the late afternoon.
His earliest memories were of cows; he had never been without them. They were the huge, warm, brown beasts kept in the center of the boma. Their dung formed the walls of his home. Their milk and blood were what he drank as a child, when his father told him what Maasai children were traditionally told: that when the earth split from the sky and God left the world, he entrusted the Maasai with all the cattle, and by extension the land and the other animals that shared it. Songoyo learned how to herd with rocks, pushing them around in the dirt. He got his first calf when he was a small boy, herding it with a stick near the boma. When he was big enough, he followed his older brothers out into the wider grazing areas, including one the Maasai called *Osero*, a word that refers to lush grasslands—in this case, the 580 square miles of land adjacent to Serengeti National Park where Maasai had lived and kept cattle for generations.
It was in Osero that he learned about different kinds of grasses and trees: which ones had good branches for bows or good bark for tea that could ease a backache. He learned where to find natural salt and the coolest streams, and he learned certain rules: Never cut down a tree. Keep cattle away from wildebeests during calving season, because they carry a disease deadly to cows.
He listened to older boys tell stories, including one whose lesson he still lived by, about a group of Maasai heading out on a cattle raid when one of the warriors broke his sandal. The warrior turned to the man behind him and asked if he would stay and help, but the man refused. He asked another, who also refused, and so on until the very last one agreed to stay, while the rest continued on to cattle-raiding glory. The stern moral was: Be prepared. Don’t fall behind. Stay with the group. Struggle.
Songoyo had struggled. He held himself together after his father died, when he was still a boy, a moment when he might have turned delinquent but didn’t. He endured his adolescent coming-of-age ceremonies with dignity, by all accounts managing not to cry or shake during his circumcision, when people scrutinize and taunt boys for any sign of weakness, and he was rewarded with cows. He learned how to shoot arrows and use a machete, and became a *moran*—entering a stage of life when young Maasai men bear responsibility for protecting their village—and was given more cows, each with a name, each with a certain character he came to know. In this way, the life he wanted became possible.
He married his first wife, then a second and a third, and eventually built a boma in the village where his children went to school, and a larger compound on the edge of Osero, where the cattle were kept, and where he’d had one of the happiest moments of his life. This was just before everything began to unravel, an otherwise ordinary day when the rains were full and the cows were fat and he’d walked out into the middle of them, their bells jangling, realizing how far he’d come and thinking, “Yes, I am a real Maasai.”
Not that life was an idyll. In village after village that I visited, people described years of tensions with safari companies and conservation authorities. People who lived within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area—a vast zone that was almost like its own country—had complained about schools falling apart and poisoned salt licks and the indignity of their identity being checked as they came and went through the tourist gate. In other areas, people had accused certain safari companies of illegally acquiring leases and paying local police to beat herders off concessions. One company was notorious for using a helicopter to spray scalding water on cows.
In Osero, the problems went back to 1992, when an Emirati company called Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC) was first granted a hunting license for the Dubai royal family. They had their own private camp and a private airstrip and, for the emir himself, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a compound on a hill, guarded by a special unit of the Tanzanian military police. When the rains ended each year, cargo planes full of four-wheelers and tents and pallets of food would buzz low over villages before landing, followed by private jets delivering the royal family and their guests. A few weeks later, they’d buzz out with carcasses of zebras and antelope and other trophies. For a while, OBC had its own cellphone tower, and Maasai villagers noticed that when they were near it, a message would pop up on their phone screens: “Welcome to the U.A.E.” The arrangement had been that the Maasai were supposed to keep away when the royals were in residence, but just about everyone had caught a glimpse. Songoyo had seen them speeding around, shooting animals from trucks with semiautomatic rifles. “Once, they pulled up in the middle of my cows and I saw them shooting so many antelope,” he told me. “They just kill, kill, kill!”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/DkfputXM7KI3k8jvzwb5e8E6lCU=/0x0:2040x1530/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240304_Maasai144_/original.jpg)
Bumper-to-bumper in Serengeti National Park, the first enclave in northern Tanzania to be set aside for conservation and tourism (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
There had been attempts at diplomacy. Sometimes the Arabs, as the Maasai called them, would give out bags of rice. They had hired Maasai men to work as guides and drivers and had flown some of their favorite employees to Dubai, buying them clothing and cars. One driver recalled being at the camp on a day when the emir arrived. The driver lined up with other staff, and the emir greeted each one of them while an assistant followed behind with a large bag of cash, inviting each worker to reach in. The driver said he pulled out $1,060.
But a bitterness was always there. Maasai leaders had long claimed that Osero belonged to 14 adjacent villages, and that they had never consented to the OBC deal. Tanzanian officials asserted authority over not only Osero but a far larger expanse—Loliondo—citing its colonial-era designation as a game-controlled area; they often resorted to violence to enforce this view. Maasai villagers described to me how government security forces had collaborated with OBC at least twice in recent years to conduct [a large-scale torching of bomas](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AFR5668412023ENGLISH.pdf) in the vicinity of the camp. Young men grazing cows had been beaten and shot at. One man described to me being shot in the face, then handcuffed to a hospital bed as he was bleeding through his ears and nose and eyes, slipping in and out of consciousness. He remembered a police officer shouting at a doctor to let him die, and the doctor refusing the order and saving his life. He lost his left eye, the socket now scarred over with skin, and had kept a thin blue hospital receipt all these years in the hope of receiving restitution that never came. Most villages have people who can tell such stories.
[Read: The war on rhino poaching has human casualties](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/war-rhino-poaching/604801/)
In 2017, amid rising complaints and lawsuits filed by Maasai leaders, Tanzanian authorities suspended OBC’s license and [accused the company’s director of offering some $2 million in bribes](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/losing-the-serengeti.pdf) to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, which led to a court case that ended in a plea deal. Requests to interview OBC executives, representatives of the Dubai royal family, and officials of the U.A.E. government about their involvement in Tanzania went unanswered.
By the time Hassan became president, in 2021, the director was back on the job and the OBC flights had resumed.
Samia Suluhu Hassan was widely embraced by West and East. Her predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in office, had been a populist with an authoritarian streak and became infamous for downplaying the dangers of COVID. He suspended media outlets, banned opposition rallies, and alienated foreign investors, even as many Maasai saw him as a hero for brushing back OBC.
Hassan eased his more repressive policies and embarked on an ambitious plan to bring foreign investment into the country, especially through tourism. She branded herself a forward-looking environmentalist.
And she found willing collaborators. [The World Bank had been encouraging more tourism](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tanzania/publication/tanzania-economic-update-increasing-tourism-for-economic-growth), arguing that it could help Tanzania achieve what official metrics define as middle-income status. One of the country’s main conservation partners, UNESCO, had been pressing Tanzanian authorities for years to implement what it called “stringent policies to control population growth” in Ngorongoro, although UNESCO also says it has never supported the displacement of people. A German conservation group called the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a major partner in managing Serengeti National Park, has expressed concern that traditional Maasai practices are becoming less tenable because of population growth. “There is a risk of overuse and overgrazing that should be addressed,” Dennis Rentsch, the deputy director of the society’s Africa department, told me. “I don’t want to vilify the Maasai. They are not enemies of conservation. But the challenge is when you reach a tipping point.”
In response to these pressures, [the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism produced a report](https://pingosforum.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Ngorongoro-Community-Report.pdf) that blamed rising Maasai and livestock populations for “extensive habitat destruction” in conservation zones. It recommended resettling all of Ngorongoro’s Maasai. It also recommended designating the 580-square-mile Osero tract, farther away, as a more restrictive game reserve, describing the land as an important wildlife corridor and water-catchment area for the Serengeti ecosystem. The designation left the Dubai royal family with an exclusive hunting playground. But none of the Maasai who lived in the area would be allowed to graze their cattle or continue living there.
Maasai leaders countered with two reports of their own—more than 300 pages covering colonial history, constitutional law, land-use law, and international conventions, and providing copies of village titles, registration certificates, and old maps—to prove their legal right to the land as citizens. They blamed habitat destruction on sprawling lodges, roads bisecting rangeland, trucks off-roading across savannas, and “huge tourist traffic.” Overgrazing was a result of being squeezed into ever smaller domains, which kept the Maasai from rotating grazing zones as they normally would. Citing their own surveys, they said the government had inflated livestock numbers, a claim supported by Pablo Manzano, a Spanish ecologist with the Basque Centre for Climate Change, who had conducted research in the region and found that the government was perpetuating a tragic misunderstanding.
Manzano and others pointed to a growing body of scholarly research demonstrating what the Maasai had long known: that their management of the land did not degrade the Serengeti ecosystem but had actually helped sustain and even create it—the grasslands the Maasai had cultivated for hundreds of years were the same grasslands that many wild animals needed to thrive. In that sense, the land had already been conserved before the Germans, the British, and various international groups decided that they needed to save it.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/0AUAuNc7OsH1qsszt98asG3JpOI=/0x0:3251x2686/928x767/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240301_Maasai004_/original.jpg)
A Maasai moran with his family’s livestock in one of the areas targeted by the Tanzanian government’s latest plans (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
In their reports, Maasai leaders concluded that the government was engaged in “a calculated process to wipe out animals” and to “devastate their livelihood and culture.” They took a bus to the capital and delivered the two reports in person to government officials.
But there would be no debate, no discussion of complexities. Hassan moved forward with her agenda. She was finalizing the $7.5 billion package with the United Arab Emirates, the fourth-largest (after China, the EU, and the U.S.) investor in Africa. One deal [turned over management of roughly two-thirds of Dar es Salaam’s port](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67199490) to DP World, a company owned by the U.A.E. government. Another deal [turned over management of some 20 million acres of forest](https://e360.yale.edu/features/al-maktoum-uae-dubai-africa-carbon-credits)—roughly 8 percent of the nation’s entire territory—to a company called Blue Carbon, which is run by a member of the royal family, Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, and uses conserved land to generate carbon credits that it sells to other companies. The package also included money for tourism.
Hassan invited travel agents to the country for a “tourism reboot.” She spoke of wanting more five-star hotels. She filmed a promotional documentary called [*The Royal Tour*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHKO9DB4dQ), which at one point involved helicoptering with a travel reporter over some Maasai villages near the Serengeti.
“All those round things down there are the Maasai bomas,” Hassan says in the film, as several villagers look up into the sky. The reporter then comments in a way that Maasai leaders found ominous: “Over the years, the Tanzanian government has tried to persuade the Maasai to become traditional farmers or ranchers, but they’ve persisted in clinging to their ancient ways. And yet, they may not have a choice now.”
Some 400 miles to the south, in the hotter, flatter farming area of Msomera, bulldozers broke ground on a new development. [The military was building 5,000 cinder-block houses](https://twitter.com/TanzaniaTribune/status/1729055705879974249) intended for Maasai families. Officials had been dispatched to villages in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to present the government’s offer: a free house on 2.5 acres. Electricity. Piped water. New schools. A cash bonus of roughly $4,000 for early takers. At one such presentation, a crowd pelted the officials with rocks.
I requested an interview with Hassan to better understand her decisions. In response, a government spokesperson arranged interviews with several other officials, one of whom was Albert Msando, a district commissioner, who told me, “Whatever I am answering is whatever the president would have answered.” We met in the town of Handeni, near Msomera. Msando’s office was inside a former British-colonial building, where a portrait of Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s founding father, hung on one wall and a portrait of Hassan hung on another.
“For the public interest,” Msando said of the Maasai, “we have to relocate them.” A lawyer by training and demeanor, Msando emphasized that any relocation is voluntary, at least for now. He also made it clear that if persuasion fails, the government maintains the legal right to remove the Maasai from conservation areas, by force if necessary. “That’s why there are guys here with their shoulders decorated,” Msando said, pointing around the room to police and military officers.
He told me that anyone in Tanzania would be lucky to get what the Maasai were getting. “We are giving them nice houses, I believe, according to modern standards.” He said that the Maasai currently live in “filthy conditions” and should be helped to “live a better life.”
He and other officials I spoke with said that they disliked even using the term *Maasai*. They invoked the spirit of Nyerere, saying that Tanzania was supposed to have a national identity, not tribal ones. Msando said he could understand the Maasai’s concern about losing their culture, even if he had little sympathy for it. “Culture is a fluid thing,” he said. “I am Chaga—the Chaga were on the verge of having their own nation. Today look at me. People do not even know I’m Chaga. My kids don’t even speak Chaga.” He was unapologetic: “The Maasai are not exempted from acculturation or cultural acclimatization, or cultural extinction.”
The government’s plans moved forward. In June 2022, a convoy of trucks carrying hundreds of security personnel rolled into the 14 villages bordering Osero, a show of force that the Maasai had never seen before. Soldiers, police, and park rangers set up camps on the outskirts of each village, announcing their intention to demarcate the boundary of the new game reserve. What happened next unfolded sporadically over several days. It has been documented in reports by human-rights groups and was described to me by dozens of witnesses and victims.
First, village leaders summoned to what was billed as a routine ruling-party meeting were arrested after they refused to go along with the demarcation—27 of them in all. The security forces then began planting a long line of three-foot-high rectangular cement markers called beacons along the perimeter of Osero. Villagers came behind them, kicking the markers down before the concrete foundations had set; women hacked at them with machetes. “I felt like I was fighting for myself,” one woman told me later. “I knew if this land goes away, there is nowhere for my children to be, and that forced me to lose my fear.” But the security forces kept beating the villagers back. Elders called more than 1,000 moran to take up positions with bows and arrows in forested areas along a main road where government trucks were patrolling.
“How many are ready to die?” a leader said to the group, and at some point, one of them shot an arrow at a police officer, killing him.
After that, the security forces opened fire. They shot at the legs of elderly women waving grass as a sign of peace. They shot an elderly man, who fell and then was heaped onto a truck “like a sack of maize,” his son told me. He has not been found. The security forces shot at men and women trying to destroy the beacons, wounding them in their arms and legs and backs. They shot tear gas into bomas and burst into one where a traditional ceremony was being held, firing into the crowd. The moran waited for orders to retaliate, but the elders, seeing what the government was willing to do, called them off. “It’s only because we didn’t have guns,” a Maasai elder told me. “If someone helped us with guns, they cannot even fight with us, because they are very cowardly.” Another elder said, “You cannot fight a gun with arrows.”
Dozens of people with bullet and machete wounds, blocked by police from local clinics, limped their way across the border into Kenya for treatment. Several thousand more fled there for safety. Others hid in the forest. Then the burning and bulldozing began. For several days, security forces plowed through circles of stick fences. They crushed houses and corrals and lit the debris on fire, burning more than 300 bomas, including Songoyo’s, and finishing the work before the start of high safari season. In [a statement issued a few days after the violence](https://www.de.tzembassy.go.tz/resources/view/press-release), the Tanzanian government said the new game reserve had “no settlements as it is alleged and therefore there is no eviction” taking place. It described what had happened as “normal practice for all wildlife and forest protected areas in Tanzania”—a necessary step to keep the Serengeti ecosystem from being “disrupted and eventually erased from the face of the Earth.”
Songoyo’s boma had been by a hot spring. His father’s and grandfather’s graves were nearby. In the aftermath of the violence, he moved his family and cattle from Osero to a smaller boma nearer to his village, where he and others returned from hiding to find homes ransacked and skeletons of cows that had been eaten by wild animals.
Security forces roamed up and down the roads. Officials called people into immigration offices and accused them of being Kenyans, requiring them to show up in court for weeks on end, until judges threw out their cases for lack of evidence. Rangers patrolled Osero more heavily than ever, shooting at and beating herders who went anywhere near the new reserve, punishments that now came with a kind of psychological torture—forcing people to consent to the legitimacy of their own dispossession. One young man told me that rangers dragged him to their truck and beat him on his back with a stick for hours, calling him “rubbish” and yelling, “You don’t agree this land was taken? We will punish you until you agree!” They would feed him cornmeal, he said, and beat him some more. But he never did agree. Now he can barely walk.
The Maasai had other problems. One was grass: There was not enough. Everywhere I went, I saw bony cows picking at short clumps of weeds in dry patches of dirt. Out of desperation, some people were taking their cows to graze in Kenya, while others were sneaking into Osero at night. To avoid alerting rangers, cows went in without bells, making them harder to keep track of in the dark. Herders used cheap flashlights for safety, shining them fleetingly in the bush to detect the eyes of lions and other predators. They struggled to keep themselves awake, wearing small radios around their necks, playing tinny music at a low volume only they could hear.
Another problem was worse: Rangers were seizing cattle. Not just a few here and there, but huge herds of them, by the hundreds and then by the thousands. One day, Songoyo got a call from his brother, who had been grazing Songoyo’s 75 cows near Osero with other herders.
He said rangers had chased them down and seized more than 700 cattle, including all of Songoyo’s. He said the rangers had then crossed with the cattle into Serengeti National Park, and were holding them in a pen. Songoyo imagined them staying like that, not eating, not drinking. He imagined his favorite, Kiripa, a brown heifer he could always count on to lead the other cattle to distant grasses and home again, slowly dying, and rushed with the other owners to the park gate.
“I tried to reason with the rangers, but I totally failed—it was like they were ready to shoot us,” he recalled, and so the group contacted a Maasai lawyer, Melau Alais, whose practice had been overwhelmed by such emergency calls in the past year.
After several days, Songoyo learned that the rangers were alleging that the cattle had been illegally grazing inside Serengeti National Park, and that they would all be auctioned off unless the owners prevailed in court. The court was in a town called Mugumu, clear on the other side of the park, a two-hour drive away. The hearing was in a few days. So Songoyo and the other owners scrambled together the park fees and set off in the lawyer’s car past lush green grass and fat, grazing zebras and Land Cruisers full of tourists enjoying the scenery. When they reached the courthouse, the owner whom they had elected to represent all of the owners in the case, a man named Soloi Toroge, was formally charged with illegal grazing and jailed until the hearing.
The next day, Songoyo and the others sat in the gallery as Toroge took the stand. Both Songoyo and Alais recalled for me the day in the courtroom.
“So what happened?” Alais asked Toroge, and as the defendant began telling the story of how the rangers had beaten the herders and taken the cattle, Songoyo said he felt his anger rising.
Alais asked Toroge how he knew the cows were his, and as he described their particular colors and markings, Songoyo thought about his own cows, and became more desperate.
At another point, Alais asked Toroge how many children he had, and as Songoyo thought about his own, he began to feel physically ill.
“So what other business do you do?” Alais continued.
Toroge said he depended only on livestock.
“This livestock, or others?” Alais asked him.
This livestock, he answered. There was no other.
“So if the court decides to auction the cattle, what will happen?” Alais asked.
“All of us will die of hunger,” Toroge answered.
As he continued, Songoyo remembered thinking that this was it. That he really was about to lose everything he’d worked his whole life to achieve—not because of drought or his own foolishness, but because of his government, and the Arabs, and something called conservation. He said he began making noises, and felt himself becoming so disoriented, so altered, that he thought he could kill someone, or that someone might kill him, and soon people were surrounding him, court officers threatening to arrest him. Songoyo was saying, “Then let us die. There is no special death.”
He did not return for the other days of testimony. He was back in his village when Alais called to tell him that the judge had ruled that the cows would be auctioned off unless the owners paid a fine, and that his share—calculated per head of cattle, per day, for more than 30 days and counting—would be roughly $5,000.
He briefly considered what others had done, which was borrow money from a Somali loan shark who was doing a brisk business, but decided that was no solution.
“Let them sell them all,” he told Alais.
He did not leave his boma for days.
Normally, relatives and neighbors would give someone in his position one of their cows to help him rebuild, but nothing was normal any longer. More than 50,000 head of cattle had been taken by rangers, according to a local tally. Between the seized cattle and the fines, a huge transfer of wealth was under way from the Maasai community to the government.
People came by Songoyo’s boma to say they were sorry. They tried to encourage him. He considered what to do. He could be a security guard. He imagined standing still for hours in front of some building in Arusha. Then he began thinking that death would be preferable. Traditional Maasai cosmology includes no afterlife, no reward or punishment in the hereafter, so that would be that. Hanging or poison were the usual methods; hanging was more certain. Then he thought about his children. “And I said no,” he recalled. He told himself what others had told him since his father had died. He was a hard worker. He knew how to struggle. He thought, “Maybe something good is ahead of me.” He thought that if he just kept going, “God will bless me for that.”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/nJroy5F-jV6URO94vBUrCqsIkI4=/0x0:2043x1533/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240307_Maasai197_/original.jpg)
A boma at dawn, its days likely numbered, in a region bordering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
He tore down a large corral where he had kept his cattle and built a smaller one for the seven goats he still had, and for the one cow he hoped to buy. He remembered a distant relative, a businessman in Kenya; they got in touch, and the plan was set: Pick up the livestock at a market near his village. Herd them across the border to a market in Kenya, and if he didn’t sell them there, go on to Aitong, a roughly 130-mile circuit every week. He had been doing this for months.
When he got home from Aitong, he would give half the money he’d earned to his wives for food. He would rest, and then start out again. He noticed himself becoming skinnier.
Songoyo headed north with his next herd of sheep, through a clearing with a seasonal stream and smooth rocks. He skirted Serengeti National Park, where he was not allowed to be, then crossed over a low mountain range that marked the Tanzania-Kenya border, his sandals splitting at the soles. At the gates of the park, some of the half a million people who visit every year were lining up in Land Cruisers, the bumpers displaying flag decals representing the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the United States. And as the sun rose one morning, in they went, tourists with bucket lists, anniversaries, dreams, and romanticized images in mind.
They roamed the dirt roads through grassy plains that really did seem to stretch on forever—a rolling sea of greens and yellows and flat-topped trees. They slowed for herds of gazelles and elephants. They sped to a leopard sighting in trucks bearing the wishful names of various outfitters—Sense of Africa, Lion King Adventures, Peacemakers Expeditions—and soon they began gathering along one side of the Mara River.
On the other side, great black herds of wildebeests were massing, waiting for the right moment to dive off a small cliff and swim across. What the animals saw waiting for them was a long line of trucks, a metal fortification.
“I want a picture!” said a woman hoisting her camera.
“My God, I want them to come down!” said her companion.
An hour passed. Another hour. The wildebeests were not migrating. A Maasai driver grumbled that obviously there were too many trucks. A man pressed binoculars to his face.
“See, it looks fine to us, but to them, something’s not right,” he said.
He wondered if it was crocodiles. They waited. A woman took a nap. Then some wildebeests began moving downriver, opposite some gaps in the otherwise solid wall of trucks. And then one hurled itself over the cliff in heroic fashion, and soon they were all diving.
“They’re flying!” someone said.
The animals were flailing, tumbling, and splashing down into the river, swimming for their lives, and now engines were cranking as trucks roared toward the crossing point, wedging into every open gap.
“We got ’em!” yelled a woman holding up a camera, and as far as anyone could see, the view was wildebeests, river, trees, and the grassy savanna beyond—no cows, no goats, no Maasai herders, no people at all, except the ones beholding the spectacle they’d been promised.
What they could not see was a tall man in blue track pants and a pink-and-purple plaid shawl herding sheep across a rocky path, trying not to think about how his knees hurt, his ankles hurt; trying to forget about all that had come before now.
Songoyo reached the first market, where he did not sell the sheep but picked up some more animals for another client and kept going, heading for Aitong.
It was late afternoon when he began crossing the Maasai Mara—the Kenyan national park—with only a stick for protection because bows and arrows are not allowed in the park. He hustled the sheep through the bush, past thorns, under branches, over sharp rocks and soft grass. He saw zebras. He [saw giraffes](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-tackle-a-giraffe/606787/). At one point, he saw a lion, which began following him, then another, coming closer and closer, and as he began to think that this would be how his life ended, a tourist truck came speeding along the road and scared the lion away, and he took off running with the sheep until he came upon elephants—“So, so many elephants,” he said—and managed to dodge those, too.
He kept walking, trying to stay alert. The night was moonless and very dark. After some hours, he reached the edge of the park and saw a boma—a cultural boma, as it turned out, the kind set up for tourists, where Maasai act out versions of the life now being extinguished—and asked if he could sleep there, but the people at the park said that was against the rules, even though welcoming him would have been the true Maasai way. So he waited outside a while and then entered anyway, lying down in a corner. It was cold, and he felt himself becoming sick.
He reached Aitong the next morning but still didn’t sell the sheep, and this meant he would have to press on another 50 miles to a town called Kilgoris. By now he was so exhausted that he decided to sleep, and this was when, as he put it, “evil came during the night,” in the form of a hyena that killed five of his sheep, two of which belonged to the new client. When Songoyo called to tell him, the man told Songoyo that he would have to repay him for the animals. Songoyo told him he didn’t have any money. The man said in that case, he would have to work without pay. Songoyo set off for Kilgoris, now in debt.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/fGUwfVtQjCoDGRiQr4ENaEuw3jI=/0x0:2043x1533/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240303_Maasai094_/original.jpg)
Maasai gather at a livestock market, one stop on Songoyo’s 130-mile circuit from Tanzania to Kenya and back. (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
He walked along a dirt road as trucks blasted him with fumes. He walked across one farm after another. He felt so hungry. At times he knelt on the ground and said, “God, can you see this?,” then got up and kept going. Another farm. A man who gave him water. A man who yelled at him to get off his land. A tree where he took a nap. His dreams lately were of cows grazing in lush grass, and of dying. More hours crossing an area that belonged to a rival pastoralist tribe, sneaking along the edges and behind stands of trees, feeling like a thief, he said, feeling like he had no place to be in this world. He kept going like that, across more land that was not his.
The land Songoyo considered his was now part of [the new Pololeti Game Reserve](https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/government-defends-loliondo-demarcation-ngorongoro-relocations-3857372). That was what Osero had become. The government had constructed a gate bearing the name along the main road into the area, not far from where Songoyo’s boma had been, and when the Dubai royal family was not around, tourists could pay a fee and go inside.
“As far as you can see, all this is now Pololeti,” said a Maasai driver who had grown up on the land and been away from it for a year, ever since the violence. “I feel like crying.” The only reason he was able to go inside now was that I had hired him as a guide.
What he saw was miles and miles of a particular grass that was good for cattle, at the moment so tall and golden. “If your cows are weak and they eat this, in two days they will stand,” he said, driving ahead.
He saw the yellowing tops of grasses that zebras favored, and thick, wetter grasses that wildebeests favored. He saw some impalas in the distance and said, “I wish to see my goats there,” because they would usually graze together.
He saw wiry red oat grasses, and thick swirls of cattail grasses, and here was the kind of acacia with bark that helped with nausea and there was the tree with large, rough leaves useful for sanding down a staff. He saw lavender morning glories used for tissues, and a sacred stream whose water was used for ceremonies. He smelled the familiar scent of bush mint in the cool afternoon, and heard such a strange quiet without the bells of cows.
“In this area, in the evening, you’d see so many cows,” the driver said, and soon he reached a clearing where it was possible to see grass pressed into faint circles.
“Over here used to be houses,” he said.
“Over here, there used to be more than 20 bomas,” he said, continuing on.
“Here used to be a boma, because you can tell the difference between this grass and the other grass,” he said. “We always have soft-soft.”
He navigated by trees he remembered and small hills he knew by heart.
“Here was a very large boma—you can see the fence,” he said, pointing to some scattered branches with thorns. He continued on.
“Over here was the Pyando family,” he said, passing a certain spot in the grass.
“The Kairungs were here,” he said, but it was hard to tell.
“Here were the Saing’eus,” he said, pointing to black weeds that grew where cow dung had been.
Here lived the Purengeis and the Ngiyos. The Kutishos, the Oltinayos, the Kikanais, the Mungas. A whole world that would soon be gone with no trace.
The driver turned and headed back toward the gate, noting a road that led up to a compound on the mountain, where the emir could look down and enjoy one of the most magnificent landscapes on Earth, with no cows or bomas or red shawls obstructing the view.
“Just imagine,” the driver said, and soon he was passing a line of white beacons.
“Oh, our land,” he said, exiting through the gate, wondering what would become of all the life that had been here.
One answer was taking shape 5,000 miles to the north, in the United Arab Emirates, at a place called Sharjah Safari park. It had been open a year, a project sponsored by an Emirati royal who wished to re-create the experience of a real African safari. It was an hour’s drive from the Dubai airport, out along a smooth, straight highway lined with green palms and bright-yellow marigolds, past mirrored skyscrapers, many mosques, discount strip malls, a crematorium, camels, and miles of desert.
At the entrance was a concrete elephant. The $75 gold package entitled visitors to tour 12 distinct African landscapes with animals procured from Africa itself, and on a 70-degree December day, tourists climbed into a modified Land Cruiser that whisked them through a series of metal gates.
“Savanna,” the tour guide said as the first gate slid open to reveal some fake termite mounds, some half-dead acacia trees, and a living waterbuck. “Ngorongoro,” she said as another gate slid open, revealing a few gazelles and four white rhinos. “Serengeti,” she said, and on it went.
Soon the tour arrived at the last exhibit: “Boma.” At the end of a curved path lined with grass was a collection of round structures made of cement, not mud and dung, with wooden doors and thatched roofs. There was a corral with goats and donkeys. And here and there were signs with cartoons explaining life in this place. One of them included a drawing of a man. He was wearing a blue-plaid shawl. His features were simply drawn, and he stared blank-faced from the confines of a rectangular wood frame.
When he saw the low mountain range, Songoyo felt a burst of energy, knowing he was near home, such as it was, the place where he was trying to start over. He crossed the clearing with the smooth rocks, and soon he arrived at a grassy slope, and there were the remnants of the larger corral he’d torn down, and there was the smaller one he’d built for the goats and the cow he still could not buy, a circle of sticks with jackets and plaid shawls drying on top. There was a mud-walled house, and a child running out of it.
His wife made him some tea. He gave her money for the market. He’d made roughly $20 on this trip, but of course he was now in debt for the sheep the hyena had killed. They discussed which neighbors were still around. So many had left. Then Songoyo went outside to check on his seven goats.
He looked inside the corral. Four, he counted. Another two were running around outside, so that made six. He kept looking. He walked to where the old corral used to be, then back to the new corral. No goat. He began walking faster, looking around the house. Still no goat. He walked farther out into the grass, seeing nothing, becoming more alarmed.
“Where’s the other one?” he said. “There is one missing!”
His wife came outside and began looking too. He ran out beyond a thorn fence and into the taller grass, now frantic, scanning the landscape for all that he had left of a vanishing life he loved and still wanted.
He kept looking, and finally he spotted the goat. It was sitting in the grass. As he came nearer, he saw that it was injured. A back leg was bloody, and seemed to have gotten stuck in some thorns. Songoyo knelt down to examine the wound more closely. He was a Maasai man without a cow, in debt, getting skinnier, and now he was shaking his head.
“Who did this?” he shouted, expecting no answer.
---
*This article appears in the [May 2024](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/) print edition with the headline “The Great Serengeti Land Grab.” Stephanie McCrummen can be reached at [smccrummen@theatlantic.com](mailto:smccrummen@theatlantic.com).*
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# The last days of Boston Market
NEWARK, Del. — From the window of the last Boston Market still open in the state of Delaware, a slightly askew sign casts a weak light into the sunshine outside. “Open,” it reads in red LED letters.
The location anchors the northwest corner of a shopping center with an Acme supermarket on one end and a row of faded restaurants and a nail salon on another. And it might catch your eye if you’re driving past on Route 273 in Newark, maybe on your way to the nearby Christiana Mall or the University of Delaware campus across town. Nearly everyone, though, drives past it.
This is what the end of an era looks like.
Boston Market was a booming brand back in the mid-1990s, a pioneer of what we now know as the fast-casual landscape. It existed in a space diners were just realizing they wanted to be in, somewhere between the greasy burgers of fast-food drive-throughs and the sit-down production of an evening out at the Olive Garden or Bennigan’s.
People flocked to its homey meals; its signature rotisserie chickens seemed fresh, even healthful, in that era of SnackWell’s cookies and Healthy Choice frozen dinners. After being founded in 1985 as Boston Chicken, it eventually expanded to more than 1,200 locations well beyond its namesake city. Now, only a few dozen remain; a report this month by the trade publication Restaurant Business put the number at 27, with more closures expected at every moment.
Inside the Newark location, the black metal chairs around faux wood-grain tables sit empty. Two high chairs stand like bored sentinels guarding the vacant space.
That “Open” sign is plugged into an extension cord that snakes its way behind the soda fountain, which is out of order: Customers who want a soda have to fetch a can out of a mini refrigerator. (They are also out of pot pies and all the desserts.) Only a handful of people pass through the sliding glass door on a recent Thursday. There’s only one manager working, and she’s gone back into the kitchen.
It’s perfectly quiet except for a soft mechanical whir of kitchen equipment. And while the sides — pans of mac and cheese, creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes — sit on a heated rack behind the counter, the only things that move are eight plump chickens, rotating on a spit.
Most of the folks who shuffle in and out, holding bags stuffed with quarter chickens and plastic foam containers bulging with side dishes, don’t know about the corporate drama behind the chain’s demise. Some customers here saw signs that things were amiss.
Fred Grinnage, who sports a woolly beard and heavy work boots, is getting ready to head to his job driving a forklift. His shift ends at midnight, and he’s stopped by to pick up dinner, which he plans to eat during his break at 5:30. He used to go to Newark’s other Boston Market, about five miles east, but it’s closed now. This one’s a little out of his way, but it’s worth it. It’s going to be a cold night in the cab of the forklift, and he’s looking for comfort food. “It’s like a home-cooked meal,” he says. “It’s good, it’s fresh.”
He surveys the scene and shrugs. “I hope they can make it,” he says, but he doesn’t sound optimistic.
A while later, Sharon Adamson comes in. She’s in town from North Carolina for a business meeting — she’s in construction, she says. She grew up going to Boston Markets, but back home, “now they’re all boarded up.”
When she spotted an open Boston Market near her Airbnb, she knew where she was eating. “We don’t have any there anymore, so I wanted to get it while I could,” she said. She planned to take her meal — a half chicken with creamed spinach and mac and cheese — back to her rental. “Just going to eat and relax.”
The manager, a woman named Gloria who doesn’t want to share her last name, says she made the food fresh this morning. In some locations, [according to reports](https://www.nrn.com/operations/closer-look-boston-market-s-slow-death), workers are resorting to shopping at local grocery stores themselves for ingredients to make the dishes — and even the signature rotisserie chicken — since supplies stopped coming in. Gloria’s usually a one-woman show on her daytime shift, cooking and scrubbing floors and ringing up orders. That morning, she says, she was lucky enough to have had a dishwasher come in for a few hours to help clean.
It’s difficult to say whether the quality of the food has slipped unless you’re a regular visitor. But on a recent visit, the creamed spinach — a dish that many people recall fondly from the chain’s heyday — mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese were all underseasoned. The spuds were thick and starchy. Even the chicken, which looked nicely bronzed, tasted as if it hadn’t even once been within range of a salt shaker.
