diff --git a/.obsidian/graph.json b/.obsidian/graph.json index 7e14ef39..0e5cd1e5 100644 --- a/.obsidian/graph.json +++ b/.obsidian/graph.json @@ -95,6 +95,6 @@ "repelStrength": 10, "linkStrength": 1, "linkDistance": 250, - "scale": 0.18963468743497444, + "scale": 0.3142885897508294, "close": true } \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json index 4d0c9c8e..577f9ae8 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-activity-history/data.json @@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ "checkpointList": [ { "path": "/", - "date": "2022-07-16", - "size": 5702746 + "date": "2022-07-20", + "size": 5851121 } ], "activityHistory": [ @@ -771,6 +771,22 @@ { "date": "2022-07-16", "value": 4556 + }, + { + "date": "2022-07-17", + "value": 145335 + }, + { + "date": "2022-07-18", + "value": 1018 + }, + { + "date": "2022-07-19", + "value": 1020 + }, + { + "date": "2022-07-20", + "value": 1020 } ] } diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json index 8f2328a0..e0710fa8 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-commits/data.json @@ -500,7 +500,7 @@ "links": 4 }, "05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": { - "size": 8789, + "size": 9745, "tags": 4, "links": 14 }, @@ -1925,7 +1925,7 @@ "links": 1 }, "01.02 Home/Household.md": { - "size": 5372, + "size": 5944, "tags": 3, "links": 2 }, @@ -4487,7 +4487,7 @@ "00.03 News/American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema.md": { "size": 30743, "tags": 3, - "links": 1 + "links": 2 }, "00.03 News/The Holy Anarchy of Fun.md": { "size": 10236, @@ -4548,14 +4548,59 @@ "size": 1077, "tags": 1, "links": 4 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-17.md": { + "size": 1131, + "tags": 0, + "links": 6 + }, + "00.03 News/The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties.md": { + "size": 4650, + "tags": 3, + "links": 2 + }, + "00.03 News/It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing.md": { + "size": 41896, + "tags": 3, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks.md": { + "size": 32429, + "tags": 5, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.03 News/Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review.md": { + "size": 31566, + "tags": 2, + "links": 2 + }, + "00.03 News/The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling.md": { + "size": 33566, + "tags": 5, + "links": 1 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-18.md": { + "size": 1108, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-19.md": { + "size": 1108, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 + }, + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-20.md": { + "size": 1108, + "tags": 0, + "links": 4 } }, "commitTypes": { "/": { - "Refactor": 627, - "Create": 580, - "Link": 1184, - "Expand": 522 + "Refactor": 633, + "Create": 590, + "Link": 1202, + "Expand": 525 } }, "dailyCommits": { @@ -4567,20 +4612,20 @@ "4": 12, "5": 6, "6": 20, - "7": 197, - "8": 300, - "9": 242, - "10": 158, - "11": 108, + "7": 200, + "8": 302, + "9": 244, + "10": 160, + "11": 110, "12": 131, "13": 250, - "14": 173, + "14": 174, "15": 114, "16": 102, "17": 123, - "18": 283, - "19": 136, - "20": 129, + "18": 284, + "19": 159, + "20": 130, "21": 69, "22": 217, "23": 52 @@ -4588,18 +4633,21 @@ }, "weeklyCommits": { "/": { - "Mon": 440, - "Tue": 250, - "Wed": 293, + "Mon": 442, + "Tue": 252, + "Wed": 295, "Thu": 346, "Fri": 279, "Sat": 0, - "Sun": 1305 + "Sun": 1336 } }, "recentCommits": { "/": { "Expanded": [ + " Storage and Syncing ", + " Household ", + " 2022-07-17 ", " Modo ", " Daizy ", " @Main Dashboard ", @@ -4647,12 +4695,19 @@ " @France ", " Configuring UFW ", " 2022-06-17 ", - " Household ", - " 2022-06-08 ", - " 2022-06-07 ", - " 2022-06-06 " + " Household " ], "Created": [ + " 2022-07-20 ", + " 2022-07-19 ", + " 2022-07-18 ", + " The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling ", + " Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review ", + " Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks ", + " Hollywood's Finest series on pregnancy and homelessness - Los Angeles Times ", + " It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing ", + " The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties ", + " 2022-07-17 ", " Untitled ", " Untitled ", " 2022-07-16 ", @@ -4693,19 +4748,14 @@ " Jeff Bezos’s Next Monopoly The Press ", " The Biggest Change in Media Since Cable Is Happening Right Now ", " At 88, Poker Legend Doyle Brunson Is Still Bluffing. Or Is He ", - " 2022-06-26 ", - " 2022-06-25 ", - " Untitled ", - " 2022-06-24 ", - " 2022-06-23 ", - " Marseille ", - " 2022-06-22 ", - " 2022-06-21 ", - " Arles ", - " Nimes ", - " Untitled " + " 2022-06-26 " ], "Renamed": [ + " The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling ", + " Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review ", + " Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks ", + " It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing ", + " The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties ", " Modo ", " Daizy ", " Meet Richard Fritz, America’s Most Unelectable Elected Official Defector ", @@ -4751,14 +4801,14 @@ " Hazing, fighting, sexual assaults How Valley Forge Military Academy devolved into “Lord of the Flies” ", " What did the ancient Maya see in the stars Their descendants team up with scientists to find out ", " The Follower ", - " Dianne Feinstein, the Institutionalist ", - " Waiting for keys, unable to break down doors Uvalde schools police chief defends delay in confronting gunman ", - " Deshaun Watson’s Massages Were Enabled by the Texans and a Spa Owner ", - " Albert Camus The philosopher who resisted despair ", - " The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush ", - " The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush " + " Dianne Feinstein, the Institutionalist " ], "Tagged": [ + " The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling ", + " Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks ", + " Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review ", + " The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties ", + " It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing ", " Modo ", " Daizy ", " Meet Richard Fritz, America’s Most Unelectable Elected Official Defector ", @@ -4804,12 +4854,7 @@ " The rise of the Strangler ", " After Christendom ", " A new generation of white supremacist killer - Los Angeles Times ", - " A new generation of white supremacist killer - Los Angeles Times ", - " Coffeezilla, the YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams ", - " American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting ", - " A Search for Family, a Love for Horses and How It All Led to Kentucky Derby Glory ", - " How Hollywood’s Blockbuster Golden Boys Went Weird Los Angeles Magazine ", - " Chez Robert " + " A new generation of white supremacist killer - Los Angeles Times " ], "Refactored": [ " @Main Dashboard ", @@ -4855,6 +4900,7 @@ " Obsidian plugins " ], "Deleted": [ + " Hollywood's Finest series on pregnancy and homelessness - Los Angeles Times ", " 2022-07-05 ", " 末 test ", " e Priso Le Bastart ", @@ -4904,10 +4950,22 @@ " unlinked files output ", " Untitled ", " 2022-01-22 ", - " SendFile ", - " Digital Cover - Method Man - Essence " + " SendFile " ], "Linked": [ + " 2022-07-20 ", + " 2022-07-19 ", + " 2022-07-18 ", + " Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review ", + " The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties ", + " The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling ", + " Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks ", + " Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review ", + " The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties ", + " It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing ", + " 2022-07-17 ", + " 2022-07-17 ", + " American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema ", " Modo ", " Modo ", " Daizy ", @@ -4945,20 +5003,7 @@ " Vernon Subutex 1 ", " 2022-07-07 ", " La promesse de l'aube ", - " Real Estate ", - " Vernon Subutex 1 ", - " Real Estate ", - " 2022-07-06 ", - " 2022-07-06 ", - " 2022-07-05 ", - " 2022-07-04 ", - " 2022-07-01 ", - " 2022-07-03 ", - " @Dubaï ", - " 2022-07-02 ", - " Git from the Bottom Up ", - " 2022-07-01 ", - " 2022-06-30 " + " Real Estate " ], "Removed Tags from": [ " Le Miel de Paris ", diff --git a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json index a817f3c5..ee0c771b 100644 --- a/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json +++ b/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-reminder-plugin/data.json @@ -2,11 +2,6 @@ "scanned": true, "reminders": { "05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": [ - { - "title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED", - "time": "2022-07-14", - "rowNumber": 208 - }, { "title": ":cloud: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]]", "time": "2022-09-12", @@ -31,6 +26,11 @@ "title": ":iphone: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for iPhone|iPhone]]", "time": "2022-10-11", "rowNumber": 188 + }, + { + "title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED", + "time": "2022-10-13", + "rowNumber": 208 } ], "06.01 Finances/hLedger.md": [ @@ -341,30 +341,30 @@ } ], "01.02 Home/Household.md": [ - { - "title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets", - "time": "2022-07-16", - "rowNumber": 116 - }, - { - "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection", - "time": "2022-07-19", - "rowNumber": 72 - }, { "title": "🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper", "time": "2022-07-25", - "rowNumber": 107 + "rowNumber": 108 }, { "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection", "time": "2022-07-26", - "rowNumber": 86 + "rowNumber": 87 }, { "title": "🛎 🛍 REMINDER [[Household]]: Monthly shop in France", "time": "2022-07-30", - "rowNumber": 105 + "rowNumber": 106 + }, + { + "title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets", + "time": "2022-07-30", + "rowNumber": 117 + }, + { + "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection", + "time": "2022-08-02", + "rowNumber": 72 } ], "01.03 Family/Pia Bousquié.md": [ @@ -416,11 +416,6 @@ "time": "2022-07-30", "rowNumber": 75 }, - { - "title": ":horse_racing: [[@Lifestyle]]: Re-start [[@Lifestyle#polo|Polo]]", - "time": "2022-07-30", - "rowNumber": 76 - }, { "title": "🎵 [[@Lifestyle]]: Continue building [[@Lifestyle#Music Library|Music Library]]", "time": "2022-09-30", diff --git a/.obsidian/workspace b/.obsidian/workspace index fd58f6c7..95a1b4a5 100644 --- a/.obsidian/workspace +++ b/.obsidian/workspace @@ -4,12 +4,12 @@ "type": "split", "children": [ { - "id": "230c4d79bedace9e", + "id": "064c6169cbfaec31", "type": "leaf", "state": { "type": "markdown", "state": { - "file": "02.03 Zürich/@Restaurants Zürich.md", + "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", "mode": "preview", "source": false } @@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ "state": { "type": "backlink", "state": { - "file": "02.03 Zürich/@Restaurants Zürich.md", + "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", "collapseAll": false, "extraContext": false, "sortOrder": "alphabetical", @@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ "state": { "type": "outgoing-link", "state": { - "file": "02.03 Zürich/@Restaurants Zürich.md", + "file": "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", "linksCollapsed": false, "unlinkedCollapsed": false } @@ -151,17 +151,17 @@ ], "currentTab": 2 }, - "active": "230c4d79bedace9e", + "active": "064c6169cbfaec31", "lastOpenFiles": [ - "02.03 Zürich/Modo.md", - "02.03 Zürich/No Idea.md", - "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-16.md", + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-20.md", "01.02 Home/@Main Dashboard.md", - "02.03 Zürich/@Restaurants Zürich.md", - "02.03 Zürich/Daizy.md", - "03.03 Food & Wine/Udon in Buttery Tomato n Soy broth.md", - "03.03 Food & Wine/@Main dishes.md", - "03.03 Food & Wine/@@Recipes.md", - "03.03 Food & Wine/@Side dishes.md" + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-19.md", + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-18.md", + "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-17.md", + "00.03 News/Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review.md", + "00.03 News/@News.md", + "00.03 News/It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing.md", + "00.03 News/The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties.md", + "00.03 News/The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling.md" ] } \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-16.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-16.md index dacd0b56..b1e8cde6 100644 --- a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-16.md +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-16.md @@ -13,9 +13,9 @@ Stress: 30 FrontHeadBar: 5 EarHeadBar: 35 BackHeadBar: 20 -Water: 3.25 +Water: 4.25 Coffee: 3 -Steps: +Steps: 12451 Ski: Riding: Racket: diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-17.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-17.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2e35e2df --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-17.md @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +--- + +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes +Sleep: 8 +Happiness: 95 +Gratefulness: 95 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 3.58 +Coffee: 2 +Steps: 4536 +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +title: "Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-07-17 + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-07-16|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-07-18|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-07-17Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-07-17NSave + +  + +# 2022-07-17 + +  + +```ad-abstract +title: Summary +collapse: open +Note Description +``` + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### Memos + +  + +#### Memos + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% ### %% +  +- [x] 11:34 :tennis: [[@Lifestyle]], [[2022-07-17|Memo]]: enquire about the Grasshopper tennis club 📅 2022-07-31 ✅ 2022-07-17 + +--- + +  + +### Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-18.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-18.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..684aeeec --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-18.md @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +--- + +Date: 2022-07-18 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes +Sleep: 7 +Happiness: 90 +Gratefulness: 90 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 4 +Coffee: 5 +Steps: 7737 +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +title: "Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-07-18 + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-07-17|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-07-19|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-07-18Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-07-18NSave + +  + +# 2022-07-18 + +  + +```ad-abstract +title: Summary +collapse: open +Note Description +``` + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### Memos + +  + +#### Memos + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% ### %% +  + +--- + +  + +### Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-19.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-19.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..eb295183 --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-19.md @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +--- + +Date: 2022-07-19 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes +Sleep: 7.5 +Happiness: 95 +Gratefulness: 95 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 5 +Coffee: 4 +Steps: 8639 +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +title: "Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-07-19 + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-07-18|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-07-20|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-07-19Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-07-19NSave + +  + +# 2022-07-19 + +  + +```ad-abstract +title: Summary +collapse: open +Note Description +``` + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### Memos + +  + +#### Memos + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% ### %% +  + +--- + +  + +### Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-20.md b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-20.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..d312eb3d --- /dev/null +++ b/00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-07-20.md @@ -0,0 +1,104 @@ +--- + +Date: 2022-07-20 +DocType: Note +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes +Sleep: 7 +Happiness: 95 +Gratefulness: 95 +Stress: 25 +FrontHeadBar: 5 +EarHeadBar: 30 +BackHeadBar: 20 +Water: 5.5 +Coffee: 6 +Steps: +Ski: +Riding: +Racket: +Football: +title: "Daily Note" +allDay: true +date: 2022-07-20 + +--- + +%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %% + +--- + +[[2022-07-19|<< 🗓 Previous ]]       [[@Main Dashboard|Back]]       [[2022-07-21|🗓 Next >>]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Record today's health +type command +action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit +id EditMetaData +``` +^button-2022-07-20Edit + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-2022-07-20NSave + +  + +# 2022-07-20 + +  + +```ad-abstract +title: Summary +collapse: open +Note Description +``` + +  + +```toc +style: number +``` + +  + +--- + +  + +### Memos + +  + +#### Memos + +This section does serve for quick memos. + +  + + +%% ### %% +  + +--- + +  + +### Notes + +  + +Loret ipsum + +  +  \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema.md b/00.03 News/American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema.md index cd8f4e30..271f5eed 100644 --- a/00.03 News/American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema.md +++ b/00.03 News/American Graffiti New Beverly Cinema.md @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ CollapseMetaTable: Yes --- Parent:: [[@News|News]] -Read:: No +Read:: [[2022-07-17]] --- diff --git a/00.03 News/It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing.md b/00.03 News/It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..815b15bc --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing.md @@ -0,0 +1,303 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Society", "US", "Abortion"] +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-07-17 +Link: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-List-abortions-before-Roe-17291284.php +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-ItwasasecretroadmaptogetanabortionNSave + +  + +# It was a secret road map for breaking the law to get an abortion. Now, ‘The List’ and its tactics are resurfacing + +1. She flew to San Francisco in June 1968 to meet a friend who knew someone who knew someone. Karen L. was 24 and eight weeks pregnant, arriving from Los Angeles. The woman picked her up at San Francisco International and carefully explained what to do next. There was a phone number; there was a code phrase. From the friend’s apartment, Karen dialed the number and spoke the phrase: + +A female voice greeted her. + +Karen was determined to end her pregnancy. A fifth-grade teacher with red hair and an allergy to birth-control pills, she had been practicing the rhythm method of contraception with her boyfriend, Erwin, who had studied to be a dentist. Though he’d offered to marry her when they found out she was pregnant, Karen did not believe in “shotgun marriages,” as she told him, and she did not want a child right then. She wasn’t ready, mentally or financially. She had grown up in a liberal Jewish family that believed abortion was an individual’s choice, in line with Jewish law and tradition. + +But this was five years before Roe v. Wade held that the Constitution protects the right to choose abortion. The procedure was banned or heavily restricted in most states, including California. Typically, according to the legal system, a person seeking an abortion, a person like Karen, was a person plotting a crime. + +On the phone at her friend’s apartment, Karen was afraid to give her name, and the voice on the other end did not ask for it. The woman simply gave her an address — 30 Clement St. — and a set of instructions: Ring the bell four times. Mention “Patricia Maginnis.” Then proceed to the second floor. + +Karen and her friend soon found themselves at a Victorian house divided into apartments in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond neighborhood. Up a steep flight of stairs, the landing gave way to polished wood floors and a living room and dining room that contained little else but tables and some bookshelves. They saw piles of literature and some women quietly stuffing envelopes with papers. + +The women told the two L.A. visitors to join them. Karen didn’t look too closely at the literature, only noticing that it mentioned political efforts to make abortion legal. After two hours, a woman beckoned Karen into a smaller room, telling the friend to stay behind. + +The woman gestured toward a set of photocopies in neat stacks, numbered pages of a single long document. This was the “Specialist Listing,” or simply “the List.” It contained the names and phone numbers of dozens of abortion providers in Mexico and Japan, along with tips about selecting a provider in those countries, preparing for the surgery and — if necessary — dodging the police. + +It was a road map for breaking the law to get a safe abortion. + +--- + +Now Playing: + +In 1968, at 24 years old, Karen L. needed an abortion, which was illegal in the U.S. She relied on an underground network of activists in San Francisco to obtain the surgery. Video: Reshma Kirpalani Special to The Chronicle + +2. “No law can stop a woman,” Karen L. recently told The Chronicle, which is identifying her by first name and last initial, as she requested for privacy and safety reasons. “I was going to risk my life,” she said. “But I was still going to do it.” + +The day 54 years ago when she visited the apartment on Clement Street and read the List, she realized she could be thrown in prison, or worse. She carefully folded a few pages of the List into an envelope, left the activists’ apartment, flew back to L.A. and began planning a trip to Mexico. + +Polls show that a majority of Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. More than two dozen leading medical associations say abortion is a safe and essential part of health care. But the GOP-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe last month, calling the precedent “egregiously wrong from the start” and claiming the Constitution does not protect the right to abortion. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote separately that he would not go as far, upholding an Mississippi abortion ban while calling the majority’s decision an “unnecessary” and “dramatic” one that guts Roe “down to the studs.” + +The decision paves the way for states or the federal government to ban abortion. Eight states have now made it illegal in all or most cases, with more states moving to pass bans. Some Republican Party officials are going further, crafting state laws to stop patients from traveling to other states for abortion care. In the meantime, Democratic Party leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom say they’ll defend abortion access and offer sanctuary. On Friday, President Biden signed an executive order that takes small steps to protect some abortion patients and providers. + +Years of scientific studies show that restrictive laws don’t stop abortions, but drive them underground instead. Women will still get abortions, and so will transgender and nonbinary people, who face additional barriers and stigmas. Abortion-rights advocates are telling people on social media to delete their period trackers and start using secure-messaging apps. Some activists are already preparing patients to evade surveillance and break the law to get care. + +In other words, they’re doing what the List’s architects were doing more than half a century ago. + +Created in San Francisco by a former U.S. Army nurse named Patricia Maginnis, the List was merely the visible component of a well-organized and efficient clandestine network that sprawled across multiple countries and incorporated the wisdom of thousands. It guided about 12,000 people to safe abortions before Roe, evolving into one of the biggest feminist projects in the country — comparable in scope to Jane, a similar group in Chicago and the subject of a recent [HBO documentary](https://www.hbo.com/movies/the-janes). + +But the List is not as well known today. Even Maginnis, who died last summer at 93, is hardly a household name, despite the fact that her radical approach transformed the abortion debate and inspired the creation of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the prominent national advocacy group. “She deserves to be much more famous than she is,” said Lili Loofbourow, an Oakland-based staff writer for Slate who [profiled Maginnis in 2018](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/pat-maginnis-abortion-rights-pro-choice-activist.html). “The debate still has not caught up to where she was.” + +The Chronicle recently spent three days at the Schlesinger Library in Massachusetts, part of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, examining hundreds of manila folders full of files that Maginnis donated. These are records from the two groups she co-founded in the mid-1960s: the Society for Humane Abortion, or SHA, which published educational materials and sponsored public talks about the need for safe abortions, and the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws, or ARAL, which dealt in underground activities and maintained the List. + +The records document every aspect of the List’s creation and upkeep. They are both meticulously detailed and secretive, marked everywhere with code numbers that ARAL employed to preserve the privacy of doctors and patients in an era when police and prosecutors sought to expose them. + +While many of these files have been available since the late 1970s, some were sitting in Maginnis’ East Oakland home until 2017. These particular folders have received little attention. + +They are full of letters that women and their loved ones wrote to her, begging for help. + +Some are neatly typed, others handwritten on pink or purple or white or yellow paper. Drawings of flowers peek out from the edges of custom stationery. Almost all are redacted, with names and addresses blacked out or excised with scissors. They vary in length from an index card (“I NEED HELP!!”) to an eight-page missive written “in the middle of the nite (sic).” The postmarks are from every corner of California and all over the country: Michigan, New York, Florida, Ohio, Alaska. + +The common thread is a tone of urgency, often bordering on desperation: + +*“Since I am 6 weeks pregnant, every day is quite important to me, so please act accordingly.” (woman in Elgin, Ill.)* + +*“I have almost reached the state of panic.” (college student, L.A.)* + +*“This is an S.O.S. letter.” (27-year-old divorcee, San Francisco)* + +*“I can’t have it, but don’t want to kill myself. The boys need me. But I’m going crazy trying to figure a way out.” (44-year-old widow and mother of three sons, Florida)* + +There are hundreds and hundreds of these letters. + +As might be expected, many of them concern young women who, like Karen L., had never been pregnant before. High school students, college students, office workers. They told Maginnis they wanted to finish school; they were broke or in debt; they couldn’t afford a kid; they just weren’t ready. + +However, a substantial number of letter-writers said they were already mothers, raising children in stable marriages or as divorcees. The Supreme Court had affirmed the legal right to contraception only in 1965, and it was still not widely available. Wives shared stories of failed IUDs and adverse reactions to birth-control pills. “I wish you every success in your crusade against our present laws,” wrote a Long Beach woman in January 1968, signing the letter with her husband’s name and a “Mrs.” in front. “Women like myself who are married and cannot take the ‘Pill’ for medical reasons are really trapped.” + +Strikingly, the medical establishment offered little comfort to women in that era. Over and over in letters to ARAL, women said they had already asked their usual doctors for help but had been turned down. “Our family doctor … told us he was sorry, understood our plight, but could not help,” wrote a mother of five in Westminster (Orange County) in early 1967. + +Doctors found themselves in positions they found nearly impossible. Philip Darney, a longtime obstetrician at San Francisco General Hospital, was a UCSF medical student training there in the late 1960s. “We didn’t learn anything about abortion in medical school,” he recalled in an interview. But his teachers spoke about being haunted by “the carnage” that resulted from botched abortions and people who tried to end their pregnancies themselves: wreckage to internal organs, gory infections. A California public health official estimated in 1962 that between 18,000 and 108,000 illegal abortions were performed *annually* in the state. In 1965, there were about 200 deaths in the U.S. from such surgeries. + +Sometimes individual doctors did flout the law in private, performing abortions for longtime patients — Darney said the medical students heard occasional “whispers” of abortions at S.F. General — but it was a huge professional risk. Physicians could be prosecuted, their patients interrogated and dragged into court. In 1966, after nine UCSF gynecologists performed abortions for women infected with rubella, which could cause severe birth defects, the state medical board accused them of “professional misconduct” and threatened to pull their licenses. + +Starting in late 1967, California law changed to allow abortions to be performed in a hospital, but only in severely limited cases and subject to approval by male-dominated hospital boards. Such restrictions continued to drive patients toward illegal providers, despite the notorious medical risks. + +And there were all kinds of scary outcomes of illegal abortions that fell short of long-term injury or death. In 1968, 15-year-old Wendy Winston of Los Angeles learned she was pregnant by her high school boyfriend. Her family hired a nurse practitioner to perform an at-home abortion when she was about three months along, Winston said. + +![Wendy Winston at home near Los Angeles. She got pregnant at age 15, and had a frightening experience with an at-home illegal abortion.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678559/6/1200x0.jpg) + +Wendy Winston at home near Los Angeles. She got pregnant at age 15, and had a frightening experience with an at-home illegal abortion. + +Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle + +The teenager was overwhelmed; the nurse, who seemed anxious, explained little. Winston remembers that the nurse inserted a plastic tube into her vagina, which soon caused contractions and lots of bleeding, which the nurse tried to slow with gauze. She gave Winston thick period pads to put in her underwear, then left the home. Winston bled through the night with her mother at her side. The next morning, she felt the fetus pass. + +Without an abortion, “I wouldn’t have been able to finish high school, since both my mom and my dad worked and my grandmother was too old to take care of a baby,” Winston, who is now 69 and still lives in the L.A. area, recently told The Chronicle. But at the time, she found the experience terrifying. + + ![Pls combo caption here: A 1990s photo of then 43-year-old Wendy Winston after she graduated college at Loyola Marymount University can be seen in her home in Venice, Calif. on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. When Winston was 15 she became pregnant while dating her high school boyfriend. When a doctor said he couldn’t perform an abortion, Winston’s mother, Patricia, hand-wrote a letter to an underground, feminist healthcare network that existed in the 60s that helped women and their families get connected to providers to obtain abortions. The organization, Society for Human Abortion, was able to connect Winston with a nurse who performed the abortion at her home. After the abortion and two decades later Winston went on to have two daughters of her own, graduated college as a single mother and ran several businesses.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678560/3/ratio3x2_1200.jpg) + +Pls combo caption here: A 1990s photo of then 43-year-old Wendy Winston after she graduated college at Loyola Marymount University can be seen in her home in Venice, Calif. on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. When Winston was 15 she became pregnant while dating her high school boyfriend. When a doctor said he couldn’t perform an abortion, Winston’s mother, Patricia, hand-wrote a letter to an underground, feminist healthcare network that existed in the 60s that helped women and their families get connected to providers to obtain abortions. The organization, Society for Human Abortion, was able to connect Winston with a nurse who performed the abortion at her home. After the abortion and two decades later Winston went on to have two daughters of her own, graduated college as a single mother and ran several businesses. + +Provided by Wendy Winston / Provided by Wendy Winston + + ![A photo of Wendy Winston’s mother Patricia Anne Luer with her grandchild and Wendy’s daughter Analisa Curzi in 1994.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/41/44/22681884/3/ratio3x2_1200.jpg) + +A photo of Wendy Winston’s mother Patricia Anne Luer with her grandchild and Wendy’s daughter Analisa Curzi in 1994. Provided by Wendy Winston + +Left: Wendy Winston in a photo taken when she graduated from Loyola Marymount University at age 43 in the 1990s. Right: Winston’s mother, Patricia Anne Luer, with her grandchild, Winston’s daughter Analisa Curzi, in 1994. Photos provided by Wendy Winston Top: Wendy Winston in a photo taken when she graduated from Loyola Marymount University at age 43 in the 1990s. Above: Winston’s mother, Patricia Anne Luer, with her grandchild, Winston’s daughter Analisa Curzi, in 1994. Photos provided by Wendy Winston + +Foreign abortions introduced yet more unknowns. While the rich could get care in countries where abortion was legal, like Japan, many people could only afford a trip to Mexico. The procedure, banned there, was widely available through illegal providers, but few patients knew how to navigate the Mexican abortion landscape. For instance, Winston’s mother, Patti, had initially considered taking her across the border for an abortion but decided against it, as she explained in a letter to ARAL in September 1968. “I hate to do that for fear of falling into the hands of someone who is not a reputable doctor,” Patti wrote. + +Now Playing: + +Wendy Winston said that her mother, Patricia, hand-wrote a letter to an underground, feminist healthcare network that existed in the 60s that helped women and their families get connected to providers to obtain abortions. Video: Bronte Wittpenn The Chronicle + +Patients during those years were so demoralized by the lack of safe options that many told ARAL they wanted to kill themselves. “Please I’m so scared I don’t know what to do,” a young woman in Daly City typed in April 1968. “Sometimes I think it would solve everything if I were dead.” Men often reported that wives and girlfriends were uttering disturbing comments. “I am afraid for her welfare,” a 20-year-old UC Santa Barbara student wrote that year. “She would kill herself rather than tell her parents.” + +Some of the most desperate situations involved rape. Multiple letters in the ARAL archive mention rape victims who had been too afraid to tell police and were now carrying their rapist’s baby. In 1968, a Chicago man told Maginnis about the recent rape of his fiancee. “She was to (sic) terrified to tell anyone, including myself,” he wrote. “When her period did not materialize when it should have, she broke down and told me the entire story.” + +Regardless of age or circumstance, most everyone writing to San Francisco asked for the same thing: Names of competent abortion providers. They wanted a copy of the List. + +--- + +![Patricia Maginnis at a 1971 Women’s Abortion Action Coalition conference and demonstration.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678557/6/1200x0.jpg) + +Patricia Maginnis at a 1971 Women’s Abortion Action Coalition conference and demonstration. + +Bob O’Connor / Special to The Chronicle 1971 + +3. The List began with an act of civil disobedience. On June 16, 1966, Patricia Maginnis carried a shopping bag full of yellow leaflets into the Financial District. A slender woman of 38 in an overcoat and dark pumps, she spent the day handing the sheets to passersby in front of office buildings, as well as at the Federal Building and UCSF, where the state medical board was meeting. + +“At the entrance to the campus,” a Chronicle reporter noted at the time, “she gave a leaflet to a priest, who returned a few minutes later and gave it back.” + +“ARE YOU PREGNANT?” one of the leaflets read. “IS YOURS A WANTED PREGNANCY? IF NOT, WHY NOT SEE AN ABORTIONIST.” It went on to give the names and contact information of 10 abortion providers in Mexico, one in Japan and a clinic in Sweden. + +It was the first draft of the List. + +Maginnis actually hoped the act of circulating it would get her arrested. California law at the time forbade “soliciting” an abortion or “providing and supplying” the means for procuring one — felonies punishable by up to five years in prison. She wanted to challenge the law in court, which could only happen if she were first handcuffed and charged. But no police intervened that day, likely fearing the very publicity she was trying to spur: Maginnis was fast becoming one of the most influential abortion-rights activists in America. + +Raised in a strict Catholic home in Oklahoma, she’d been radicalized by her experiences as an Army nurse in the 1950s, stationed at bases in Panama and the U.S. and caring for women in obstetrics wards. She saw a lot of forced birth there — women made to deliver babies they had already tried and failed to abort by their own hands, or non-viable babies with severe birth defects. Once she saw doctors place a wire cage over the bed of a screaming woman during a delivery, “as if she were an animal,” Maginnis later told a reporter for Los Angeles FM & Fine Arts magazine. + +It wasn’t enough to relax or “reform” abortion laws, she felt; they all just had to go. After leaving the Army and moving to San Francisco, Maginnis met two friends who felt the same — Rowena Gurner, a Palo Alto electronics designer, and Lana Phelan, a Long Beach legal assistant — and they formed SHA and ARAL to spread the message. “We regard abortion as a simple surgical procedure and not a criminal offense,” SHA literature declared: Abortion was medicine, and it should be available to anyone, at any time, without apology, ideally for free. + +“She’s really the first one who starts to write that way: The laws are wrong,” said Leslie Reagan, professor of history at the University of Illinois, who has studied ARAL and wrote the book “When Abortion Was a Crime.” “She’s not afraid of what anyone thinks of her.” + +Their entire budget for 1966 was less than $10,000, supplemented by whatever Maginnis earned from working weekend shifts at a hospital lab. Their headquarters was her walk-up apartment in the Richmond. “She said, ‘We’re going to do this with Scotch tape and Xeroxes, and pick up clothes off the street and wear them,’” said Loofbourow, the Slate writer. + +That intensity drew people to Maginnis. She worked with Black organizers in San Francisco to advocate legalization and printed leaflets in Spanish. Along with Gurner and Phelan, she taught abortion classes in the Bay Area and on trips to the Midwest. The classes usually began with an overview of female reproductive anatomy, then reviewed various abortion techniques, including surgical procedures such as dilation and curettage (D&C ) and a do-it-yourself technique that involved direct manipulation of the uterus with a finger or a saline wash. + +Most patients, she stressed, would be better off with a D&C. It was several times safer than childbirth if performed by a professional, and by the mid-1960s, abortionists in Mexico were doing D&Cs with modern suction equipment. “So *please* won’t you go to Mexico if you possibly can?” Maginnis implored a group of Palo Alto women who gathered to hear her speak in 1967. + +ARAL believed that despite its considerable risks, Mexico