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2 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
iOS 6149f98f48 end april flush
7 months ago
iOS 1273437d17 post-Colmar flush
7 months ago

@ -47,7 +47,6 @@
"obsidian-rich-links", "obsidian-rich-links",
"auto-card-link", "auto-card-link",
"obsidian-dialogue-plugin", "obsidian-dialogue-plugin",
"obsidian-account-linker",
"cmdr", "cmdr",
"obsidian-tasks-plugin", "obsidian-tasks-plugin",
"obsidian-lineup-builder", "obsidian-lineup-builder",

@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
"601d1cc7-a4f3-4f19-aa9f-3bddd7ab6b1d": { "601d1cc7-a4f3-4f19-aa9f-3bddd7ab6b1d": {
"locked": false, "locked": false,
"lockedDeviceName": "iPhone", "lockedDeviceName": "iPhone",
"lastRun": "2024-04-05T07:47:29+02:00" "lastRun": "2024-04-29T07:23:07+02:00"
} }
} }
} }

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

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

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

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

@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
"checkpointList": [ "checkpointList": [
{ {
"path": "/", "path": "/",
"date": "2024-04-05", "date": "2024-04-29",
"size": 14639155 "size": 15526921
} }
], ],
"activityHistory": [ "activityHistory": [
@ -3278,7 +3278,103 @@
}, },
{ {
"date": "2024-04-05", "date": "2024-04-05",
"value": 1282 "value": 2056
},
{
"date": "2024-04-06",
"value": 4498
},
{
"date": "2024-04-07",
"value": 1316
},
{
"date": "2024-04-08",
"value": 1418
},
{
"date": "2024-04-09",
"value": 4720
},
{
"date": "2024-04-10",
"value": 29302426
},
{
"date": "2024-04-11",
"value": 242676
},
{
"date": "2024-04-12",
"value": 3000
},
{
"date": "2024-04-13",
"value": 1278
},
{
"date": "2024-04-14",
"value": 1754
},
{
"date": "2024-04-15",
"value": 233407
},
{
"date": "2024-04-16",
"value": 1444
},
{
"date": "2024-04-17",
"value": 1879
},
{
"date": "2024-04-18",
"value": 42546
},
{
"date": "2024-04-19",
"value": 1900
},
{
"date": "2024-04-20",
"value": 3779
},
{
"date": "2024-04-21",
"value": 204179
},
{
"date": "2024-04-22",
"value": 1392
},
{
"date": "2024-04-23",
"value": 1489
},
{
"date": "2024-04-24",
"value": 12152
},
{
"date": "2024-04-25",
"value": 1375
},
{
"date": "2024-04-26",
"value": 2026
},
{
"date": "2024-04-27",
"value": 2215
},
{
"date": "2024-04-28",
"value": 116628
},
{
"date": "2024-04-29",
"value": 4919
} }
] ]
} }

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

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

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long

@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
{ {
"id": "obsidian-auto-link-title", "id": "obsidian-auto-link-title",
"name": "Auto Link Title", "name": "Auto Link Title",
"version": "1.5.3", "version": "1.5.4",
"minAppVersion": "0.12.17", "minAppVersion": "0.12.17",
"description": "This plugin automatically fetches the titles of links from the web", "description": "This plugin automatically fetches the titles of links from the web",
"author": "Matt Furden", "author": "Matt Furden",

File diff suppressed because it is too large Load Diff

@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
{
"showFudgeIcon": false,
"rollLinksForTags": false,
"copyContentButton": true,
"customFormulas": [],
"displayFormulaForMod": true,
"displayResultsInline": false,
"displayFormulaAfter": false,
"escapeDiceMod": true,
"signed": false,
"displayLookupRoll": true,
"formulas": {},
"defaultRoll": 1,
"defaultFace": 100,
"renderer": false,
"renderAllDice": false,
"addToView": false,
"renderTime": 2000,
"colorfulDice": false,
"scaler": 1,
"diceColor": "#202020",
"textColor": "#ffffff",
"textFont": "Arial",
"showLeafOnStartup": true,
"showDice": true,
"displayAsEmbed": true,
"round": "None",
"initialDisplay": "Roll",
"icons": [
{
"id": "dice-roller-d4",
"shape": "Triangle",
"formula": "d4",
"text": "4"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d6",
"shape": "Square",
"formula": "d6",
"text": "6"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d8",
"shape": "Diamond",
"formula": "d8",
"text": "8"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d10",
"shape": "Diamond",
"formula": "d10",
"text": "10"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d12",
"shape": "Dodecahedron",
"formula": "d12",
"text": "12"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d20",
"shape": "Icosahedron",
"formula": "d20",
"text": "20"
},
{
"id": "dice-roller-d100",
"shape": "Circle",
"formula": "d%",
"text": "%"
}
],
"showRenderNotice": true,
"diceModTemplateFolders": {},
"replaceDiceModInLivePreview": true,
"viewResults": [],
"version": "11.0.1"
}

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long

@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
{ {
"id": "obsidian-dice-roller", "id": "obsidian-dice-roller",
"name": "Dice Roller", "name": "Dice Roller",
"version": "10.4.6", "version": "11.0.1",
"minAppVersion": "0.12.15", "minAppVersion": "0.12.15",
"description": "Inline dice rolling for Obsidian.md", "description": "Inline dice rolling for Obsidian.md",
"author": "Jeremy Valentine", "author": "Jeremy Valentine",