How things came to this sad end is a story with as many turns as a rotisserie spit. The proximate COD seems to be its current management, a company called the Rohan Group that bought the chain cheaply from a private equity firm in 2020. [Jay Pandya](https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/inside-chaotic-world-owner-boston-market), the Rohan Group’s owner, was a franchisee at chains including Pizza Hut and Checkers who had a history of being sued.
Pandya promised to turn the brand’s fortunes around and open new stores. Instead, locations around the country began shuttering by the dozens, with [landlords](https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/cts-boston-market-locations-face-evictions-and-lawsuits-for-unpaid-rent/3153818/) claiming [unpaid rent](https://www.wptv.com/lifestyle/food/boston-market-no-more-south-florida-locations-shutter-amid-evictions-unpaid-salary-complaints) and a fresh barrage of lawsuits and investigations over overdue bills and wages.
Earlier this year, Massachusetts labor officials [fined the chain](https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-campbell-announces-over-100000-in-citations-against-boston-market-for-failure-to-pay-workers-on-time-provide-accurate-records) for late payments to employees; last year, New Jersey issued a stop-work order for 27 locations over failure to pay workers. After [the company paid](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/new-jersey-dol-lifts-stop-work-order-against-boston-market-630K-wage-complaint/694023/) $630,000 in back wages, they were allowed to reopen in the state, though it isn’t clear how many actually did. Boston Market’s Colorado headquarters was seized. The biggest blow came in the form of a lawsuit from supplier U.S. Foods over unpaid bills in which a judge in January ordered Boston Market to pay $15 million.
Attempts to reach Pandya and the Rohan Group were unsuccessful; several phone numbers associated with the company seemed to be disconnected. Emails sent to several publicly available addresses bounced back.
Even with a handful of locations hanging on, industry experts are sounding the death knell for Boston Market.
Restaurant analyst Aaron Allen says many of the brand’s problems predated its change of ownership. “It’s not the death of a thousand cuts, but many things contributed,” he said.
For one, he said, after distinguishing itself in the 1990s as a cut above fast food, it attempted to compete with those brands by holding its costs down — a move that ultimately led to a reduction in quality, which only undercut it further. “If you chase a lower price-point consumer you can price yourself out of business,” Allen says.
Grocery stores, too, ate Boston Market’s lunch as they began adding [rotisserie chickens](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/09/05/best-rotisserie-chicken-taste-test/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40) to their expanding prepared-meal aisles. Essentially, Boston Market became a victim of its own success. After helping to popularize the roasted, whole chickens — in some cases, introducing the concept to consumers — the chain eventually saw the likes of [Costco serve up the same things](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicken-lawsuit/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40), for far cheaper.
It’s hard to imagine a time when rotisserie chickens weren’t ubiquitous, but looking back at news stories from the early to mid-1990s reminds us that, for a brief moment, they seemed, if not exactly chic, at least new — and exactly what diners were clamoring for. Headlines called them “the answer to dinner dilemma” and “a new spin on fast food.” “Everyone’s flocking to join the rotisserie chicken revolution,” the Chicago Tribune declared in 1994. Chains such as [Kenny Rogers Roasters](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1996/02/12/it-wasnt-country-chicken-country/cb7bb630-adac-42dc-b18f-915a5da97da2/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43), Clucker’s and [Muhammad Ali Rotisserie Chicken](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1994/11/07/float-like-a-butterball/1130e9cd-a226-4ee2-a80e-51426102ab89/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43) spread around the country, while KFC debuted its own spinoff called [Rotisserie Gold](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1994/08/03/its-a-game-of-chicken/ba811b11-145c-4661-8ad9-167833314fd7/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43). Boston Chicken, which changed its name in 1995, led the way.
Eventually, though, the chain’s all-American, homestyle fare, often served in family-size portions, fell out of step with tastes. Diners were drawn to [ultra-customizable bowls at Chipotle](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/02/the-chipotle-effect-why-america-is-obsessed-with-fast-casual-food/?itid=lk_inline_manual_44) and the varied menu at Panera Bread, two leaders in the market now infiltrated by chains offering healthier options and global flavors, such as [Sweetgreen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/as-the-sweetgreen-revolution-rolls-on-fresh-and-local-remain-the-focus/2017/09/21/0851020e-9b08-11e7-b569-3360011663b4_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_44) and [Cava](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/cava-to-nearly-double-by-next-summer/2014/08/01/d28a9122-1666-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_44). In Newark, within a mile or two of the Boston Market, customers can find avocado-topped burgers and craft beer at Red Robin, or adobo chicken bowls at Qdoba.
Modern customers are more fickle than they’ve ever been, too, Allen notes. That creates a challenge for all brands, but legacy ones in particular. Diners today have a restless mind-set influenced by our experiences with consumer technology. After all, our iPhones get an upgrade every 20 months, so we come to expect that other things we spend money on should constantly evolve and modernize, too. “These days, the consumer gets tired a lot faster,” Allen says.
The few customers still coming to the Newark Boston Market, though, don’t seem to be chasing something novel.
Take Rashard Gibson, a DoorDasher who waits by the counter in a black hoodie and stocking hat. He usually delivers about five lunches a day, but dinner is when things really pick up. He doesn’t often get orders from Boston Market. Usually, people want [Taco Bell](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/02/02/taco-bell-value-menu-review/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50) or [McDonald’s](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/01/25/double-big-mac-mcdonalds-review/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50), maybe a [pizza](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/interactive/2023/best-pizza-map-style-near-you/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50). [Chick-fil-A is huge](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/19/chick-fil-a-becomes-third-largest-restaurant-chain-us/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50). “Everybody wants Chick-fil-A,” he says. He had almost forgotten about this neglected outpost, but his visit has him feeling nostalgic.
Growing up in New York, Friday nights meant home movies and Boston Market takeout with his mother. She would order different things, but his order was always the same: a quarter chicken with mashed potatoes and corn, which he would cut up and mash together. “It was always just the two of us,” he says, smiling at the memory. There used to be long lines, he recalls as he looks around the empty dining room. “Not like now.”
Tonight, he says, after he finishes his deliveries, he’s coming back for dinner for himself. And he knows exactly what he’ll be ordering.
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# The soft life: why millennials are quitting the rat race
Rose Gardner did everything right. Straight As at school and college, a first-class degree from a top university, a master’s. She got a job in publishing and rose through the ranks of some of the industry’s most prestigious companies before getting a job with a media organisation. Eventually, she bought her own flat in London.
But each time she reached a new milestone, she didn’t feel any real joy.
“I remember walking into my flat, and this might make me sound so ungrateful, but I felt scared,” she says. “I knew I was going to have to keep working at this job that I hated to pay the mortgage.”
It wasn’t that there was anything particularly bad about the job, it was more that as time went on, she says she didn’t feel driven by the consumerism that the companies she worked for depended on. She’d lost her sense of materialism and didn’t get much from going to bars, clubs or parties. On top of that, she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which made working in an open-plan office with a strict 9-5 policy incredibly hard. Gardner, 42, works best in isolation, early in the morning and in the evening, and she didn’t feel her workplace was prepared to accommodate that. Pushing through her afternoon “crashes” for years had become exhausting. So, five years ago, she had what she called her “Jerry Maguire moment”. She quit. She sold her flat and moved back to her parents’ house in Wiltshire, where she now works part-time in hospitality and handcrafts jewellery and ceramics from a shed in the garden. She has little income, but also very few outgoings.
“My parents are getting older and I pay them rent and my own bills. I have my own little area. We get to live a separate but together life and I see that as a privilege. I meditate and take long walks with my dog in nature … I lost my relationship with myself when I listened so much to what I should be doing. Now, I get a lot more pleasure out of the small things.”
Gardner is living what is increasingly becoming known online as the “soft life”. As a millennial, she is part of a generation brought up to take pride in hard work, who now find themselves in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the third recession of their lifetimes. As Gabrielle Judge, better known online as the Anti Work Girlboss, says: “You think your managers will take care of you? Your job will take care of you? That really crumbled for millennials, especially during the 2008 recession.”
For millennials and the younger generation Z and Alphas, who may never be able to afford to buy a home or retire at a reasonable age, there is a growing feeling online that hard work is fortifying a system that, at best, is giving them nothing back and, at worst, is actively screwing them over. And so the “soft life” revolution was born – where the priority is no longer about working yourself to the bone to be a #girlboss or “leaning in” to the corporate male world, as former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote, and pushing until you “have it all”. The goal of a softer life is more time and energy for what makes you happy and as little time as possible focusing on what doesn’t.
![‘I equated being successful with doing something I didn’t like’ … Rose Gardner in her studio.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f77f7e5490eba54b77a0dc4043265b2badba7b2f/0_709_6496_4361/master/6496.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
‘I equated being successful with doing something I didn’t like’ … Rose Gardner in her studio. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian
Judge, 26, coined the term “lazy girl job” back in 2023 on TikTok. She had graduated with a computer science degree in 2019 and got a job at a tech company. Two exhausting years later, she received a $10k a year pay increase. On the surface, it seemed great. But then she looked deeper. “Even before taxes, that’s only $5K a year for doing 60 hours of work a week,” she says. And with inflation factored in, it was technically a pay cut. “I didn’t see the payoff,” she says.
Judge was forced to take two months off after a serious concussion – and she never went back. She got an entry-level job in customer services for a website-building platform. “I was technically underemployed and wasn’t really using my degree, but I was still paying my bills and was comfortable,” says Judge, who lives in Denver, Colorado. “It was the biggest breakthrough on a spiritual level – with my friendships and relationships.” And that is where her notion of a “lazy girl job” started to form – a job that is typically low in stress, fully remote and with enough salary to pay for the bare essentials.
Judge has since built a huge audience online – with more than 400,000 followers across her various social media platforms. She has created a community of people sharing their stories of working all hours and getting little in return as mass redundancies and AI come for their jobs. She now advocates for a four-day week, living wage and prioritising health and wellbeing. “I’m not telling people exactly how much they need to be working,” she says. “I’m just trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy.”
Abadesi Osunsade, 37, speaks to me as she power walks between her meetings. As the CEO of her company Hustle Crew, which delivers diversity and inclusion training, and co-host of the podcast Techish, she is not the most obvious proponent of the “soft life”. Yet she advocates for the same “laziness” and boundaries that Judge champions. In her 20s, she worked in tech startups, doing 12-hour days while building Hustle Crew in every spare moment. She lived in a “six-week cycle of burnout”. Now her own business is established, she has been able to introduce “softness” into her life, making time for relationships, exercise and visiting family in the Philippines. This “softer” life is a work in progress “and that’s OK,” she says. What is most important for Osunsade, is to no longer define herself by her output. “Productivity and fulfilment become conflated,” she says. “What value do you actually get from being busy? Are you cultivating enough self-love and self-awareness to enjoy downtime?” She says many of us feel guilt when not filling every hour serving some greater purpose or goal. “Why is there shame in not being busy?” she asks. “Have we been so brainwashed by capitalism that you have to be busy to be worth something?”
Osunsade views the late-capitalist approach to work as being mired in historical and cultural prejudices. “For black people, our value was as forced labourers. If you can socialise people into thinking that they are only good for what they make and what they do, the other side of that coin is that they’ll feel guilty when they’re not doing anything.”
![‘I’m not telling people how much they need to work. I’m trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy’ … Gabrielle Judge.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ccde9f37ddb16453c0d35e1fd16660d8a205b403/0_92_1284_1706/master/1284.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
‘I’m not telling people how much they need to work. I’m trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy’ … Gabrielle Judge. Photograph: Isiah Yibibo
She puts the rise in “soft living” down to the current economic and political climate – especially the Trump administration. “A lot of that naive optimism that helped movements like ‘lean in’ happen was confronted by the crushing reality of patriarchy,” she says. And telling women to just work harder to become equal with men has proved a fallacy when, 10 years on from Sandberg’s book, the gender pay gap remains at [16% in the US](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/gender-pay-gap-statistics/#sources_section). As Michelle Obama put it: “it’s not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesn’t work all the time”. Especially if you have the intersectional pressures that immigrants, queer women and women of colour have, too. The soft life is a logical reaction to a macro-level business model that suppresses the wages of society’s most vulnerable.
In the US, [Black women earned 30% less](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/#:~:text=not%20entirely%20clear.-,Gender%20pay%20gap%20differs%20widely%20by%20race%20and%20ethnicity,the%20earnings%20of%20White%20men.&text=In%202022%2C%20Black%20women%20earned,earned%20only%2065%25%20as%20much.) than white men in 2022. In [the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/gender-pay-gap-widest-for-ethnic-minority-women-labour-finds), that figure is 26% – and it rises to 31% for Pakistani women. This discrimination takes a toll on the body and spirit. Even high-profile figures such as MP Diane Abbott face levels of abuse that far surpass their white professional counterparts. A leaked internal Labour party report from 2020 documented how Abbott’s colleagues would mock her for crying and called her “repulsive” and “angry”. It is this additional burden that makes the soft life even more appealing to young Black women. “It’s listening to your mind and body’s needs and putting them first in a system where women are encouraged to put others’ needs before our own,” says Osunsade. The poet and feminist Audre Lorde in her book A Burst of Light set out the radical implications of self-care and womanhood, writing, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
[skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/02/soft-life-why-millennials-are-quitting-the-rat-race#EmailSignup-skip-link-17)
after newsletter promotion
The soft life approach is not without its critics. In 2022, Kim Kardashian infamously claimed that women need to “get your fucking ass up and work” as “it seems like nobody wants to work these days”. She was forced to apologise – after it was pointed out that coming from a rich, already-famous family in LA would have its advantages in the job market. Not to mention that while Kardashian has become a billionaire off the back of her fashion and beauty brands, some [former employees alleged](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnky4/i-worked-my-ass-off-for-kim-kardashian-jenner-apps-i-couldnt-afford-gas-jessica-defino) that they were scraping by on unlivable wages, with barely enough money to get to work. Other figures have made “soft living” about a generational divide. [Whoopi Goldberg](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/msnbc/whoopi-goldberg-the-view-millennials-argument-rcna124424) has said that millennials and gen Z who feel that life milestones such as having children and owning houses are out of reach just aren’t working hard enough. “I’m sorry – if you only want to work four hours, it’s going to be harder for you to get a house,” she said. [Jodie Foster](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview) told the Guardian that gen Z are “really annoying” to work with. “They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’”
“We’re being lectured on not being hardworking enough by people who have no idea what it is like to never switch off,” says Osunsade. With Zoom and Slack keeping us connected to our workplaces at every moment, it is no longer plausible to say that you haven’t seen the emails that ping into your smartphone at the weekend. For Judge, she feels there is a “tendency online to blame all societal ills on our parents’ generations … but baby boomers aren’t stupid for doing what they did for their careers … I’m just saying it doesn’t work in today’s age.” The “return on investment” on working all hours for some kind of meritocratic ideal “just isn’t the same any more”.
No longer can you do everything society asks of you and be guaranteed to attain even the lowest totem on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, when in the US 53% of people living in homeless shelters [were employed](https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-about-homelessness-using-linked-survey-and-administrative-data/) in 2021, and one in four of the households made homeless in 2022 in England had at least [one person in work](https://www.itv.com/news/2023-05-10/were-trapped-homelessness-rises-among-working-people-in-england).
But to choose not to work, or to work less, can still be judged as a feminist betrayal. Osunsade recalls a conversation she had with an older colleague who described a bright young woman stopping working after having children as “an absolute crime. What a waste of a mind!”. “There is a sense,” she says, “that we have to have it all because people fought for us to be able to have it.” It was that idea – that a brilliant brain must be offered up on the sacrificial altar of capitalism – that made Gardner so miserable at work. As a child, “I was very much told art was a hobby and that I needed to go down the academic route, otherwise it would be a travesty … It felt as if choosing to do what I love was being lazy. I equated being successful with doing something I didn’t like.”
All around me I see overwork. Top editors who freelance at the weekends, small business owners who don’t have time to unpack the boxes in the homes they moved into three years ago, self-proclaimed cogs in corporate machines who drink Huel at their desks because they have no time to eat. Social conversations with peers vacillate between how unaffordable London, where I live, has become and symptoms of our almost perpetual burnout.
Is it possible to achieve a softer life without entirely uprooting yourself, which may not be realistic for many? For Osunsade, it’s about accepting that “people can only prioritise a small number of things. [Women](https://www.theguardian.com/society/women) in particular, get into this trap of wanting to be the best mother, writer, friend, runner and yoga person in the class. We need to be happy with being the best in one or two roles and content with being mediocre in others.”
Embracing a little mediocrity is at the core of other online workplace trends, from “[quiet quitting](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/06/quiet-quitting-why-doing-the-bare-minimum-at-work-has-gone-global)” (doing the minimum your job requires of you) to “[bare minimum Mondays](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/feb/08/bare-minimum-mondays-a-perfect-start-to-the-week-or-a-recipe-for-disaster)”. Osunsade suggests doing an “audit of priorities. Decide what your non-negotiables are. If it’s important for you to do bath time with your kids every night, then that is just a permanent block in your calendar that no one ever touches because it’s sacred. Every time you schedule a class, a walk, a beauty appointment, or buy a book, see it as a meeting that you can’t cancel.”
Gardner is now thriving in her softer life, which is filled with creativity and family. She finally feels that her life is a success. “There’s something about softness that is not valued in the corporate world or isn’t understood. It’s seen as a weakness.” But now, she says, “I see it as a strength.”
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00.03 News/The “Multi-Multi-Multi-Million-Dollar” Art Fraud That Shook the World.md
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# The “Multi-Multi-Multi-Million-Dollar” Art Fraud That Shook the World
## [ARTS & CULTURE](https://thewalrus.ca/category/culture/) / [JUNE 2024](https://thewalrus.ca/category/issues/june-2024/)
#### The “Multi-Multi-Multi-Million-Dollar” Art Fraud That Shook the World
### Norval Morrisseau was one of the most famous Indigenous artists anywhere. Then the fakes of his works surfaced—and kept coming
## BY [LUC RINALDI](https://thewalrus.ca/author/luc-rinaldi/)
Published 6:30, April 5, 2024
![Against a yellow backdrop, a maroon-coloured earth features animals such as turtles, muskrats, fish, birds, as well as humans all surrounding Thunderbird. Primarily painted in blues, Thunderbird is enclosed in a dome made of wings.](https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/Rinaldi_Morrisseau_Androgyny_1400.jpg)
Norval Morrisseau, *Androgyny*, acrylic on canvas, 1983Images courtesy of the Indigenous Art Collection, Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
In the spring of 2005, Norval Morrisseau called a meeting to talk about “the fakes.” Picasso, Dalí, Van Gogh—many great artists have dealt with forgeries. Morrisseau, appointed to the Order of Canada and member of the Indigenous Group of Seven, was no exception. His paintings sold for tens of thousands of dollars, but so did fakes created by former apprentices, strangers, even his own relatives. For years, Morrisseau and Gabe Vadas, his business manager and adopted son, had witnessed dubious paintings pop up in galleries and collections across Canada. In one biography of Morrisseau, *A Picasso in the North Country*, the Thunder Bay author James R. Stevens wrote about a Manitoulin Island art dealer who brought Morrisseau photos of fifty pieces supposedly painted by the artist. Morrisseau set several aside. “The small pile, I might have had something to do with,” he said. “The rest, I’ve never seen before.” Another time, his friend Bryant Ross told me, Morrisseau was more blunt: “I didn’t paint those fucking things.”
At first, Vadas tried to educate galleries about the fakes, but few gallerists stopped selling them. So, on the advice of their lawyer, Morrisseau and Vadas invited trusted experts—art historians and independent curators who’d studied and shown his art—to their lawyer’s office in Toronto and asked them to create a definitive catalogue of his oeuvre. They called this group of volunteers the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society. Like the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board, which had formed a decade earlier to validate Warhol’s work, the society’s job was to separate Morrisseau’s masterpieces from his imitators’ knock-offs.
It was a monumental task. Morrisseau had created thousands of works of art: paintings, drawings, carvings, pieces of clothing, furniture. Galleries and collectors sought these works because they were unlike anything they’d seen before. They were characterized by bold black lines and vibrant colours, depicting the birds, bears, and beasts of Ojibwe legends passed down by Morrisseau’s grandfather—imagery that was, at the time, uncommon in contemporary art. Morrisseau made these legends his own, melding traditional motifs with the Catholic iconography imprinted on him in residential school as well as the psychedelic symbols of Eckankar, a form of New Age spirituality he adopted later in life. His works were at once stoic and sexual, depicting Jesus on one canvas and a phallus on the next. He worked with different materials (paint, crayon, and, by some reports, orange juice and blood) on a variety of surfaces (birch bark, fridge doors, pizza boxes). He inspired others—artists who paint in his style are known as the Woodland School—but none rivalled his fame. Though his works could fetch huge sums, he often gifted them to friends or traded them. For reasons both good (his talent) and bad (his public struggles with substance use), he was frequently in the press.
A year later, in the summer of 2006, Vadas learned that Heffel, a reputable Toronto auction house, was selling a number of Morrisseau paintings. He identified a handful of them as fakes, and Heffel removed them from the auction. When Heffel informed Joseph Otavnik, the owner of two of those paintings—as well as of dozens more on the walls of his home—that it wouldn’t be selling his pieces, Otavnik sued Vadas, claiming that he’d devalued the paintings and prevented him from selling them for as much as $12,000 each. By then, Morrisseau had been living with Parkinson’s disease. In the lawsuit, Otavnik referred to Morrisseau’s diagnosis and made the claim that his history of alcohol use might have contributed to a memory disorder; the artist, Otavnik asserted, therefore couldn’t be trusted to verify his own paintings. (The people who were closest to Morrisseau at the time say he remained mentally sharp.) Otavnik implored the courts to instead trust the judgment of Joseph McLeod, a gallerist who sold Otavnik the paintings and swore they were real. Moreover, earlier in his career, Morrisseau had allegedly allowed his assistants to pass off their work as his own so that they could make more money. In his claim, Otavnik wrote, “Norval doesn’t even care if people are copying his style of painting or even if they are selling fakes.”
Morrisseau clearly cared. He and Vadas flew to Toronto, where the suit had been filed, to rally support from like-minded gallerists and settle the debate once and for all. But by then, the artist was in his mid-seventies and frail and was using a wheelchair; he’d suffered a stroke ten years earlier and had also had double knee surgery. While in Toronto, he was taken to Toronto General Hospital, where, on December 4, 2007, he died. He never got a chance to tell a judge he hadn’t painted those pieces. Years later, the fight over the fakes still rages.
In 1937, when Morrisseau was around six years old, he was separated from his family, who lived in what is now Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation, and sent to St. Joseph’s Indian Industrial School, nearly 200 kilometres away, in Thunder Bay. The cruelty of those years at a Roman Catholic residential school was documented in two biographies, Stevens’s *A Picasso in the North Country* and Ojibwe author Armand Garnet Ruffo’s *Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird*. Morrisseau was forbidden from speaking Ojibwe or hugging his own brother. Nuns hit him with leather straps, and priests raped him. Drawing became a respite.
The school left scars. He started drinking at thirteen. In his twenties, he married a woman named Harriet Kakegamic, and they had seven children, but he was, by some reported accounts, a neglectful husband and father. He wholly dedicated himself to his craft and mission. “Morrisseau talked about bridging people together,” Vadas told me. “He talked about how we can no longer say, ‘That person is Black, that person is white, that person is Indian’—how, instead, we should just call each other brothers and sisters and be together as a community of humans.”
According to the two biographers, with little money to buy paint or canvas, Morrisseau salvaged materials from the local dump; he extracted pigments from Christmas decorations and tubes of lipstick to create paint, which he layered onto birch bark and scraps of paper. He sold his art at the general store in Red Lake, a small community in northern Ontario, which is where, in the late 1950s, he caught the attention of a fly-in doctor named Joseph Weinstein and his wife, Esther. The Weinsteins were wealthy art collectors from Montreal who, despite travelling the globe, had never seen art like Morrisseau’s. They granted him access to their vast library of art books, bought him art supplies, and urged him to continue creating.
It wasn’t long before Morrisseau graduated from the shelves of small-town gift shops to the walls of Toronto’s art galleries. In 1962, a gallery owner named Jack Pollock toured the towns around Lake Nipigon, north of Thunder Bay, teaching art classes. Along the way, he met Morrisseau. At the time, Morrisseau—six feet two, lanky, and lean—had a reputation as an eccentric. Amused by the artist and, more importantly, awed by his art, Pollock invited Morrisseau to mount a show at his gallery in Toronto. The exhibition that September was a sensation. All thirty-five paintings sold. *Time* magazine, one of the many outlets to cover the exhibition, wrote, “Few exhibits in Canadian art history have touched off a greater immediate stir.”
The show was a breakthrough for Morrisseau and a watershed moment for Indigenous art. For decades, works by First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American artists had been regarded largely as historical artifacts rather than as artworks worthy of display in contemporary galleries. “Our art was done basically as tourist art,” Tom Hill, the late Six Nations curator, said in *A Separate Reality: Norval Morrisseau*, a documentary by filmmaker Paul Carvalho. “It was insignificant until Morrisseau comes along.”
Canada’s relationship with its original inhabitants was also changing that year: Indigenous people could vote in a federal election for the first time that June, and the government and establishment art institutions were slowly beginning to take notice of Indigenous arts. To the minds of cosmopolitan gallery goers, Morrisseau was a symbol of this progress. Collectors and art critics spoke of Pollock “discovering” him in the bush. Purchasing one of his paintings came to be seen as buying a piece of history; to some, it was also a tangible way to support Indigenous culture. Morrisseau never intended to be an Indigenous poster child, but he took the role seriously. “I am an example of my people,” he said in *A Separate Reality*. “The responsibility for me today is to be a great artist.”
In the ensuing decades, Morrisseau’s career blossomed. He held more shows in Canada as well as in Los Angeles and Paris. Marc Chagall, the French modernist, dubbed him the “Picasso of the North.” The National Film Board of Canada produced a short documentary [called](https://www.nfb.ca/film/paradox_of_norval_morrisseau/) *The Paradox of Norval Morrisseau* that depicted him as the “noble savage”: an Indigenous creator who’d broken into the white art world. It was a world in which Morrisseau never felt fully comfortable. According to Ruffo, after Morrisseau was appointed to the Order of Canada, in 1978, the artist said, “First the white man drives my people down to the pits of hell with an army of missionaries, and then they honour him, lift him up on their shoulders, with this medal. What has been lost is lost, and no matter who he was before, that person is gone.”
![A painting of a Christ-like figure with long black hair and a red and blue halo against a yellow-brown background.](https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/Rinaldi_Morrisseau_IndianJesusChrist_511.jpg)
Norval Morrisseau, *Indian Jesus Christ*, acrylic on paper, 1974
![A black-and-white photo of Norval Morrisseau in a plaid shirt, looking down at a painting he is working on, a thin paintbrush in his hand. He is angling the painting up towards his face.](https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/Rinaldi_Morrisseau_Getty_672.jpg)
Marc Chagall called Norval Morrisseau, photographed here in 1977, the “Picasso of the North.”Photo by Graham Bezant / the *Toronto Star* via Getty Images
A spirit of subversion ran through Morrisseau’s work, setting the stage for future generations of Indigenous artists to be more provocative. When he was invited to paint a mural for the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 67, he proposed a piece depicting a bear cub and baby suckling at the teat of Mother Earth. (The organizers balked, which prompted Morrisseau to walk away, leaving his assistant to complete an amended design.) Several years later, he painted a cynical masterpiece called *The Gift*, which showed a missionary giving Indigenous people two catastrophic presents: Christianity and smallpox. But Morrisseau didn’t just prod; he also tried to heal divides. In 1983, he presented one of his greatest works, *Androgyny*—a breathtaking yellow, blue, and maroon polyptych illustrating the interconnectedness of all things—as a gift to the people of Canada. It now hangs in Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor general.
Morrisseau made plenty of money, but he never hung on to it very long. According to Stevens, after his first show at Pollock’s gallery, he used the money from sales to hire a taxi to take him home, a fourteen-hour drive from Toronto. He later spent earnings to buy parkas for homeless Indigenous men, to rent hotel rooms and party with his friends. Despite making millions, he spent much of his life in poverty. “The white man is always after material gain,” he is quoted as saying in *A Picasso in the North Country*. “To me, money is of no importance. I don’t want it.”
Morrisseau had many agents and assistants who would help with the management of day-to-day tasks. Some looked after him—saving money, sending cash to his wife and children, buying him supplies. Others took advantage. A number of his agents and gallerists kept more than their fair share of his proceeds. Some bought works from him when he was drunk, paying well below market value. And some of his apprentices—an ever-revolving cast of disciples, friends, and relatives who trained under him—began imitating his work, passing off pieces he’d never touched as authentic Morrisseaus and pocketing the money. Bryant Ross, who helped the artist manage his business affairs in the late 1980s and early ’90s, says that Morrisseau looked the other way at first. “Norval was a generous guy,” he says. “I think he knew back then but didn’t really try to interfere with it. He wanted his friends to do well, to be able to pay their rent and buy their groceries and live a good life.”
By the early 2000s, however, Morrisseau’s tolerance for these fakes was put to the test. While living in Thunder Bay in the 1990s, he befriended a man in his thirties, named Gary Lamont. Lamont was a local drug dealer and tough guy: when his customers failed to pay up, he was known to beat them with a baseball bat. In exchange for some paintings, Lamont let Morrisseau work out of a cabin he owned. Lamont was stunned by how much money Morrisseau’s pieces could fetch. When Morrisseau eventually stopped using the cabin, Lamont seemed to hatch a plan: What if he created and sold fake artwork to keep the cash flowing? He enlisted local Indigenous artists—including Morrisseau’s brother Wolf and nephew Benji—to start painting knock-offs in that same rustic cabin. They copied existing works or invented entirely new images in Morrisseau’s style. They signed each one with the same Cree syllabics that Morrisseau put in one of the bottom corners of every piece. (The syllabics translate to “Copper Thunderbird,” a name that was given to him by a member of the Midewiwin Society after he recovered from a life-threatening illness in his teens.) Lamont paid the artists in cash, alcohol, and drugs, and he used their Indian status cards to purchase art supplies tax free. His wife, Linda Tkachyk, allegedly managed a website to sell the paintings. According to the documentary *There Are No Fakes*, artists who worked in Lamont’s operation occasionally threw thirty or so pieces in a pickup truck and drove across the country, to Alberta or British Columbia, where they sold them for thousands of dollars apiece. As a cover for their unexplained income, Lamont and Tkachyk billeted young Indigenous men in their home. These teens and twenty-somethings had left their reserves for Thunder Bay in hopes of gaining a better education; instead, his victims later told the courts, Lamont raped many of them on a nightly basis.
Morrisseau never intended to be an Indigenous poster child, but he took the role seriously. “I am an example of my people. The responsibility for me today is to be a great artist.”
In 2012, a number of Lamont’s victims came forward to police. He was arrested and convicted on multiple charges—including sexual assault—but not art fraud. By then, much damage had already been done to Morrisseau’s oeuvre. Unbeknownst to art buyers and gallerists, Lamont’s assembly line had pumped hundreds of fake Morrisseaus into the market, enriching white art dealers often off the backs of impoverished Indigenous artists. As one of Lamont’s victims put it in *There Are No Fakes*, “Gary pretty much raped my culture.”
In 2010, the Art Gallery of Ontario invited the musician Kevin Hearn to guest-curate a show of works from his private art collection. Hearn, the keyboard player of Barenaked Ladies, owned a few Morrisseaus. Hearn especially admired his use of colour, which reminded him of the stained glass at a cathedral where he’d sung as a boy. He decided to include one of Morrisseau’s works, titled *Spirit Energy of Mother Earth*, a green-on-green canvas filled with sinister-looking creatures, in the AGO exhibition.
A few days after the exhibition opened, that June, Hearn got a call from Gerald McMaster, then the AGO’s curator of Canadian art. They’d taken *Spirit Energy* off the wall. McMaster explained that the painting, which Hearn believed Morrisseau had painted in the ’70s, may not be genuine. Embarrassed, he contacted Joseph McLeod, the gallerist who’d sold him the work in 2005. At first, he assumed it was a big misunderstanding. “I thought that we would compare our information and see what the truth was,” says Hearn. McLeod refused to entertain the idea that the painting was fake, and he wouldn’t give Hearn his money back. According to Hearn, McLeod told him “that would set off a chain of events that would result in the closing of my gallery.”
![A painting of a Shaman riding a creature alongside two raven-like birds. It is painted in black, orange, yellow, green, and ochre, and brown.](https://walrus-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/img/Rinaldi_Morrisseau_ShamanRider_1400.jpg)
Norval Morrisseau, *Shaman Rider*, tempera on tarpaper, 1972
Undeterred, Hearn started working with Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who had recently represented a woman who’d launched a lawsuit against another gallery, alleging it had sold her a fake Morrisseau. During that trial, one of Morrisseau’s gallerists argued that the work had telltale signs of a forgery: the back of the canvas was signed in black dry brush, which was inconsistent with Morrisseau’s style, and the layers of paint had been applied in a different order. But the defendants called on other experts, including McLeod and a forensic scientist specializing in document verification and handwriting analysis, who testified that the signature was almost certainly authentic. Presented with opposing opinions, the judge ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it was fake. The owner of the work didn’t want to keep fighting in the courts, but Hearn, a platinum-selling rock star, did. He sued McLeod for $80,000.
To win their suit, Hearn and Sommer knew they’d need to do more than call upon expert witnesses who believed *Spirit Energy* was a fake. They decided to investigate the provenance of the piece. McLeod claimed that Morrisseau had painted several pieces, including *Spirit Energy*, while in jail and that he’d given them to a prison guard. But when Sommer asked Correctional Service Canada, he discovered there was no such guard. McLeod had provided a list of previous owners: some of them said they’d never seen the piece, others simply didn’t exist. Sommer and Hearn eventually traced the painting back not to a prison guard but to an auctioneer named Randy Potter, who seemed to have purchased the painting—and many others like it—from a man in Thunder Bay named Gary Lamont.
“It wasn’t about the painting anymore. It was really about the victims of the whole scam.”
When Hearn sued McLeod, a handful of collectors rallied behind the gallerist, including Joseph Otavnik, the owner of several questionable Morrisseaus who had sued Vadas in 2007 for allegedly devaluing the paintings he owned. Since then, Otavnik had launched several more lawsuits against anyone who so much as whispered that his paintings were fake. For the most part, the strategy worked: even experts were scared to take a side. If McLeod was found to be selling fakes, then Otavnik’s Morrisseaus, purchased from his gallery and marked with the same dry brush signature as Hearn’s, would likely be worthless. In 2017, just before the case went to trial, McLeod died. Another one of those Morrisseau collectors, a historian named John Goldi, attempted to get involved in the case to reject the existence of fakes.
In court, Goldi repeated the sorts of arguments contained in Otavnik’s original suit and claimed that Morrisseau’s keepers were trying to corner the market to serve their own economic interests. He also sowed chaos. Hearn says that Goldi and his wife, Joan, slandered their opponents online, publishing inflammatory lies about Hearn and posting pictures of his daughter, who is disabled. They tarnished Sommer’s reputation to the point where the famous Scottish Canadian tenor John McDermott, who also owned a suspected fake, dropped him as counsel. Hearn says the Goldis hissed at him in the courtroom and harassed his witnesses using fake email addresses. Hearn had to hire private security to escort one expert witness, a member of the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, to and from court. “It was just this weird, awful, ugly, dark element to what was already a tough thing,” says Hearn.