was the best option for many patients. Though Mexican police did routinely arrest or harass abortion providers, they had no power to chase anyone back into the U.S., which gave visitors some protection. And it was close, of course, which reduced the time and expense of the journey: A woman in California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas could cross the border in the morning and be home that night. + +After June 1966, when Maginnis put abortionists’ names on leaflets as a form of protest and California media covered it, demand for the information grew quickly. Soon Maginnis was answering 75 phone calls a week at Clement Street, dozens of letters arrived each month requesting copies of the List, and patients and their partners began streaming across the border into Mexico, seeking out the highlighted abortion providers. + +Naturally, the activists felt responsible for the safety of those patients, so the women of ARAL began to formalize and expand the List, building a system to ensure its accuracy. The system depended on a number of checks and balances, including in-person tours of the clinics by ARAL volunteers, exchanges of letters with the doctors and a paper-and-pencil form of crowdsourcing. Altogether, it amounted to nothing less than “the first open (and illegal) abortion referral service in the United States,” Leslie Reagan wrote in [a 2000 historical study of ARAL](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178537). + +Jane, the abortion underground based in Chicago, also helped women get illegal abortions, but the bulk of their work was training activists to perform secret abortions themselves, instead of pointing people to medical specialists abroad. The List was more like an “underground feminist health agency,” in Reagan’s description: Within a year or two of the first draft, by summer 1968, a couple of women on Clement Street were basically running an international public health department. + +--- + +4. In the third week of June 1968, Karen L. packed a Spanish-English dictionary, an oral thermometer, sanitary napkins and “sturdy walking shoes,” as the List advised. A “neat, conservative appearance will make you inconspicuous. If questioned, say you are a tourist.” + +She picked Ciudad Juarez, a short taxi ride from the Texas border. It seemed as good a place as any. The first several doctors on the List were all located there, and a few seemed to have positive reviews. On a scrap of paper, she wrote down the phone numbers of the three most promising specialists. One was “a busy family doctor.” Another ran a “large sanitorium” that provided care ranging from “unbelievably excellent to poor.” A third was a highly praised female provider. + +In an excess of caution, before getting on the plane to El Paso, where she and her boyfriend would cross the border, Karen scribbled a fourth number, of a male doctor whose description was shorter, with few reviews. She tucked the paper in her bag, leaving the List pages at home. + +A few days later, she and Erwin arrived in El Paso. + +At a bar pay phone, she unfolded the scrap of paper and plunked in some change. She began to sweat as, one after another, the voices on the other end told her the same thing in halting English or in Spanish, which Karen spoke: They could not help her right now. The first doctor “had to leave to take care of a sick family member”; the second number had been disconnected; the third doctor was not taking patients for two weeks. Please call back then, or in a month. + +Panicked now, and feeling weak in the knees, she looked again at the crumpled sheet. The only number she hadn’t tried was for the doctor with the most minimal entry on the List. + +Dial tone. + +Karen punched in the fourth and last number. + +“Patricia Maginnis sent me,” she said. + +“Yes,” a woman answered, “I’ll get the doctor.” Moments later, a man greeted her in smooth English and told her exactly what to do next. + +--- + +![A leader in the movement for unrestricted abortion, Patricia Maginnis stands next to a bulletin board full of abortion information in Sausalito, Calif. in the 1960s.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678558/6/1200x0.jpg) + +A leader in the movement for unrestricted abortion, Patricia Maginnis stands next to a bulletin board full of abortion information in Sausalito, Calif. in the 1960s. + +Bettmann Archive / Getty Images + +5. The abortionists on the List were an eclectic mix. Most, but not all, were licensed physicians. ARAL referred to them broadly as “specialists” and kept a detailed file on each, keyed to a code number. + +According to the files, No. 26, a Tokyo doctor, was “a stocky, kind-faced man with very sure hands.” No. 39 was a middle-aged Spaniard with an anxious demeanor and a clean Mexicali clinic two blocks from the U.S. border. No. 8, in San Luis Rio Colorado near Yuma, Ariz., stocked the antibiotic Terramycin and was “highly recommended.” No. 43, in Juarez, “may act as if he doesn’t speak or understand English. Don’t believe it.” + +Maginnis brokered informal deals with the specialists. She promised to direct patients to their clinics and avoid exposing the most sensitive details about their practices to law enforcement. In exchange, the specialists agreed to treat the referred patients kindly and charge a reasonable fee. The price of an illegal abortion in Mexico, always paid in cash, ranged widely, from $150 to $700 U.S. ($1,250 to $6,000 in today’s dollars). Cost depended on the provider, the size of his staff and his ethics; Maginnis often haggled the providers down and even negotiated free abortions for patients who could not afford them. + +ARAL insisted, too, that providers allow inspections of their facilities. The author Susan Berman visited an abortion clinic in San Luis in 1970 on ARAL’s behalf, filing a colorful dispatch to Clement Street: + +More on Roe v. Wade Overturned + +*The clinic was in a brand new tract type house on the outskirts of San Luis. … The operating room had a table with a clean piece of paper over it, stirrups and a leather cut out for the ass. … The clinic had no thermometers, nor blood pressure taker. Dr. (redacted) said they were probably there but he couldn’t find them. ... Dr. (redacted) said he had been to a private high school in Ohio and to the University of Mexico Medical School. I asked to see his credential but he said he didn’t bring them in case he was busted.* + +At times, ARAL’s files read more like the records of a democratic resistance movement than a health bureaucracy. Police surveillance was a constant threat, particularly on the Mexico side, requiring the activists and doctors to switch phone numbers, speak through intermediaries and mail each other from hotels. There were times when police pressure forced specialists to lie low for months; their nurses would tell patients the doctor was “on vacation.” + +Occasionally, ARAL received allegations that a specialist had committed fraud or misconduct, requiring them to scratch a name from the List or append a warning. For example, in October 1967, an 18-year-old college freshman from Palo Alto told Maginnis in a letter that a male provider in Agua Prieta had botched her abortion, damaged her uterus and then tried to rape her. After interviewing the traumatized woman, Gurner wrote to the doctor directly. + +“Words will not describe how horrified we feel,” she said, demanding that he refund the girl’s $300. “We shall have to warn people who contact us about your unprofessional conduct.” Gurner photocopied the letter, marked it with the specialist’s code (No. 53), and tucked it in his permanent file. + +Crucially, the activists included a survey form with each copy of the List, asking patients to fill it out and send it back after their surgeries, “for the sake of the next woman,” as Phelan put it once. These accounts, many of which are preserved at the Schlesinger Library, allowed ARAL to incorporate feedback in close to real time. + +“The operation was carried-out in the strictest hospital way,” a 29-year-old San Francisco woman wrote to Maginnis in 1966 about a San Luis abortion. “I was swabbed liberally with antiseptic liquid — pink — and shaven naked as a babe!!!” The boyfriend of one patient reported that “the whole thing took 20 minutes” in a “spotless” Nogales clinic where “an old mamasita (sic) type” tended to his partner after the procedure. + +Many patients were so pleased with the care in Mexico that they mailed long narrative accounts of their abortions to Maginnis in addition to filling out the standard ARAL survey. A common theme in these letters is surprise — at how easy it all could be. + +“The whole experience was completely rewarding and not at all terrifying in any respect to any of us,” wrote a woman who traveled to a Juarez clinic with three other patients in 1967. One woman who went to Nogales for an abortion marveled, “It’s such a simple procedure the most difficult thing is the expense and breaking the law!” Another wrote, “I had my abortion and lived happily ever after.” + +The more people used the List, fact-checking it as they went, the more reliable it became. A new version was printed most every month, with “Supplements” issued in between on a near-daily basis. Swelling from the original one-page flyer to eight pages to 20, the List ebbed and flowed with the experiences of women and the struggles of providers as they all tried to live their lives and stay out of jail. + +As well as this system worked most of the time, the fact that it worked at all was a minor miracle, requiring significant effort, luck and trust. Patients relying on the List needed to know that ARAL and the specialists would keep their secret. And there were massive risks inherent to an abortion referral service that ARAL lacked the power to eliminate. All they could do was be as blunt as possible: + +*WARNING. ABORTION IS ILLEGAL IN MEXICO. DO NOT CARRY THIS LIST INTO MEXICO. The ARAL cannot guarantee refunds in cases of incomplete abortions, nor can we guarantee bail funds in case of arrest …* + +--- + +![In 1968, at 24 years old, Karen L. needed an abortion. She traveled to Ciudad Juarez to obtain one.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678556/6/1200x0.jpg) + +In 1968, at 24 years old, Karen L. needed an abortion. She traveled to Ciudad Juarez to obtain one. + +Reshma Kirpalani/Special to The Chronicle + +6. The morning of Karen’s appointment in Juarez, she and Erwin followed the instructions given over the phone by the doctor. They took a taxi to a fountain in the city’s downtown. Waiting for them there was a handsome, dark-haired man in his 30s: Specialist No. 55. The couple hugged him, pretending they were all old friends. The Americans climbed into his silver car. + +According to ARAL’s archives, No. 55 was a bit of a mystery at that point. He first appeared on the List in 1967. For unclear reasons, his name had been crossed out in early 1968, months before Karen met him in Juarez. “We do not know if he is a physician,” ARAL had written, and, worse, “We do not trust him.” But then the group toured one of his offices and confirmed his medical credentials — he was an M.D. who had trained at St. Luke’s Hospital in Massachusetts as well as a Juarez hospital — and he was re-added to the List by the time Karen picked up her photocopies at Clement Street. + +Departing from the city’s fountain, No. 55 drove Karen and her boyfriend through the streets of Juarez, doubling back a few times, before stopping in an alley next to the back door of a building. + +*Here it is, the proverbial back alley*, Karen remembers thinking. But then the doctor ushered her inside, where she saw “a small, spotless office with two rooms, one for the procedure and one for recovery,” she wrote a few months later in an essay about her abortion. “Instruments were laid out on a shelf behind glass cabinet doors. ... A nurse or assistant greeted us, I changed into a gown, and that’s all I remember before the anesthesia put me out.” + +She awoke feeling fine, other than some grogginess and slight discomfort. An hour later, she dressed and left with Erwin, who took her back to the hotel. Later that evening the couple went to dinner with the doctor at Martino’s, a Juarez restaurant popular with tourists and featuring a menu of French and Spanish specialties. + +The next day, Karen threw the crumpled slip of paper with the providers’ names into a trash can and crossed back into the U.S. feeling “huge relief,” she recalled. “I was alive.” + +An appointment with her L.A. gynecologist a few days later confirmed that she was healthy and the Mexican doctor had done a “good job,” the obstetrician told her. Karen moved on with her life. “I had no regrets of any kind,” she recently said. “I just felt lucky.” + +Soon after the surgery, Karen remembered her duty to update the List and wrote Maginnis an eight-page letter, a copy of which exists at the Schlesinger Library. Though it contains no name or address — it is signed “A Grateful Soul” — The Chronicle was able to identify Karen’s letter by the date (June 26, 1968) as well as some details, and when emailed a copy, she confirmed it was hers. + +“Your list was complete and served as a bible in these past few troubled and desperate weeks,” Karen had written, thanking Maginnis and describing Specialist No. 55 as kind, “very polite” and “extremely capable.” + +--- + +![Images from events related to abortion rights, including demonstrations in support of legal abortion and women’s rights in San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s; and the 1935 removal of a woman (top right) from a San Francisco apartment in which illegal abortions were performed.](https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/40/60/22678564/6/1200x0.jpg) + +Images from events related to abortion rights, including demonstrations in support of legal abortion and women’s rights in San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s; and the 1935 removal of a woman (top right) from a San Francisco apartment in which illegal abortions were performed. + +Collage by Daymond Gascon / The Chronicle from elements by Bettmann Archive / Getty Images and The Chronicle + +7. As the feminist movement gained momentum through the late 1960s, and people kept dying from forced births and botched abortions, public opinion shifted and laws began to change. In 1970, New York legalized abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy; Roe v. Wade followed in 1973. + +American doctors were finally able to perform abortions in the open, and the impact was profound. The first full year after Roe, 1974, at least 900,000 patients received legal abortions in 2,000 U.S. hospitals and clinics. Medical schools began teaching the procedure, and abortion was integrated into medical practice. With safe abortions now available, maternal death rates plummeted, and care kept getting better. + +In the 50 years since Roe, “We have improved abortion techniques and learned an immense amount,” said Darney, who became chief of obstetrics at S.F. General. He and his wife, the psychologist Uta Landy, went on to build what is now the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF, which pioneered a multidisciplinary model for sexual health. Today, medical research shows that legal abortion in the U.S. is safe and effective — 14 times safer than childbirth, according to a 2012 study, and safer even than colonoscopies and some dental procedures, according to a comprehensive 2018 review. + +Maginnis and her co-founders never claimed that the List was any substitute for a legal and regulated system of professional medicine. As Rowena Gurner wrote in a 1967 letter, “Some day, we hope the cruel abortion laws will be repealed and that women will be able to go to their own physicians for proper abortion care.” + +The activists disbanded SHA and ARAL in 1975. But they had achieved something remarkable: Between 1966 and 1970, they had transformed a yellow leaflet into a health service of last resort, helping thousands who had almost nowhere else to turn. Like Karen, who never met Maginnis or gave ARAL her real name, the users of the List were able to preserve their privacy while contributing to an analog database of enormous power, which they used to shape their own fates. + +After 1968, Karen left teaching and became a social worker, helping Spanish-speaking families. She wanted to work in the field of family planning; the experience in Mexico had convinced her that the right to choose was fundamental. Over the decades, though, she didn’t really talk about her own abortion. Karen is now in her 70s and runs her own company. And it was only a few months ago, hearing that the Supreme Court was poised to reverse Roe, when she dug out the essay she’d written back in the summer of 1968. It had been sitting in a cabinet all this time. The title was “Odyssey Into the Abortion Underground When it was a Crime.” + +Now there will be “undergrounds everywhere,” Karen said. Yes, they’ll be different, relying on digital tools instead of the Postal Service, and they’ll face new challenges: electronic surveillance, aggressive state bans, vigilantes empowered by law to sue patients and anyone assisting them. But, “If you don’t know about the past, you cannot learn from the past,” she said. “This is what we had to go through.” + +The List didn’t just change people’s lives by leading them to medical care. It gave them a glimpse of a world that seemed kinder and saner and very much within reach. Over and over, in their post-abortion letters to ARAL, women said their experiences with safe, medical abortions in Mexico had shown them that the United States could easily provide such care. Criminalization was senseless, they said in those letters from the 1960s; it couldn’t possibly last much longer. + +Many expressed an earnest desire to support the cause of repeal. They told ARAL that if they couldn’t afford to donate money — several apologized for being broke — they would write letters to Congress, tell friends, tell their stories. + +“Am very grateful for such an organization as yours,” a San Francisco woman wrote to the group in 1968, describing a successful surgery in a small, tidy clinic and a comfortable recovery during which the doctor brought her Pepsi and a light Mexican meal on a tray. “The change in abortion laws shall be accepted before long I’m certain. I shall come in and help when I can.” + +*Jason Fagone (he/him) and Alexandria Bordas (she/they) are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: [jason.fagone@sfchronicle.com](mailto:jason.fagone@sfchronicle.com), [alexandria.bordas@sfchronicle.com](mailto:alexandria.bordas@sfchronicle.com) Twitter: [@jfagone](https://twitter.com/jfagone), [@CrossingBordas](https://twitter.com/CrossingBordas)* + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks.md b/00.03 News/Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..89e1d71f --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks.md @@ -0,0 +1,165 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Economy", "Saudi", "Project", "Future", "City"] +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-07-17 +Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mbs-neom-saudi-arabia/ +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-SaudiCrownPrince500BillionSmartCityFacesSetbacksNSave + +  + +# Saudi Crown Prince’s $500 Billion ’Smart City’ Faces Major Setbacks + +![A rendering from an internal “style catalog” for the planned high-tech region of Neom that was seen by Bloomberg Businessweek.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i.b0HU_lwVDw/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +A rendering from an internal “style catalog” for the planned high-tech region of Neom that was seen by *Bloomberg Businessweek*. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +## MBS’s $500 Billion Desert Dream Just Keeps Getting Weirder + +Neom, the Saudi crown prince’s urban megaproject, is supposed to have a ski resort, swim lanes for commuters, and “smart” everything. It’s going great—for the consultants. + +July 14, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC + +One day last September, a curious email arrived in Chris Hables Gray’s inbox. An author and self-described anarchist, feminist, and revolutionary, Gray fits right into Santa Cruz, Calif., where he lives. He’s written extensively about genetic engineering and the inevitable rise of cyborgs, attending protests in between for causes such as Black Lives Matter. + +While Gray had taken some consulting gigs over the years, he’d never received an offer like this one. The first shock was the money: significantly more than he’d earned from all but one of his books. The second was the task: researching the aesthetics of seminal works of science fiction such as *Blade Runner*. The biggest surprise, however, was the ultimate client: Mohammed bin Salman, the 36-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia. + +MBS, as he’s known abroad, was in the early stages of one of the largest and most difficult construction projects in history, which involves turning an expanse of desert the size of Belgium into a high-tech city-region called Neom. Starting with a budget of $500 billion, MBS bills Neom as a showpiece that will transform Saudi Arabia’s economy and serve as a testbed for technologies that could revolutionize daily life. And as Gray’s proposed assignment suggested, the crown prince’s vision bears little resemblance to the cities of today. Intrigued, Gray took the job. “If I can be honest with how I see the world, I’ll pretty much put my work out to anyone,” he says. + +![Mountains that Neom planners intend to turn into a ski area.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iRmWWUMzZehM/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +Mountains that Neom planners intend to turn into a ski area. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +Gray had signed on to a city-building exercise so ambitious that it verges on the fantastical. An internal Neom “style catalog” viewed by *Bloomberg Businessweek* includes elevators that somehow fly through the sky, an urban spaceport, and buildings shaped like a double helix, a falcon’s outstretched wings, and a flower in bloom. The chosen site in Saudi Arabia’s far northwest, stretching from the sun-scorched Red Sea coast into craggy mountain badlands, has summer temperatures over 100F and almost no fresh water. Yet, according to MBS and his advisers, it will soon be home to millions of people who’ll live in harmony with the environment, relying on desalination plants and a fully renewable electric grid. They’ll benefit from cutting-edge infrastructure and a regulatory system designed expressly to foster new ideas—as long as those ideas don’t include challenging the authority of MBS. There may even be booze. Neom appears to be one of the crown prince’s highest priorities, and the Saudi state is devoting immense resources to making it a reality. + +Yet five years into its development, bringing Neom out of the realm of science fiction is proving a formidable challenge, even for a near-absolute ruler with access to a $620 billion sovereign wealth fund. According to more than 25 current and former employees interviewed for this story, as well as 2,700 pages of internal documents, the project has been plagued by setbacks, many stemming from the difficulty of implementing MBS’s grandiose, ever-changing ideas—and of telling a prince who’s overseen the imprisonment of many of his own family members that his desires can’t be met. + +Efforts to relocate the indigenous residents of the Neom site, who’ve lived there for generations, have been turbulent, devolving on one occasion into a gun battle. Dozens of key staff have quit, complaining of a toxic work environment and a culture of wild overspending with few results. And along the way, Neom has become something of a full-employment guarantee for international architects, futurists, and even Hollywood production designers, each taking a cut of Saudi Arabia’s petroleum riches in exchange for work that some strongly suspect will never be used. Few are willing to speak on the record, citing nondisclosure agreements or fear of retribution; at least one former employee who criticized the project was jailed in Saudi Arabia. (He’s since been released.) + +It would be unfair to entirely dismiss Neom as an autocrat’s folly. Parts of the plan, such as a $5 billion facility to produce hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles and other uses, are rooted in current economic realities, and building a global hub almost from scratch isn’t without precedent in the region; even 30 years ago, most of Dubai was empty sand. Since he became Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler in 2017, MBS has demonstrated a talent for imposing dramatic change, doing away with large swaths of the religious restrictions that used to bind every aspect of daily life. Women are pouring into the workforce, and teenagers are able to dance at sold-out music festivals—events that were previously unimaginable. + +Nonetheless, the chaotic trajectory of Neom so far suggests that MBS’s urban dream may never be delivered. The same is true of his broader plans for economic transformation. In the crown prince’s telling, Saudi Arabia will soon be a center of innovation and entrepreneurship, free of the corruption and religious extremism that have long held it back. But to his critics, this promised future is a veneer, a layer of technological gloss over a core of repression, kleptocracy, and—above all—indefinite one-man rule. + +“I was not alone in realizing that it was spurious at best,” Andy Wirth, an American hospitality executive who worked on Neom in 2020, says of the project. “The complete absence of being tethered to reality, objectively, is what was demonstrated there.” + +MBS introduced Neom at the inaugural Future Investment Initiative, a glitzy conference for international investors held in 2017 at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel—the same hostelry that days later would become a five-star prison for businessmen his government accused of corruption. Everything about Neom, which is a portmanteau combining the Greek word for “new” with *mustaqbal*, Arabic for “future,” would be cutting-edge. The difference between it and an ordinary city, MBS declared from the stage, would be as stark as the gap between an old Nokia and a sleek smartphone. + +In an interview the same day with Bloomberg News, MBS explained that Neom’s most important innovation would be its legal framework. He said that in a place like New York, there’s an inconvenient need for laws to serve citizens as well as the private sector. “But Neom, you have no one there,” he said, omitting mention of the tens of thousands of Saudis then living in the area. As a result, regulations could be based on the desires of investors alone. “Imagine if you are the governor of New York without having any public demands,” MBS said. “How much would you be able to create for the companies and the private sector?” + +The idea of an authoritarian polity run for the benefit of international capital had a certain appeal to the Davos class. Steve Schwarzman and Masayoshi Son, the chief executives of Blackstone Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp., respectively, were among the international financiers who endorsed the project. Klaus Kleinfeld, the former CEO of Alcoa Inc., was appointed to lead it. Architects and planners were also interested, seeing a rare chance to shape a metropolis from the ground up—even if some wondered whether the money might be better spent improving existing Saudi cities. Neom looked like a “pace-setter in terms of new kinds of thinking around mobility and energy,” says John Rossant, the chairman of NewCities, a nonprofit focused on urban issues, who joined its advisory board. Its model makes room for blue-sky ideas; some employees say they view the project as a sort of urban skunk works, providing a rare opportunity to test futuristic concepts even if they’re likely to fail. + +![MBS unveiling Neom in 2017.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iaL6yAm5a5k0/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +MBS unveiling Neom in 2017. Credit: YouTube + +Although the Neom site was in a region few Saudis have ever visited, MBS made clear that he expected it to become a hub for national life. Within a few months of the Ritz-Carlton announcement, satellite images showed that a series of large buildings was already under construction, surrounded by expanses of greenery that stuck out sharply from the desert. It was a new palace for the crown prince, where he’d soon be spending much of his time. + +Less than a year after MBS declared his intentions for Neom, the *Washington Post* columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul and never walked out. A US intelligence assessment found that MBS likely ordered the writer and government critic’s murder; the crown prince denied any involvement. But the ensuing outrage cast a pall over foreign investment in Saudi Arabia, and many businesspeople cut ties with the kingdom—and with Neom. Among others, the British architect Norman Foster, former Y Combinator President Sam Altman, and ex-US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz all left the Neom advisory board. MBS was undaunted. At the second gathering of the Future Investment Initiative, held three weeks after Khashoggi was killed, he hosted some of the remaining advisory board members for a late-night audience at his palace. According to Rossant, who was in attendance, MBS described Khashoggi’s death as a “tragedy” that should never have occurred. He also delivered a clear message: Neom would go on no matter what. + +It would, however, be an increasingly Saudi-led project. Kleinfeld had lasted less than a year as CEO and was replaced a few months before the Khashoggi murder. His successor, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, came from Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. A chemical engineer by training, Al-Nasr had a reputation at Aramco for executing complicated plans. He’d also learned to navigate the demands and sensitivities of Saudi Arabia’s rulers. And at Neom, understanding the preferences of the man at the top is paramount. “His Royal Highness,” Al-Nasr says, “has been with us, and I am not exaggerating, almost daily.” + +Neom’s first major development was planned for Sharma, a modest town of car repair shops and concrete houses scattered around a placid bay. The goal was to create a community inspired by the Côte d’Azur, with an initial population of almost 50,000. To plan it, Neom executives turned to an unusual source, according to internal documents and two former employees: Luca Dini Design & Architecture, an Italian firm that specializes in superyachts. Luca Dini’s designers tweaked and retweaked their proposals with feedback from a committee headed by MBS. The result was a concept called Silver Beach. Instead of mere sand, the seaside would be lined with crushed marble, planners noted, which would shimmer in the sun like silver. Bound by tight deadlines to begin construction, Neom staff and consultants worked overtime for weeks to refine the design, which also included a yacht club, an electric-car racing circuit, and more than 400 mansions, some as large as 100,000 square feet. + +![A conceptual rendering of Silver Beach.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iJHgfiOWvt.Y/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +A conceptual rendering of Silver Beach. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +Then, in the first quarter of 2019, the project was abruptly shelved, several former employees say. Two of them recall being told that the concept, even with its lustrous seaside, wasn’t imaginative enough for Neom’s leadership. Real estate development can involve considerable trial and error, and many designs never see the light of day. But to the employees, scrapping Silver Beach was part of a pattern of working furiously on ambitious, expensive plans that were quickly abandoned—such as one of Neom’s early initiatives, a $200 billion solar field that was canceled soon after being announced. “If I had to put a bottom line for all the work that I did in this era, it was presentations and PowerPoints that went into the garbage the next week,” says a former manager who worked on Silver Beach. “It was the least productive part of my whole life in terms of doing real things and the most productive in terms of the money I got.” + +The work could indeed be phenomenally lucrative. Neom offered tax-free salaries of $700,000 to $900,000 for some senior expatriates—more than 20 times the income of the average Saudi—and a broad range of other perks. With pay packages like that, it had little trouble attracting foreign staff, especially once the initial furor over Khashoggi subsided. Most were required to live on the project site, where Neom had constructed temporary housing—comfortable if basic apartments in the desert, with an army of migrant laborers taking care of food, cleaning, and laundry. Remote work was discouraged during the pandemic; in 2020 the government chartered flights from London to bring Neom staff to Saudi Arabia. + +As more of them arrived, foreign employees began describing their experiences with a joke: When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets. The first is to hold all the gold you’ll accumulate, and with so many living expenses taken care of, it will soon grow heavy. The second bucket is for all the shit you take. When that bucket is full, you pick up your bucket of gold and leave. It often doesn’t take long; many people Neom hires last less than a year. + +Former employees say one of the chief sources of aggravation is Al-Nasr, whom they describe as having a volcanic temper. Several recall him openly berating subordinates, sometimes issuing threats unlike anything they’d experienced in their careers. In one particularly tense moment, after two e-sports companies canceled partnerships with Neom, citing human-rights concerns, Al-Nasr said he’d pull out a gun and start shooting if he wasn’t told who was to blame, according to two witnesses to the exchange. Al-Nasr disputes these accounts. “Not anyone can stand the pressure of the demands of the day, and there are people who leave because it’s more demanding than anything they have done before,” he says. + +![A planned seaside hotel.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ijDWU0GfOPrE/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +A planned seaside hotel. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +Among the misdeeds most likely to anger Al-Nasr, the former employees say, was failing to spend enough money. Three of them described Al-Nasr keeping a diagram showing which department heads were disbursing less than their budgets allowed, which the ex-staff half-seriously referred to as a “wall of shame.” There were few constraints on hiring outside consultants—both McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group Inc. have worked extensively on Neom—and some plans were developed so fast that the firms hired to assess them would provide cost estimates with 40% buffers. One former senior manager says he was so disturbed by what he saw as financial waste that it kept him up at night. (In response, Al-Nasr says that “we don’t do it this way” and that Neom evaluates employees based on their progress implementing plans, not how much they spend.) + +Wirth, the American hospitality executive, was hired to work on a particularly expensive project: a Neom ski resort. The idea is slightly less absurd than it sounds. Temperatures sometimes dip below freezing on the region’s higher mountaintops; with enough snow-making equipment, it could be possible to facilitate a winter ski season. But Wirth soon grew alarmed by the environmental implications. The resort plans called for building an artificial lake, which would require blowing up large portions of the landscape. The Vault, an adjacent hotel and residential development, would occupy a man-made canyon, essentially “a massive open-pit mine,” Wirth says. It was a landscape that might have been lifted from *Foundation*, an Apple TV+ series set thousands of years in the future that MBS has said he enjoys. (Loosely based on novels by Isaac Asimov, it tells the story of a mathematician’s quest to protect human knowledge from the collapse of a dying galactic empire, whose three genetically identical monarchs live in a sprawling palace while their subjects toil below ground.) “We couldn’t even estimate the build cost,” Wirth says. “We were hanging buildings on the side of cliffs, and we didn’t even know the geology.” He decided faster than most that his No. 2 bucket was overflowing. Wirth resigned in August 2020, five months into the job. + +![One of Neom's housing complexes for employees.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ibkxtxWyMJTo/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +One of Neom's housing complexes for employees. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +The main residential camp for Neom’s 2,000 employees is tucked among rocky hills 2 miles from the coast. To enter, I had to pass two checkpoints manned by private security guards. My face was also scanned by machinery bearing the logo of Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., a company accused by activists of helping the Chinese government surveil Uyghurs in Xinjiang. + +Past the barbed-wire fence, Neom Community 1 unfolds in a series of neat lawns and identical white homes. Each is about the size of a shipping container, identified by a series of letters and numbers—Block 15, C-83, for example. Meals are served in a central dining hall, and employees zip between buildings on electric scooters. The overall aesthetic might be described as a cross between a Google campus and a minimum-security prison, albeit one with a small population of children: Community 1 has a school, and some employees have moved their families in. + +Neom’s marketing is everywhere. One poster in an office building instructs employees to embody a “champion mindset,” emphasized with inspirational quotations from MBS and Nelson Mandela. (The poster gives them equal billing.) That means maintaining “an unshakable belief in yourself and Neom, challenging the status quo, demonstrating an innovative ethos that enables everyone to seek and become a CATALYST FOR CHANGE.” + +Many staffers seem to have genuinely bought into that message. Jan Paterson, a British-Canadian who heads planning for Neom’s “sports sector,” says she wants her grandchildren to grow up in the city, which she hopes will be the most physically active urban center in the world. Three years in, she’s one of the longest-serving employees. “I joined because, in my working career, no one has ever said, ‘Do you fancy setting up a semi-autonomous state using your passion as a tool for positive social change?’ ” Paterson explains. “It’s as simple as that.” Her eyes light up as she describes an ideal day in the Neom of the future. Imagine a sixth grader, she says. When he wakes up, his home will scan his metabolism. Because he had too much sugar the night before, the refrigerator will suggest porridge instead of the granola bar he wanted. Outside he’ll find a swim lane instead of a bus stop. Carrying a waterproof backpack, he’ll breaststroke the whole way to school. Paterson actually means this; Neom says it’s considering an idea for canals filled with swimmable water, creating a novel aquatic commuting option. If all goes well, she says, residents can expect an extra 10 years of “healthy life expectancy.” + +![Temporary office buildings.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iDkCSyRf2q3s/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +Temporary office buildings. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +![Employees heading for a meal.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i2w086CLNNMU/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +Employees heading for a meal. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +Living and working in their camp, Neom executives have little contact with the indigenous inhabitants of Tabuk, as the broader area is called. Its coastline has long been one of Saudi Arabia’s more neglected territories; some towns weren’t hooked up to the electric grid until the 1980s. Many of its people are members of the Huwaitat, an historically nomadic tribe, now settled in the region where Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt meet. From the start, there was no place for them in Neom’s plans, and thousands were told in early 2020 that the state would require their land. + +As officials went house to house months later, surveying the properties to be cleared out, a man named Abdulraheem Al Huwaity greeted them angrily. He began recording a series of videos with his phone, which soon went viral. His wiry beard streaked with gray, Al Huwaity faced the camera head on, speaking in a steady voice as he accused the government of intimidating residents into signing over their homes. He also broke almost every taboo of Saudi political speech. MBS’s reign amounted to “rule by children,” he said, and the government’s clerics were “silent cowards.” Al Huwaity declared he was waiting for the authorities to arrest or kill him. The measure of a life, he said, isn’t time spent on Earth; rather, “a stand of one day can equal 90 years.” In mid-April 2020 heavily armed police arrived at his house and a gunfight ensued. When it ended, Al Huwaity was dead and two officers injured. The government said he had weapons in his home and had opened fire, ignoring demands that he surrender. + +After Al Huwaity’s death, officials expanded the compensation packages provided to removed residents, promising to grant them land elsewhere in the region. For larger properties, residents say, the payments can reach 1 million riyals ($266,000), though the owner of a simple home might receive just 100,000 riyals—less than the monthly salary of some Neom employees. Neom is also offering training programs for local youth and funding a scholarship program that sends students from Tabuk to the US, after which they receive jobs at the project. “We want to make sure the locals here feel the value of Neom,” Al-Nasr says. + +The town of Sharma, where Silver Beach was supposed to be, has been flattened, along with Alkhurayba, where Al Huwaity lived. On a recent visit, a lyric from an Arabic love song had been spray-painted on one of the few walls still standing: “He’s unjust, but?” The word for “unjust,” *dhalim*, can also mean “tyrant.” One Huwaitat man, who asked not to be identified because he fears retaliation, says he resisted relocation at first. But after Al Huwaity was killed and the authorities cut off the electricity and closed the schools, he realized he had no choice. He’s waiting for his compensation payment. “What can we do?” he asks. “We want to live.” + +In January 2021, MBS appeared on Saudi television to introduce Neom’s most far-fetched element yet, a “civilizational revolution” called the Line. A “linear city” 100 miles long, it would generate zero carbon emissions. Its 1 million residents would occupy a car-free surface layer, with no one more than five minutes’ walk from essential amenities; utility corridors and high-speed trains would be hidden underground, along with infrastructure for moving freight. + +![Early construction for a Neom industrial zone.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i3iqxjGaOT6E/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +Early construction for a Neom industrial zone. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +The concept carried echoes of an idea originated in the 1960s by Superstudio, an Italian architectural collective, for a structure so enormous it would wrap around the entire planet. This “Continuous Monument” was never a real building proposal; it was intended as a critique of excessive urbanization and of the modernist megaprojects then in vogue. One of Superstudio’s last surviving members, when asked about the Line by the *New York Times*, dryly noted that “seeing the dystopias of your own imagination being created is not the best thing you could wish for.” + +Within Neom, the Line was being overseen by Antoni Vives, the head of urban development. A former deputy mayor of Barcelona, Vives had been hired in 2018 and quickly became one of Al-Nasr’s closest allies. But two weeks after the plan was announced, a judge in Vives’s home country found him guilty of charges of malfeasance relating to his time as an official, according to *El Pais* newspaper. Vives was sentenced to two years in prison, which was reduced to community service. He returned to Neom soon after. (Vives didn’t respond to requests for comment; Al-Nasr says that Neom doesn’t penalize employees for “their own country’s business or politics” and that Vives is “an honest person, putting his time and his life to this job.”) + +Neom staff are still working nonstop to deliver the Line and to move forward with other projects. Early construction has started on the mountain resort that so alarmed Wirth, which will require the removal of more than 20 million tons of rock—three times the weight of Hoover Dam. At Oxagon, a vast industrial zone to be built partly on pontoonlike structures floating in the Red Sea, workers are digging the foundations of a hydrogen plant, while cranes swing back and forth over an almost finished data center. And according to Al-Nasr, Neom’s legal and political framework is nearly complete. An entity called the Neom Authority will govern the region, its head appointed by the Saudi king—almost certainly MBS, once he succeeds his 86-year-old father, King Salman. It may be demarcated from the rest of the country by a “digital border,” allowing entry only to those with authorization. Residents will be represented by an advisory body, though it’s not yet clear whether its members will be elected. + +To Neom’s backers, such detailed planning is all part of a serious effort to create a hypermodern city—a bold initiative but not a ridiculous one. Ali Shihabi, a commentator close to the government who sits on the Neom advisory board, says he divides its components into two categories: those that could make a realistic near-term difference to Saudi Arabia, such as improved desalination technology, and those that he concedes are more “aspirational.” Neom “has a huge amount of research and thought and strategy and substance behind it,” he says. + +At the same time, Neom executives and their array of consultants continue to generate yet more ideas, some of them informed directly by Hollywood. Over the past several years, Neom has commissioned work from Olivier Pron, a designer who helped create the look of the *Guardians of the Galaxy* films, and Nathan Crowley, who’s known for his work on the Dark Knight trilogy. It’s also hired Jeff Julian, a futurist with credits on *World War Z* and *I Am Legend*, movies that depict a zombie apocalypse and the aftermath of a pandemic that’s wiped out most of humanity, respectively. + +Gray, the Santa Cruz author, was hired to help conceive a high-end tourism zone called the Gulf of Aqaba, which internal documents say will feature luxurious homes, marinas, nightclubs, and a “destination boarding school.” MBS told its designers that he liked the aesthetic of “cyberpunk,” a sci-fi subgenre that typically depicts a dark, tech-infused future with a seedy underworld—think William Gibson’s novel *Neuromancer* or the Keanu Reeves vehicle *Johnny Mnemonic* (also based on a book by Gibson). “I was a little surprised to hear that the prince was very interested in science fiction, but many people are, of all sorts of political persuasions,” Gray says. He and a team of other consultants were soon working long hours to research the aesthetics and implied culture of cyberpunk’s many iterations, which fed into a taxonomy of science fiction atmospheres that Neom employees were developing. + +![On the road to Neom.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ix3FB0A.1Kfo/v0/640x-1.jpg) + +On the road to Neom. Photographer: Iman Al-Dabbagh + +An internal document from this exercise listed 37 options, arranged alphabetically from “Alien Invasion” to “Utopia.” After input from a panel of experts, 13 advanced to the next phase of consideration—almost all of them cyberpunk-related in some way. These were divided further into “backward-looking” and “forward-looking” categories and laid out on a spectrum from dystopian to utopian. Each was analyzed in depth, with Neom staff interrogating their values. (“The big question biopunk asks is, Where does one stop being human?”) Next they ranked the concepts on a matrix of factors, including whether they had a “strong architectural component” and their alignment with Neom’s goals. Two guiding philosophies for the Gulf of Aqaba came out on top: “solarpunk,” depicting a future where environmental challenges have largely been solved, and “post-cyberpunk.” The latter, the document said, takes a relatively optimistic view of the world to come, with clean edges, slim skyscrapers, and sleek flying cars. It identified the best example of the style as Ryan Coogler’s *Black Panther*—coincidentally, the first movie shown when MBS allowed Saudi cinemas to reopen after a decades-long ban. + +It remains to be seen, of course, whether ideas like the Gulf of Aqaba will survive contact with financial and physical reality. Almost immediately after the Line was unveiled, Neom executives discovered just how challenging the project would be. One major problem, an internal progress report explained, was building the underground layer that’s supposed to contain transportation and logistics facilities. There would be “abnormal upfront infrastructure/utilities costs resulting from linear design,” it said. According to several ex-employees, the original concept for a series of interconnected low-rise communities gradually evolved into an idea for two parallel mega-structures, as tall as the Empire State Building, that would extend horizontally for dozens of miles. Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, a former Neom planner estimated they could cost $1 trillion to build. Neom isn’t discussing any of this publicly, even as crews start early work on the site and designers refine plans for a half-mile-long prototype. “What we will present when we are ready will be revolutionary,” Al-Nasr says. + +At a recent art biennale in Riyadh, renderings of Superstudio’s Continuous Monument hung on the wall, showing a linear structure swallowing the whole world. The caption invited viewers to “imagine a near future in which all architecture will be created with a single act.” The idea stayed in my mind long after leaving Neom, where I flew in a helicopter over the spot where the Line is supposed to begin. From far above, the construction vehicles churning the ground looked like toys. There was already a faint but unmistakable slash—one man’s will carved into the desert. It traced inland from the sea toward the mountains, then disappeared in the haze. *—With Matthew Martin, Ben Bartenstein, and Rodrigo Orihuela* + +## More On Bloomberg + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review.md b/00.03 News/Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..bf5f43ff --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review.md @@ -0,0 +1,192 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Society", "Libertinage"] +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-07-17 +Link: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/06/29/scenes-from-an-open-marriage/ +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: [[2022-07-17]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-ScenesfromanOpenMarriageNSave + +  + +# Scenes from an Open Marriage - The Paris Review + +[![](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/tpr_illo_openmarriage.jpg)](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/tpr_illo_openmarriage.jpg) + +Illustration by Na Kim. + +About six months after our daughter was born, my husband calmly set the idea on the table, like a decorative gun. I said I’d think about it. + +I couldn’t pretend to be that surprised by the proposition, or ignorant of my part in engendering it. I was too tired. I was too busy. The baby the baby the baby. I had a deadline. I was reading. I was watching *The Sopranos* (again). I was depressed. I just wanted a nap, needed a nap, ached for a hot throbbing nap. This might, I figured, be “real” marriage, harder deeper marriage, marriage opening its cute mouth all the way and showing the mess that was back there. + +Accidental iPhone video of forty minutes in the kitchen one night, a view of the cutting board and the wallpaper: You can hear a baby and the banging of something metal and you can hear our two adult bodies rustling around the space, running water, sliding a knife into the knife holder, dragging a chair across the wood floor, opening and closing the fridge―a sound like a breath and then nothing. We speak in short, muffled bursts, loving to her, not unloving to each other. + +Maybe, I thought, the libido of a certain kind of woman is an animal that lives a little and then crawls into a cave and lies there panting for a few decades until, with a final ragged pant, it expires. Could it expire so early? Or perhaps it was taking a breather postpartum—understandable, surely, given how a six-and-a half-pound human body had been slither-pulled out of the place I get fucked, or one of the places. + +And the child herself, coextensive with me at first and then tantalizing in her change, a body of mixed signals that consumed me and spared only meager scraps, like the dried bits of Play-Doh I sit among on the rug as I study a knee skinned for the very first time, knowing this leg will only get longer, thinner, and stranger to me. The way the legs grow is diabolical, absolutely no mercy. + +Plus the drugs: Prozac’s gloved hand over libido’s mouth. For days and even weeks at a time I would forget there were such things as organs or pleasure or pleasure organs, like I was in the freezer, coldly buzzing on top of the dinosaur-shaped Broccoli Littles®. Until some lazy afternoon he would come into the bedroom while I was napping and wake me up and escort me through four shuddering orgasms and then, clearing his throat, go turn on the shower. *Escort*, what an odd verb to use. + +\*\*\* + +What is there to want, after all? He is mine, sacredly, in sickness and in other states of being. + +Except he is not, and his absolute, nonproprietary realness can flash out so suddenly that the spell of marital monotony is reversed and he becomes again a free man. Sometimes this happens when I see him from afar, struck by the full shape of him as if sighting a rare animal in the wild, or when I watch him playing the drums, the muscles in his neck twitching, the slight tilt of his head coinciding with the gulp of the kick, the ambush speed when he silences the cymbal. All of it stops when he senses I’m there. + +That vision whereby one part of the man—shoulder, neck, wrist—seems all at once to radiate the whole of him can be so hot (loverly, worshipful) and so cold (clinical, dismembering), and in either case wifely. Spouses do chop each other into pieces, fashion new forms and uses for each other. I have been, at various times, the villain (when I cheated), the home front (during his long stretches of touring), the critic at whose feet to lay new work. For my part, I may, at least for a few years, have made of my husband a shelter for my exhausted, heaving materials, a threshold beyond which a strong wind abruptly dies. If I had made him that, could sex with others somehow transform him back? “You and I have taken refuge in a hermetically sealed existence,” Johan says to Marianne as he prepares to leave her for his lover in Bergman’s *Scenes from a Marriage*. “The lack of oxygen has smothered us.” + +Finally I asked my husband, “Which scenario endangers us more: you sleeping with other women, or you not sleeping with other women?” I told him to think about it, assess, and render a verdict; I would do whatever gave us the best chance. + +\*\*\* + +Originally, the term *open marriage* referred to an arrangement that today we might just call *marriage*. In their 1972 runaway bestseller *Open Marriage*, the husband-and-wife team of anthropologists Nena and George O’Neill hyped a “new lifestyle,” defined in opposition to the claustrophobic fifties model with its enforced gender and sexual role-play (husband works, pays, and tops; wife housekeeps, mothers, and enjoys—per Freud’s prescription—exclusively vaginal orgasms). The new lifestyle included such radical possibilities as having friends of the opposite sex, sharing the responsibilities of parenthood, and “some mutual privacy.” Sexually open marriage, or SOM, made an appearance in a single chapter, as one option that might suit some open couples. + +Equality in marriage being now assumed if rarely achieved, the qualifier *open* has resumed its primary sense of “enterable by outsiders,” or the more degenerate-sounding “pervious.” (It strikes me that sex, marriage, and procreation intrinsically imply an escalating perviousness—will you let another in? Having let them in, will the two of you accommodate a third, or more?) The elusive feminist promise of the seventies model would seem to have carried over into today’s concept of open marriage. But there are different kinds of liberation. The kind I stood to gain at first felt shamefully backward, which only increased its illicit appeal: openness might offer deliverance not only for the restless, horny, lonely, or unsatisfied but also for the depressive working parent who has, as I hissed one night after another complaint about unmet needs, “absolutely nothing left for you.” + +\*\*\* + +The first time, he came home boyish, whisper-laughing in the dark as he tore off his sweatshirt and climbed into bed. He used the word *fun*. + +I had been waiting, braced for some seismic shift, but here he was home and mine again without so much as waking the baby. Just penis-vagina, I reminded myself. With people attached, though: My husband and someone else, moving deliberately, perhaps tenderly, in pursuit of each other and of a pleasure beyond … But: didn’t he deserve some compartment of his own, a chamber of mystery? Don’t we all? + +I found I could be happy for my husband in his fun. More than happy, in fact. It can be a real thrill to let your partner go out, give it fully to another woman, and then come home and look you in the eyes over that, kiss you deeply and touch you over that. It is romantic in a way that culturally underscripted moments often are. + +\*\*\* + +Once, before we were parents, a maroon sedan T-boned us at an intersection, going about thirty miles per hour. We flipped twice and skidded upside down for a small eternity, he said my name, I answered, hanging there, groping for his hand in the inverted space. “Be careful when you undo your seatbelt,” he said. I nodded, then pressed the release and dropped like a diver, face smacking dashboard. We laughed hysterically as we scrambled out the broken windows, and for hours afterward we were elated, marveling at each other’s unbroken bodies. + +The inherent risk of open marriage is exhilarating. Nothing reifies a romance like proximate disaster. In fact, ours began when, at seventeen, we went home together from the funeral of a mutual friend who had been on American Airlines Flight 11. (The city was covered in ash that fall, and for us city kids there was a strong buddy-system vibe, like, Everyone quick grab your buddy, this is not a drill.) I still think of that friend whenever I’m traveling alone and the plane leaves the ground. I think of my husband at these times too, imagine him mourning me, review our parting words or final text exchange: “Cool,” “Coming,” “Can you look on the floor in the front seat?” + +\*\*\* + +Last month I attended a funeral on my own. Afterward I went with a group of friends and acquaintances to a divey bar nearby. There were six of us, all women, all thirtysomething, four married with children, one simply married, one single. We packed ourselves in on two sides of a picnic table out back. The mood was giddily beleaguered; sudden death made our lives briefly thrilling and ridiculous. + +As the third round of drinks arrived, the woman across from me said with a laugh that she hardly ever had sex anymore. “Oh yeah,” came a voice from farther down the bench, “we haven’t since H. was born.” A third agreed that sex was barely a thing lately. Reflexively I joined the rush to wrap the initial confession in assurances. Even the married woman without kids seemed, in her looks and noises, to allow that some lessening was inevitable after a while (or else, outnumbered by new and newish mothers, she just knew her audience). Only the single woman, who listened wide-eyed and wavering in the Schadenfreude exurbs of concerned alarm, was left to insist on the value of frequent, high-quality fucking. + +With any question of private behavior, one tends to find the confirmation one goes looking for. I have no data from the other long-partnered women, some of them mothers, who attended the funeral but opted not to join us at the bar. (The black-box privacy of a “closed” marriage can be its own kind of intimacy, an unassailable communion not unlike sex, perhaps.) “We have