@ -6,11 +6,11 @@
"emojiStyle": "native", "emojiStyle": "native",
"iconColor": null, "iconColor": null,
"recentlyUsedIcons": [ "recentlyUsedIcons": [
"TpWappenGenfMatt",
"❤️‍🔥",
"TpUnteribergBlazon", "TpUnteribergBlazon",
"TpServerRemix1ByMerlin2525", "TpServerRemix1ByMerlin2525",
"TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector", "TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector"
"TpBenBoisVinylRecords",
"💿"
], ],
"recentlyUsedIconsSize": 5, "recentlyUsedIconsSize": 5,
"rules": [], "rules": [],
@ -26,7 +26,10 @@
"iconsBackgroundCheckEnabled": false, "iconsBackgroundCheckEnabled": false,
"iconsInNotesEnabled": true, "iconsInNotesEnabled": true,
"iconIdentifier": ":", "iconIdentifier": ":",
"iconsInLinksEnabled": true "iconsInLinksEnabled": true,
"iconInFrontmatterFieldName": "icon",
"iconColorInFrontmatterFieldName": "iconColor",
"debugMode": false
}, },
"02.03 Zürich": "TpZurichCoatOfArms", "02.03 Zürich": "TpZurichCoatOfArms",
"02.01 London": "TpCoatOfArmsOfTheCityOfLondon", "02.01 London": "TpCoatOfArmsOfTheCityOfLondon",
@ -122,5 +125,7 @@
"05.02 Networks": "TpServerRemix1ByMerlin2525", "05.02 Networks": "TpServerRemix1ByMerlin2525",
"03.02 Travels/Hoch Ybrig.md": "TpUnteribergBlazon", "03.02 Travels/Hoch Ybrig.md": "TpUnteribergBlazon",
"02.03 Zürich/Dr Awad Abuawad.md": "TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector", "02.03 Zürich/Dr Awad Abuawad.md": "TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector",
"02.03 Zürich/Dr Cleopatra Morales.md": "TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector" "02.03 Zürich/Dr Cleopatra Morales.md": "TpPharmacieLogoSvgVector",
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"01.03 Family/Dorothée Moulin.md": "TpWappenGenfMatt"
} }

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long

@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
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"name": "Iconize", "name": "Iconize",
"version": "2.11.5", "version": "2.11.14",
"minAppVersion": "0.9.12", "minAppVersion": "0.9.12",
"description": "Add icons to anything you desire in Obsidian, including files, folders, and text.", "description": "Add icons to anything you desire in Obsidian, including files, folders, and text.",
"author": "Florian Woelki", "author": "Florian Woelki",

@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
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"HideDoneTasks": false, "HideDoneTasks": false,
"ShowTaskLabel": false, "ShowTaskLabel": false,
"AppendDateWhenTaskDone": false,
"MobileAndDesktop": "All", "MobileAndDesktop": "All",
"OpenMemosAutomatically": false, "OpenMemosAutomatically": false,
"ShowTime": true, "ShowTime": true,
@ -32,6 +33,8 @@
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"CommentOnMemos": false, "CommentOnMemos": false,
"CommentsInOriginalNotes": false, "CommentsInOriginalNotes": false,
@ -58,18 +61,6 @@
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"target": "ProcessEntriesBelow", "target": "ProcessEntriesBelow",
"insert": "InsertAfter" "insert": "InsertAfter"
},
{
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"target": "MemoDefaultCanvasPath"
},
{
"value": "MULTI",
"target": "MemoDefaultMultiFilePath"
},
{
"value": "FILE",
"target": "MemoDefaultSingleFilePath"
} }
], ],
"DeleteThinoDirectly": false, "DeleteThinoDirectly": false,
@ -94,7 +85,7 @@
"MomentsIcon": "https://images.pexels.com/photos/256514/pexels-photo-256514.jpeg", "MomentsIcon": "https://images.pexels.com/photos/256514/pexels-photo-256514.jpeg",
"MomentsQuote": "Share your thino with the world", "MomentsQuote": "Share your thino with the world",
"DefaultThemeForThino": "classic", "DefaultThemeForThino": "classic",
"LastUpdatedVersion": "2.3.61", "LastUpdatedVersion": "2.4.33",
"ShareToThinoWithText": false, "ShareToThinoWithText": false,
"ShareToThinoWithTextAppend": "", "ShareToThinoWithTextAppend": "",
"ShareToThinoWithTextPrepend": "", "ShareToThinoWithTextPrepend": "",
@ -103,5 +94,20 @@
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"InsertAfterForTask": "", "InsertAfterForTask": "",
"ProcessContentTarget": "custom", "ProcessContentTarget": "custom",
"InsertType": "custom" "InsertType": "custom",
"ShareAppendType": "preset",
"SharePrependType": "preset",
"SetFileNameAfterCreate": false,
"TagForFileTypeFiles": "thino/file",
"TagForMultiTypeFiles": "thino/multi",
"MinHeightForShare": "200px",
"ThinoMaxHeight": 0,
"ThinoCollapsedHeight": 100,
"OptimizeForCallout": true,
"AppendOrPrependTextViaServer": false,
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@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
"id": "obsidian-memos", "id": "obsidian-memos",
"name": "Thino", "name": "Thino",
"description": "Capturing ideas and save them into daily notes.", "description": "Capturing ideas and save them into daily notes.",
"version": "2.3.61", "version": "2.4.33",
"author": "Boninall", "author": "Boninall",
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"isDesktopOnly": false, "isDesktopOnly": false,