The court heard from not only art experts but also Lamont’s victims, one of whom retold the story of forging Morrisseau’s work to feed a drug addiction and avoid Lamont’s wrath. By the closing arguments, Hearn had spent much more than the $80,000 he had demanded from McLeod, and Sommer estimates he put in a million dollars’ worth of pro bono work. “It wasn’t about the painting anymore,” Hearn says. “It was really about the victims of the whole scam.”
In early 2018, the judge ruled in favour of McLeod: while he accepted the existence of Lamont’s fraud ring, none of the witnesses could convince him that *Spirit Energy* was a fake. On appeal, however, another judge ruled that because McLeod had provided fabricated provenance, he had breached their sale contract and therefore defrauded Hearn. “I remember the feeling of a weight lifting off my shoulders that I’d had for ten years,” says Hearn. The judge ordered the McLeod estate to pay him $60,000 in damages. Hearn told them to donate the money to an Indigenous charity instead. They have yet to do so.
Hearn had invited the documentary filmmaker Jamie Kastner to follow the trial in hopes that a movie would publicize Lamont’s forgery ring and prod police to lay charges. The film, *There Are No Fakes*, also detailed the death of seventeen-year-old Scott Dove, who’d bought drugs from Lamont and was later found dead. After the film was first screened in Thunder Bay, in the summer of 2019, a police officer named Jason Rybak called Hearn and Sommer and explained that he thought portions of the film might help him prosecute Lamont, the leading suspect in Dove’s death. Ultimately, Sommer recalls Rybak saying, there wasn’t enough evidence to indict Lamont for murder but he could build a case around the forgeries instead—something Vadas, Morrisseau’s business manager, had been pursuing for years. In 2007, following Morrisseau’s death, Vadas had reported the fakes to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; months later, they had referred the case to police in Thunder Bay, who had never laid any charges. “It was a difficult fire to light,” Sommer says about convincing police, “but once it got going, it was a big bonfire.”
In 2023, after a two-and-a-half-year investigation, Rybak and a team of Thunder Bay and Ontario Provincial Police officers arrested eight people in connection to the fake Morrisseaus. The charged included Lamont and his wife, Tkachyk; Morrisseau’s nephew Benji; an art wholesaler named Jim White, who allegedly sold fakes; David Paul Bremner, who is thought to have created fake authentication documents, according to Sommer; and three others, who police say were involved in the forgeries. In December 2023, Lamont pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. Police, who called the operation “the biggest art fraud in world history,” have seized more than a thousand fakes; the Morrisseau estate estimates there are thousands more.
It took police nearly two decades to crack down on forgeries of works by one of Canada’s greatest artists. That doesn’t bode well for other Indigenous artists, many of whom deal with fakes on a daily basis. Andy Everson, a Northwest Coast artist, says that people regularly send him links to online stores where his designs, including an Every Child Matters logo, have been stolen and printed onto T-shirts, mugs, and Crocs. “A lot of times, I just ignore it because it’s so pervasive,” he says.
Everson is the primary artist for Totem Design House, a business run by his wife, Erin Brillon, that sells Indigenous-made clothing and art. Brillon says it’s tough to make a living when stores sell knock-offs of their wares at a discount. The replicas, they say, come from Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines and are carved by local artisans paid measly wages, while the middlemen who ship their creations into Canada reap the profits. Some are sold on online arts marketplaces like Etsy and Redbubble. “When people complain or make comments, they block those people,” says Brillon. “And if their ads get taken down, they’ll pop up the next week with a slightly different business name and website.”
In some cases, the forgers don’t fake just Indigenous artwork; they fake entire Indigenous identities. In 2021, Brillon noticed something fishy about an artist named Harvey John. Though John’s bio noted he was Nuu-chah-nulth from Vancouver Island, no one in his supposed hometown knew him, and one art store in Alberta suspiciously described his work as original Haida carvings. Brillon posted about John in a Facebook group dedicated to exposing fraudulent Indigenous art. Its members got to work investigating the supposed Haida artist, ultimately discovering that the persona was entirely fictitious. “There is a long legacy of non-Indigenous people profiting from our artwork,” says Brillon. “How many generations have seen their artworks stolen? From the start of colonization to now, it hasn’t gotten any better.”
Faced with fakes, Indigenous artists have little recourse. They can hire a lawyer and spend thousands of dollars to pursue lawsuits that may not lead anywhere. “The Morrisseau case was the tip of the iceberg,” says Jason Henry Hunt, a Kwagiulth carver on Vancouver Island who frequently finds phony copies of his work being sold online. “It can’t be that every single case of forgery has to be this multi-, multi-, multi-million-dollar thing—including who knows how many different branches of government and the RCMP and the courts—just to prove something that is relatively obvious to everyone.”
Since the summer of 2022, Patricia Bovey, the first art historian to serve as a Canadian senator, has pressured the federal government to set up a legal fund to support Indigenous artists. “I’m devastated for the artists who are losing their rights,” she says. “I’m devastated for their loss of income and the blow it’s taking to their professional credibility.” Though Bovey was forced to retire from the Senate when she turned seventy-five last year, she is still lobbying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet to institute changes that would protect Indigenous artists: tightening importation rules to stop counterfeit art at the border, training customs agents to identify fakes, and advocating for changes to the Copyright Act that would require art resellers to remit 5 percent of their profits to the original artists or their estates, ensuring that Indigenous artists are compensated every time a non-Indigenous dealer or auctioneer sells their works. In 2022, the federal government promised to incorporate resale rights into the Copyright Act, but it has yet to do so. In fact, it has implemented none of Bovey’s proposals.
But it may be a question of resources or priorities: the RCMP and Sûreté du Québec’s joint Integrated Art Crime Investigation Team, a once four-officer unit tasked with policing art fraud and theft nationwide, is now defunct. “There is no consideration within the RCMP to create a federal art-fraud investigation unit,” the RCMP told the CBC last December. By comparison, France enforces resale rights and funds a roughly thirty-agent art-fraud and theft police unit. The United States’ Department of the Interior, through the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, can prosecute producers of fake Indigenous art. Canada, meanwhile, has few tools to detect, investigate, and prosecute inauthentic art, meaning that fakes of all kinds continue to flood the market. Last January, for example, the public learned that three works in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia believed to have been painted by the folk artist Maud Lewis were, in fact, forgeries, according to the CBC.
The upshot is that Indigenous artists are robbed of the recompense they’re owed. Hunt comes from a long line of carvers that includes his uncle, Richard, whose work has been replicated by forgers in Eastern Europe using 3D printers. Hunt worries that the ubiquity of fakes will stop younger artists from taking up the craft, endangering yet another facet of Indigenous culture. “In our village, my brother and I are the two youngest guys making a living as artists—and I’m fifty,” he says. “It’s a hard way to make a living to begin with, let alone having to compete with all the fraudulent stuff that’s out there.”
“What we need at the core level,” says Cory Dingle, the executive director of Morrisseau’s estate, “is legislative change.” He says that Canada is paying for its inaction on the international stage. European galleries, he says, may become scared to display Canadian artists, concerned that their reputations will take a hit if the works turn out to be fake. “My counterparts phone me from Germany and France and say, ‘What the fuck is going on in Canada?’”
Though some of Morrisseau’s forgers have been arrested, many of the fakes they made remain at large. This past January, Ontario Provincial Police took *Salmon Life Giving Spawn*, a suspected counterfeit, off the walls of the provincial legislature. Two weeks later, McGill University removed a supposed Morrisseau, *Shaman Surrounded by Ancestral Spirit Totem*, from a campus library and launched an investigation into its provenance. Even as investigators clean up the Morrisseau market, a cloud of uncertainty continues to hang over his legacy.
“The thing that deserves more attention is Norval himself: who he was and what he was trying to teach people,” says his friend Bryant Ross. “But the conversation always goes to the forgeries.” Today, many auction houses, including Heffel, refuse to sell his work, not only because there are still thousands of fakes out there but also because, for a long time, selling Morrisseaus meant getting entangled in a dark web of shady characters and intractable lawsuits.
Now, however, there is progress. Lamont’s guilty plea means that no one can deny the existence of fakes anymore. And following the arrests, Morrisseau’s biological children decided to work together with Vadas to restore their father’s legacy. (In the past, Morrisseau’s biological children and Vadas have had a tenuous relationship; at one point, they accused him of taking advantage of Morrisseau, as reported in the CBC. They have since reconciled, according to Vadas.) There is now a torrent of Morrisseau-related projects in the works. Queen’s and Carleton universities have mounted new Morrisseau exhibitions. Carmen Robertson, a Carleton art history professor and member of the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, is part of a research team compiling a book, due out in 2025, featuring Morrisseau’s pre-1985 work; a book on the latter half of his career will follow. “Morrisseau’s sense of genius—what he honestly accomplished as an artist, his visual language, what he did with his subject matter—has been watered down or tainted in such a way that, when you google his art, you often see things that are not by the hands of that artist,” says Robertson. “And so I hope that we can restore a sense of what his aesthetic power was and continues to be.”
Dingle, the head of Morrisseau’s estate, is working on the most ambitious effort of all. Not long ago, the founder of Toronto’s Museum of Inuit Art reached out to him, proposing the creation of a new gallery of Morrisseau’s works, on the property of the city’s Metropolitan United Church. The gallery is meant to be a concrete act of reconciliation, a symbolic bridge between the church and Indigenous people—something that would have aligned with Morrisseau’s mission. “Why am I alive?” Morrisseau once said. “To heal you guys who’re more screwed up than I am.” If all goes as planned, the gallery will include a collection of unseen Morrisseaus that his estate kept hidden during the decades-long forgery debacle. Visitors will no doubt marvel at these never-before-seen works. And at least a few of them will quietly question whether they were really painted by Norval Morrisseau at all.
*Correction, April 11, 2024: An earlier version of this article stated that an artist working with Toronto’s Metropolitan United Church had reached out to Cory Dingle about creating a new gallery of Norval Morrisseau’s work. In fact, it was the founder of the Museum of Inuit Art who proposed the idea. The Walrus regrets the error.*
[![Luc Rinaldi](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%2070%2070'%3E%3C/svg%3E)](https://thewalrus.ca/author/luc-rinaldi/)
Luc Rinaldi is an award-winning writer based in Toronto who has written for *Maclean’s*, *Toronto Life*, and *Canadian Business*, among others.
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# They came for Florida's sun and sand. They got soaring costs and a culture war.
March 31, 2024, 11:00 AM UTC
One of the first signs Barb Carter’s move to Florida wasn’t the postcard life she’d envisioned was the armadillo infestation in her home that caused $9,000 in damages. Then came a hurricane, ever present feuding over politics, and an inability to find a doctor to remove a tumor from her liver.
After a year in the Sunshine State, Carter packed her car with whatever belongings she could fit and headed back to her home state of Kansas — selling her Florida home at a $40,000 loss and leaving behind the children and grandchildren she’d moved to be closer to.
“So many people ask, ‘Why would you move back to Kansas?’ I tell them all the same thing — you’ve got to take your vacation goggles off,” Carter said. “For me, it was very falsely promoted. Once living there, I thought, you know, this isn’t all you guys have cracked this up to be, at all.”
Florida has had a population boom over the past several years, with more than 700,000 people moving there in 2022, and it was the second-fastest-[growing](https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/migration-plays-a-role-in-restoring-u-s-population-to-pre-pandemic-levels) state as of July 2023, according to Census Bureau [data](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/11/state-to-state-migration.html). While there are some indications that migration to the state has slowed from its pandemic highs, only Texas saw more one-way [U-Haul moves](https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Announces-Top-Growth-States-Of-2023-30660/) into the state than Florida last year. Mortgage application data indicated there were nearly two homebuyers moving to Florida in 2023 for every one leaving, according to data analytics firm CoreLogic.
But while hundreds of thousands of new residents have flocked to the state on the promise of beautiful weather, no income tax and lower costs, nearly 500,000 left in 2022, according to the most recent census data. Contributing to their move was a perfect storm of soaring insurance costs, a hostile political environment, worsening traffic and extreme weather, according to interviews with more than a dozen recent transplants and longtime residents who left the state in the past two years.
![A demonstrator holds a placard reading "Ban Hate" during a 'Walkout 2 Learn' rally](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-culture-wars-se-556p-971408.jpg)
Young people in Miami demonstrate in 2023 in response to Florida's crackdown on lessons surrounding race and Black history, and against a string of anti-LGBTQ laws that are affecting students. Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images
“It wasn’t the utopia on any level that I thought it would be,” said Jodi Cummings, who moved to Florida from Connecticut in 2021. “I thought Florida would be an easier lifestyle, I thought the pace would be a little bit quieter, I thought it would be warmer. I didn’t expect it to be literally 100 degrees at night. It was incredibly difficult to make friends, and it was expensive, very expensive.”
Cummings expected she’d have extra money in her paycheck working as a private chef in the Palm Beach area since the state doesn’t have an income tax. But the high costs of car insurance, rent and food cut into that additional take-home pay. After six months of dealing with South Florida’s heat and traffic, she began planning a move back to the Northeast.
“I had been so disenchanted with Florida so quickly,” Cummings said. “There was this feeling of confusion and guilt about wanting to leave, of moving there then realizing this is not anything like I thought it would be.”
![A window air conditioning unit during a heat wave in Miami](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-heatwave-se-604p-83e1bc.jpg)
A window air conditioning unit during a heat wave in Miami in 2023.Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images
While costs have been rising across the country, some areas of Florida have been hit particularly hard. In the South Florida region, which includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, consumer prices in February were up [nearly 5%](https://www.bls.gov/regions/southeast/news-release/ConsumerPriceIndex_Miami.htm) over the prior year, compared to [3.2% nationally](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf), according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Homeowners insurance rates in Florida rose 42% last year to an average of $6,000 annually, [driven by hurricanes and climate change](https://www.npr.org/2023/10/26/1208590263/florida-homeowners-insurance-soaring-expensive), and car insurance in Florida is more than 50% higher than the national average, according to the Insurance Information Institute. While once seen as an affordable housing market, Florida is now among the more expensive states to buy a home in, with prices up 60% since 2020 to an average of $388,500, [according](https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2024-02-29-Home-buyers-need-to-earn-47,000-more-than-in-2020) to Zillow.
For Carter, who made the move in 2022 from Kansas to a suburb of Orlando for the weather, beaches and to be closer to her grandchildren, the costs began to quickly pile up. She purchased a manufactured home and initially expected the lot rent in her community to be $580 a month. But when she arrived she learned her monthly bill was actually $750, and by the time she left it had jumped to $875 a month. Along with the $9,000 in repairs from the armadillos, her car insurance doubled and Hurricane Ian destroyed her home’s roof on her 62nd birthday.
![A aerial view of a man wading through a flooded street.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-hurricane-ian-se-604p-b694a1.jpg)
A flooded street in Orlando, Fla., following Hurricane Ian in 2022.Bryan R. Smith / AFP via Getty Images
There were also the ever-present conversations and disagreements over politics that started to wear on her. Carter, who describes herself as a “middle of the road” Republican, said she learned to keep her opinions to herself.
“You cannot engage in a conversation there without politics coming up, it is just crazy. We’re retired, we’re supposed to be in our fun time of life,” she said. “I learned quickly, just keep your mouth shut, because I saw people in my own community break up their friendships over it. I don’t like losing friends, and especially over politics.”
![A supporter of President Joe Biden faces supporters of Donald Trump outside of the courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., where Trump attended a hearing in his classified records case on March 14.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-donald-trump-supporters-se-604p-962ea7.jpg)
A supporter of President Joe Biden faces supporters of Donald Trump outside of the courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., where Trump attended a hearing in his classified records case on March 14.Joe Raedle / Getty Images
But she said the final straw was when she couldn’t find a surgeon to remove a 6-inch tumor from her liver that doctors warned could burst at any moment and lead to life-threatening sepsis. After being passed among doctors, she finally found one willing to remove the tumor. But when she called to schedule the surgery, her calls went unanswered and her messages weren’t returned. After months of trying and fearing for her life, she returned to Kansas to have the procedure done.“It just seemed like one challenge after another, but I kept with it until there was literally a lifesaving event that I needed to get handled and I wasn’t able to do it there,” she said. “I think it was the most difficult year of my life.”
No state has had more residents relocate to Florida in recent years than New York, with 90,000 New Yorkers moving there in 2022, according to census data. Among all out-of-state mortgage applicants, nearly 9% were from New York in 2023, slightly lower than the previous two years but similar to 2019, according to CoreLogic. One of those New York transplants was Louis Rotkowitz. He lasted less than two years in Florida.
“Like every good New Yorker, this is where you want to go,” he said by phone while driving the last of his belongings out of the state to his new home in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s a complete fallacy.”
After years working in emergency medicine, and nearly dying from a Covid-19 infection he contracted at work, Rotkowitz said he and his wife were looking for a more pleasant, affordable lifestyle and warmer weather when they decided to buy a house in the West Palm Beach area in 2022. He got a job there as a primary care physician and his wife took a teaching position.
But he said he quickly found the Florida he’d moved to wasn’t the one he’d experienced on regular visits there over the years. His commute to work often took more than an hour each way, he struggled to get basic services like a dishwasher repair, and the cost of his homeowners association fees doubled.
“I had a good salary, but we were barely making ends meet. We had zero quality of life,” said Rotkowitz.
Along with the rising costs, Rotkowitz said he generally felt unsafe in the state between the erratic traffic — which resulted in a number of his patients being injured by vehicles — and a state [law](https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/31/florida-approves-concealed-weapons-firearms-guns-without-a-permit-what-that-means/70067814007/) passed in 2023 that allowed people to carry a concealed weapon without a license.
![A handgun is inventoried at store that sells guns in Delray Beach](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-guns-se-635p-935d07.jpg)
A handgun is inventoried at store that sells guns in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2023.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
“Everyone is walking around with guns there,” he said. “I consider myself a conservative guy, but if you want to carry a gun you should be licensed, there should be some sort of process.”
Veronica Blaski, who moved to Florida from Connecticut, said rising costs drove her out of the state after less than three years. When at the start of the pandemic her husband was offered a job in Florida making more money as a manager for a landscaping company, Blaski envisioned warm weather and a more comfortable lifestyle.
The couple, both in their 40s, sold their home in Connecticut and were starting to settle into their new community when Blaski said they were hit with a “bulldozer” of costs at the start of 2023.
Her homeowners insurance company threatened to drop her coverage if she didn’t replace her home’s 9-year-old roof, a $16,000 to $30,000 project, and even with a new roof, she was expecting her home insurance rates to double — one neighbor saw their insurance go from $600 a month to $1,200 a month.
She was also facing rising property taxes as the value of her home increased, her homeowners association fees went from $326 a month to $480, and her insurance agent warned that her car insurance would likely double when it was time to renew her policy. Her husband had to get a second job on weekends to cover the higher costs.
While Florida has an unemployment rate below the national average, Blaski and others said wages weren’t enough to keep up with their expenses. The median salary in Florida is among the lowest in the country, [according](https://payinsights.adp.com/?_ga=2.241332738.1291770885.1663350648-640311136.1643823277) to payroll processor ADP. To afford a home in one of Florida’s more affordable metro areas, like Jacksonville, a homebuyer would need to earn $109,000 a year, around twice as much income as a buyer would have needed just four years ago, according to an [analysis](https://zillow.mediaroom.com/2024-02-29-Home-buyers-need-to-earn-47,000-more-than-in-2020) by Zillow.
“My little part-time job making $600, $700 a month went to paying either car insurance or homeowners insurance, and forget about groceries,” said Blaski, who was working in retail. “There are all these hidden things that people don’t know about. Make sure you have extra money saved somewhere because you will need it.”
![A woman looks at bottle of juice.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-groceries-se-604p-2ccd95.jpg)
A person shops in a grocery store on July 13, 2022, in Miami as the consumer price index soared to 9.1%, marking the fastest pace for inflation since November 1981.Joe Raedle / Getty Images file
When her husband’s former boss in Connecticut reached out to see if he’d be willing to return, the couple leaped at the chance.
The reverse migration out of Florida isn’t just among newcomers, but also among longtime residents who said they can no longer afford to live there and are uncomfortable with the state’s increasingly conservative policies, which in recent years have included a [crackdown](https://apnews.com/article/florida-immigration-law-effects-immigrants-desantis-6997fe6cdbcfa9d0b309bb700690e747) on undocumented immigrants, a [ban](https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-adults-e7ae55eec634923e6593a4c0685969b2) on transgender care for minors, state interventions in how [race](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-florida-standards-teach-black-people-benefited-slavery-taught-usef-rcna95418), slavery and sexuality are taught in schools, and a six-week ban on [abortions](https://apnews.com/article/florida-abortion-ban-approved-c9c53311a0b2426adc4b8d0b463edad1#:~:text=Ron%20DeSantis%20signed%20into%20law,he%20had%20signed%20the%20legislation.).
After more than three decades in the Tampa Bay area, Donna Smith left the state for Pennsylvania in December, with politics and rising insurance costs playing a major role in her decision to leave.
“It breaks my heart, it really does, because Florida was really a pretty great place when I first moved there,” Smith said.
Having grown up in Oklahoma, Smith considered herself a Republican, but as Florida’s politics shifted to the right, she said she began to consider herself a Democrat. It wasn’t until the past several years, though, that politics started to encroach on her daily life — from feuds between neighbors and friends to neo-Nazis showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally in her small town.
“When I first moved to Florida, it was a live-and-let-live sort of beach feel. You met people from all over, everybody was relaxed. That’s just gone now, and it’s shocking. It’s just gone,” said Smith, 61, who works as a graphic designer and illustrator. “Instead, it’s just a constant stressful atmosphere. I feel as though it could ignite at any point, and I’m not a fearmonger. It’s just the atmosphere, the feeling there.”
She was already considering a move out of the state when she was told by her homeowners insurance company that she would need to replace her home’s roof because it was older than four years or her insurance premium would be going up to $12,000 a year from $3,600, which was already double what she had been paying. Even with a new roof, she was told her premium would be $6,900 a year. Before she could make a decision about what to do, her insurance policy was canceled.
Shortly after, Smith ended up moving to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area, where she is closer to her adult children. While the majority of voters in her new county chose Donald Trump in the last election, she said politics is no longer such a heavy presence in her everyday life.
“I don’t feel it is as oppressive. People don’t wear it on their sleeve like they did in Florida,” she said. “When you walk in a room, you don’t overhear a conversation all the time where people are saying ‘Trump is the best’ or ‘I went to that last rally,’ and they’re telling total strangers while you’re just waiting for your car or something. It was just everywhere.”
![A supporter of Donald Trump wears a Trump bust jewelry.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-maga-se-635p-6f58ab.jpg)
A supporter of Donald Trump at a Super Tuesday election-night watch party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 5.Chandan Khanna / AFP - Getty Images
Costs and politics were also enough to cause Noelle Schmitz to leave the state after more than 30 years, despite her son having a year left in high school, and relocate to Winchester, Virginia. She said the politics became ever-present in her daily life — one former neighbor had a massive Trump banner in front of their house for years, and another had Trump written in big letters across their yard. When she put out a Hillary Clinton sign in 2016, it was stolen and her house was egged.“I saw my neighbors and co-workers become more radicalized, more aggressive and more angry about politics. I’m thinking, where is this coming from? These are not the people I remember,” Schmitz said. “I was finally like, we need to get the hell out of here, things are not going well.”
For some Florida newcomers though, politics is the main draw to the state, said John Desautels, who has sold real estate in Florida for decades. While politics never used to be a topic for homebuyers, Desautels said it is now a regular subject his clients bring up. Rather than asking about schools or amenities in a community, prospective buyers are asking him about the political affiliations of a certain neighborhood.
“One of the first things they say is, ‘I don’t want to be in one of them X or Y political party neighborhoods,’” Desautels said. “I spend hours listening to people vent to me about fleeing the communist government of XYZ and they want to come to freedom or whatever. So the politics have been the biggest issue when we get the call.”
Even home showings have become a politically sensitive issue. He recalled showing an elderly woman one property where there were Confederate flags at the gate and swastikas on the fish tank.
But while politics are a lure to people arriving in the state, he said they’re also among the reasons sellers tell him they’re leaving, and the state’s politics have deterred some of his gay or nonwhite clients from moving there.
“The problem is, when we alienate protected classes, it sounds like a good sound bite, but you’ve got to remember those are people who spend money in our community,” he said. “For this pro-business, free state, I’m feeling it in the wallet, bad.”
In Kansas, Carter says it’s good to be home. She moved into a 55-plus community in a small town about 10 miles from Wichita. While in Florida she was paying nearly $900 in lot rent for her manufactured home, she now pays just $520 in rent for a cottage-style apartment — a place she estimates would have cost her $1,800 a month in Florida.
With the money she’s saving in Kansas, she can afford to visit Florida.
“People call me the modern-day Dorothy,” she said. “There’s no place like home.”
![An aerial view of a vehicle driving along a flooded street.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2024-03/240314-florida-idalia-se-635p-fd42db.jpg)
A flooded street in New Port Richey, Fla., after Hurricane Idalia made landfall in 2023.Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / AFP via Getty Images
[![](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2023_08/3596165/shannon-pettypiece-byline-jm-1.jpg)](https://www.nbcnews.com/author/shannon-pettypiece-ncpn1036991)
[Shannon Pettypiece](https://www.nbcnews.com/author/shannon-pettypiece-ncpn1036991)[](mailto:shannon.pettypiece@nbcuni.com)
Shannon Pettypiece is senior policy reporter for NBC News digital.
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00.03 News/This is how reporters documented 1,000 deaths after police force that isn't supposed to be fatal.md
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# This is how reporters documented 1,000 deaths after police force that isn't supposed to be fatal
After George Floyd was killed under a Minneapolis police officer’s knee, reporters at The Associated Press wanted to know [how many other people died following encounters](https://apnews.com/02881a2bd3fbeb1fc31af9208bb0e310) in which law enforcement used not firearms but other kinds of force that is not supposed to be fatal.
The U.S. government is supposed to track these non-shooting deaths, but poor implementation and inconsistent reporting from local law enforcement agencies mean no one really knows the scope.
A team of journalists led by the AP spent three years reporting on deaths after “less-lethal force.” For that investigation, done in collaboration with the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism and FRONTLINE (PBS), reporters created a new database that provides the most complete accounting yet of these cases, and new opportunities to understand patterns in policing.
The investigation identified 1,036 deaths over a decade following encounters that involved less-lethal force. Some cases are well-known. Others have not been reported publicly. The total is undoubtedly an undercount — deaths can be hard to verify, including due to the deliberate suppression of information.
More than 800 of the more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. had at least one documented fatality. The nation’s 20 largest cities accounted for 16% of deaths.
To be included, cases had to meet the following criteria. Primary source documentation was required to verify each case, typically records from government agencies. News reports or lawsuit allegations alone were not enough to substantiate a case.
WHAT: Encounters that involved at least one type of force, restraint or less-lethal weapon beyond handcuffs.
Holding someone facedown in what is known as prone restraint and Tasers were the most prevalent types of force. Blows with fists or knees, takedowns and devices to restrain people’s legs were also common. Less so were chokeholds, pepper spray, spit hoods, dog bites and bean bag rounds fired through a shotgun. Reporters excluded deaths by firearm and car crashes after police pursuits.
Inclusion does not always mean excessive force. In about half of the cases, the medical examiner or coroner concluded that law enforcement caused or contributed to the death.
Fewer than 10 deaths were ruled suicides. Such cases were included only when officers used significant force, for example a Taser to shock someone so they would stop slashing themself.
WHEN: Encounters that occurred from Jan. 1, 2012, through Dec. 31, 2021.
WHO: Officers who interact with the general public, often on patrol.
Most cases involved local police or sheriff’s deputies, but some officers were state or university police. Deaths involving only jailers, prison guards or federal agents, such as from the Border Patrol, were excluded. When others helped police — whether private security, civilians, paramedics, firefighters, jailers or federal agents — the force they exerted was not included. The exception was when medical personnel administered sedatives, sometimes at the encouragement of police.
WHERE: Deaths often occurred at the scene or in the hospital soon after. The most common location for an encounter was in or near the home of the deceased.
Fatalities in jails or police station holding cells were excluded, unless a person died shortly after force during an arrest, or the force continued in the jail with the involvement of arresting officers. Deaths in prison were excluded.
To document deaths, reporters at AP and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University and the University of Maryland filed roughly 7,000 requests with public agencies across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The resulting repository of documents exceeded 200,000 pages and included hundreds of hours of body-camera footage. While some records were released without charge, the effort to collect them cost more than $39,000 in fees.
In designing the strategies for requesting and interpreting all those records, AP reporters consulted with experts in policing, public health, forensic pathology and other fields.
Reporters first submitted requests seeking data from state agencies which might collect the names of people who died after encounters with police. These requests went to the attorney general or state police as well as to the chief medical examiner or health department. Where a state had centralized data, reporters combed through tens of thousands of names to identify those who died after less-lethal force, rather than in shootings, car chases or while behind bars.
Many states don’t track these deaths or consider them public information. In several states, reporters went county by county, calling coroners and mailing requests to obtain lists of potential cases.
Reporters identified additional potential cases to review from tips by sources, news stories, court cases and databases that researchers and others have shared to track deaths. No death was included based on this information alone.
After obtaining a name, reporters filed records requests to law enforcement agencies, district attorneys and medical examiners seeking incident reports, autopsy reports, internal investigations and video. They also read lawsuit exhibits and depositions, and in some cases contacted families for records. AP also contacted every law enforcement agency involved in a death with a questionnaire about its use-of-force policies and training.
In all, about 270 of the 1,036 cases AP identified did not appear in any of three well-known, public databases that include non-shooting deaths.
The investigation also looked at coroners and medical examiners, whose opinions about how and why a person died influence investigators and prosecutors. Drawing mostly from death certificates or autopsy reports, as well as police reports, investigations by local district attorneys, lawsuits or government databases, reporters gathered the official cause and manner of death in 951 cases.
Many times, agencies released records, but blacked out information or blurred videos. Officers routinely used vague language like “struggle” or “taken into custody” in their reports, glossing over more serious force documented in other evidence.
Laws in some states — notably Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska and Pennsylvania — restrict public access to government records, so reporters couldn’t always determine whether a death fit the investigation’s criteria. Elsewhere, records were lost to time, flood or fire. Other requests for records foundered without resolution, or were denied outright. And high costs for records — including one estimate of $10,000 for video in a Nevada death — also limited access.
Because access to records varied widely, comparisons risk being misleading. Based on the strict criteria reporters used, the investigation could document only one death in Philadelphia, a city of 1.6 million — the same number as Philadelphia, Mississippi, population 7,000.
In addition to the 1,036 criteria deaths, there were about 100 others that reporters had reason to believe may be cases based on news reports or lawsuit allegations. These cases are not currently in the database because reporters have not yet independently confirmed the details, sometimes because agencies refused to release information.
AP continues to seek information about deaths that may meet the criteria outlined above and are not included in the database. Please send information about the case, as well as any documents you may have, to [\[email protected\]](https://apnews.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#d7beb9a1b2a4a3beb0b6a3bea1b297b6a7f9b8a5b0).
## \_\_\_
This story is part of an ongoing investigation led by The Associated Press in collaboration with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism programs and FRONTLINE (PBS). The investigation includes the Lethal Restraint interactive story, database and the documentary, “Documenting Police Use Of Force,” premiering April 30 on PBS.
## \_\_\_
The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. This story also was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
## \_\_\_
Contact AP’s global investigative team at [\[email protected\]](https://apnews.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#7a33140c1f090e131d1b0e130c1f3a1b0a5415081d) or [https://www.ap.org/tips/](https://www.ap.org/tips/)
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00.03 News/Vital City Jimmy Breslin and the Lost Rhythm of New York.md
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# Vital City | Jimmy Breslin and the Lost Rhythm of New York
> What newspaper columnists gave the city is painfully missing today.
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The death of the city columnist has gone unreported even by the handful of us still writing imitations of the thing, including me over the past decade [at the Daily News](https://www.nydailynews.com/author/harry-siegel/). 
Jimmy Breslin, champion of the common man, famously [found the gravedigger](https://www.thedailybeast.com/jimmy-breslin-on-jfks-assassination-two-classic-columns) after JFK’s murder. Now, amid [waves](https://www.hbo.com/movies/breslin-and-hamill-deadline-artists) [of nostalgia](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/theater/reviews/tom-hanks-in-lucky-guy-at-the-broadhurst-theater.html) for the deadline artists of the last century, there’s no memorial for Breslin’s own lost tribe. 
What I mean is, as Michael Daly, one of the last masters of the form, put it when I told him I was badly, unforgivably behind deadline to write this piece pegged off the new Library of America collection of Breslin’s [“Essential Writings”:](https://www.loa.org/books/essential-writings/) “There’s a difference between running a column and being a columnist.”
The difference being that “you got to have that rhythm,” said Daly, who did the thing for decades over two stints at The News before taking a national perch at The Daily Beast, where I was rather ridiculously his editor for a year or so, and also Wayne Barrett’s. 
“You got to have that presence if you want to talk about city columnists.”
Breslin had it in spades and it comes off in nearly every page of “Essential Writings,” even if that is a funny name for a tradesman allergic to preciousness who knew he was playing a numbers game and whose work mostly appeared inside of the following day’s fish wrap. 
Many of the earlier, longer columns and articles collected here by Dan Barry of the New York Times aren’t anywhere online. Those share space with about 75 of his later, shorter tabloid pieces — it says a lot about the diminished state of print journalism that the collection doesn’t list the outlets where each piece ran — and two non-fiction books. 
There’s [“How the Good Guys Finally Won,”](https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_the_Good_Guys_Finally_Won/5BRRKP2BYnoC?hl=en) Breslin’s Watergate account, and [“The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez,”](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/18037/the-short-sweet-dream-of-eduardo-gutierrez-by-jimmy-breslin/9780307559630/excerpt) a compact [gut-punch of a read](https://www.villagevoice.com/the-importance-of-jimmy-breslin/) about how 21-year-old Tomás Eduardo Daniel Gutiérrez traveled through Mexico the hard way to make it Brooklyn and off-the-books construction work before a needless accident on the job killed him. It’s a book that feels remarkably timely two decades later amid the city’s ongoing “migrant crisis.”
Breslin wrote the account of Gutiérrez’s life when he was in his 70s and still at it, digging around and reporting and showing up and banging away at books and columns and treating himself and everyone around him as grist for his mill even as he largely kept his moral compass aligned, with the underdogs at true north. 
Still, the appeal here is the columns, and that voice, those characters, those sentences. 
It’s hard to express now what a big figure J.B. was, big enough for decades to compete for those esteemed initials. He wrote for the Daily News [when it had a circulation inside of New York](https://www.historic-newspapers.com/blog/daily-news-history/) bigger than [the viewership MSNBC or CNN draws nationwide today](https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/this-is-the-cable-network-ratings-report-for-2023/). 