an early morning,” said one woman, squeezing my hand, and her family retracted into its protective case. + +\*\*\* + +A few months into our arrangement, while my husband was on tour in Europe, I noticed a new playlist on his Spotify and put it on in the car, quiet enough not to wake my daughter. I knew right away: the songs were too expressive of his core taste to have been thrown together for his own casual listening or for a group. The sensation was disorienting. I opened a window, letting the noise of the highway roar against the beat of a great love song, a song we’d danced to at our wedding. + +Then came righteousness—our child in the back seat; self-pity, as a casualty of the great hurtling, impersonal male drive; the urge to drive through the discomfort, speed past it, newly self-reliant in my wound … though, of course, he was only doing what I had given him explicit permission to do. The woundedness felt strangely romantic; I was excited to confront him. Perhaps this was simply another woman’s bid driving up his price. + +I have heard the argument that true intimacy cannot exist where one partner is having any significant, preoccupying experience from which the other is excluded. Maybe there’s something to that. Then again, people find all kinds of ways to be preoccupied. + +On the phone, when I asked my husband about the woman for whom he’d made the playlist, I had to concede that if his love—or his preoccupation—was developing toward this new person, it was not noticeably being withdrawn from me. Where was it coming from, then? Maybe it was being spontaneously created, generated as a song generates pleasure, without diminishing anything else. + +\*\*\* + +I did and do worry, especially about the younger girls, in their twenties. Were they all right, these kids? How did they feel about being “on the side”? Occasionally I stumbled into something like outrage on their behalf, as though I were the spirited friend in their drama: “Fuck that guy!” Weren’t they being exploited? In fact, wasn’t *I* exploiting them, outsourcing the labor of care, pleasure, attention, affirmation to this scattered, precarious workforce? How sinister, in this light, those nights my husband and I spent scrolling through the faces of sexual supply, our ethic blatantly consumerist, collecting primary and vicarious thrills that redounded to our own marriage, strengthening our family through the efforts and maybe even the pain of others … + +These women would probably smirk at my anxiety for them, feel insulted by it. After all, they were out there making choices, getting into compelling snares, pleasing themselves. What was troubling me most, I suspected, was that among the squatting archetypes I’d been discovering in myself—the wronged wife (righteous, sympathetic, a bit tiresome); the “don’t ask” wife (practical, family-oriented, nobly incurious); the mother of a girl (protective of these youngsters wasting their time on a married man)—was the complacently cucked wife, shoring up the patriarchy for her own convenience. My husband’s extramarital activity was (and is) convenient. His date nights gave me much that I had yearned for, lusted after: relief from the distraction of guilt, space and solitude, time to write. + +Maybe this was my erotic life now, these late-night vigils at my laptop, hitting a joint just until the spectating bitch-self got stupid, then taking some notes, wolfing popcorn and smearing butter on the keys, testing the rhythm of a line, the pressure of a word in that spot, seeing how it felt, right there. + +But words are words and flesh is flesh, its phantom vibrations notifying me every now and then, and I needed to act out, make some other use of my freedom. + +\*\*\* + +“When people meet on an open market,” Eva Illouz writes in *The End of Love*, “they do it using scripts of exchange, time efficiency, hedonic calculus, and a comparative mindset.” The dating app rewards a comfort and facility with choice, perhaps not the strong suit of the long-partnered. Choice can be humiliating, time-consuming, and cruel. Leave, stay, leave, leave, stay, and when you decide against someone, based on the angle of a tooth or on a popped collar or eerie lighting, the face disappears like a frisbee into the night. + +“What about this guy?” my husband said one evening from the couch, swiping through men on my phone. Our daughter was on the rug fitting shapes into shape holes, a CNN anchor enunciating severely over her head. I had just got home from work and showered. It was raining hard and I didn’t feel like going out again, but I came over in my towel to look. + +The man had sent a message: *Hey there 🙂*. In the first picture you could see his whole body. He was leaning up against a wall, shirtless, wiry but with a hint of muscle, the waistband of his ratty jeans slung just low enough to show the hollows framing his groin, a cigarette hanging from his hand. Above his squinting eyes his hair was dark and messily buzzed. The second picture made for a jarring transition: his face filled almost the entire frame; his hair, now curly and possibly wet(?), looked longer and lighter, and his eyes were startlingly blue. There was something cheesy about how blue they were, and about the way he was looking into his own phone as though it were a person he was exaggeratedly listening to. These were the only two pictures of the man, too far away and too close, and I scrolled back and forth between them as though peering through a stereoscope. + +> *Hi* +> *How goes it?* +> *It goes. You?* +> *Yes it does 🙂 What ya up to?* + +My husband helped me dress. We settled on faded 501®s, a loose black shirt, Nike high-tops, and a teal trench with a hole in the seam. I was conscious while walking the few blocks to the bar of performing a purposeful stride. The man was standing in the rain holding a black umbrella whose canopy had slipped up to reveal one metal rib. I greeted him with a bro-y hug. + +We ordered ginger ales and sat on low chairs by the bar’s front windows, talking about something—work, place of origin, who knows. Yoga came up and I said I hated it, hated staying still and breathing. I could tell he was weighing my pros and cons and I was doing the same for him. He was a good-looking man but there was a light in his eyes like he was spacing out during a firework. + +I exerted myself to be charming. I had set out to play this game and I intended to score a goal. On the walk back to his place he smoked a cigarette and I smoked part of a joint. Getting high makes me panic, sex is one of the few things that helps, and creating a problem that only sex could solve eased my suspense. There was hardly any furniture in his condo—a futon, a coffee table, a speaker—and he explained he wasn’t really living there at the moment. The only book appeared to be a new copy of *Oh, The Places You’ll Go!* lying on the floor. Where was the man going? I got the vibe that he was dazed but in a deeply familiar way, like, Here I am again, dazed. + +He was an excellent kisser, a lucky first toss. We started in on some slow, delirious motion. Springing merrily from his boxer briefs, the first nonhusband dick I’d met in a decade. Greetings, totemic power of random dick! (My husband would later ask about the size of it—what could I say, it was a beaut.) When I was naked the man pulled back to survey me, then brought his slightly unnerving eyes level with mine. He seemed to be seeing me for the first time, and I guess he was—seeing the part I’d brought to show, carrying it to the bar like a creature in a sheet-draped cage. + +The experience was difficult to savor in the moment, but it lingered on, casting a glow. The next morning walking near Rockefeller Center I saw a pretty man and was instantly wet. I felt it with my husband, too, driving up the West Side Highway that week—a saturated, suspenseful energy, the warm wind pawing the hairs on my arm, the charged space between our bodies, his tensing jaw and tendons. A defamiliarizing layer of awareness stole over our lovemaking, a sense of trespass on the well-known body. One night in the dark I whispered into his mouth, You’re such a pervert. He whispered into my mouth, Does it turn you on to call me a pervert? I whispered into his mouth, Does it turn you on to ask me if it turns me on to call you—and before I could finish we were both rigid with laughter. + +\*\*\* + +This morning M. is already in the kitchen when I come down, sitting by the window with her fresh black coffee and her mass of dark hair in a loose topknot. She looks peaceful, thoughtful, having not yet donned her high-energy persona. I get my tea and phone and sit across from her, and we share the words we’ve gotten in the *Times* Spelling Bee. *Arrow*, *wallow*, *ardor*. + +M. has been coming to stay with us every few weeks since COVID began. Some nights, after my daughter is asleep, when my husband is working late or out on a date, M. and I will smoke a joint and play Bananagrams at the kitchen table, or we’ll bring the ashtray and some blankets and cookies to the couch and watch a stupid show, laughing at the outfits and canned dialogue. Or we’ll just talk, about articles, movies, my daughter’s development, how things are going with M.’s longtime boyfriend. I sometimes feel a little vampiric, trawling for narrative scraps about M.’s friends and their partners and parties and dramas—who has a secret crush, who has been modeling or hanging out with someone kinda famous, who got dumped or a new job or into graduate school. + +If you ask M. about her future she may start to cry. “It’s just a physical response,” she says, and laughs. She’s at that age, twenty-five, twenty-six, when you begin to have a long memory of yourself. To me she is a bright, talented young woman on the brink of decisions and commitments that will consume her later years. To herself she is paralyzed, indecisive, falling behind. I try to argue the point but this only agitates her more, and then I remember how crazy it used to drive me, at her age, when my parents insisted on my value, my promise, my being “on track.” What offended me, I realize now, was the implication that I was not permitted to feel disappointed in myself. So now when M. expresses anxiety about her life, I don’t argue. I hope I can remember the lesson with my daughter, later on. + +\*\*\* + +A few months prepandemic, my husband told me that E., a young woman he’d met on Tinder, had a guy friend who thought I was cute, and she wanted to set us up. I prodded for more detail. “You should ask her,” he said, and gave me E.’s number. + +I had already decided, based on a few inches of her Insta grid, that E. was much more in command of the powers of her youth than I had been at her age. Good for her. My husband and E. had been seeing each other for a minute, and something about her put me on the alert. It wasn’t just that I could tell he genuinely cared for E.—that had happened before. It was more that E. had become real to me in a way none of the others had when she’d suggested M., her best friend, as a babysitter for our daughter. We liked M. immediately, and as I came to respect and trust her, E. gained a certain status in my eyes not just from my husband’s esteem but from M.’s. + +E. replied to my text quickly, sharing her friend’s name and contact info. + +> *And if this hot young manchild doesn’t do it for you I have more on retainer.* + +I said we should hang out sometime. She agreed. I was free right then, actually. Worked for her. I headed straight to the subway and rumbled along Myrtle Avenue. She met me at the door and led me up some dusty white steps, offered me tea. Her hair was bleached blond, her lips full, her cheeks pink as though from recent sleep. She had an aura of tentative but brave knowingness; her eyes seemed to make a point of neither darting around nor burning into me but just holding their ground with amused sympathy. My husband has great taste in women, I thought. + +We sat at a small table and drank our tea, talked a little about books and about how great M. is, how thankful my husband and I were to have found someone like her to care for our child. E. was in a serious relationship with someone her own age, though not married or anywhere near it. I told her about the man with the Dr. Seuss book, how I had got lucky there but was wary of rolling the Tinder dice again. She advanced a seize-the-day attitude. I noticed my own attraction to her, the kind of rivalrous magnetism that is mostly just a desire to take a quick spin in someone, rifle through their memories, glimpse their face in the mirror. We chatted for maybe an hour, and as I was getting up to leave she came back to the subject of her guy friend. + +When we reached the bottom of the stairs I turned and said, “He’s really too young for me. Don’t you think?” + +She cocked her head. “Do I seem too young for your husband?” + +I didn’t have to think about it. “No,” I said, and hugged her goodbye, smelling the familiar smell. + +And the next thing you know I’m in a cab on the BQE, on the way to a blind date with E.’s friend, who is too young, I know he is, but I have agreed to meet him anyway because fuck you, no one is too young for me. I am out on a school night, a work night, I’m scooting across the slick leather of a cab again, I am fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, thirty-five—my age is a finite sequence happening all at once and here I go to meet this stranger. I might fuck this stranger, I might fuck him I might fuck him, and this potential fucking is both exciting and oppressive, the way it hovers in my thoughts, relentless, thrusting, threatening to shatter my very selfhood as I am about to become the stranger this young man is thinking he might fuck, I am about to become a fucking stranger. + +\*\*\* + +I met E.’s friend in a dark, nearly empty bar. He was scruffy, a poet, and I liked talking to him. Again I smoked a joint on the way back to his place and once there we gave it the old college try. There was not only no chemistry between us but a kind of antichemistry, a lack of resistance so total that the physics of our bodies seemed to fail; instead of buttressing each other we kept yielding and collapsing like the flailing tube man at the car dealership. It may have been partly the weed, which hit me a little wrong this time, pinballed me into a solitary dimension. I was distracted by the docility I sensed in him, like he was ready to do whatever I commanded. Nonetheless we stuck it out right up to the point of imminent penetration, both of us naked on his mattress on the floor, a T-shirt thrown over the harsh bedside lamp. I tried to stay “in” it, but something kept disfiguring the scene, turning the bare, engorged boy on the mattress into a placidly obedient child. We got dressed and had a nice chat over tea. + +With my husband and with M., I play the story of this date for laughs and am gratified when I get them. (Marriage might be the ideal place to process a bad sexual encounter with someone else.) To say that by now I’ve become close with M. doesn’t quite capture it—she has grown as dear to me as she is vital to the operation of my family. The cliché of falling in love with the nanny makes so much sense to me now. It does something to you to see a person devote themselves to your child, to see your child trust that person and enjoy their full attention. I love to see M.’s navy-blue scarf hanging in the entryway and to hear her turn her fist into a gruff-voiced character named Frumpkin at my daughter’s request. I love how generous she is with her laughter and how she sighs wistfully after a good laugh. + +It’s a risky opening, letting an outsider into the role of parent. But a new kind of freedom emerges from these periods of open motherhood when M. visits. Her presence is miraculous, releasing me even as it solidifies my status, giving my daughter the opportunity to want me. I close my office door against her small crying body and hear M.’s bright, breathless voice calling her to finish a puzzle or come quick and see the deer out the window, and after a pause I hear the small feet go running. + +\*\*\* + +The new woman’s piney smell comes home on the neatly folded hand-me-downs she sends back with my husband, from her child to mine. As a rival I find her formidable in an unfamiliar way. A single mother’s time seems particularly dangerous to waste; she must plan ahead, must not be kept waiting or canceled on at the last minute. I have seen a picture of her son, his tangled dark hair framing a dreamy frown, and have allowed my daughter to go on playdates with him. My husband and I discuss the situation as we unload the dishwasher. Where is the relationship going? How does this other child fit in? Openness has placed his mother and me in this tender, fanged relation; I wish her well, but when it comes to the distribution of something finite—my husband’s ultimate loyalty—one of us is going to lose. + +One March evening we are approaching a restaurant, our daughter in my arms, and my husband says quietly, “She’s here.” Entering the crowded room, I know her by her child—that face, which in my mind has become mildly accusatory, and those dangling sneakers, blue with a red stripe just like the ones handed down to us. As we walk past the row of tables arranged along the western-facing window I take in, peripherally, an attractive man sitting next to the child, his mouth moving in the sunset glare, and, closer to me, inches from my arm, her ponytail of thick, dark, wavy hair, unmoving as I pass. + +We meet our friends at a table a few yards southeast of the ponytail, which burns behind me but I do not turn. Someone has brought crayons and paper for the kids. What are you drawing? A house? I read somewhere that you should not say, What a beautiful drawing, or, I love your drawing, but rather something specific and affirming of the child’s will: You gave your house a big green door. + +The drinks arrive. I sense, to my left, the alertness of my husband’s body, a certain buoyancy in his laughter, and I wonder if her presence and mine together have sharpened his reality, made him feel honored in some way. He does seem special to me at this moment—a man to know. It is as if the cord running between him and me, strong but a little slack, has been snapped taut by a third force, the ponytail. + +My daughter needs to go to the bathroom, which is near the restaurant’s entrance. My husband rises, leading her, and I follow them. The ponytail turns and belongs to a woman whose expression is shy and warm—I extend my hand to her and she reaches up to embrace me. Later, after dinner, as our children chase each other shrieking around a planter out front, I watch her hugging herself and laughing in the cold. She is very beautiful, a beauty I feel both disarmed and affirmed by, as though I have brought a new friend home and she has won over the whole gang. I owe her something, but it is not yet clear what, and this makes me nervous—to care in this eager, unresolving way about someone I don’t know. Not like falling in love, but not entirely unlike it. + +\*\*\* + +Lately my daughter and I keep getting locked in standoffs. I am saying Don’t do it and she is doing it, watching me expectantly at first as though to confirm a hypothesis, then with mounting rage, and I am trying to remember to use the language from the book (“I can see you’re really upset”) even though my instinct is to impose consequences, demonstrate who has the power, because fuck the book, the words from the book aren’t having any effect, I am trying them in every kind of cadence with every variation of emphasis (“I don’t *like* it when you *hit* me”) but they are broken and as a result I am broken, jammed, and just like my daughter I am doing the thing and doing the thing and doing the thing, and then I am yelling and she is yelling and there is one of me and one of her and we both want reunion and separation at once and the only answer is no. In these moments we need an interruption from outside—M. is that benevolent figure passing through, caring for us without making any promises. After all, M. will not be our nanny forever, just as E. has not remained my husband’s lover. + +Here’s another scene: My husband and daughter and me in the car, parked at the station, waiting for M. We hear the rush of the train, the opening of the doors, the distant announcer’s voice. Various strangers emerge in masks, greet their rides, depart. Suddenly I hear my daughter singing M.’s name, my husband’s window humming down as he calls out to her, and, catching sight of the familiar baseball hat pulled low over the messy curls, I feel the approach of the world itself, coming to puncture the seal, let in some light and air. + +*Jean Garnett is a senior editor at Little, Brown and Company. Her work has been published in* The Yale Review*, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize.* + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties.md b/00.03 News/The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ca272a6e --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties.md @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Lifestyle", "Society", "Party"] +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-07-17 +Link: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/dinner-party-history +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: [[2022-07-17]] + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-TheSurprisingEvolutionofDinnerPartiesNSave + +  + +# The Surprising Evolution of Dinner Parties + +Setting an intention for the meal creates comfort for guests and hosts alike, says Priya Parker, author of *The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters*. “‘Purpose’ is just a different way of saying, ‘What is the need around which I want to bring people together?’” she says. Maybe it’s to welcome a new friend to the neighborhood, celebrate an accomplishment, try a new recipe, or mark a community ritual together. (For a few years, I had a huge party every summer, the only goal of which was to eat a giant Low Country boil, with our hands, in the heat.) + +Defining a purpose for a dinner party may feel a little high-strung, too much like sending out a meeting agenda. But Parker thinks of it differently. A purpose “allows people some amount of shared context, a shared story, a shared way of knowing what to talk about,” she says. It allows people to connect in a meaningful way, and the added context helps guests settle into the evening and enjoy the company of others. It’s what my friend Carey accomplished so well with Soup. + +That’s not to say the food doesn’t matter. The ultimate comfort of a dinner party is that everyone knows the intention will be backdropped by a central activity: eating dinner. Without that cohesive element, everything goes adrift, as famously demonstrated in the “Dinner Party” episode of *The Office,* which becomes a horror story as the guests wait, and wait, and wait for the promised osso bucco. + +Different home cooks set their own ground rules based on what they personally find comforting. Jeff Chu, an author and journalist who also writes the [food-rich newsletter “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer](https://jeffchu.substack.com/),” draws on his family’s Chinese heritage when he brings friends around the table, which means serving every meal family-style. “That’s not just about Chinese culture and tradition, though that’s a part of it,” he says. “It also creates a sense of belonging, because it gives people agency. If you hate asparagus, you don’t have to take asparagus, it’s not pre-plated for you, you’re not forced to push it to the side or worry about how it’s going to look.” + +Similarly, Charles Hunter III—a personal chef and recipe developer who writes [The Salted Table](https://thesaltedtable.com/) blog—leans on his memories of Southern family cooking when he hosts dinners. “I conjure inspiration from the Sunday suppers we had, which were ritualistic in our family,” he says, who all met up regularly at his great-grandmother’s duplex. Hunter now creates occasional pop-up dinner parties in addition to his own entertaining, and the goal is to make people feel like they’re at those Sunday suppers, even if they’ve never been. That means abundance and familiarity. “I want to evoke that feeling, that vibe, of there being plenty of food for people to choose from,” he says. “The comfort of eating things that feel familiar, even if they’re different.” + +Writing my book during the pandemic allowed me to conjure some of those fuzzy dinner party feelings. I could imagine sitting late into the night at Maya Angelou’s table, picking the crumbs off plates of Edna Lewis’s peach crumble, drinking Hannah Arendt’s martinis, listening to Ella Baker’s stories, and stroking Agnes Varda’s finicky tabby cat. + +Yet there’s no substitute for the real thing. And as we tentatively begin to venture out again, seeking comfort and belonging, there may be no better salve than a dinner party—a real one, this time. Something simple, filled with purpose and context, and structured around low-key formalities that create freedom and relief for the attendees. For Chu, that process has been profound. “My goal,” he says, “is just that whoever’s around the table will love being with each other.” + +*Alissa Wilkinson is a senior culture reporter at Vox and author of* *‘Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living From Revolutionary Women,’ out June 28 from Broadleaf Books.* + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/00.03 News/The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling.md b/00.03 News/The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..0e7a854b --- /dev/null +++ b/00.03 News/The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling.md @@ -0,0 +1,221 @@ +--- + +Tag: ["Art", "Literature", "RoleModel"] +Date: 2022-07-17 +DocType: "WebClipping" +Hierarchy: +TimeStamp: 2022-07-17 +Link: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/03/the-metamorphosis-of-j-k-rowling-00043835 +location: +CollapseMetaTable: Yes + +--- + +Parent:: [[@News|News]] +Read:: No + +--- + +  + +```button +name Save +type command +action Save current file +id Save +``` +^button-ThemetamorphosisofJKRowlingNSave + +  + +# The metamorphosis of J.K. Rowling + +The tour is free, but wizarding fans are encouraged to provide an optional “donation” (£10 to £20 recommended, cards accepted). A proportion goes to the Scottish Trans Alliance, an activist group promoting rights for transgender people. + +“Many of you may be aware of JK Rowling’s recent tweets concerning transgender issues,” reads an explanation on the [tour group’s website](https://www.pottertrail.com/home). “It’s a difficult time to be a Harry Potter fan for many but we sincerely wish JK Rowling’s views not to diminish our appreciation of the books and their messages of inclusion and tolerance.” + +The disclaimer is a quiet but unambiguous protest against Rowling’s buzziest body of work since her blockbuster series of schoolboy sorcery. It’s also a tiny but telling example of how, in a few short years, the author has gone from being an unobjectionable matron of the political left to one of its most hated villains. + +Rowling’s views — and her willingness to exchange biting blows with her online critics — have been denounced by fans as transphobic, a betrayal of the values of tolerance they learned from her books. Stars of the Harry Potter movies have disavowed her statements; celebrities have taken their distance; major websites devoted to the wizarding world have said they’d stop writing about her. (On the other side of the spectrum, Russian President Vladimir Putin has bemoaned that [she’s been “canceled.”](https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-jk-rowling-proof-west-cancel-culture/)) + +None of this seems to have given Rowling pause — or done much to put a crimp in her commercial prospects. Twenty-five years after the publication of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” her books continue to fly off the shelves. The third installment of the Harry Potter spin-off “Fantastic Beasts” hit theaters in March. If anything, as the criticism has mounted, Rowling has only become more combative, cheerfully retweeting her detractors to trigger pile-ons from fellow thinkers. + +What’s more: When it comes to driving the debate, she seems to be winning. Asked earlier this year by an anonymous poster whether her battle was a hill she wanted her legacy to die on, she answered tartly: + +“Yes, sweetheart. I’m staying right here on this hill, defending the right of women and girls to talk about themselves, their bodies and their lives in any way they damn well please,” [she tweeted](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501291633165357056). “You worry about your legacy, I’ll worry about mine 😉” + +**F**or most of her career, Rowling sat politically in the milquetoast center left. + +In a speech to Harvard graduates in 2008, she described her first job out of university, at Amnesty International, where the personal testimonies of African political prisoners and victims of torture stirred her soul. She told the Ivy League graduates that their elite status and influence is “your privilege, and your burden” and exhorted them to use it “on behalf of those who have no voice.” + +In 2010, she [wrote movingly](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-single-mothers-manifesto-zprmcjl7wss) of having relied on the welfare state when her “life hit rock bottom,” explaining why she was happy to keep paying British taxes: “This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.” + +Indisputably, Rowling has been extraordinarily generous. She famously gave so much to charity in 2011 — 16 percent of her net worth — that she was [knocked off the Forbes billionaires](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/mar/06/facebook-posts/yes-jk-rowling-was-knocked-forbes-billionaires-lis/%5d) list the next year. Most recently, she pledged to [match up to £1 million in donations](https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-jk-rowling-to-personally-match-emergency-appeal-funding-up-to-1m-as-children-face-uncertain-future-12559934) to her charity Lumos for its work helping vulnerable children in Ukraine. + +When it comes to politics, Rowling hasn’t hesitated to invoke her fiction to talk about her real-world views, or to issue post-hoc clarifications in defense of the moral legacy of the world she created. + +In October 2007, a few weeks after the seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series was published, Rowling [announced that Hogwarts’ beloved headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is gay](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rowling-idUSN2052004020071020) and had fallen in love with a fellow wizard. In 2015, when the Black British actor Noma Dumezweni was cast to play Hermione Granger in a play, [Rowling tweeted](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/678888094339366914) “Rowling loves black Hermoine,” noting that the text had never specified the character’s skin color. The following year, she said she had made a popular character a werewolf as a [metaphor for the stigma of HIV](https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/09/08/jk-rowling-reveals-remus-lupins-werewolf-condition-metaphor-for-hiv/). + +Rowling’s views have, until recently, been unambiguously left-leaning. However, when she has waded directly into electoral politics, it has typically been in defense of the status quo. It’s a fact that has caused increasing tension with her younger, more progressive fan base. + +During the debate over Scottish independence — predominantly a left-wing cause — Rowling fell behind those advocating to remain in the United Kingdom. One hundred days before the 2014 independence referendum, she donated £1 million to the effort — which was run by her personal friend and neighbor, the Labour Party politician Alistair Darling — and wrote an [essay on her website](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/i-supporting-better-together/) to explain her position. + +The gist: The imagined rewards weren’t worth the very real risks (including to the Scottish medical research that she’d heavily invested in). And to any nationalists who would deem her inadequately Scottish to merit an opinion, she wrote that was “a little Death Eaterish for my taste.” + +The response on Twitter was venomous; [Rowling later remembered](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/05/jk-rowling-responds-to-twitter-attacks) being called a “‘traitor,’ ‘w-—-’ and ‘b——,’ told to go back where I came from.” + +Two years later, with another referendum on the horizon, she waded into the Brexit debate, in defense of staying in the European Union. Saying that she’s not an expert in much but does “know how to create a monster,” she compared the villainous specter of the EU evoked by the Leave campaign to Hannibal Lecter, Big Brother and her own Lord Voldemort. + +After the Brexit result, she turned her fire on Jeremy Corbyn — the bearded, professorial hard leftist who as leader of the Labour Party had declined to take a clear stance on the issue. Responding to a tweet by a fan who described Corbyn as a “political Dumbledore,” [she answered](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/748473204075827200?lang=en), “I forgot Dumbledore trashed Hogwarts, refused to resign and ran off to the forest to make speeches to angry trolls.” + +A month later, as it became clear that Corbyn would fend off a post-Brexit-vote leadership challenge, she [followed up with another tweet](https://www.politico.eu/article/harry-potter-author-jk-rowling-jeremy-corbyn-is-not-dumbledore-labour-leader/): “Corbyn. Is. Not. Dumbledore.” + +In a preview of the slugfests she would later engage in on trans rights, she spent much of the following hours responding to attacks from Corbyn supporters with blasts of her own. “I’m going nowhere!” she [tweeted in response to one piece of criticism](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/771005128136617985). “Little known fact about filthy bourgeois neoliberal centrists – we’re tougher than you’d think ;)” + +Rowling’s interactions that day also foreshadowed another aspect that would become apparent as she engaged with her online opponents: a willingness to use the power of her platform against relatively powerless detractors. By directing her then-8 million followers toward “fairly anodyne critics,” Rowling “behaved irresponsibly,” Guardian columnist Ellie Mae O’Hagan [wrote in 2016](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/01/jk-rowling-corbynites-twitter-row-labour). + +**W**hen somebody is as famous as Rowling, even the smallest online gesture will be parsed over, reacted to and criticized. + +The Harry Potter author’s first foray into the trans-rights debate was ambiguous: a “like” on a tweet she later described as accidental. The March 2018 tweet in question was by a Labour Party activist, and it referred to trans women as “men in dresses.” Rowling’s liking of it was set upon by LGBTQ activists as evidence of transphobia. + +It was just a “clumsy and middle-aged moment,” a Rowling spokesperson [told PinkNews](https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/03/22/jk-rowling-reps-blame-middle-aged-moment-for-liking-tweet-calling-trans-women-men-in-dresses/), saying the author hit “like” while holding her phone incorrectly. Rowling later acknowledged this wasn’t the complete truth — she’d meant to privately screenshot the tweet to research it later, rather than visibly “like” it. + +Her official entrance into the debate came about a year and a half later, when Rowling came to the defense of Maya Forstater. An obscure global development expert, Forstater had lost her contract at a think tank after a series of tweets her coworkers felt were transphobic, including [one that stated:](https://twitter.com/mforstater/status/1046450304986812416?lang=en) “that men cannot change into women.” + +“Dress however you please,” Rowling [tweeted in December 2019](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033). “Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotaDrill.” + +Rowling’s message blew what had been a small, national story into an international furor, with people on both sides quick to weigh in, sometimes aggressively. When someone sent Forstater the tweet over WhatsApp, she thought, “Somebody made that to cheer me up. And then I saw that it was real. And, you know, the Internet was going crazy… just all these likes and retweets.” + +The media started showing up at Forstater’s doorstep, and the glaring coverage was often hostile. “It was a complete shock,” she said. + +Yet she wasn’t “averse” to the attention Rowling drew to her. + +“She didn’t really know anything about me,” Forstater said. “But she must have looked and gone, ‘Is this person going to crumble if I do this?’ Because that is a huge thing to shine that light on somebody.” + +Rowling herself was at first cowed by the blowback. She stayed relatively quiet — later citing the need to protect her mental health from the abuse — until June 2020, when she posted another missive: a tweet linking to an article headlined “Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate,” an example of language intended to be an inclusive catchall for both assigned females at birth and trans men. + +“‘People who menstruate,’” [Rowling mused](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313?lang=en). “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” + +A few days later, she followed up with a [3,700-word essay](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/) laying out the reasons why she was so “worried about the new trans activism” and the effort “to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.” + +“The ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanizing and demeaning,” Rowling wrote. “I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.” + +She was concerned, she added, about the “huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning.” She described her own struggles with feeling “mentally sexless” as a youth. “I too might have tried to transition,” Rowling wrote, if she’d been born 30 years later. Given a supportive online community, Rowling mused, “I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred. + +“Transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people,” she wrote. But she worried that too many checks were being removed too quickly. “The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass.” + +Specifically, Rowling cited her concern about a proposal by the Scottish government to allow people to self-identify as a new gender, rather than get a medical diagnosis. Doing that, she said, would make women less safe. “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman,” she wrote, “then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” + +Rowling said she could understand why trans women seek safe spaces. “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe,” she said, by letting men declare themselves legally women. + +In support of her argument, she revealed her history as a survivor of both sexual assault and domestic violence. “I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty,” she wrote. (“I’m not sorry for slapping her,” her ex, Jorge Arantes, later told a [U.K. tabloid](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11842719/jk-rowling-ex-husband-abuse-claims/), insisting that there was no “sustained abuse.”) + +**R**owling couldn’t have waded into a more bitter battle, or a more intractable one. Both sides see themselves as battling bigotry — and the other side as unwittingly supporting reactionary forces seeking to roll back decades of progressive advancement. + +Heightening the tension is an explosion of referrals for gender-dysphoria services for children and young people in the U.K., which have gone from 50 in 2009 to 2,500 annually by 2020. The spike first started in 2014-2015, according to [an interim report](https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/interim-report/) National Health Service gender services made public in March; the backlog now totals 4,600 people, who can expect about two years on the waitlist. + +For trans-rights activists, those numbers reveal under capacity in British health care. Growing caseloads are a welcome sign that more kids are comfortable seeking the help they need — and the system needs to respond with more resources and training for general practitioners, not moralizing or efforts to limit people’s choices. + +Those on this side of the debate describe women like Rowling as “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or TERFs, an acronym that is deployed as a slur. In their view, references to sexual violence like [Rowling’s are a textbook](https://www.ourspectrum.