File diff suppressed because one or more lines are too long

@ -3,41 +3,41 @@
"reminders": { "reminders": {
"05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": [ "05.01 Computer setup/Storage and Syncing.md": [
{ {
"title": ":floppy_disk: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for FV|Folder Vault]] %%done_del%%", "title": ":cloud: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05", "time": "2024-06-10",
"rowNumber": 184 "rowNumber": 191
}, },
{ {
"title": ":iphone: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for iPhone|iPhone]] %%done_del%%", "title": "Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for Anchor|Anchor Wallet]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09", "time": "2024-07-04",
"rowNumber": 179 "rowNumber": 174
}, },
{ {
"title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED %%done_del%%", "title": ":floppy_disk: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for FV|Folder Vault]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-11", "time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 194 "rowNumber": 185
}, },
{ {
"title": ":cloud: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Backup Volumes to [[Sync|Sync.com]] %%done_del%%", "title": ":iphone: Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for iPhone|iPhone]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-10", "time": "2024-07-09",
"rowNumber": 189 "rowNumber": 179
}, },
{ {
"title": "Backup [[Storage and Syncing#Instructions for Anchor|Anchor Wallet]] %%done_del%%", "title": ":camera: [[Storage and Syncing|Storage & Sync]]: Transfer pictures to ED %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-04", "time": "2024-07-11",
"rowNumber": 174 "rowNumber": 196
} }
], ],
"06.01 Finances/hLedger.md": [ "06.01 Finances/hLedger.md": [
{ {
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update Price file %%done_del%%", "title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update Price file %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05", "time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 418 "rowNumber": 418
}, },
{ {
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update current ledger %%done_del%%", "title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[hLedger]]: Update current ledger %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-05", "time": "2024-07-05",
"rowNumber": 423 "rowNumber": 424
} }
], ],
"05.02 Networks/Server Cloud.md": [ "05.02 Networks/Server Cloud.md": [
@ -65,21 +65,21 @@
} }
], ],
"05.02 Networks/Server Tools.md": [ "05.02 Networks/Server Tools.md": [
{
"title": ":closed_lock_with_key: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Bitwarden & Health checks %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-17",
"rowNumber": 595
},
{ {
"title": ":hammer_and_wrench: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Standard Notes & Health checks %%done_del%%", "title": ":hammer_and_wrench: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Standard Notes & Health checks %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-18", "time": "2024-05-18",
"rowNumber": 603 "rowNumber": 604
}, },
{ {
"title": ":desktop_computer: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Gitea & Health checks %%done_del%%", "title": ":desktop_computer: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Gitea & Health checks %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-18", "time": "2024-06-18",
"rowNumber": 587 "rowNumber": 587
}, },
{
"title": ":closed_lock_with_key: [[Selfhosting]], [[Server Tools|Tools]]: Upgrader Bitwarden & Health checks %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-17",
"rowNumber": 595
},
{ {
"title": ":hammer_and_wrench: [[Server Tools]]: Backup server %%done_del%%", "title": ":hammer_and_wrench: [[Server Tools]]: Backup server %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-01", "time": "2024-10-01",
@ -187,7 +187,7 @@
"01.03 Family/Philomène de Villeneuve.md": [ "01.03 Family/Philomène de Villeneuve.md": [
{ {
"title": ":birthday: **[[Philomène de Villeneuve|Philomène]]** %%done_del%%", "title": ":birthday: **[[Philomène de Villeneuve|Philomène]]** %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-18", "time": "2025-04-18",
"rowNumber": 105 "rowNumber": 105
} }
], ],
@ -229,7 +229,7 @@
"01.03 Family/Quentin de Villeneuve.md": [ "01.03 Family/Quentin de Villeneuve.md": [
{ {
"title": ":birthday: **[[Quentin de Villeneuve|Quentin BV]]** %%done_del%%", "title": ":birthday: **[[Quentin de Villeneuve|Quentin BV]]** %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-21", "time": "2025-04-21",
"rowNumber": 105 "rowNumber": 105
} }
], ],
@ -292,14 +292,14 @@
"01.03 Family/Achille Bédier.md": [ "01.03 Family/Achille Bédier.md": [
{ {
"title": ":birthday: **[[Achille Bédier|Achille]]**", "title": ":birthday: **[[Achille Bédier|Achille]]**",
"time": "2024-04-20", "time": "2025-04-20",
"rowNumber": 105 "rowNumber": 105
} }
], ],
"01.03 Family/Isaure Bédier.md": [ "01.03 Family/Isaure Bédier.md": [
{ {
"title": ":birthday: **[[Isaure Bédier|Isaure]]** %%done_del%%", "title": ":birthday: **[[Isaure Bédier|Isaure]]** %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-21", "time": "2025-04-21",
"rowNumber": 105 "rowNumber": 105
} }
], ],
@ -334,48 +334,48 @@
"01.02 Home/Household.md": [ "01.02 Home/Household.md": [
{ {
"title": "🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%%", "title": "🛎 🧻 REMINDER [[Household]]: check need for toilet paper %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-08", "time": "2024-05-06",
"rowNumber": 102 "rowNumber": 107
}, },
{ {
"title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%%", "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Paper* recycling collection %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09", "time": "2024-05-07",
"rowNumber": 75 "rowNumber": 75
}, },
{ {
"title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%%", "title": ":bed: [[Household]] Change bedsheets %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-13", "time": "2024-05-11",
"rowNumber": 118 "rowNumber": 127
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"rowNumber": 131
}, },
{ {
"title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection %%done_del%%", "title": "♻ [[Household]]: *Cardboard* recycling collection %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-16", "time": "2024-05-14",
"rowNumber": 83 "rowNumber": 85
}, },
{ {
"title": "🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%%", "title": "🛎️ :house: [[Household]]: Pay rent %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30", "time": "2024-05-31",
"rowNumber": 97 "rowNumber": 101
}, },
{ {
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Winter tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%", "title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Winter tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-15", "time": "2024-10-15",
"rowNumber": 132 "rowNumber": 144
}, },
{ {
"title": ":ski: [[Household]]: Organise yearly ski servicing ([[Ski Rental Zürich]]) %%done_del%%", "title": ":ski: [[Household]]: Organise yearly ski servicing ([[Ski Rental Zürich]]) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-31", "time": "2024-10-31",