> There used to be someone like him in every city, a person who made his own name — and it was mostly him — by giving voice to the place’s characters and making some sense of its plot. No more. 
He was beaten up by a mobster, appeared on “The Tonight Show,” got letters sent to him “from the sewers of New York” by David Berkowitz (the “Son of Sam” serial killer whom Breslin later wrote a book about), effectively embedded with the Democrats who worked to bring down Richard Nixon, and starred in a national series of commercials for “a good drinking beer” including one somehow lost to the internet with “Pogo” cartoonist Walt Kelly. 
All that’s just the 1970s, after he capped his fully formed emergence in the 60s with a brilliant political run to make New York the 51st State on a citywide ticket with Village Voice founder Norman Mailer (tagline: “the other guys are the joke”). He remained in prime form through the 80s, 90s and the aughts, and was still going in the 10s, writing books and living large but always, finally, writing columns. 
Breslin belonged to the world of newspapers. The term “columnist” was born from and will die with the printed page and the daily paper.
\*\*\*
I don’t mean to poke at myself or my peers by saying that no one writing for a living in New York City has anything like his rhythm or presence now. There used to be someone like him in every city, a person who made his own name — and it was mostly him — by giving voice to the place’s characters and making some sense of its plot. No more.  
The economics of the news business have been swallowed up by tech goliaths and that has meant the loss of all those stories that people like Breslin told about people who make cities work. 
More talented and ambitious people than me are instead writing scripts for Marvel Comics’ intellectual property, before [AI gets to those too](https://chat.openai.com/share/7999c36e-1d1d-436e-844e-55a662e83c36) and maybe all the rest of us.
Right now, there’s me at The News on Sundays while [Ginia Bellafante](https://www.nytimes.com/by/ginia-bellafante) writes the Big City column for the half-orphaned Sunday Metropolitan section of the Times, which Daly recalls was referred to by one rewrite man at New York’s hometown paper as “a small English-language daily headquartered on Manhattan’s West Side.”
Errol Louis writes weekly, behind a paywall [at New York magazine](https://nymag.com/author/errol-louis/), and Nicole Gelinas appears regularly [in The Post](https://nypost.com/author/nicole-gelinas/). All of us except Bellafante have full-time jobs elsewhere — I’m an editor for the non-profit newsroom THE CITY, Errol is an anchor at NY1 and Nicole is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and — make of this what you will — all three of us also contribute to Vital City.  
Depending on how you count, you could throw in [Ross Barkan](https://rossbarkan.com/), who writes seemingly everywhere and about everything, [Mara Gay](https://www.nytimes.com/by/mara-gay), who focuses on New York for the Times editorial board, the opinionated crew at the scrappy new website [Hell Gate](https://hellgatenyc.com/) and maybe a few others. 
Add us all up, and it’s less reported commentary that you used to get in a single issue of the Village Voice, back when it was free, or in The News or The Post or the late and still sometimes lamented New York Newsday — and Breslin wrote at different points for all three — on any given day.
Neither of the city’s tabloids have a city columnist, and neither does The Times since it quietly folded its long-running [“About New York” column](https://www.nytimes.com/column/about-new-york), most recently helmed by the late Jim Dwyer, who kept reporting on the city after that slot was unceremoniously removed. 
New York didn’t get boring, but its newspapers got thinner and there’s really nothing online or on the air that’s filled that space. 
It’s not that New Yorkers became less colorful or less interested in the city’s characters, or that the columnist was some Runyonesque schtick that took a powder along with the dese-dem-and-dose denizens of the County of Kings who were already aging into the afterlife when Breslin published his Damon Runyon biography in 1992. 
> A columnist is — or was — out endlessly, talking to people all over the city and writing every other day or even more frequently, climbing tenement stairs while giving a platform to people who’d otherwise be lost in the crowd. 
There’s another column early on in “Essential Writings” where Breslin covers the death of the now largely forgotten New York Mirror, a tragedy for those involved even when the paper industry as a whole seemed invincible:
“He was finishing out a career as so many newspaper men do, sitting at a horseshoe-shaped copy desk and writing headlines of stories that younger men collect and write."
Breslin wrote that with respect, not malice, but that didn’t happen to him. A half-century later, he was still out and about, banging away.
A columnist is — or was — out endlessly, talking to people all over the city and writing every other day or even more frequently, climbing tenement stairs while giving a platform to people who’d otherwise be lost in the crowd. 
Human nature has changed as the technology and the economy have, and the crucial function in civic life that Breslin and others filled is, simply, not being filled now. It’s a damn shame.
“Working at a newspaper can get to be a way of life more than a job,” Breslin wrote at the end of that column, titled “The Wake for a Newspaper.”
It’s still true, more or less, after so many of those wakes because the world is full of stubborn people finding the tide and the time and doing the work of chronicling the daily life of the city.  
Bosses today aren’t so different from what they’ve always been: There have always been plenty of risk-averse company men and women out there. But there doesn’t seem to be a boss left who really understands the value for a publication in having the connection to the city that only comes from a columnist who’s there day in and day out, with the talent and the drive to see and hear as much as they can of this vast, sad, funny, weird place, write it up, and then do it the next day and the day after that, amen.
[Harry Siegel](https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/contributors/harry-siegel) is a senior editor at THE CITY, a columnist at the Daily News and a Vital City contributing writer.
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# Welcome to Northwestern University at Stateville
**Related:** [“Cleaning Is Something I Can Do”](https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/april-2024/cleaning-is-something-i-can-do/)
William Peeples was an invisible man. He did not know when exactly he’d come to think of himself this way. But after 27 years in prison — 13 of them on death row before his sentence was commuted — he had accepted it as true.
That’s how Peeples felt one morning in 2017 while he swept the chapel at Stateville Correctional Center. As one might expect at a state prison, it’s a chapel in name only. No stained-glass windows, no altar, no weeping Jesus gazing down from a wall-mounted crucifix. Just a few small rooms off a narrow hallway. Ring three times at the steel gate and wait for it to be unlocked, then walk past the laundry (two rings if that’s where you’re headed), with its row of churning industrial washers and dryers and its sharp tang of bleach, and into the chaplain’s office. There, the Reverend George Adamson, a somewhat eccentric presence with his long hair and penchant for motorcycles and a stint as musical director for the Platters, greets you from behind his large desk.
On this day, Peeples, push broom in hand, glanced up to see a visitor, a woman — a university professor. She was talking fast and excitedly to the chaplain, which, Peeples would later learn, is how she speaks to virtually everyone, always. Peeples had heard some inmates talking about her, about how she was a real-life Northwestern University faculty member teaching legit classes on philosophy and the law inside the prison.
Peeples was interested in taking her class, but he was nervous asking her about it. So, he was relieved when the professor, Jennifer Lackey, offered him a bright “Good morning” and extended her hand. 
“You’re the person I’ve been hearing about,” Peeples said. “The professor. I want to take your law ethics class.” 
“That’s great,” she responded. “Unfortunately, we’re already two weeks in and the class is full. Maybe the next one.”
“No,” he said. “I need to be in this one. Please.”
Lackey paused. The inmate seemed so hungry and earnest.
“OK,” she said. “What if I get you all the readings — there are six. Can you do a paper on each by the next class? It’s in one week.” 
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.
“All right. Get them to me and I’ll see what I can do.”
No one in the office that day — not Lackey, or Adamson, or Peeples — had any idea what would happen in time: that Peeples would become one of Lackey’s best students and that her classes would evolve into a history-making endeavor that would ensure Peeples and all the other inmates involved were never invisible again.
The tomb-gray slabs that form the walls of Stateville, a maximum security state prison in Crest Hill, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, loom out of the flatlands like a low line of brooding storm clouds. The guard towers weep rust, and large dark blotches mar the 33-foot-high walls — a fitting reflection of the grim history that has played out behind them. The serial killer John Wayne Gacy was put to death here in 1994 by lethal injection, spared the prison’s previous method of execution: Old Sparky, the electric chair. Richard Speck, who slaughtered eight nursing students in Chicago in 1966, served his sentence here. Leopold and Loeb, the University of Chicago students who famously kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1924 to try to prove they could get away with it, also did time here, as did Larry Hoover, who founded Chicago’s Gangster Disciples.
Even the architecture of the prison, which opened in 1925, is notorious. At the center of its labyrinthine campus stands F House, a circular building where hundreds of inmates once lived in cells stacked around a tower from which a single guard could peer into each one. This panopticon model was adopted in numerous prisons for its efficiency, but all such buildings in the United States, including Stateville’s, were eventually shuttered after criticism that the design created “insufferable noise-levels; extreme temperatures and poor ventilation,” in the words of the John Howard Association, an Illinois organization dedicated to criminal justice reform.
One Wednesday morning last November, eight days before Thanksgiving, the ghosts and gloom of the old prison were temporarily chased away, supplanted by an air of something as rare as silence in a cellblock: celebration. In the prison’s auditorium, 16 inmates in full graduation regalia, tassels swinging from their mortarboards, took their seats among family members and the media, the first graduating class of the Northwestern Prison Education Program and the first students in history to earn a bachelor’s from a top 10 American university while behind bars.
They listened as the commencement speaker, celebrated author Ta-Nehisi Coates, praised their achievement and shared his sense of connection with them. “When I got the invitation to come here to address you, wild horses couldn’t stop me,” he said, “because I’m addressing myself.” The graduates, including William Peeples, strode across the stage in turn, shook hands with Lackey and Coates, and took their diplomas in hand.
It was a scene that could have taken place on Evanston’s leafy campus. Except for the reminders that it wasn’t. Watching from every corner, at every door, from perches on each side of the stage, and from a balcony at the rear of the auditorium were armed guards, some chewing gum, some wearing sunglasses. And after the ceremony, when the cameras had left and the families had been escorted back outside, the inmates were aggressively searched and had their cells tossed. 
I visited Stateville in early January to sit in on a Northwestern class. When I arrived at the visitors’ entrance, a clean but drab room with fluorescent lights and a long list of rules posted in English and Spanish, I spotted Lackey, who would be leading me in. She was unmistakable — there or anywhere. A 5-foot-5 bundle of energy, earnestness, and fierceness, the 51-year-old professor is a hurricane blowing through the university and the prison. Between the prison program and her full-time job teaching philosophy to undergrads in Evanston, 80-hour workweeks are not unheard of for her. On this day, she was coordinating movements like a field marshal mounting a charge, chatting easily with an intake sergeant, helping a group of students and teaching assistants get signed in, greeting the professors, and making sure everyone’s papers and assignments were tucked into plastic bags as required.
After being searched, we were led by guards down a sidewalk to the prison entrance. One after another, steel gates banged shut behind us as we passed several checkpoints under the tight gaze of correctional officers. At each gate, their shouted instructions echoed down the sterile, polished-concrete hallways. We emerged through a solid steel door into the squintingly bright sunlight and walked across the prison yard, where a number of inmates who had been exercising stopped to watch us pass.
Entering the education building, we were shown to the program’s main classroom, aptly called the Purple Room. Its doorway, painted Wildcat purple, is a singular splash of color in the industrial gray hallway. The school’s color also accents a long iron girder overhead, the trim of the classroom’s interior windows, and the lower half of one of its walls. The Northwestern Prison Education Program seal is prominently stenciled on another.
Lackey launched the program in 2018, three years after starting to teach at Stateville and three years before the endeavor would be given degree-granting status. Originally, the students were meant to live together in a single college-dorm-like cell house, but a roof collapse prevented that from happening, leaving them scattered in different locations. The Purple Room was soon created, upgraded from a room that had previously been unusable, a de facto trash dump condemned by wall-climbing mold.
> The lighting is poor. Cardboard boxes propped on laps serve as writing desks. Traditional pens are forbidden because the hard plastic can be fashioned into shivs.
By ones and twos, the student inmates — dressed in powder blue prison shirts and navy blue prison pants and sporting wool hats or kufi caps, beards, braids, tattoo sleeves, and neck tattoos that seemed incongruous with the reading glasses many wore — drifted in beneath a set of pipes that rattled like a bucket boy banging out a solo on a downtown street corner.
At just past the hour, the professor arrived. Slightly rumpled in a maroon sweater and chinos, his dark beard fighting to hold off an encroachment of silver, David Smith is a Mr. Chips stereotype. He teaches Statistical Methods of Psychology, which, he is well aware, isn’t a favorite subject of most of his student inmates, who tend to prefer explorations of philosophy and sociology to the cold language of binomial distributions and standard deviations. So, to grab the class’s attention, he employs sports analogies.
That day, he introduced one statistical method as a means of settling a timeless argument: Who was better, Michael Jordan or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Smith guided the class through the formula, with inmates peppering him with a range of questions, some on point, others not so much: “Can you do that last part again?” “Is that the same thing as the P values?” “Have you taught Jeff Bezos’s daughter? I heard she’s at Northwestern.”
The discussion culminated in a genuine eureka moment. “Yes!” an inmate named Miguelangel Garcia shouted, grinning. “You’ve just given me a way to prove Michael Jordan is the best of all time.”
It was Lackey’s goal for the Purple Room to mimic other Northwestern classrooms as closely as possible, important enough to her to spend grant money acquiring the same desks as those on the Evanston campus. Likewise, course offerings are many and varied — psychology, chemistry, journalism, statistics, sociology, physics, legal writing and advocacy, philosophy (Philosophy of Punishment and Incarceration is a favorite), archaeology, documentary filmmaking, and dozens of others.
The logistics of creating and maintaining a program like this would be daunting in any off-campus setting, but a place like Stateville adds layers of complexity. The syllabuses for all classes must be approved by prison officials. Ditto all textbooks, which also must be physically checked by the prison staff before being handed out to students. That’s quite an undertaking in a program with around 100 inmates enrolled — roughly 80 at Stateville and 20 at Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison about 30 miles northeast of Springfield. The students, divided into groups of about 20, take three classes a week, each class lasting three hours, and have one day of study hall. With four such groupings at Stateville, that’s 12 classes a week.
It’s a far cry from the early days. The renowned author Alex Kotlowitz, a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, has been teaching at Stateville since 2019. He recalls the conditions back then, when teaching was the easy part: “I had 10 incarcerated students and 10 undergrads from Medil**l**. And we would all carpool down once a week, and they would lock us in a room \[over the prison gym\].” 
As hard as Lackey has worked to create a setting in Stateville that mirrors Northwestern, one need merely hear the voices that bounce off the cinder blocks of the hallway outside the Purple Room like screams in a metal garbage can to start to grasp the differences. Here, there are no faculty office hours available to inmates. “They can’t even drop a professor a quick email,” Lackey says. “They can’t follow up on something. They can’t look something up online.” 
Justified or not, the living situation is so oppressive, so filled with distractions and hurdles, both psychological and physical, that, to Lackey, it’s a wonder students can read full passages from textbooks, much less produce thoughtful essays — all handwritten — on the application of the philosophies of Kant and Socrates to life in the housing projects. The cells are so small that “if two men are standing up at the same time, they’re quite literally bumping into each other,” says Lackey, who has visited the cell house more than once. 
The lighting is poor. Cardboard boxes propped on laps serve as writing desks. Traditional pens are forbidden because the hard plastic can be fashioned into shivs. Instead, inmates must use the bendy plastic inserts as their sole writing instruments. “I’m younger than many of the students, and I feel like it would give my hand arthritis,” Lackey says.
The biggest challenge, however, is the noise — the relentless, jarring din of the cellblock. “Noise, noise, noise,” Lackey says. “If one person in the cell house wants to blast rap music, and you’re trying to do homework — I mean, one time we asked if we could donate earplugs, and they said no. I was at Stateville recently and saw one of the students and said, ‘You look so exhausted.’ He said, ‘It’s the noise. I just can never sleep for more than a couple of hours.’ ” At one point, one of the students was trying to do schoolwork while his cellmate, who had been smoking ketamine all day, was having a psychotic breakdown. And then there are the periodic visits from the Orange Crush, the prison’s tactical team, which tosses cells, looking for contraband. Textbooks and assignments have been known to get trashed in the process.
“It’s not an easy place to visit,” echoes Kotlowitz. “Physically, I think, it’s the most depressing place I’ve ever been. The prison’s a hundred years old, it’s literally falling apart. The guys can’t even drink the water there. They get, I think, 23 bottles of water a week, and they went six months without hot water a couple of years ago.”
Overcoming such obstacles is a semimiraculous feat in Lackey’s view: “Getting a college degree is hard. Getting a college degree from Northwestern is very hard. And getting a college degree from Northwestern University while you’re incarcerated at a place like Stateville Correctional Center is nothing short of heroic.”
The letter, neatly penned on yellow Care Bears stationery, was addressed to the warden of Cook County Jail. Its author, an 11-year-old girl, wondered if she might satisfy her Catholic school service requirement by doing volunteer work with some of the inmates.
It seemed an absurd request. Allow a young girl to mingle with prisoners? Then again, the sheriff at the time, Richard Elrod, knew the value of feel-good publicity.
And so it was, one day in the fall of 1984, that a squad car pulled up in front of Jennifer Lackey’s school in the west suburbs. To the astonishment of her classmates and teachers, the seventh grader climbed in and was soon on her way to 26th and California. A photo in the newspaper captured the moment: Lackey, dressed in a white short-sleeved blouse with her dark hair pulled back, flanked on one side by Elrod and on the other by four female inmates, beaming for the camera while holding a tray of cookies that Lackey and her mother had stayed up most of the night baking.
While her schoolmates chose activities like babysitting and volunteering in retirement homes to satisfy their service requirements, Lackey felt drawn to what at the time was a radical idea: that inmates were as deserving of compassion and humanity as anyone else. “I remember having a conversation with my mother,” she says. “I don’t know exactly how I put it then, but the feeling was that criminal activity is often attributed to people entirely as arising from agency — that you did this, and you deserve \[jail\]. And I felt back then, as I still do now, that there are many kinds of social influences at play in how people end up incarcerated.”
Her face-to-face meetings with the inmates only confirmed such feelings for her. “I remember one woman was crying and hugged me and gave me a flower made out of tissue. I still have that in my little box of childhood memories. I think that for many of them, it felt very comforting to be with a child when so many of them were separated from their own. It obviously had a very profound impact on me.”
![](https://www.chicagomag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/04_FEATURE_PRISON.LAY-P_2400651.jpg)
Lackey visited Cook County Jail when she was 11. “It obviously had a very profound impact on me,” she says. Photograph: courtesy of Jennifer Lackey
As formative as her visits were, Lackey did not envision herself working with inmates as a career. Her mother, Lackey’s hero and guiding force, worked a series of office jobs to support her daughter and two older children as a single parent, and to her, there was no greater pursuit than a career in education.
Her mother didn’t just preach the value of learning. “When I was 3 or 4, she started taking night classes,” recalls Lackey. “And this is, I think, another part of the connection to the work that I do, because my mom really felt that education is empowering. She didn’t have a college degree when she had us, but she went back to school and would have us in the cafeteria studying, give us coloring books and stuff. She would take her classes and come home and be cooking in the kitchen and telling us about literature and psychology. I remember her literally walking me through chapters of *Tess of the d’Urbervilles.*” Eventually, Lackey’s mother earned a bachelor’s from Concordia University in River Forest.
Lackey received her doctorate in philosophy from Brown in 2000 and began teaching at Pomona College, an elite liberal arts school in California. After a stint at Northern Illinois, she joined the faculty of Northwestern in 2007. In 2015, she started teaching a single philosophy class at Stateville, having gotten the prison to agree to it. “I was doing it on my own, with no credit, just a certificate, a very informal thing,” she explains. But she had bigger ambitions. She soon drafted a proposal to Northwestern for a degree program “with the same content and the same expectations as I had with my on-campus classes.”
> An undercurrent of resentment from some of the guards and staff members at Stateville ripples through the prison. Students have been subjected to strip searches that they feel go beyond routine security measures.
She laid out specifics, like target enrollment and a timeline, but to mount such a program would take an enormous buy-in from the university. And that proved to be no easy sell. “It’s not something that was really familiar to an institution like Northwestern,” Lackey says. The first provost she approached, she says, “needed to be persuaded about how this work fit with the university’s mission.”
Perhaps the biggest hurdle was the lack of precedent. No top-tier university had ever offered anything remotely like what Lackey had in mind. Offering education programs in prison was one thing. Handing out a four-year degree from one of the best universities in the country was quite another. 
Lackey knew she would need money. For that, she applied for and was awarded a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, a giant in higher education philanthropy. Though the foundation administrators initially had concerns over the extent of Northwestern’s involvement with the program, Lackey says, they eventually agreed to fund it. “They were tired of certificate programs for incarcerated people, where universities receive credit for having prison education programs but without putting their names behind degrees.”
She still needed to persuade Northwestern, though. A new provost, Jonathan Holloway, had said he would allow credits to be granted and tuition waived for such a program, but stopped short of agreeing to grant a degree. Lackey continued to fight. “My personality is a little bit like a bulldozer,” she says. “I just don’t let things go.”
When Holloway left to take over as president of Rutgers in 2020, Lackey and a colleague peppered the inbox of the interim provost, Kathleen Hagerty, asking for updates on the request. Hagerty had been working to secure funding that could sustain the program beyond the Mellon grants, but Lackey was sending so many emails that the provost finally asked for some patience. “I remember I was walking into the grocery store and she called me,” Lackey recalls. Hagerty said she was working on it. “I’m about two weeks out from getting to a place where I’m comfortable with all of this.”
Finally, in 2021, Northwestern agreed to offer a four-year degree to inmates who completed the program — at no cost to them. Lackey was vacationing with her husband’s family in Corrales, New Mexico, when she received word via a Zoom call. “I was sitting at the kitchen table in this Southwestern-style house,” she recalls. “It was that vivid, just an absolutely incredible moment. I have written books and won awards, but this was the most emotional moment of my whole career.”
The real work was just beginning. There were issues to iron out. “It was like, What is the students’ major going to be, and what school is going to confer it, and who’s on board? And what happens when the students are released and they haven’t finished?” Lackey recalls. “We met weekly — and I mean every single week — for an hour to hammer out all these details.” It would take a full year before everything was worked out. But with Lackey fueling the program, there was no doubt it would come together.
“She’s kind of a fast talker, a lot of this kind of high energy,” says Kotlowitz, the professor and author. “But here’s the thing. She has an incredibly generous spirit, one of the most generous people I know. And I don’t mean that in that she gives, but in her ability to build these individual connections with these guys. I remember going into that prison early on, and one of the things that I just was astonished by — she not only had the respect and admiration of the students, but she also had the respect and admiration of the corrections officers.”
William Peeples takes a seat across from me in a large corner room in the education building. Sun floods through the glass block windows. Clusters of student inmates chat at nearby tables as one sets up a video on a large-screen television on a rolling stand. Lackey had introduced Peeples to me earlier in the day, saying she wanted me to talk to one of her best students — not just at Stateville, but anywhere. 
Peeples, in keeping with his Muslim faith, wears a white kufi cap and a neatly trimmed chin beard — mostly white save for a stripe of iron gray. With his gray-framed glasses and placid manner, Peeples, now 60, looks the part of an earnest, if older, student. He drops his head and shakes it gently when I ask him to recount his journey from death row inmate to Northwestern graduate. 
Peeples was raised in the Robert Taylor Homes, the public housing high-rises on South State Street that were torn down in the early 2000s. By age 11, Peeples was drinking wine and smoking weed. By his early teens, he had joined the Black Gangster Disciples and dropped out of high school. 
On May 18, 1988, according to trial evidence, Peeples, who was living in Schaumburg, stabbed a neighbor at his apartment complex 39 times in the process of robbing her for drug money, killing her, then set fire to her apartment to try to cover up the crime. The victim, Dawn Dudovick, had opened the door to Peeples to lend him a cup of sugar. The *Chicago Tribune* reported that Peeples had shown no remorse during the jury trial and “stared defiantly” at Judge Brendan McCooey as he sentenced him to death.
In his first years in prison, at Menard Correctional Center, Peeples remained violent, attacking a guard and other inmates. It was in 1994, he says, after someone brought him a tape of a Louis Farrakhan sermon, that he began what he calls his “transition.” Peeples eventually disavowed the controversial Nation of Islam leader and became an orthodox Muslim. Over the years, as he grew more devout, he also became a voracious reader, studying the dictionary and devouring books by authors such as James Baldwin and Richard Wright. 
In 2003, Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of all those on death row, and Peeples was transferred to Stateville, where he is now serving a life term.
After joining Lackey’s class in 2018 and taking as many additional courses as the prison would allow, Peeples wasn’t sure what would come next for him. That’s when Lackey presented a new opportunity. “Just as class was about to wrap up, she comes in with this stack of papers,” he recalls. “She was like, ‘These are applications for Northwestern’s degree program.’ I was like, ‘The what?’ ” Lackey explained that she was rolling out a full program and working hard to get Northwestern to grant a bachelor’s to inmates who completed it. She thought Peeples would be an ideal candidate. 
“I was a little intimidated,” Peeples says. “You’ve heard of impostor syndrome?” He had thrived in Lackey’s class, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready for a full-time course load. He took the application as much to humor Lackey as anything. 
Before the professor left, she gave Peeples a parting word. “It was almost like this woman read my mind,” he recalls. “When I went to turn away, she looked me in the eye and said, ‘You can do this — if you want it.’ ”
Later that day, he returned to his cell and filled out the application. “I wrote probably the best, most heartfelt essays of my life about why I should be in the program.” He described the events that brought him to death row:  How he grew up in public housing and was physically abused as a child. How he was drawn into gang life and became a thief and murderer to fuel a deepening drug habit. And how his conversion to Islam and the courses he’d taken in prison had reframed his view of himself and led him to search for ways to atone for what he’d done, an act that haunted him still.
“I’m a grandfather,” Peeples tells me. “My victim will never be a grandparent because I took her life.” Whatever he has been able to achieve academically, he says, he has done to honor not only family members who stood by him but also the victim’s memory. 
One thing Lackey may not have anticipated: Not everyone would share her excitement about a major university granting inmates degrees. An undercurrent of resentment from some of the guards and staff members at Stateville ripples through the prison. Students have been subjected to strip searches that they feel go beyond routine security measures. Some days, guards arrive late to take students from their cells to the education building, making them tardy for class. As those inmates are escorted across the prison grounds, they are met with rolled eyes, smirks, and under-the-breath snipes from certain corrections officers.
On some level, the discontentment is understandable. These are convicted criminals, after all — many of them murderers. The guards have led lives that have kept them on the other side of the bars. No one is offering them a free-ride education from Northwestern.
> “We so often think about these guys as some ‘others,’ as monsters, as people who are evil,” says professor Alex Kotlowitz. “And yet, they are more than that. They’re who we are. They’re us.”
Why do inmates deserve special opportunities? Even Kotlowitz, who has written with empathy and compassion about poverty and perversions of justice, “kind of bumbled” his response to that question during an interview with the *New Yorker* editor David Remnick, he says. His answer today comes down to a question of humanity: “Look, they are a part of us. We so often think about these guys as some ‘others,’ as monsters, as people who are evil. And yet, they are more than that. They’re who we are. They’re us. They’ve made mistakes and they’ve shown remorse and asked for forgiveness both of themselves and others.”
He continues: “We’ve got, what, two million now behind bars, and they’re disproportionately Black and brown people. And if we’re going to restore a sense of equity or equanimity to how we deal with people who have committed crimes, then we’ve got to include them in our community. I’m always reminded of Studs Terkel, who I was fortunate to count as a dear friend and mentor. He had this line — and I’m paraphrasing — that if the community isn’t doing all right, then neither am I. The challenge for us is to imagine these men and women as part of our community. If they’re not doing all right, neither am I. On that basis, it seems to me perfectly reasonable and fair that we provide them with an education, even a great education.”
On one of my visits, I met with Charles Truitt, who took over as Stateville’s warden less than two years ago, after the program was already underway. He favors such a progressive stance toward prison education, heaping praise on Lackey and the Northwestern program and calling the graduation ceremony “monumental history” and “probably the pinnacle to my career.” He treads carefully, though, when asked about the resentment, even hostility, from guards that had been described to me. 
Most of the complaints he’s heard about the program, Truitt insists, come from people outside the prison walls — perhaps from those wary of reading stories celebrating the student inmates. “As far as my staff, that has never gotten back to me that this is an unacceptable practice here.” Still, the former guard hints at disgruntlement. “I would not say it was easy for me to get my staff to understand, but they also understand that I worked this facility three decades ago. I turned keys like they did.”
The critical factor in getting guards on board, he says, has been explaining to them the benefits to the Stateville operations. “When you look at the security piece of putting these programs into place, you realize they give the student a sense of worth,” he says. “And the more we give them to do, the more things to help them work on themselves,” the fewer problems the prison has managing them.
The graduation ceremony, at which the inmates were allowed to freely interact with friends and family and professors and the media, posed a particular challenge for the guards, in terms of not just ensuring security and safety but also forcing themselves to stand back and not interfere with an unabashed moment of jubilation from men they had been accustomed to controlling. Says Truitt: “To say that I was nervous — nervous every second — is an understatement.”
On that Wednesday morning in November, 16 students wearing purple robes over white prison-issue sneakers gathered in the Stateville auditorium. On the stage were Northwestern professors and various dignitaries. Among those inmates who were given a chance to speak to the crowd of some 200 that day was William Peeples.
He gripped the sides of the lectern, letting the waves of applause wash over him as he scanned the audience, glancing from side to side before finally sighing softly and pulling the microphone down and close. “Family, friends, and loved ones,” he began, his voice breaking slightly. “This moment is literally the culmination of 30 years of people pouring into me.” When he first arrived in prison, he had been defined by “drugs, violence, ignorance to the max,” he told the group, chopping the air with each of his words. “And instead of judging and condemning me, \[the people in the Northwestern program\] loved me.”
He talked about the woman he had met six years earlier, while sweeping the prison chapel, feeling invisible. She had made him feel seen. “I won’t bore you with the story. But what I will say is that there have been very few times in my life where a stranger had made me feel as accepted and valued as that woman there.” He pointed to Lackey. “If we had more people like her, these places would not be necessary.”
When it came Lackey’s turn to speak, her eyes were shining with tears. “I am in awe of and humbled by each of you,” she said to the graduates. “You have radically expanded what it means to be a Northwestern student, and you have enriched Northwestern University in ways that will echo for decades to come.”
Afterward, graduate Michael Broadway approached Lackey onstage. The two hugged briefly, and Broadway, whose mother was in the audience, swept his arm out as if to say to Lackey, *Look at this.* “Is this everything you envisioned?” he asked her.
“We both laughed really hard,” Lackey recalls. “Because the answer was definitely no. It was so beyond anything I could ever have imagined.”
A bittersweet feeling hung in the air after the ceremony. Outside the prison auditorium, the graduates posed for group photos, beaming and laughing, shouting at Lackey to stand in the center. On a photographer’s count, they flung their mortarboards skyward, and then the student inmates and their professors exchanged one last round of hugs. One of the shots was included in Reuters’s weekly selection of the best news photos from around the world.
Peeples has applied for clemency and is awaiting a ruling. In the meantime, he has been hired by the Northwestern program as a teaching fellow for a biology course being taught by a physician from the university’s medical school. He may never get out of prison, may never be able to apply his degree outside these walls. But in a broader sense, he sees this achievement as another step on a path toward personal redemption. Guiding him, he says, is a central question: “What am I doing substantively to make the world, and even this environment in here, a better place?”
The ceremony over, he and the other students took off their purple gowns, returning to their prison blues. The guards, barking a little louder than usual, lined the men up and began walking them back to their cells, back into the gray.
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# Who Is Podcast Guest Turned Star Andrew Huberman, Really?
## Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control
## The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist.
[![Portrait of Kerry Howley](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/b3c/ed5/3eafb53dd24662654dc6905fe976d6e928-kerry-howley.2x.rsquare.w168.jpg)](https://nymag.com/author/kerry-howley/)
By , a features writer for New York Magazine since 2021.  She is the author of ‘Thrown’ and ‘Bottom’s Up and the Devil Laughs.’
![](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/9d0/e48/a65cd5fe6ab8ff7856bfed3f033273ad94-Andrew-Huberman.rvertical.w570.jpg)
Photo-Illustration: New York Magazine; Source image: Sciocomm Media
For the past three years, one of the biggest podcasters on the planet has told a story to millions of listeners across half a dozen shows: There was a little boy, and the boy’s family was happy, until one day, the boy’s family fell apart. The boy was sent away. He foundered, he found therapy, he found science, he found exercise. And he became strong.
Today, Andrew Huberman is a stiff, jacked 48-year-old associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is given to delivering three-hour lectures on subjects such as “the health of our dopaminergic neurons.” His podcast is revelatory largely because it does not condescend, which has not been the way of public-health information in our time. He does not give the impression of someone diluting science to universally applicable sound bites for the slobbering masses. “Dopamine is vomited out into the synapse or it’s released volumetrically, but then it has to bind someplace and trigger those G-protein-coupled receptors, and caffeine increases the number, the density of those G-protein-coupled receptors,” is how he explains the effect of coffee before exercise in a two-hour-and-16-minute deep dive that has, as of this writing, nearly 8.9 million views on YouTube.
[![package-table-of-contents-photo](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/6d5/b8c/e00cb357f64a19ed150a792dbac144613d-0724Cov-4x5-Huberman.2x.rvertical.w330.jpg)](https://nymag.com/magazine/toc/2024-03-25.html)
[See All](https://nymag.com/magazine/toc/2024-03-25.html) 
Millions of people feel compelled to hear him draw distinctions between neuromodulators and classical neurotransmitters. Many of those people will then adopt an associated “protocol.” They will follow his elaborate morning routine. They will model the most basic functions of human life — sleeping, eating, seeing — on his sober advice. They will tell their friends to do the same. “He’s not like other bro podcasters,” they will say, and they will be correct; he is a tenured Stanford professor associated with a Stanford lab; he knows the difference between a neuromodulator and a neurotransmitter. He is just back from a sold-out tour in Australia, where he filled the Sydney Opera House. Stanford, at one point, hung signs (AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY) apparently to deter fans in search of the lab.
With this power comes the power to lift other scientists out of their narrow silos and turn them, too, into celebrities, but these scientists will not be Huberman, whose personal appeal is distinct. Here we have a broad-minded professor puppyishly enamored with the wonders of biological function, generous to interviewees (“I love to be wrong”), engaged in endearing attempts to sound like a normal person (“Now, we all have to eat, and it’s nice to eat foods that we enjoy. I certainly do that. I love food, in fact”).
This is a world in which the soft art of self-care is made concrete, in which Goop-adjacent platitudes find solidity in peer review. “People go, ‘Oh, that feels kind of like weenie stuff,’” Huberman tells Joe Rogan. “The *data* show that gratitude, and avoiding toxic people and focusing on good-quality social interactions … huge increases in serotonin.” “Hmmm,” Rogan says. There is a kindness to the way Huberman reminds his audience always of the possibilities of neuroplasticity: They can change. He has changed. As an adolescent, he says, he endured the difficult divorce of his parents, a Stanford professor who worked in the tech industry and a children’s-book author. The period after the separation was, he says, one of “pure neglect.” His father was gone, his mother “totally checked out.” He was forced, around age 14, to endure a month of “youth detention,” a situation that was “not a jail,” but harrowing in its own right.