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Media-Style-Guide_horizontal.pdf) “dog whistle,” casting trans people as an insidious enemy to be feared — while sounding perfectly reasonable to the untrained ear. + +They say that evocations like Rowling’s of bathrooms and changing rooms are a scare tactic and that phrases like “natal woman” and “single-sex spaces” undermine trans peoples’ legitimacy and fuel the idea that trans women are a threat. Efforts to block gender-affirming care, they warn, could fray at laws that give women and girls control over their own bodies and gay people freedom to love as they please. + +Rowling and other so-called gender-critical feminists (the more neutral term) see things differently. For them, the spike in reported gender dysphoria is evidence of persistent misogyny and homophobia. Fueled by TikTok, girls who hate their bodies can be persuaded that they are actually boys, and men who desire men are given a chance to become straight women. + +Efforts by trans activists to shut down any attempt to question whether so many people should be seeking to transition, their thinking goes, not only puts young girls at risk of making choices they’ll regret; it puts women in danger of men who adopt a trans identity in order to gain access to spaces that were previously off-limits. + +The push to replace sex-based rights with gender is “the biggest threat to feminism that we’ve seen,” said Julie Bindel, the author of “Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation,” a book Rowling called “timely, necessary and important.” + +After four decades in the activist trenches, Bindel said the toxicity of the debate is “exceptional,” because it creates a politically acceptable path for liberal men to attack women — particularly older women. “The ideology has enabled men … to say that they are standing up for women, when in fact, what they’re doing is attempting to strip away all of our rights,” said Bindel. + +“They’re screaming at feminists, ‘TERFS,’ when they want to say, ‘c—-s,’” she said. + +**T**here’s little evidence that Rowling has suffered financially from her cancellation, but her stance has come with a personal cost. + +Six days before Rowling tweeted her message in support of Forstater, she had been awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award for Human Rights for her work helping institutionalized children. The award, which was also bestowed on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was “one of the highest honors I have ever been given,” said Rowling as she accepted it. + +If her youngest had been a boy, Rowling added, she’d have named him Robert, after Robert Kennedy. She said she picked the pen name she uses to write mystery novels, Robert Galbraith, “in tribute to my political hero.” + +That’s [according to a tweet](https://web.archive.org/web/20191215023453/https:/twitter.com/RFKHumanRights/status/1205541878810189825) that’s since been deleted by RFK Human Rights. After criticism from Kennedy’s daughter, who said Rowling’s “deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements” represented a “repudiation of my father’s vision,” Rowling voluntarily gave up the prize in August 2020. No award “means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience,” [she wrote](https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/statement-from-j-k-rowling-regarding-the-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-ripple-of-hope-award/). + +The cascade of divorces by die-hard fans was just beginning. + +“Transgender women are women,” [proclaimed Daniel Radcliffe](https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/daniel-radcliffe-responds-to-j-k-rowlings-tweets-on-gender-identity/), schooling the woman, 25 years his senior, who created the character that launched his acting career; other Harry Potter stars piled on with similar messages. Obsessive fan sites MuggleNet and Leaky Cauldron announced they would stop posting fan art with her likeness and avoid coverage and purchase links not directly related to the “Wizarding World,” in a [statement crafted with the LGBTQ advocacy groups GLAAD and the Trevor Project](https://twitter.com/glaad/status/1280655162361724928). + +Just last week, during a junket at Warner Brothers Studios promoting a new Harry Potter-themed display, Britain’s Sky News was [asked by the company’s press handlers](https://news.sky.com/story/the-pr-attempt-to-separate-jk-rowling-from-harry-potter-and-why-its-important-12640707) not to bring up Rowling during an interview. + +Rowling said she’s received “so many death threats I could paper my house with them.” + +**I**f anybody knows what it’s like to follow Rowling’s path from popular progressive to pariah, it’s Suzanne Moore. A former leftist columnist for the Guardian, she underwent a similar saga after she wrote a [piece in March 2020](https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced) sticking up for a historian whose speech to a feminist conference was canceled due to links to a group opposed to gender self-identification. + +Moore’s underlying message was a plea to focus on a shared mission: F—- the patriarchy. “The materiality of having a female body may mean rape or it may mean childbirth — but we still seek liberation from gender,” Moore wrote. But it was also a defiant call to arms: “You can tell me to ‘die in a ditch, terf’ all you like, as many have for years, but I self-identify as a woman who won’t go down quietly.” She concluded, “There are more of us than you think.” + +Apparently, Moore had fewer sisters in arms than she hoped for. Within a week of the column, [338 of her colleagues](https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/guardian-staff-trans-rights-letter) on both sides of the Atlantic signed a letter accusing the Guardian of being “hostile to trans rights and trans employees.” Moore [left the Guardian](https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/) voluntarily in November 2020. + +With a CV that includes street activism on AIDS, bylines in Marxism Today and decades in journalism devoted to confronting the liberal Oxbridge elite on their failures toward the working class, Moore has always considered herself “radical and left” — now she’s accused of being “funded by Christian rightwing evangelicals,” she said. + +Moore now writes a regular column in the Telegraph, a right-leaning newspaper. Between that and her Substack, she’s making more than she was before. Yet she’s still adjusting to the idea that the debate about trans rights has become “totemic” and may define her legacy. + +“It doesn’t matter what I say or do,” she said. “I’m transphobic, I’m a TERF, I go around murdering trans people in my spare time. You know, that’s how I’m seen by certain people.” She and her daughters have faced threats of rape bad enough to call the police — and she asked one of her daughters if she wanted to drop the name Moore, lest she face cancellation-by-association. + +Asked if the trans rights issue is the most important to her, given her long history of activism, Moore responded quickly: “No!” and burst into laughter. “No, that’s the thing. It’s become important.” The trans debate, she conceded, “pushed everything else out of the way.” + +But if Rowling and Moore’s positions on trans issues have cost them friends, it has also attracted new ones, and brought them together. Moore and Rowling met in person for the first time in April, when they both joined a raucous gathering of bold-faced names from the gender-critical movement. + +Notoriously private, Rowling flaunted the boozy brunch at the River Café on the Thames Wharf, tweeting photos with her arms draped around [lesbians](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1513546029953687556), backbenched left-leaning [politicians](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1513471923660992516) [and prominent polemicists](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1513577127307792395). With glossy red hair and a plunging neckline, Rowling out-glammed them all, even as the poses [got sloppier](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1513419509851467777) with each bottle of wine. + +Admitting her recollection was hazy, Moore later reported in her [Telegraph column](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/truth-raucous-lunch-jk-rowling/) that the speeches “were mostly about how wonderful it was to be together having felt so outcast.” + +“Her power is real and it is global,” Moore wrote a week later to her paying Substack subscribers, reminding them she was no stranger to power, having met leaders like George W. Bush and Boris Johnson. “Rowling’s soft power feels pretty damn solid and yes of course its \[sic\] to do with money. But it is also to do with her steel.” + +**F**or those on the other side of the debate, what Moore describes as “steel” can very often look like cruelty. While Rowling’s critics haven’t held back in their attacks, the Harry Potter author hasn’t hesitated from responding in kind — at least when it involves punching down. + +She’s been silent in the face of high-profile slights from the stars of her movies. She said nothing after the blasphemously irreverent director John Waters singled out Rowling for cancellation, in [an interview](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/21/magazine/john-waters-interview.html) about his willingness to “defend the worst people in the world.” Rather than pick a fight with the bestselling author Stephen King when he said “transwomen are women,” she simply [blocked him](https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-king-on-scary-stalkers-being-canceled-by-jk-rowling-and-navigating-trauma). Nor did she react publicly when the [New York Times](https://screenrant.com/harry-potter-new-york-times-campaign-jk-rowling/) broached the idea of “imagining Harry Potter without its creator” in a February advertising campaign. + +However, in April, Rowling [responded to an amateur music video](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1510359599165100032) with lyrics “J.K. hope you fit in a hearse” by tweeting a public complaint — eliciting a howl of protest from the original poster (whose video was taken down by Twitter). + +“The most powerful TERF in the world (billionaire, lives in castle, 14.1M followers) sent a mob after me (broke, lives with mom, 1.1k followers),” [tweeted Faye Fadem, the bedroom producer behind the video and a trans woman](https://twitter.com/TrustFundOzu/status/1511026909953601537). “She made a conscious choice to target me because she felt threatened by a young trans woman expressing herself. If u want to come in here and say ‘but u did death threat’ I’m an artist with 0 power expressing myself.” + +Last year, Rowling accused three trans activists of “[doxxing](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1462759152837615623)” her after they posted a photo of their protest in front of her Edinburgh mansion that included her address — [easily discovered information](https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/doxx-jk-rowling?s=r). The activists took so much heat from Rowling’s followers that they [deleted the photo](https://archive.ph/sOYei) — and their accounts. + +Trans-rights advocates say Rowling, a self-professed expert at monster creation, is using those skills to whip up a false narrative that casts trans people as a threat to women and their rights. + +Fiona Robertson, a Scottish National Party activist who worked on the proposed gender-identification overhaul that Rowling objected to, called the novelist’s intervention in the debate “a perfect campaign in terms of radicalizing people.” Rowling’s essay, Robertson said, kicked off a vicious circle, as “a huge influx of people with no grounding and no knowledge on this issue” adopted language perceived as hateful by the trans community — which responded by lashing back. + +Skeptics of trans rights who had cast their objections as “just asking questions” found permission in Rowling’s letter to go “full in on the cruelty,” Robertson said. “It enabled and ennobled,” she added. “People felt like they had a champion on their side, and significantly a champion with a f—-ton of money.” + +**E**ven as she wages battle online, Rowling has generally declined to allow herself to be meaningfully challenged. She thrust Forstater into the spotlight with a tweet and promoted the work of Bindel and Moore — all of whom agreed to interviews — but she has personally refused to engage when she doesn’t have full control over the text. “JKR isn’t doing interviews on this subject,” her publicist said. + +On Twitter, however, it’s hard to escape the impression that Rowling is having a lot of fun. In 2015, she called the social media platform an “[unmixed blessing, trolls included](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/28/conversation-lauren-laverne-jk-rowling-interview),” and there are few signs that sentiment has changed. + +That might be because her side seems to be winning. Bindel described the fallout from Rowling’s essay as a watershed moment. “The tide has turned because now regular people with no engagement in feminism, or trans politics, or gender identity or any other kind, are now recognizing that this is a mob of bullies,” said Bindel. Rowling’s intervention, Robertson agreed, “caused one of the larger tipping points.” + +In Scotland, Rowling’s essay was part of a wave of political pushback that forced the Scottish government to spend another couple of years shoring up ([and watering down](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-alliance-fears-right-to-object-could-lead-to-court-cases-vhhps8v5c)) its legislation on gender self-identification. The bill was published in March and remains the subject of heated debate. + +In the U.K. more broadly, the definition of “woman” is on its way to becoming a full-fledged wedge issue — Prime Minister Boris Johnson [cited “biology” in March](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/biology-defines-who-is-a-woman-says-boris-johnson-v0m06c8zn), while top Labour pols have waffled when quizzed on that vocabulary. Meanwhile, cases like Forstater’s and Moore’s are becoming rarer, as their once-taboo positions become increasingly mainstream among the British left-leaning commentariat. At the Guardian, Sonia Sodha and Hadley Freeman write sympathetically about the gender-critical perspective. + +And as much as Rowling and her British allies are angry about being equated to the American right, the bottom line is that their arguments are being used by conservatives in the U.S. to push back against trans rights. [Democrats warn](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/us/politics/rachel-levine-transgender.html) that Republicans are gearing up to use so-called bathroom bills — state-level legislation to bar trans people from single-sex spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms — as a key front in the culture wars ahead of congressional elections in 2022. + +In 2020, a conservative Republican senator quoted Rowling’s essay to explain why he was voting against a bill that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of classes protected from discrimination. + +“To say in the words of J.K. Rowling this past week where she wrote, ‘All I’m asking, all I want is for similar empathy, similar understanding to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats or abuse,’” Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) [said on the Senate floor](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/gop-senator-quotes-j-k-rowling-while-blocking-vote-lgbtq-n1231569). + +The measure remains blocked. + +**R**owling may profess to be unconcerned about her legacy, but it’s becoming increasingly likely that her stance on trans rights — perhaps as much as her novels — will be what defines it. + +During the coronavirus pandemic, Nicolsons Cafe, where Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book, changed hands several times and at one point even closed. Today, it’s once again serving coffee and a budget-friendly bite for anybody looking to write the next blockbuster young adult series — or just bask in the afterglow of the last one. + +The décor is devoted to Harry, not J.K., but there are some handwritten tributes to the author on Post-It notes stuck to the wall: “HP got my now 27-year-old to read. Now she is a teacher. Rock n Roll JKR,” reads one. Another, in Spanish, thanks her for creating the “marvelous world.” But there are complaints too: “We needed more Ravenclaw rep! JK is a turf!” + +When a reporter approached a group of students who were discussing a project at a big table in the corner, most of them shrugged and said they hadn’t been paying much attention to the trans debate. But one of them, Francisca Escobar, an exchange student at the University of Edinburgh from Chile, had some understandably conflicted feelings to share. + +Escobar, 33, is an artist who says she performs as a drag king. She’s got a trans sister. And she’s a big Harry fan — but maybe no longer so much an admirer of Rowling. + +“Her books talk about inclusion and nondiscrimination,” Escobar said. “Then, J.K. said these trans people should be excluded. And I’m like, ‘Hey, are you Voldemort, or what?’” + +  +  + +--- +`$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))` \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/01.01 Life Orga/@Lifestyle.md b/01.01 Life Orga/@Lifestyle.md index 6d1d0b14..d9d6d095 100644 --- a/01.01 Life Orga/@Lifestyle.md +++ b/01.01 Life Orga/@Lifestyle.md @@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ Repository of Tasks & To-dos regarding life style.   - [ ] :swimming_man: [[@Lifestyle]]: Re-start swimming 📅 2022-07-30 -- [ ] :horse_racing: [[@Lifestyle]]: Re-start [[@Lifestyle#polo|Polo]] 📅 2022-07-30 +- [x] :horse_racing: [[@Lifestyle]]: Re-start [[@Lifestyle#polo|Polo]] 📅 2022-07-30 ✅ 2022-07-17 - [ ] 🎵 [[@Lifestyle]]: Continue building [[@Lifestyle#Music Library|Music Library]] 📅 2022-09-30   diff --git a/01.02 Home/Household.md b/01.02 Home/Household.md index c42a8cb1..cac90b52 100644 --- a/01.02 Home/Household.md +++ b/01.02 Home/Household.md @@ -70,7 +70,8 @@ This section on different household obligations. #### Garbage collection -- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-07-19 +- [ ] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-08-02 +- [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-07-19 ✅ 2022-07-17 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-07-05 ✅ 2022-07-05 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-06-21 ✅ 2022-06-21 - [x] ♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection 🔁 every 2 weeks on Tuesday 📅 2022-06-07 ✅ 2022-06-07 @@ -114,7 +115,8 @@ This section on different household obligations. - [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper 🔁 every week 📅 2022-06-13 ✅ 2022-06-10 - [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper 🔁 every week 📅 2022-06-06 ✅ 2022-06-07 - [x] 🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper 🔁 every week 📅 2022-05-30 ✅ 2022-05-29 -- [ ] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-07-16 +- [ ] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-07-30 +- [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-07-16 ✅ 2022-07-17 - [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-07-02 ✅ 2022-07-02 - [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-06-18 ✅ 2022-06-18 - [x] :bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets 🔁 every 2 weeks on Saturday 📅 2022-06-04 ✅ 2022-05-29 diff --git a/05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md b/05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md index 41f59938..7ce39abe 100644 --- a/05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md +++ b/05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md @@ -206,7 +206,8 @@ The following Apps require a manual backup: - [x] [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Monday 📅 2021-12-01 ✅ 2022-01-08 - [x] [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Monday 📅 2021-09-16 ✅ 2021-10-16 - [x] Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Monday ✅ 2021-09-15 -- [ ] :camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2022-07-14 +- [ ] :camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2022-10-13 +- [x] :camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2022-07-14 ✅ 2022-07-17 - [x] [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2022-04-30 ✅ 2022-05-01 - [x] [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2022-01-14 ✅ 2022-01-14 - [x] [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED 🔁 every 3 months on the 2nd Thursday 📅 2021-10-20 ✅ 2022-01-08