"rowNumber": 139 "rowNumber": 151
}, },
{ {
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Renew [road vignette](https://www.e-vignette.ch/) %%done_del%%", "title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Renew [road vignette](https://www.e-vignette.ch/) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-12-20", "time": "2024-12-20",
"rowNumber": 133 "rowNumber": 145
},
{
"title": ":blue_car: [[Household]]: Change to Summer tyres @ [[Rex Automobile CH]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-15",
"rowNumber": 142
} }
], ],
"01.03 Family/Pia Bousquié.md": [ "01.03 Family/Pia Bousquié.md": [
@ -395,18 +395,13 @@
"01.01 Life Orga/@Finances.md": [ "01.01 Life Orga/@Finances.md": [
{ {
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%%", "title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: update crypto prices within Obsidian %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-09", "time": "2024-05-14",
"rowNumber": 116 "rowNumber": 116
}, },
{
"title": ":bar_chart: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Re-establish financial plan for 2024",
"time": "2024-04-30",
"rowNumber": 73
},
{ {
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Swiss tax self declaration %%done_del%%", "title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Swiss tax self declaration %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30", "time": "2024-05-31",
"rowNumber": 122 "rowNumber": 123
}, },
{ {
"title": ":moneybag: [[@Finances]]: Transfer UK pension to CH %%done_del%%", "title": ":moneybag: [[@Finances]]: Transfer UK pension to CH %%done_del%%",
@ -416,15 +411,10 @@
{ {
"title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Close yearly accounts %%done_del%%", "title": ":heavy_dollar_sign: [[@Finances|Finances]]: Close yearly accounts %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-01-07", "time": "2025-01-07",
"rowNumber": 120 "rowNumber": 121
} }
], ],
"01.01 Life Orga/@Personal projects.md": [ "01.01 Life Orga/@Personal projects.md": [
{
"title": ":fork_and_knife: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Rechercher à créer un set Christofle (80e les 6 couteaux; 120e les 6 autres aux Puces)",
"time": "2024-05-30",
"rowNumber": 75
},
{ {
"title": ":art: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Continuer à construire un petit trousseau d'[[@Personal projects#art|art]]", "title": ":art: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Continuer à construire un petit trousseau d'[[@Personal projects#art|art]]",
"time": "2024-06-21", "time": "2024-06-21",
@ -440,6 +430,11 @@
"time": "2024-06-30", "time": "2024-06-30",
"rowNumber": 78 "rowNumber": 78
}, },
{
"title": ":fork_and_knife: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Rechercher à créer un set Christofle (80e les 6 couteaux; 120e les 6 autres aux Puces)",
"time": "2024-11-30",
"rowNumber": 75
},
{ {
"title": ":fleur_de_lis: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Refaire [[@Personal projects#Chevalière|chevalière]] (Bastard & Flourville)", "title": ":fleur_de_lis: [[@Personal projects|Personal projects]]: Refaire [[@Personal projects#Chevalière|chevalière]] (Bastard & Flourville)",
"time": "2025-12-31", "time": "2025-12-31",
@ -454,27 +449,27 @@
} }
], ],
"06.02 Investments/Crypto Tasks.md": [ "06.02 Investments/Crypto Tasks.md": [
{
"title": ":chart: Check [[Nimbus]] earnings %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-08",
"rowNumber": 89
},
{ {
"title": ":ballot_box_with_ballot: [[Crypto Tasks]]: Vote for [[EOS]] block producers %%done_del%%", "title": ":ballot_box_with_ballot: [[Crypto Tasks]]: Vote for [[EOS]] block producers %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-07", "time": "2024-05-07",
"rowNumber": 72 "rowNumber": 72
},
{
"title": ":chart: Check [[Nimbus]] earnings %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-13",
"rowNumber": 89
} }
], ],
"05.02 Networks/Configuring UFW.md": [ "05.02 Networks/Configuring UFW.md": [
{ {
"title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]] Get IP addresses caught by Postfix %%done_del%%", "title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]] Get IP addresses caught by Postfix %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-06", "time": "2024-05-04",
"rowNumber": 239 "rowNumber": 239
}, },
{ {
"title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]]: Update the Blocked IP list %%done_del%%", "title": "🖥 [[Selfhosting]], [[Configuring UFW|Firewall]]: Update the Blocked IP list %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-06", "time": "2024-05-04",
"rowNumber": 303 "rowNumber": 307
} }
], ],
"01.03 Family/Amélie Solanet.md": [ "01.03 Family/Amélie Solanet.md": [
@ -501,7 +496,7 @@
"00.08 Bookmarks/Bookmarks - Admin & services.md": [ "00.08 Bookmarks/Bookmarks - Admin & services.md": [
{ {
"title": ":label: [[Bookmarks - Admin & services]]: Review bookmarks %%done_del%%", "title": ":label: [[Bookmarks - Admin & services]]: Review bookmarks %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30", "time": "2024-07-30",
"rowNumber": 113 "rowNumber": 113
} }
], ],
@ -596,28 +591,28 @@
"01.01 Life Orga/@Life Admin.md": [ "01.01 Life Orga/@Life Admin.md": [
{ {
"title": ":scissors: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Cut hair %%done_del%%", "title": ":scissors: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Cut hair %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-02-08", "time": "2024-07-20",
"rowNumber": 129 "rowNumber": 129
}, },
{
"title": ":telephone: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Switch from Swisscom to Sunrise",
"time": "2024-04-20",
"rowNumber": 79
},
{ {
"title": ":confetti_ball: :mother_christmas: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Saint Nicolas %%done_del%%", "title": ":confetti_ball: :mother_christmas: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Saint Nicolas %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-12-06", "time": "2024-12-06",
"rowNumber": 144 "rowNumber": 145
},
{
"title": ":telephone: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Switch from Swisscom to Sunrise",
"time": "2024-12-31",
"rowNumber": 79
}, },
{ {
"title": ":confetti_ball: :crown: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Epiphanie ([[Galette des rois]]) %%done_del%%", "title": ":confetti_ball: :crown: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Epiphanie ([[Galette des rois]]) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-01-06", "time": "2025-01-06",
"rowNumber": 141 "rowNumber": 142
}, },
{ {
"title": ":confetti_ball: :love_letter: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Saint Valentin %%done_del%%", "title": ":confetti_ball: :love_letter: [[@Life Admin|Life Admin]]: Saint Valentin %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-02-14", "time": "2025-02-14",
"rowNumber": 142 "rowNumber": 143
} }
], ],
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-04.md": [ "00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-01-04.md": [
@ -673,7 +668,7 @@
"01.02 Home/Entertainment.md": [ "01.02 Home/Entertainment.md": [
{ {