“The thing that really saved me,” Huberman tells Peter Attia, “was this therapy thing … I was like, *Oh, shit* … I do have to choke back a little bit here. It’s a crazy thing to have somebody say, ‘Listen,’ like, to give you the confidence, like, ‘We’re gonna figure this out. *We’re gonna figure this out.*’ There’s something very powerful about that. It wasn’t like, you know, ‘Everything will be okay.’ It was like, *We’re gonna figure this out.*”
The wayward son would devote himself to therapy and also to science. He would turn Rancid all the way up and study all night long. He would be tenured at Stanford with his own lab, severing optic nerves in mice and noting what grew back.
Huberman has been in therapy, he says, since high school. He has, in fact, several therapists, and psychiatrist Paul Conti appears on his podcast frequently to discuss mental health. Therapy is “hard work … like going to the gym and doing an effective workout.” The brain is a machine that needs tending. Our cells will benefit from the careful management of stress. “I love *mechanism,*” says Huberman; our feelings are integral to the apparatus. There are Huberman Husbands (men who optimize), a phenomenon not to be confused with #DaddyHuberman (used by women on TikTok in the man’s thrall).
A prophet must constrain his self-revelation. He must give his story a shape that ultimately tends toward inner strength, weakness overcome. For Andrew Huberman to become your teacher and mine, as he very much was for a period this fall — a period in which I diligently absorbed sun upon waking, drank no more than once a week, practiced physiological sighs in traffic, and said to myself, out loud in my living room, “I *also* love mechanism”; a period during which I began to think seriously, for the first time in my life, about reducing stress, and during which both my husband and my young child saw tangible benefit from repeatedly immersing themselves in frigid water; a period in which I realized that I not only liked this podcast but liked other women who liked this podcast — he must be, in some way, better than the rest of us.
Huberman sells a dream of control down to the cellular level. But something has gone wrong. In the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between the podcaster preaching dopaminergic restraint and a man, with newfound wealth, with access to a world unseen by most professors. The problem with a man always working on himself is that he may also be working on you.
Some of Andrew’s earliest Instagram posts are of his lab. We see smiling undergraduates “slicing, staining, and prepping brains” and a wall of framed science publications in which Huberman-authored papers appear: *Nature,* *Cell Reports, The Journal of Neuroscience.* In 2019, under the handle @hubermanlab, Andrew began posting straightforward educational videos in which he talks directly into the camera about subjects such as the organizational logic of the brain stem. Sometimes he would talk over a simple anatomical sketch on lined paper; the impression was, as it is now, of a fast-talking teacher in conversation with an intelligent student. The videos amassed a fan base, and Andrew was, in 2020, invited on some of the biggest podcasts in the world. On *Lex Fridman Podcast,* he talked about experiments his lab was conducting by inducing fear in people. On *The* *Rich Roll Podcast,* the relationship between breathing and motivation. On *The* *Joe Rogan Experience,* experiments his lab was conducting on mice.
He was a fluid, engaging conversationalist, rich with insight and informed advice. In a year of death and disease, when many felt a sense of agency slipping away, Huberman had a gentle plan. The subtext was always the same: We may live in chaos, but there are mechanisms of control.
By then he had a partner, Sarah, which is not her real name. Sarah was someone who could talk to anyone about anything. She was dewy and strong and in her mid-40s, though she looked a decade younger, with two small kids from a previous relationship. She had old friends who adored her and no trouble making new ones. She came across as scattered in the way she jumped readily from topic to topic in conversation, losing the thread before returning to it, but she was in fact extremely organized. She was a woman who kept track of things. She was an entrepreneur who could organize a meeting, a skill she would need later for reasons she could not possibly have predicted. When I asked her a question in her home recently, she said the answer would be on an old phone; she stood up, left for only a moment, and returned with a box labeled OLD PHONES.
Sarah’s relationship with Andrew began in February 2018 in the Bay Area, where they both lived. He messaged her on Instagram and said he owned a home in Piedmont, a wealthy city separate from Oakland. That turned out not to be precisely true; he lived off Piedmont Avenue, which was in Oakland. He was courtly and a bit formal, as he would later be on the podcast. In July, in her garden, Sarah says she asked to clarify the depth of their relationship. They decided, she says, to be exclusive.
Both had devoted their lives to healthy living: exercise, good food, good information. They cared immoderately about what went into their bodies. Andrew could command a room and clearly took pleasure in doing so. He was busy and handsome, healthy and extremely ambitious. He gave the impression of working on himself; throughout their relationship, he would talk about “repair” and “healthy merging.” He was devoted to his bullmastiff, Costello, whom he worried over constantly: *Was Costello comfortable? Sleeping properly?* Andrew liked to dote on the dog, she says, and he liked to be doted on by Sarah. “I was never sitting around him,” she says. She cooked for him and felt glad when he relished what she had made. Sarah was willing to have unprotected sex because she believed they were monogamous.
On Thanksgiving in 2018, Sarah planned to introduce Andrew to her parents and close friends. She was cooking. Andrew texted repeatedly to say he would be late, then later. According to a friend, “he was just, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be there. Oh, I’m going to be running hours late.’ And then of course, all of these things were planned around his arrival and he just kept going, ‘Oh, I’m going to be late.’ And then it’s the end of the night and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry this and this happened.’”
Huberman disappearing was something of a pattern. Friends, girlfriends, and colleagues describe him as hard to reach. The list of reasons for not showing up included a book, time-stamping the podcast, Costello, wildfires, and a “meetings tunnel.” “He is flaky and doesn’t respond to things,” says his friend Brian MacKenzie, a health influencer who has collaborated with him on breathing protocols. “And if you can’t handle that, Andrew definitely is not somebody you want to be close to.” “He in some ways disappeared,” says David Spiegel, a Stanford psychiatrist who calls Andrew “prodigiously smart” and “intensely engaging.” “I mean, I recently got a really nice email from him. Which I was touched by. I really was.”
In 2018, before he was famous, Huberman invited a Colorado-based investigative journalist and anthropologist, Scott Carney, to his home in Oakland for a few days; the two would go camping and discuss their mutual interest in actionable science. It had been Huberman, a fan of Carney’s book *What Doesn’t Kill Us,* who initially reached out, and the two became friendly over phone and email. Huberman confirmed Carney’s list of camping gear: sleeping bag, bug spray, boots.
When Carney got there, the two did not go camping. Huberman simply disappeared for most of a day and a half while Carney stayed home with Costello. He puttered around Huberman’s place, buying a juice, walking through the neighborhood, waiting for him to return. “It was extremely weird,” says Carney. Huberman texted from elsewhere saying he was busy working on a grant. (A spokesperson for Huberman says he clearly communicated to Carney that he went to work.) Eventually, instead of camping, the two went on a few short hikes.
Even when physically present, Huberman can be hard to track. “I don’t have total fidelity to who Andrew is,” says his friend Patrick Dossett. “There’s always a little unknown there.” He describes Andrew as an “amazing thought partner” with “almost total recall,” such a memory that one feels the need to watch what one says; a stray comment could surface three years later. And yet, at other times, “you’re like, *All right, I’m saying words and he’s nodding or he is responding, but I can tell something I said sent him down a path that he’s continuing to have internal dialogue about, and I need to wait for him to come back.*”
Andrew Huberman declined to be interviewed for this story. Through a spokesman, Huberman says he did not become exclusive with Sarah until late 2021, that he was not doted on, that tasks between him and Sarah were shared “based on mutual agreement and proficiency,” that their Thanksgiving plans were tentative, and that he “maintains a very busy schedule and shows up to the vast majority of his commitments.”
In the fall of 2020, Huberman sold his home in Oakland and rented one in Topanga, a wooded canyon enclave contiguous with Los Angeles. When he came back to Stanford, he stayed with Sarah, and when he was in Topanga, Sarah was often with him.
When they fought, it was, she says, typically because Andrew would fixate on her past choices: the men she had been with before him, the two children she had had with another man. “I experienced his rage,” Sarah recalls, “as two to three days of yelling in a row. When he was in this state, he would go on until 11 or 12 at night and sometimes start again at two or three in the morning.”
The relationship struck Sarah’s friends as odd. At one point, Sarah said, “I just want to be with my kids and cook for my man.” “I was like, *Who says that?*” says a close friend. “I mean, I’ve known her for 30 years. She’s a powerful, decisive, strong woman. We grew up in this very feminist community. That’s not a thing either of us would ever say.”
Another friend found him stressful to be around. “I try to be open-minded,” she said of the relationship. “I don’t want to be the most negative, nonsupportive friend just because of my personal observations and disgust over somebody.” When they were together, he was buzzing, anxious. “He’s like, ‘Oh, my dog needs his blanket this way.’ And I’m like, ‘Your dog is just laying there and super-cozy. Why are you being weird about the blanket?’”
Sarah was not the only person who experienced the extent of Andrew’s anger. In 2019, Carney sent Huberman materials from his then-forthcoming book, *The Wedge,* in which Huberman appears. He asked Huberman to confirm the parts in which he was mentioned. For months, Huberman did not respond. Carney sent a follow-up email; if Huberman did not respond, he would assume everything was accurate. In 2020, after months of saying he was too busy to review the materials, Huberman called him and, Carney says, came at him in a rage. “I’ve never had a source I thought was friendly go bananas,” says Carney. Screaming, Huberman threatened to sue and accused Carney of “violating Navy OpSec.”
It had become, by then, one of the most perplexing relationships of Carney’s life. That year, Carney agreed to Huberman’s invitation to swim with sharks on an island off Mexico. First, Carney would have to spend a month of his summer getting certified in Denver. He did, at considerable expense. Huberman then canceled the trip a day before they were set to leave. “I think Andrew likes building up people’s expectations,” says Carney, “and then he actually enjoys the opportunity to pull the rug out from under you.”
In January 2021, Huberman launched his own podcast. Its reputation would be directly tied to his role as teacher and scientist. “I’d like to emphasize that this podcast,” he would say every episode, with his particular combination of formality and discursiveness, “is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public.”
“I remember feeling quite lonely and making some efforts to repair that,” Huberman would say on an episode in 2024. “Loneliness,” his interviewee said, “is a need state.” In 2021, the country was in the later stages of a need state: bored, alone, powerless. Huberman offered not only hours of educative listening but a plan to structure your day. A plan for waking. For eating. For exercising. For sleep. At a time when life had shifted to screens, he brought people back to their corporeal selves. He advised a “physiological sigh” — two short breaths in and a long one out — to reduce stress. He pulled countless people from their laptops and put them in rhythm with the sun. “Thank you for all you do to better humanity,” read comments on YouTube. “You may have just saved my life man.” “If Andrew were science teacher for everyone in the world,” someone wrote, “no one would have missed even a single class.”
Asked by *Time* last year for his definition of fun, Huberman said, “I learn and I like to exercise.” Among his most famous episodes is one in which he declares moderate drinking decidedly unhealthy. As MacKenzie puts it, “I don’t think anybody or anything, including Prohibition, has ever made more people think about alcohol than Andrew Huberman.” While he claims repeatedly that he doesn’t want to “demonize alcohol,” he fails to mask his obvious disapproval of anyone who consumes alcohol in any quantity. He follows a time-restricted eating schedule. He discusses constraint even in joy, because a dopamine spike is invariably followed by a drop below baseline; he explains how even a small pleasure like a cup of coffee before every workout reduces the capacity to release dopamine. Huberman frequently refers to the importance of “social contact” and “peace, contentment, and delight,” always mentioned as a triad; these are ultimately leveraged for the one value consistently espoused: physiological health.
In August 2021, Sarah says she read Andrew’s journal and discovered a reference to cheating. She was, she says, “gutted.” “I hear you are saying you are angry and hurt,” he texted her the same day. “I will hear you as much as long as needed for us.”
Andrew and Sarah wanted children together. Optimizers sometimes prefer not to conceive naturally; one can exert more control when procreation involves a lab. Sarah began the first of several rounds of IVF. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies that he and Sarah had decided to have children together, clarifying that they “decided to create embryos by IVF.”)
In 2021, she tested positive for a high-risk form of HPV, one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. “I had never tested positive,” she says, “and had been tested regularly for ten years.” (A spokesperson for Huberman says he has never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC, there is currently no approved test for HPV in men.) When she brought it up, she says, he told her you could contract HPV from many things.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about truth-telling and deception,” Andrew told evolutionary psychologist David Buss on a November 2021 episode of *Huberman Lab* called “How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term.” They were talking about regularities across cultures in mate preferences.
“Could you tell us,” Andrew asked, “about how men and women leverage deception versus truth-telling and communicating some of the things around mate choice selection?”
“Effective tactics for men,” said a gravel-voiced, 68-year-old Buss, “are often displaying cues to long-term interest … men tend to exaggerate the depths of their feelings for a woman.”
“Let’s talk about infidelity in committed relationships,” Andrew said, laughing. “I’m guessing it does happen.”
“Men who have affairs tend to have affairs with a larger number of affair partners,” said Buss. “And so which then by definition can’t be long-lasting. You can’t,” added Buss wryly, “have the long-term affairs with six different partners.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, “unless he’s, um,” and here Andrew looked into the distance. “Juggling multiple, uh, phone accounts or something of that sort.”
“Right, right, right, and some men try to do that, but I think it could be very taxing,” said Buss.
By 2022, Andrew was legitimately famous. Typical headlines read “I tried a Stanford professor’s top productivity routine” and “Google CEO Uses ‘Nonsleep Deep Rest’ to Relax.” Reese Witherspoon told the world that she was sure to get ten minutes of sunlight in the morning and tagged Andrew. When he was not on his own podcast, Andrew was on someone else’s. He kept the place in Topanga, but he and Sarah began splitting rent in Berkeley. In June 2022, they fully combined lives; Sarah relocated her family to Malibu to be with him.
According to Sarah, Andrew’s rage intensified with cohabitation. He fixated on her decision to have children with another man. She says he told her that being with her was like “bobbing for apples in feces.” “The pattern of your
11 years, while rooted in subconscious drives,” he told her in December 2021, “creates a nearly impossible set of hurdles for us … You have to change.”
Sarah was, in fact, changing. She felt herself getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized, again and again and again. “I have been selfish, childish, and confused,” she said. “As a result, I need your protection.” A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah’s accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah’s decision to have children with another man, and denies that he said being with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. A spokesperson said, “Dr. Huberman is very much in control of his emotions.”
The first three rounds of IVF did not produce healthy embryos. In the spring of 2022, enraged again about her past, Andrew asked Sarah to explain in detail what he called her bad choices, most especially having her second child. She wrote it out and read it aloud to him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this incident and says he does not regard her having a second child as a bad choice.
I think it’s important to recognize that we might have a model of who someone is,” says Dossett, “or a model of how someone should conduct themselves. And if they do something that is out of sync with that model, it’s like, well, that might not necessarily be on that person. Maybe it’s on us. Our model was just off.”
Huberman’s specialty lies in a narrow field: visual-system wiring. How comfortable one feels with the science propagated on *Huberman Lab* depends entirely on how much leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds for multiple hours a week on subjects well outside his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates wildly from limited animal studies, posits certainty where there is ambiguity, and stumbles when he veers too far from his narrow realm of study, but even they will tend to admit that the podcast is an expansive, free (or, as he puts it, “zero-cost”) compendium of human knowledge. There are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient, and often moving descriptions of biological process.
*Huberman Lab* is premised on the image of a working scientist. One imagines clean white counters, rodents in cages, postdocs peering into microscopes. “As scientists,” Huberman says frequently. He speaks often, too, of the importance of mentorship. He “loves” reading teacher evaluations. On the web, one can visit the lab and even donate. I have never met a Huberman listener who doubted the existence of such a place, and this appears to be by design. In a glowing 2023 profile in *Stanford* magazine, we learn “Everything he does is inspired by this love,” but do not learn that Huberman lives 350 miles and a six-hour drive from Stanford University, making it difficult to drop into the lab. Compounding the issue is the fact that the lab, according to knowledgeable sources, barely exists.
“Is a postdoc working on her own funding, alone, a ‘lab?’” asks a researcher at Stanford. There had been a lab — four rooms on the second floor of the Sherman Fairchild Science Building. Some of them smelled of mice. It was here that researchers anesthetized rodents, injected them with fluorescence, damaged their optic nerves, and watched for the newly bright nerves to grow back.
The lab, says the researcher, was already scaling down before COVID. It was emptying out, postdocs apparently unsupervised, a quarter-million-dollar laser-scanning microscope gathering dust. Once the researcher saw someone come in and reclaim a $3,500 rocker, a machine for mixing solutions.
Shortly before publication, a spokesperson for Stanford said, “Dr. Huberman’s lab at Stanford is operational and is in the process of moving from the Department of Neurobiology to the Department of Ophthalmology,” and a spokesperson for Huberman says the equipment in Dr. Huberman’s lab remained in use until the last postdoc moved to a faculty position.
On every episode of his “zero-cost” podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens and now as AG1. It is one thing to hear Athletic Greens promoted by Joe Rogan; it is perhaps another to hear someone who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back from the lab proclaim that this $79-a-month powder “covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.” In an industry not noted for its integrity, AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Beres, “one of the most egregious players in the space.” Here we have a powder that contains, according to its own marketing, 75 active ingredients, far more than the typical supplement, which would seem a selling point but for the inconveniences of mass. As performance nutritionist Adam McDonald points out, the vast number of ingredients indicates that each ingredient, which may or may not promote good health in a certain dose, is likely included in minuscule amounts, though consumers are left to do the math themselves; the company keeps many of the numbers proprietary. “We can be almost guaranteed that literally every supplement or ingredient within this proprietary blend is underdosed,” explains McDonald; the numbers, he says, don’t appear to add up to anything research has shown to be meaningful in terms of human health outcomes. And indeed, “the problem with most of the probiotics is they’re typically not concentrated enough to actually colonize,” one learns from Dr. Layne Norton in a November 2022 episode of *Huberman Lab.* (AG1 argues that probiotics are effective and that the 75 ingredients are “included not only for their individual benefit, but for the synergy between them — how ingredients interact in complex ways, and how combinations can lead to additive effects.”) “That’s the good news about podcasts,” Huberman said when Wendy Zukerman of *Science Vs* pointed out that her podcast would never make recommendations based on such tenuous research. “People can choose which podcast they want to listen to.”
Whenever Sarah had suspicions about Andrew’s interactions with another woman, he had a particular way of talking about the woman in question. She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars. He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it. He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to “entrap” him. (A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead-baby story and says the hair story was taken out of context.) Most of the time, Sarah believed him; the women probably were crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful.
It was in August 2022 that Sarah noticed she and Andrew could not go out without being thronged by people. On a camping trip in Washington State that same month, Sarah brought syringes and a cooler with ice packs. Every day of the trip, he injected the drugs meant to stimulate fertility into her stomach. This was round four.
Later that month, Sarah says she grabbed Andrew’s phone when he had left it in the bathroom, checked his texts, and found conversations with someone we will call Eve. Some of them took place during the camping trip they had just taken.
“Your feelings matter,” he told Eve on a day when he had injected his girlfriend with hCG. “I’m actually very much a caretaker.” And later: “I’m back on grid tomorrow and would love to see you this weekend.”
Caught having an affair, Andrew was apologetic. “The landscape has been incredibly hard,” he said. “I let the stress get to me … I defaulted to self safety … I’ve also sat with the hardest of feelings.” “I hear your insights,” he said, “and honestly I appreciate them.”
Sarah noticed how courteous he was with Eve. “So many offers,” she pointed out, “to process and work through things.”
Eve is an ethereally beautiful actress, the kind of woman from whom it is hard to look away. Where Sarah exudes a winsome chaotic energy, Eve is intimidatingly collected. Eve saw Andrew on Raya in 2020 and messaged him on Instagram. They went for a swim in Venice, and he complimented her form. “You’re definitely,” he said, “on the faster side of the distribution.” She found him to be an extraordinary listener, and she liked the way he appeared to be interested in her internal life. He was busy all the time: with his book, and eventually the podcast; his dog; responsibilities at Stanford. “I’m willing to do the repair work on this,” he said when she called him out for standing her up, or, “This sucks, but doesn’t deter my desire and commitment to see you, and establish clear lines of communication and trust.” Despite his endless excuses for not showing up, he seemed, to Eve, to be serious about deepening their relationship, which lasted on and off for two years. Eve had the impression that he was not seeing anyone else: She was willing to have unprotected sex.
As their relationship intensified over the years, he talked often about the family he one day wanted. “Our children would be amazing,” he said. She asked for book recommendations and he suggested, jokingly, *Huberman: Why We Made Babies.* “I’m at the stage of life where I truly want to build a family,” he told her. “That’s a resounding theme for me.” “How to mesh lives,” he said in a voice memo. “A fundamental question.” One time she heard him say, on *Joe Rogan,* that he had a girlfriend. She texted him to ask about it, and he responded immediately. He had a stalker, he said, and so his team had decided to invent a partner for the listening public. (“I later learned,” Eve tells me with characteristic equanimity, “that this was not true.”)
In September 2022, Eve noticed that Sarah was looking at her Instagram stories; not commenting or liking, just looking. Impulsively, Eve messaged her. “Is there anything you’d rather ask me directly?” she said. They set up a call. “Fuck you Andrew,” she messaged him.
Sarah moved out in August 2023 but says she remained in a committed relationship with Huberman. (A spokesperson for Huberman says they were separated.) At Thanksgiving that year, she noticed he was “wiggly” every time a cell phone came out at the table — trying to avoid, she suspected, being photographed. She says she did not leave him until December. According to Sarah, the relationship ended, as it had started, with a lie. He had been at her place for a couple of days and left for his place
to prepare for a Zoom call; they planned to go Christmas shopping the next day. Sarah showed up at his house and found him on the couch with another woman. She could see them through the window. “If you’re going to be a cheater,” she advises me later, “do not live in a glass house.”
On January 11, a woman we’ll call Alex began liking all of Sarah’s Instagram posts, seven of them in a minute. Sarah messaged her: “I think you’re friends with my ex, Andrew Huberman. Are you one of the woman he cheated on me with?” Alex is an intense, direct, highly educated woman who lives in New York; she was sleeping with Andrew; and she had no idea there had been a girlfriend. “Fuck,” she said. “I think we should talk.” Over the following weeks, Sarah and Alex never stopped texting. “She helped me hold my boundary against him,” says Sarah, “keep him blocked. She said, ‘You need to let go of the idea of him.’” Instead of texting Andrew, Sarah texted Alex. Sometimes they just talked about their days and not about Andrew at all. Sarah still thought beautiful Eve, on the other hand, “might be crazy,” but they talked some more and brought her into the group chat. Soon there were others. There was Mary: a dreamy, charismatic Texan he had been seeing for years. Her friends called Andrew “bread crumbs,” given his tendency to disappear. There was a fifth woman in L.A., funny and fast-talking. Alex had been apprehensive; she felt foolish for believing Andrew’s lies and worried that the other women would seem foolish, therefore compounding her shame. Foolish women were not, however, what she found. Each of the five was assertive and successful and educated and sharp-witted; there had been a type, and they were diverse expressions of that type. “I can’t believe how crazy I thought you were,” Mary told Sarah. No one struck anyone else as a stalker. No one had made up a story about a dead baby or torn out hair with chunks in it. “I haven’t slept with anyone but him for six years,” Sarah told the group. “If it makes you feel any better,” Alex joked, “according to the CDC,” they had all slept with one another.
The women compared time-stamped screenshots of texts and assembled therein an extraordinary record of deception.
There was a day in Texas when, after Sarah left his hotel, Andrew slept with Mary and texted Eve. They found days in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at the same time. They realized that the day before he had moved in with Sarah in Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he had also been with her in December 2023, the weekend before Sarah caught him on the couch with a sixth woman.
They realized that on March 21, 2021, a day of admittedly impressive logistical jujitsu, while Sarah was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to L.A. to stay with him in Topanga. While Mary was there, visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her with Costello. He drove to a coffee shop, where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about their relationship. They thought they were in a good place. He wanted to make it work.
“Phone died,” he texted Mary, who was waiting back at the place in Topanga. And later, to Eve: “Thank you … For being so next, next, level gorgeous and sexy.”
“Sleep well beautiful,” he texted Sarah.
“The scheduling alone!” Alex tells me. “I can barely schedule three Zooms in
a day.”
In the aggregate, Andrew’s therapeutic language took on a sinister edge. It was communicating a commitment that was not real, a profound interest in the internality of women that was then used to manipulate them.
“Does Huberman have vices?” asks an anonymous Reddit poster.
“I remember him saying,” reads the first comment, “that he loves croissants.”
While Huberman has been criticized for having too few women guests on his podcast, he is solicitous and deferential toward those he interviews. In a January 2023 episode, Dr. Sara Gottfried argues that “patriarchal messaging” and white supremacy contribute to the deterioration of women’s health, and Andrew responds with a story about how his beloved trans mentor, Ben Barres, had experienced “intense suppression/oppression” at MIT before transitioning. “Psychology is influencing biology,” he says with concern. “And you’re saying these power dynamics … are impacting it.”
In private, he could sometimes seem less concerned about patriarchy. Multiple women recall him saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous but the man was not. “He told me,” says Mary, “that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap in the ass in public, and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.) The women continued to compare notes. He had his little ways of checking in: “Good morning beautiful.” There was a particular way he would respond to a sexy picture: “Mmmmm hi there.”
A spokesperson for Huberman insisted that he had not been monogamous with Sarah until late 2021, but a recorded conversation he had with Alex suggested that in May of that year he had led Sarah to believe otherwise. “Well, she was under the impression that we were exclusive at that time,” he said. “Women are not dumb like that, dude,” Alex responded. “She was under that impression? Then you were giving her that impression.” Andrew agreed: “That’s what I meant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put it on her.”
The kind of women to whom Andrew Huberman was attracted; the kind of women who were attracted to him — these were women who paid attention to what went into their bodies, women who made avoiding toxicity a central focus of their lives. They researched non-hormone-disrupting products, avoided sugar, ate organic. They were disgusted by the knowledge that they had had sex with someone who had an untold number of partners. All of them wondered how many others there were. When Sarah found Andrew with the other woman, there had been a black pickup truck in the driveway, and she had taken a picture. The women traced the plates, but they hit a dead end and never found her.
Tell us about the dark triad,” he had said to Buss in November on the trip in which he slept with Mary.
“The dark triad consists of three personality characteristics,” said Buss. “So narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.” Such people “feign cooperation but then cheat on subsequent moves. They view other people as pawns to be manipulated for their own instrumental gains.” Those “who are high on dark-triad traits,” he said, “tend to be good at the art of seduction.” The vast majority of them were men.
Andrew told one of the women that he wasn’t a sex addict; he was a love addict. Addiction, Huberman says, “is a progressing narrowing of things that bring you joy.” In August 2021, the same month Sarah first learned of Andrew’s cheating, he released an episode with Anna Lembke, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Lembke, the author of a book called *Dopamine Nation,* gave a clear explanation of the dopaminergic roots of addiction.
“What happens right after I do something that is really pleasurable,” she says, “and releases a lot of dopamine is, again, my brain is going to immediately compensate by downregulating my own dopamine receptors … And that’s that comedown, or the hangover or that aftereffect, that moment of wanting to do it more.” Someone who waits for the feeling to pass, she explained, will reregulate, go back to  baseline. “If I keep indulging again and again and again,” she said, “ultimately I have so much on the pain side that I’ve essentially reset my brain to what we call anhedonic or lacking-in-joy type of state, which is a dopamine deficit state.” This is a state in which nothing is enjoyable: “Everything sort of pales in comparison to this one drug that I want to keep doing.”
“Just for the record,” Andrew said, smiling, “Dr. Lembke has … diagnosed me outside the clinic, in a playful way, of being work addicted. You’re probably right!”
Lembke laughed. “You just happen to be addicted,” she said gently, “to something that is really socially rewarded.”
What he failed to understand, he said, was people who ruined their lives with their disease. “I like to think I have the compassion,” he said, “but I don’t have that empathy for taking a really good situation and what from the outside looks to be throwing it in the trash.”
At least three ex-girlfriends remain friendly with Huberman. He “goes deep very quickly,” says Keegan Amit, who dated Andrew from 2010 to 2017 and continues to admire him. “He has incredible emotional capacity.” A high-school girlfriend says both she and he were “troubled” during their time together, that he was complicated and jealous but “a good person” whom she parted with on good terms. “He really wants to get involved emotionally but then can’t quite follow through,” says someone he dated on and off between 2006 and 2010. “But yeah. I don’t think it’s …” She hesitates. “I think he has such a good heart.”
Andrew grew up in Palo Alto just before the dawn of the internet, a lost city. He gives some version of his origin story on *The Rich Roll Podcast*; he repeats it for Tim Ferriss and Peter Attia. He tells *Time* magazine and *Stanford* magazine. “Take the list of all the things a parent shouldn’t do in a divorce,” he recently told Christian bowhunter Cameron Hanes. “They did them all.” “You had,” says Wendy Zukerman in her bright Aussie accent, “a wayward childhood.” “I think it’s very easy for people listening to folks with a bio like yours,” says Tim Ferriss, “to sort of assume a certain trajectory, right? To assume that it has always come easy.” His father and mother agree that “after our divorce was an incredibly hard time for Andrew,” though they “do not agree” with some of his characterization of his past; few parents want to be accused of “pure neglect.”
Huberman would not provide the name of the detention center in which he says he was held for a month in high school. In a version of the story Huberman tells on Peter Attia’s podcast, he says, “We lost a couple of kids, a couple of kids killed themselves while we were there.” (*New York* was unable to find an account of this event.)
Andrew attended Gunn, a high-performing, high-pressure high school. Classmates describe him as always with a skateboard; they remember him as pleasant, “sweet,” and not particularly academic. He would, says one former classmate, “drop in on the half-pipe,” where he was “encouraging” to other skaters. “I mean, he was a cool, individual kid,” says another classmate. “There was one year he, like, bleached his hair and everyone was like, ‘Oh, that guy’s cool.’” It was a wealthy place, the kind of setting where the word *au pair* comes up frequently, and Andrew did not stand out to his classmates as out of control or unpredictable. They do not recall him getting into street fights, as Andrew claims he did. He was, says Andrew’s father, “a little bit troubled, yes, but it was not something super-serious.”
What does seem certain is that in his adolescence, Andrew became a regular consumer of talk therapy. In therapy, one learns to tell stories about one’s experience. A story one could tell is: I overcame immense odds to be where I am. Another is: The son of a Stanford professor, born at Stanford Hospital, grows up to be a Stanford professor.
I have never,” says Amit, “met a man more interested in personal growth.” Andrew’s relationship to therapy remains intriguing. “We were at dinner once,” says Eve, “and he told me something personal, and I suggested he talk to his therapist. He laughed it off like that wasn’t ever going to happen, so I asked him if he lied to his therapist. He told me he did all the time.” (A spokesperson for Huberman denies this.)
“People high on psychopathy are good at deception,” says Buss. “I don’t know if they’re good at self-deception.” With repeated listening to the podcast, one discerns a man undergoing, in public, an effort to understand himself. There are hours of talking about addiction, trauma, dopamine, and fear. Narcissism comes up consistently. One can see attempts to understand and also places where those attempts swerve into self-indulgence. On a recent episode with the Stanford-trained psychiatrist Paul Conti, Andrew and Conti were describing the psychological phenomenon of “aggressive drive.” Andrew had an example to share: He once canceled an appointment with a Stanford colleague. There was no response. Eventually, he received a reply that said, in Andrew’s telling, “Well, it’s clear that you don’t want to pursue this collaboration.”
Andrew was, he said to Conti, “shocked.”
“I remember feeling like that was pretty aggressive,” Andrew told Conti. “It stands out to me as a pretty salient example of aggression.”
“So to me,” said Huberman, “that seems like an example of somebody who has a, well, strong aggressive drive … and when disappointed, you know, lashes back or is passive.”
“There’s some way in which the person doesn’t feel good enough no matter what this person has achieved. So then there is a sense of the need and the right to overcontrol.”
“Sure,” said Huberman.
“And now we’re going to work together, right, so I’m exerting significant control over you, right? And it may be that he’s not aware of it.”
“In this case,” said Andrew, “it was a she.”
This woman, explained Conti, based entirely on Andrew’s description of two emails, had allowed her unhealthy “excess aggression” to be “eclipsing the generative drive.” She required that Andrew “bowed down before” her “in the service of the ego” because she did not feel good about herself.
This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men egging each other on, diagnosis after diagnosis, salient, perhaps, for reasons other than those the two identify. We learn that this person lacks gratitude, generative drive, and happiness; she suffers from envy, low “pleasure drive,” and general unhappiness. It would appear, at a distance, to be an elaborate fantasy of an insane woman built on a single behavior: At some point in time, a woman decided she did not want to work with a man who didn’t show up.
There is an argument to be made that it does not matter how a helpful podcaster conducts himself outside of the studio. A man unable to constrain his urges may still preach dopaminergic control to others. Morning sun remains salutary. The physiological sigh, employed by this writer many times in the writing of this essay, continues to effect calm. The large and growing distance between Andrew Huberman and the man he continues to be may not even matter to those who buy questionable products he has recommended and from which he will materially benefit, or listeners who imagined a man in a white coat at work in Palo Alto. The people who definitively find the space between fantasy and reality to be a problem are women who fell for a podcaster who professed deep, sustained concern for their personal growth, and who, in his skyrocketing influence, continued to project an image of earnest self-discovery. It is here, in the false belief of two minds in synchronicity and exploration, that deception leads to harm. They fear it will lead to more.
“There’s so much pain,” says Sarah, her voice breaking. “Feeling we had made mistakes. *We* hadn’t been enough. *We* hadn’t been communicating. By making these other women into the other, I hadn’t really given space for their hurt. And let it sink in with me that it was so similar to my own hurt.”
Three of the women on the group text met up in New York in February, and the group has only grown closer. On any given day, one of the five can go into an appointment and come back to 100 texts. Someone shared a Reddit thread in which a commenter claimed Huberman had a “stable full a hoes,” and another responded, “I hope he thinks of us more like Care Bears,” at which point they assigned themselves Care Bear names. “Him: You’re the only girl I let come to my apartment,” read a meme someone shared; under it was a yellow lab looking extremely skeptical. They regularly use Andrew’s usual response to explicit photos (“Mmmmm”) to comment on pictures of one another’s pets. They are holding space for other women who might join.
“This group has radicalized me,” Sarah tells me. “There has been so much processing.” They are planning a weekend together this summer.
“It could have been sad or bitter,” says Eve. “We didn’t jump in as besties, but real friendships have been built. It has been, in a strange and unlikely way, quite a beautiful experience.”
*Additional reporting by Amelia Schonbek and Laura Thompson.*
Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control
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01.01 Life Orga/@Family.md
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&emsp;
- [ ] :family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore civil procedures to change names (+whether in 🇨🇭 or 🇫🇷) 📅2024-04-15
- [ ] :family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore maintaining in the ANF books 📅2024-04-15
- [ ] :family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore civil procedures to change names (+whether in 🇨🇭 or 🇫🇷) 📅 2024-09-15
- [ ] :family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore maintaining in the ANF books 📅 2024-09-15
- [ ] :stopwatch: [[@Family|Family]]: Réparer l’oignon Lip 📅2024-06-20
- [x] Re-start dialogue ✅ 2021-12-05

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&emsp;
- [ ] :moneybag: [[@Finances]]: Transfer UK pension to CH %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-10-31
- [ ] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-04-09
- [ ] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-05-14
- [x] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-04-09 ✅ 2024-04-06
- [x] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-03-12 ✅ 2024-03-08
- [x] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-02-13 ✅ 2024-02-09
- [x] :heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the 2nd Tuesday 📅 2024-01-09 ✅ 2024-01-06

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#### Bases
- [x] 🍝 Pasta ✅ 2023-12-23
- [x] 🍜 Noodles ✅ 2024-03-30
- [x] 🍜 Noodles ✅ 2024-04-12
- [x] 🌾 Bulgur ✅ 2022-10-29
- [x] 🍚 Rice ✅ 2024-03-08
- [x] 🥔 Potatoes ✅ 2024-03-12
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- [x] 🌶️ Ketjap Manis ✅ 2023-06-28
- [x] 🌶️ Cayenne Pepper ✅ 2023-06-29
- [x] 🌶 Harissa ✅ 2023-07-15
- [ ] 🇲‍🇽 Mexican seasoning
- [x] 🇲‍🇽 Mexican seasoning ✅ 2024-04-09
- [x] 🥢 Soy sauce ✅ 2023-05-29
- [x] 🥢 Hoisin sauce ✅ 2023-09-23
- [x] 🧂 Cumin ✅ 2022-03-14