"title": "🎬 [[Entertainment]]: African territory", "title": "🎬 [[Entertainment]]: African territory",
"time": "2024-04-30", "time": "2024-10-30",
"rowNumber": 66 "rowNumber": 66
} }
], ],
@ -687,7 +682,7 @@
"01.07 Animals/@Sally.md": [ "01.07 Animals/@Sally.md": [
{ {
"title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%%", "title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]]: Pay for horseshoes (150 CHF) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-10", "time": "2024-05-10",
"rowNumber": 142 "rowNumber": 142
}, },
{ {
@ -707,15 +702,15 @@
} }
], ],
"02.03 Zürich/Juan Bautista Bossio.md": [ "02.03 Zürich/Juan Bautista Bossio.md": [
{
"title": ":birthday: :horse_racing: [[Juan Bautista Bossio|Juan]]s birthday %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-19",
"rowNumber": 122
},
{ {
"title": ":horse_racing: [[Juan Bautista Bossio|Juan]]: Bring a bottle of fernet + normal coca cola %%done_del%%", "title": ":horse_racing: [[Juan Bautista Bossio|Juan]]: Bring a bottle of fernet + normal coca cola %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-20", "time": "2024-05-20",
"rowNumber": 102 "rowNumber": 102
},
{
"title": ":birthday: :horse_racing: [[Juan Bautista Bossio|Juan]]s birthday %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-19",
"rowNumber": 123
} }
], ],
"00.08 Bookmarks/Bookmarks - Investments.md": [ "00.08 Bookmarks/Bookmarks - Investments.md": [
@ -735,7 +730,7 @@
"01.07 Animals/2023-07-13 Health check.md": [ "01.07 Animals/2023-07-13 Health check.md": [
{ {
"title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing", "title": ":racehorse: [[@Sally|Sally]], [[2023-07-13 Health check|Note]]: Check front hoofs healing",
"time": "2024-04-09", "time": "2024-05-07",
"rowNumber": 53 "rowNumber": 53
} }
], ],
@ -767,13 +762,6 @@
"rowNumber": 103 "rowNumber": 103
} }
], ],
"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2023-12-24.md": [
{
"title": "17:08 :grapes: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Re-buy white wines [[Finca Racons]] [[Nadine Saxer - Blanc de Noir]]",
"time": "2024-05-30",
"rowNumber": 103
}
],
"02.03 Zürich/Sonne.md": [ "02.03 Zürich/Sonne.md": [
{ {
"title": "🎄 [[Sonne]]: Check Advent & Christmas happenings %%done_del%%", "title": "🎄 [[Sonne]]: Check Advent & Christmas happenings %%done_del%%",
@ -791,17 +779,17 @@
"01.01 Life Orga/@Family.md": [ "01.01 Life Orga/@Family.md": [
{ {
"title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore civil procedures to change names (+whether in 🇨🇭 or 🇫🇷)", "title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore civil procedures to change names (+whether in 🇨🇭 or 🇫🇷)",
"time": "2024-04-15", "time": "2024-09-15",
"rowNumber": 94 "rowNumber": 94
}, },
{ {
"title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore maintaining in the ANF books", "title": ":family: [[@Family|Family]]: Explore maintaining in the ANF books",
"time": "2024-04-15", "time": "2024-09-15",
"rowNumber": 95 "rowNumber": 95
}, },
{ {
"title": ":stopwatch: [[@Family|Family]]: Réparer loignon Lip", "title": ":stopwatch: [[@Family|Family]]: Réparer loignon Lip",
"time": "2024-06-20", "time": "2024-10-20",
"rowNumber": 96 "rowNumber": 96
} }
], ],
@ -813,21 +801,6 @@
} }
], ],
"02.03 Zürich/@@Zürich.md": [ "02.03 Zürich/@@Zürich.md": [
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Sechseläuten %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"rowNumber": 118
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{
"title": ":hibiscus: :runner: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Marathon %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-21",
"rowNumber": 128
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{
"title": ":hibiscus: :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Book a restaurant with terrace for the season: [[Albishaus]], [[Restaurant Boldern]], [[Zur Buech]], [[Jardin Zürichberg]], [[Bistro Rigiblick]], [[Portofino am See]], [[La Réserve|La Muña]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-01",
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{ {
"title": "🎭:frame_with_picture: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out exhibitions at the [Kunsthaus](https://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/) %%done_del%%", "title": "🎭:frame_with_picture: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out exhibitions at the [Kunsthaus](https://www.kunsthaus.ch/en/) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-05-15", "time": "2024-05-15",
@ -836,7 +809,7 @@
{ {
"title": ":hibiscus: :canned_food: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [FOOD ZURICH - MEHR ALS EIN FESTIVAL](https://www.foodzurich.com/de/) %%done_del%%", "title": ":hibiscus: :canned_food: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [FOOD ZURICH - MEHR ALS EIN FESTIVAL](https://www.foodzurich.com/de/) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-01", "time": "2024-06-01",
"rowNumber": 105 "rowNumber": 106
}, },
{ {
"title": "🎭:frame_with_picture: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out exhibitions at the [Rietberg](https://rietberg.ch/en/) %%done_del%%", "title": "🎭:frame_with_picture: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out exhibitions at the [Rietberg](https://rietberg.ch/en/) %%done_del%%",
@ -846,42 +819,42 @@
{ {
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Pride Festival %%done_del%%", "title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Pride Festival %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-06-15", "time": "2024-06-15",
"rowNumber": 119 "rowNumber": 121
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{ {
"title": ":sunny: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out programmation of the [Zurich's finest open-air cinema | Allianz Cinema -](https://zuerich.allianzcinema.ch/en) %%done_del%%", "title": ":sunny: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out programmation of the [Zurich's finest open-air cinema | Allianz Cinema -](https://zuerich.allianzcinema.ch/en) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-07-01", "time": "2024-07-01",
"rowNumber": 106 "rowNumber": 107
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{ {
"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Seenachtfest Rapperswil-Jona %%done_del%%", "title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Seenachtfest Rapperswil-Jona %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-01", "time": "2024-08-01",
"rowNumber": 122 "rowNumber": 124
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{ {
"title": ":sunny: :runner: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out tickets to Weltklasse Zürich %%done_del%%", "title": ":sunny: :runner: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out tickets to Weltklasse Zürich %%done_del%%",
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"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Street Parade %%done_del%%", "title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Street Parade %%done_del%%",
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"title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Openair %%done_del%%", "title": ":sunny: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Zürich Openair %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-08-23", "time": "2024-08-23",