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#### 🚮 Garbage collection
- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-04-09
- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-04-23
- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-04-09 ✅ 2024-04-08
- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-03-26 ✅ 2024-03-25
- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-03-12 ✅ 2024-03-11
- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2024-02-27 ✅ 2024-02-26
@ -100,7 +101,9 @@ style: number
- [x] 🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the last 📅 2024-02-29 ✅ 2024-02-26
- [x] 🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the last 📅 2024-01-31 ✅ 2024-01-28
- [x] 🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%% 🔁 every month on the last 📅 2023-12-31 ✅ 2023-12-25
- [ ] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-04-08
- [ ] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-04-22
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-04-15 ✅ 2024-04-15
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-04-08 ✅ 2024-04-06
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-04-01 ✅ 2024-03-29
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-03-25 ✅ 2024-03-22
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-03-18 ✅ 2024-03-16
@ -116,7 +119,8 @@ style: number
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-01-08 ✅ 2024-01-06
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2024-01-01 ✅ 2023-12-25
- [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%% 🔁 every week 📅 2023-12-25 ✅ 2023-12-23
- [ ] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-04-13
- [ ] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-04-27
- [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-04-13 ✅ 2024-04-09
- [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-03-30 ✅ 2024-03-23
- [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-03-16 ✅ 2024-03-11
- [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%% 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2024-03-02 ✅ 2024-02-29
@ -129,7 +133,8 @@ style: number
#### 🚙 Car
- [ ] :blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-04-15
- [ ] :blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2025-04-15
- [x] :blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-04-15 ✅ 2024-04-15
- [ ] :blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Winter tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-10-15
- [ ] :blue_car: [[Household]]: Renew [road vignette](https://www.e-vignette.ch/) %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-12-20