"rowNumber": 121 "rowNumber": 123
}, },
{ {
"title": ":maple_leaf: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Zürich Film Festival %%done_del%%", "title": ":maple_leaf: :movie_camera: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Zürich Film Festival %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-09-15", "time": "2024-09-15",
"rowNumber": 107 "rowNumber": 108
}, },
{ {
"title": ":maple_leaf: :wine_glass: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Zürichs Wine festival ([ZWF - Zurich Wine Festival](https://zurichwinefestival.ch/)) %%done_del%%", "title": ":maple_leaf: :wine_glass: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out Zürichs Wine festival ([ZWF - Zurich Wine Festival](https://zurichwinefestival.ch/)) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-09-25", "time": "2024-09-25",
"rowNumber": 108 "rowNumber": 109
}, },
{ {
"title": ":snowflake:🎭 [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out floating theatre ([Herzlich willkommen!](http://herzbaracke.ch/)) %%done_del%%", "title": ":snowflake:🎭 [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out floating theatre ([Herzlich willkommen!](http://herzbaracke.ch/)) %%done_del%%",
@ -891,7 +864,7 @@
{ {
"title": ":maple_leaf: :wine_glass: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [Discover the Excitement of EXPOVINA Wine Events | Join Us at Weinschiffe, Primavera, and Wine Trophy | EXPOVINA](https://expovina.ch/en-ch/) %%done_del%%", "title": ":maple_leaf: :wine_glass: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [Discover the Excitement of EXPOVINA Wine Events | Join Us at Weinschiffe, Primavera, and Wine Trophy | EXPOVINA](https://expovina.ch/en-ch/) %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-10-15", "time": "2024-10-15",
"rowNumber": 109 "rowNumber": 110
}, },
{ {
"title": ":snowflake: :person_in_steamy_room: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [Sauna Cubes at Strandbad Küsnacht — Strandbadsauna](https://www.strandbadsauna.ch/home-eng) %%done_del%%", "title": ":snowflake: :person_in_steamy_room: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Check out [Sauna Cubes at Strandbad Küsnacht — Strandbadsauna](https://www.strandbadsauna.ch/home-eng) %%done_del%%",
@ -906,12 +879,27 @@
{ {
"title": ":snowflake: :swimmer: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Samichlausschwimmen %%done_del%%", "title": ":snowflake: :swimmer: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Samichlausschwimmen %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-12-08", "time": "2024-12-08",
"rowNumber": 115 "rowNumber": 116
}, },
{ {
"title": ":snowflake: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: ZüriCarneval weekend %%done_del%%", "title": ":snowflake: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: ZüriCarneval weekend %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-02-15", "time": "2025-02-15",
"rowNumber": 116 "rowNumber": 117
},
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :partying_face: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Sechseläuten %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-15",
"rowNumber": 119
},
{
"title": ":hibiscus: :runner: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Zürich Marathon %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-04-21",
"rowNumber": 130
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"title": ":hibiscus: :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|:test_zurich_coat_of_arms:]]: Book a restaurant with terrace for the season: [[Albishaus]], [[Restaurant Boldern]], [[Zur Buech]], [[Jardin Zürichberg]], [[Bistro Rigiblick]], [[Portofino am See]], [[La Réserve|La Muña]] %%done_del%%",
"time": "2025-05-01",
"rowNumber": 104
} }
], ],
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@ -952,17 +940,10 @@
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} }
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"title": "16:06 :ski: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Look for a ski bag & a ski boot bag",
"time": "2024-04-15",
"rowNumber": 104
}
],
"01.08 Garden/@Plants.md": [ "01.08 Garden/@Plants.md": [
{ {
"title": ":potted_plant: [[@Plants|Plants]]: Buy fertilizer for the season %%done_del%%", "title": ":potted_plant: [[@Plants|Plants]]: Buy fertilizer for the season %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-30", "time": "2024-05-31",
"rowNumber": 111 "rowNumber": 111
} }
], ],
@ -1007,11 +988,45 @@
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{ {
"title": "09:15 :performing_arts: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Book tickets for the [Colombian exhibition]([](https://rietberg.ch/en/exhibitions/morethangold)) at the Rietberg", "title": ":birthday: **[[Dorothée Moulin]]** %%done_del%%",
"time": "2024-04-01", "time": "2025-04-19",
"rowNumber": 111
}
],
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{
"title": ":birthday: **[[Gordana|Nicolas]]**",
"time": "2024-06-25",
"rowNumber": 161
},
{
"title": ":birthday: **[[Gordana|Dana]]**",
"time": "2024-06-28",
"rowNumber": 160
}
],
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{
"title": "09:10 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Bistro Rigiblick]]",
"time": "2024-05-30",
"rowNumber": 103 "rowNumber": 103
},
{
"title": "09:11 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Jardin Zürichberg]]",
"time": "2024-06-30",
"rowNumber": 104
},
{
"title": "09:12 🍴: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Restaurant Boldern]]",
"time": "2024-07-30",
"rowNumber": 105
},
{
"title": "09:13 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Zur Buech]]",
"time": "2024-08-30",
"rowNumber": 106
} }
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@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
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@ -61,14 +61,14 @@
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@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
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"extraContext": false, "extraContext": false,
"sortOrder": "alphabetical", "sortOrder": "alphabetical",
@ -174,6 +175,7 @@
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@ -204,7 +206,7 @@
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@ -244,50 +246,50 @@
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@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ hide task count
This section does serve for quick memos. This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp; &emsp;
- [ ] 17:08 :grapes: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Re-buy white wines [[Finca Racons]] [[Nadine Saxer - Blanc de Noir]] 📅2024-05-30 - [x] 17:08 :grapes: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Re-buy white wines [[Finca Racons]] [[Nadine Saxer - Blanc de Noir]] 📅 2024-05-30 ✅ 2024-04-15
- [x] 19:55 :fried_egg: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Buy tupperware 📅 2024-01-31 ✅ 2024-01-20 ^g5hlxg - [x] 19:55 :fried_egg: [[@Life Admin|Admin]]: Buy tupperware 📅 2024-01-31 ✅ 2024-01-20 ^g5hlxg

@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp; &emsp;
- [x] 10:44 :computer: [[@IT & Computer|Computer]]: Check battery issue of file server 📅 2024-02-03 ✅ 2024-02-03 - [x] 10:44 :computer: [[@IT & Computer|Computer]]: Check battery issue of file server 📅 2024-02-03 ✅ 2024-02-03
- [ ] 16:06 :ski: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Look for a ski bag & a ski boot bag 📅2024-04-15 - [x] 16:06 :ski: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Look for a ski bag & a ski boot bag 📅 2024-04-15 ✅ 2024-04-15
%% --- %% %% --- %%

@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ hide task count
This section does serve for quick memos. This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp; &emsp;
- [ ] 09:15 :performing_arts: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Book tickets for the [Colombian exhibition]([](https://rietberg.ch/en/exhibitions/morethangold)) at the Rietberg 📅 2024-04-01 - [x] 09:15 :performing_arts: [[@Lifestyle|Lifestyle]]: Book tickets for the [Colombian exhibition]([](https://rietberg.ch/en/exhibitions/morethangold)) at the Rietberg 📅 2024-04-01 ✅ 2024-04-20
%% --- %% %% --- %%

@ -16,9 +16,9 @@ Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5 FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20 EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30 BackHeadBar: 30
Water: Water: 3
Coffee: Coffee: 6
Steps: Steps: 12730
Weight: Weight:
Ski: Ski:
IceSkating: IceSkating:
@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp; &emsp;
Loret ipsum 📺: [[The Sea Beyond (2020)]]
&emsp; &emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-06
Date: 2024-04-06
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 85
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.5
Coffee: 3
Steps: 9024
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-05|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-07|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-06Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-06NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-06
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-06
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-06
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
- [x] 12:27 :iphone: [[Email & Communication]]: Buy a Touch charger for iPhone 📅 2024-04-21 ✅ 2024-04-22
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📺: [[The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-06]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-14
Date: 2024-04-14
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.91
Coffee: 1
Steps: 11120
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-13|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-15|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-14Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-14NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-14
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-14
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-14
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🚗: Visite du Haut Koenigsberg & [[@France|Colmar]] to [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]
🍹: [[Albishaus]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-14]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-15
Date: 2024-04-15
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3
Coffee: 5
Steps: 13714
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-14|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-16|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-15Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-15NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-15
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-15
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-15
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[Their Eyes Were Watching God]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-15]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-16
Date: 2024-04-16
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3.5
Coffee: 5
Steps: 8863
Weight: 94.4
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding: 1
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-15|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-17|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-16Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-16NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-16
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-16
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-16
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
📖: [[Their Eyes Were Watching God]]
🐎: Training with [[@Sally|Sally]] at [[Polo Park Zürich|PPZ]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-16]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-17
Date: 2024-04-17
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 6.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3
Coffee: 4
Steps: 6283
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-16|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-18|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-17Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-17NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-17
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-17
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-17
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🚆: [[Geneva]] for the day
📖: [[Catch-22]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-17]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-18
Date: 2024-04-18
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2
Coffee: 4
Steps: 13128
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-17|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-19|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-18Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-18NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-18
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-18
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-18
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🍴: [[Chilli con Carne]]
🍽️: [[Spicy Szechuan Noodles with Garlic Chilli Oil]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-18]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-19
Date: 2024-04-19
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3.5
Coffee: 5
Steps: 6806
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-18|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-20|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-19Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-19NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-19
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-19
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-19
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🛞: [[Rex Automobile CH]]
🍽️: [[Big Shells With Spicy Lamb Sausage and Pistachios]]
👩‍🍼: [[Dorothée Moulin]] is born
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-19]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-20
Date: 2024-04-20
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.63
Coffee: 3
Steps: 8951
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-19|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-21|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-20Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-20NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-20
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-20
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-20
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-20]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-21
Date: 2024-04-21
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3.08
Coffee: 5
Steps: 7296
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-20|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-22|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-21Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-21NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-21
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-21
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-21
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
- [x] 17:47 💽 [[Gordana|Dana]]: Explore a good vinyl player 📅 2024-04-24 ✅ 2024-04-22
- [x] 17:49 🚲 [[Gordana|Dana]]: Explore e-bike @ Decathlon 📅 2024-04-26 ✅ 2024-04-22
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🚆: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]] to [[@@Paris|Paris]]
📺: [[2024-04-21 ⚽️ PSG - OL (4-1)]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-21]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-22
Date: 2024-04-22
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.91
Coffee: 6
Steps: 10861
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-21|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-23|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-22Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-22NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-22
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-22
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-22
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-22]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-23
Date: 2024-04-23
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3.66
Coffee: 6
Steps: 14744
Weight: 93.4
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-22|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-24|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-23Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-23NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-23
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-23
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-23
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🍽️: [[Bambou]] Kitchen
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-23]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-24
Date: 2024-04-24
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.9
Coffee: 6
Steps: 5255
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-23|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-25|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-24Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-24NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-24
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-24
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-24
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🚆: [[@@Paris|Paris]] to [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]
📖: [[Catch-22]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-24]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-25
Date: 2024-04-25
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.66
Coffee: 4
Steps: 13134
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-24|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-26|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-25Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-25NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-25
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-25
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-25
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
- [x] 12:58 🍼 [[Dorothée Moulin]]: Commander cadeau 📅 2024-04-28 ✅ 2024-04-26
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-25]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-26
Date: 2024-04-26
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 6
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.5
Coffee: 5
Steps: 12786
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding: 1