93
01.04 Partner/Gordana.md
Unescape View File

@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
---
Alias: [""]
Tag: ["❤️"]
Date: 2024-04-15
DocType:
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
---
Parent::
---
&emsp;
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-GordanaNSave
&emsp;
# Gordana
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Note Description
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### Dana
&emsp;
28th June
&emsp;
#### Hobbies
- Water & water sports (not necessary sailing)
- Cooking
&emsp;
#### Wishes
- Vespa
&emsp;
#### Presents - Dana/Family
- [x] :gift: Vogelhäuschen ✅ 2024-04-12
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### Nicolas
&emsp;
26th June
&emsp;
#### Tastes
- Anything with wheels
&emsp;
&emsp;

3
01.07 Animals/2023-07-13 Health check.md
Unescape View File

@ -51,7 +51,8 @@ style: number
[[2023-07-13|This day]], ripped hoof (front right) is healing well
–> On track to heal fully by the end of the Summer season
- [ ] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-04-09
- [ ] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-04-23
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-04-09 ✅ 2024-04-08
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-03-26 ✅ 2024-03-23
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-03-12 ✅ 2024-03-10
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing 🔁 every 2 weeks 📅 2024-02-27 ✅ 2024-02-26

54
01.07 Animals/2024-04-11 First exercice.md
Unescape View File

@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
---
Alias: [""]
Tag: ["timeline", "🐎", "🐿️"]
Date: 2024-04-11
DocType: Confidential
Hierarchy: NonRoot
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
---
Parent:: [[@Sally|Sally]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-11FirstexerciceNSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-11 First exercice
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Note Description
&emsp;
<span class='ob-timelines' data-date='2024-04-11-00' data-title='First exercise' data-class='green' data-type='range' data-end='2024-04-11-00'> First exercise: 40min of walk and canter
</span>
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
[[2024-04-11|Today]], 40 min of walk & canter
&emsp;
&emsp;

3
01.07 Animals/@Sally.md
Unescape View File

@ -140,7 +140,8 @@ divWidth=100
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: EHV-1 vaccination dose %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-01-31 ✅ 2024-01-31
- [ ] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Influenza vaccination dose %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2025-01-31
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Influenza vaccination dose %%done_del%% 🔁 every year 📅 2024-01-31 ✅ 2024-01-31
- [ ] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-04-10
- [ ] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-05-10
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-04-10 ✅ 2024-04-09
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-03-10 ✅ 2024-03-08
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-02-10 ✅ 2024-02-07
- [x] :racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%% 🔁 every month 📅 2024-01-10 ✅ 2024-01-08

2
02.02 Paris/Abri.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Japanese
Location: "Gare du Nord"
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟧
Phone: "+33 1 83 97 00 00"
Email:
Website: "[ABRI / Bistronomie / Paris](https://www.abrirestaurant.fr/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Alluma.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: Israeli
Location: République
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: ""
Email: "alluma.paris@gmail.com"

2
02.02 Paris/Andy Wahloo.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: "North African"
Location: Marais
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 42 71 20 38"
Email: "info@andywahloo-bar.com"
Website: "[Andy Wahloo - bar à cocktails - Paris, Nord Marais](https://www.andywahloo-bar.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Baillotte.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: Japanese
Location: "Saint-Germain"
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 9 84 29 93 48"
Email: ""

2
02.02 Paris/Bambou.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: Thai
Location: Marais
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 1 40 28 98 30"
Email: "events@bambouparis.fr"

2
02.02 Paris/Boulangerie Sain.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: "French"
Location: "République"
Country: "France"
Status: "Recommended"
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 7 61 23 49 44"
Email: "contact@sain-boulangerie.com"

2
02.02 Paris/Bourrache.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: Pigalle
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 9 78 80 95 23"
Email: ""

2
02.02 Paris/Brach Hotel.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: "French"
Location: "LaMuette"
Country: "France"
Status: "Prospect"
Status: 🟥
Phone: "+33 1 44 30 10 00"
Email: "contact@brachparis.com"
Website: "[BRACH, Luxury design hotel 5 stars by Starck - Paris 16 - EVOK Hotels](https://brachparis.com/?lang=en)"

2
02.02 Paris/Café Hugo.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: Marais
Country: FR
Status: Favourite
Status: 🟩
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 1 42 72 64 04"
Email:

2
02.02 Paris/Candelaria.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: Mexican
Location: Marais
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 9 50 84 19 67"
Email: "info@candelaria-paris.com"
Website: "[Candelaria](https://www.candelaria-paris.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Carmen.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Rococo
Location: Pigalle
Country: France
Status: Prospect
Status: 🟥
Phone: "+33 1 45 26 50 00"
Email:
Website: "[LE CARMEN - Paris Pigalle - 34 rue Duperré - 75009 Paris](http://www.le-carmen.fr/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Chez Georges.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Trendy
Location: Chatelet
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 44 78 47 99"
Email: "commercial@beaumarly.com"
Website: "[Restaurant Georges Paris Terrasse Rooftop Centre Pompidou - Accueil](https://restaurantgeorgesparis.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Chez Robert.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: "Gare du Nord"
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟧
Phone: "+33 1 43 57 20 29"
Email: "contact@robert-restaurant.fr"
Website: "[robert-restaurant](https://robert-restaurant.fr/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Chinaski.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: "Quartier Latin"
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 73 74 74 06"
Email:
Website: "[Chinaski / Cuisine de Saison / Paris](https://www.chinaskiparis.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Coretta.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: Mexican
Location: Bagatelles
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 1 42 26 55 55"
Email: "restaurant@coretta.fr"

2
02.02 Paris/Cotte roti.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: Bastille
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 43 45 06 37"
Email: "lacoterie75@gmail.com"
Website: "[Le Cotte Rôti](https://www.lecotteroti.fr)"

2
02.02 Paris/Dersou.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: "Asian"
Location: Bastille
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 9 81 01 12 73"
Email: "info@dersouparis.com"
Website: "[Dersou / cuisine d'auteur / PARIS](https://www.dersouparis.com)"

2
02.02 Paris/Doppio.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Italian
Location: "Gare du Nord"
Country: France
Status: Regular
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 9 81 82 03 72"
Email:
Website: "https://www.facebook.com/doppioparis/"

2
02.02 Paris/Early June.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Modern
Location: République
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: <a href="tel:+33142854074">01 42 85 40 74</a>
Email: "[hey@early-june.fr](readdle-spark://compose?recipient=hey@early-june.fr&subject=Reservation)"

2
02.02 Paris/Galbar.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location:
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟧
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 9 83 32 42 49"
Email: "contact@galbar.fr"

2
02.02 Paris/Guibine.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Korean
Location: Opéra
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟧
Phone: "+33 1 40 20 45 83"
Email:
Website: "[Where to eat? Find the best place to eat - Eater Space](https://eater.space)"

2
02.02 Paris/Hotel Amour.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Hipster
Location: Pigalle
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 48 78 31 80"
Email: "amour@hotelamourparis.fr"
Website: "[Hôtel Amour à Paris - Réserver un hôtel](https://amour.hotelamourparis.fr/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Hotel Chopin.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Parisian
Location: Opera
Country: France
Status: Prospect
Status: 🟥
Phone:: "+33 1 47 70 58 10"
Email: "info@hotelchopin.fr"
Website: "[2 stars hotel in Paris center // OFFICIAL WEBSITE //](https://hotelchopin-paris-opera.com/en/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Hotel Grand Amour.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Trendy
Location: GareduNord
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 44 16 03 30"
Email: "grandamour@hotelamourparis.fr"
Website: "[Hotel Grand Amour à Paris - Réserver un hôtel](https://grandamour.hotelamourparis.fr/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Inavoué.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Fusion
Location: Rivoli
Country: France
Status: Occasional
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 40 20 09 28"
Email: "Restaurant@inavoue.com"
Website: "[Inavoué Restaurant Paris - L'Adresse Atypique, Secrète et Tendance, Saluée Par La Presse](https://inavoue.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/L'Aube.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: Rivoli
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 1 42 44 00 60"
Email: "contact@laube-paris.com"

2
02.02 Paris/La Gare.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: ["Peruvian", "Fish"]
Location: "La Muette"
Country: France
Status: Tested
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 42 15 15 31"
Email: "commercial@andia-paris.com"
Website: "[Andia](https://andia-paris.com/)"

2
02.02 Paris/La Meringaie.md
Unescape View File

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: "Pigalle"
Country: France
Status: Recommended
Status: 🟥
CollapseMetaTable: true
Phone: "+33 1 42 45 62 87"
Email: "contact@lameringaie.com"

2
02.02 Paris/La maison bleue.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: French
Location: "Gare du Nord"
Country: France
Status: Regular
Status: 🟩
Phone: "+33 1 44 65 01 80"
Email: "coucou@lamaisonbleue.paris"
Website: "[La Maison Bleue](http://www.lamaisonbleue.paris/)"

2
02.02 Paris/Le Ballroom du Beef Club.md
Unescape View File

@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Place:
Style: Speakeasy
Location: Chatelet
Country: France
Status: Prospect
Status: 🟥
---

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