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-25|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-27|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-26Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-26NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-26
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-26
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-26
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🐎: first S&B of the season with [[@Sally|Sally]] at [[Polo Park Zürich|PPZ]]
🍽️: [[Toto]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-26]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,136 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-27
Date: 2024-04-27
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2.86
Coffee: 1
Steps: 5700
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding: 1
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-26|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-28|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-27Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-27NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-27
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-27
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-27
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🍴: [[Iroquois]]
🐎: S&B with [[@Sally|Sally]] at [[Polo Park Zürich|PPZ]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-27]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-28
Date: 2024-04-28
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 3.83
Coffee: 1
Steps: 8204
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding: 1
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-27|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-29|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-28Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-28NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-28
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-28
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-28
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
🍴: [[Portofino am See]]
🐎: S&B with [[@Sally|Sally]] at [[Polo Park Zürich|PPZ]]
🍽️: [[Spicy Szechuan Noodles with Garlic Chilli Oil]]
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-28]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
---
title: "🗒 Daily Note"
allDay: true
date: 2024-04-29
Date: 2024-04-29
DocType: Note
Hierarchy:
TimeStamp:
location:
CollapseMetaTable: true
Sleep: 7.5
Happiness: 90
Gratefulness: 90
Stress: 25
FrontHeadBar: 5
EarHeadBar: 20
BackHeadBar: 30
Water: 2
Coffee: 3
Steps:
Weight:
Ski:
IceSkating:
Riding:
Racket:
Football:
Swim:
---
%% Parent:: [[@Life Admin]] %%
---
[[2024-04-28|<< 🗓 Previous ]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[@Main Dashboard|Back]] &emsp; &emsp; &emsp; [[2024-04-30|🗓 Next >>]]
---
&emsp;
```button
name Record today's health
type command
action MetaEdit: Run MetaEdit
id EditMetaData
```
^button-2024-04-29Edit
```button
name Save
type command
action Save current file
id Save
```
^button-2024-04-29NSave
&emsp;
# 2024-04-29
&emsp;
> [!summary]+
> Daily note for 2024-04-29
&emsp;
```toc
style: number
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### ✅ Tasks of the day
&emsp;
```tasks
not done
due on 2024-04-29
path does not include Templates
hide backlinks
hide task count
```
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 📝 Memos
&emsp;
This section does serve for quick memos.
&emsp;
- [ ] 09:10 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Bistro Rigiblick]] 📅2024-05-30
- [ ] 09:11 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Jardin Zürichberg]] 📅2024-06-30
- [ ] 09:12 🍴: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Restaurant Boldern]] 📅2024-07-30
- [ ] 09:13 :fork_and_knife: [[@@Zürich|Zürich]]: Book [[Zur Buech]] 📅2024-08-30
%% --- %%
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### 🗒 Notes
&emsp;
Loret ipsum
&emsp;
---
&emsp;
### :link: Linked activity
&emsp;
```dataview
Table from [[2024-04-29]]
```
&emsp;
&emsp;

@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
---
title: ⚽️ PSG - OL (4-1)
allDay: false
startTime: 21:00
endTime: 23:00
date: 2024-04-21
completed: null
---
[[2024-04-21|Ce jour]], [[Paris SG|PSG]] - OL: 4-1
Buteurs:: ⚽️ Matic (csc)<br>⚽️ Beraldo<br>⚽️⚽️ G. Ramos<br>⚽️ Nuamah (OL)
&emsp;
```lineup
formation: 4231
players: Donnarumma,Beraldo,Danilo,Marquinhos (Škriniar),Hakimi (Mukiele),Vitinha,Zaïre-Emery (Soler),Barcola (Mayulu),Asensio,Kolo Muani,G.Ramos (Lee)
```

@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
---
title: ⚽️ Borussia - PSG
allDay: false
startTime: 21:00
endTime: 23:00
date: 2024-04-30
completed: null
---
[[2024-04-30|Ce jour]], Borussia Dortmund - [[Paris SG|PSG]]:
Buteurs::

@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
---
title: ⚽️ PSG - Borussia
allDay: false
startTime: 21:00
endTime: 23:00
date: 2024-05-07
completed: null
---
[[2024-05-07|Ce jour]], [[Paris SG|PSG]] - Borussia Dortmund:
Buteurs::

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# A Familys Disappearance Rocked New Zealand. What Came After Has Stunned Everyone.
![Cartoon images of a missing poster with three kids, footage of two bank robbers, loose bank notes flying through the air, a pickup truck parked on the beach, and two people on a motorbike.](https://compote.slate.com/images/cdc9afab-22a6-4479-a15f-b67a2a10a410.jpeg)
Illustration by Toby Morris
The waves were already crashing over the Toyotas hood when they found it.
It was a blustery September Sunday in 2021, and the Hilux pickup sat far down the gray sand in a remote cove on the wild west coast of New Zealands North Island. The Māori men who noticed the car live in mobile homes and cabins up by the road, on ancestral land near Kiritehere Beach. The truck was parked below the high-tide line, facing the sea, and was nearly swamped by the waves pummeling the shore. The men found the keys, tucked under the drivers-side floormat, and backed the car up the beach. They couldnt help but notice empty child seats strapped into the back. If any kids had gotten close to the sea on a day like this, they were long gone.
The truck, it would turn out, belonged to Tom Phillips, the son of a prominent Pākehā—white—family with a farm nearby in Marokopa. Phillips, 34, spent much of his time on the farm, where he home-schooled his three kids, Jayda, 8, Maverick, 6, and Ember, 5. Hed separated from his wife three years before and had custody of the kids. Locals heard she was down on the South Island, struggling with her own problems.
Now here was his truck, marooned. The next morning, Toms brother Ben drove down to the beach. Hed last seen Tom and the kids on Saturday, Sept. 11, when theyd left the farm, heading, everyone thought, back to Ōtorohanga, the inland town where Tom kept a house. Now it was Sept. 13. Ben inspected the Toyota, then called the police.
Soon photos of the missing father and his three smiling children were in every newspaper and on every TV channel in New Zealand. Police and volunteer searchers fanned out over the area, knocking on doors. Helicopters, planes, and heat-detecting drones flew over the deep bush surrounding the beach. Rescue boats and jet skis buzzed through the roaring waves, looking for bodies. On days the sea was calm, swimmers from surf rescue teams explored caves along the shoreline. The local hapū, or Māori clan, cooked hot meals for the searchers in a shed near the beach. Three days into the search, Phillips ex-wife [released a careful statement](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126382867/mum-holding-out-every-hope-for-children-missing-on-stormy-waikato-beach?rm=a) through the police, thanking the searchers for their efforts. “We are holding out every hope that my children Jayda, Maverick, and Ember are safe,” she said.
But the stark facts—the lonely car on the beach, the 8-foot waves, Tom and the children vanishing completely—were daunting. “I do fear the worst,” Toms sister, Rozzi Pethybridge, told a reporter. “I am worried a rogue wave has caught one of the kids and hes gone in to save them.” Phillips uncle seemed to be hinting at something even darker when he told another reporter that in some ways he hoped it *had* been a rogue wave: “If something has happened to the children, the best-case scenario is that they were washed out to sea,” he said. “That way its an accident.”
September in New Zealand, the height of Southern Hemisphere spring, is whitebaiting season, when locals set up nets at the river mouth to capture the shoals of immature fish headed back to their freshwater home. But during the search operation, authorities placed a rāhui, a ban, on fishing. Some Marokopa residents grumbled about halting what had been a boom season. But others put things in perspective. “Thats the end of the whitebaiting,” one local [told a reporter](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300408397/the-mystery-of-the-missing-family--whats-become-of-tom-phillips-and-his-kids), “but thats small-time compared with losing a family.”
On social media and on Reddit, observers seized on rumors of a custody dispute and [spun out dark theories](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/puhmqz/missing_family_daily_searches_for_family_last/) of an abduction or staged disappearance. Phillips was an experienced bushman, camper, and hunter. In passing, locals told reporters that if Phillips *had* taken the kids out into the wild for some reason, they were confident he could last for weeks or months out there, even with three children in tow. A week into the search, family members seemed to be pinning their hopes on this idea. “Were looking on the bright side,” the uncle [told Radio New Zealand](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/451509/family-hope-missing-dad-and-children-are-in-hiding-uncle-says). “Were hoping hes just gone and hidden in the bush.”
After 12 days of active searching, the [police stood down](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300415580/missing-family-daily-searches-for-family-last-seen-in-marokopa-suspended). The whitebaiting rāhui was lifted. Emergency services personnel moved out of the Marokopa community building on the banks of the river. Other than the Toyota, not a single sign had been found of the four missing Phillipses. The media continued covering the case, but there wasnt much to say—everyone understood that until bodies washed up somewhere, it was unlikely there would be any further news.
No one knew that the disappearances were just the beginning of an ordeal that has not yet ended—a case that has only grown stranger and more ominous in the two and a half years since, prompting pleas from family, increasing public astonishment, online speculation, a shocking crime, and a communitys closing ranks around one of its own.
Back in September 2021, the real mystery started when the first one was solved. Because 17 days after they had been reported missing, Tom Phillips and his three children walked through the front door of his parents farm.
The Tom Phillips disappearance captivated New Zealand. But the incident never reached the 24/7 fever pitch of blanket coverage that would have characterized the story if it had happened in the United States. In part thats because theres no CNN-style 24-hour news channel in New Zealand, though pretty much every outlet in the country sent a reporter to the west coast in hopes of digging something up. But no one had much to say. Phillips uncle spoke to press during the search, but other members of the Phillips clan stuck to the farm and stayed away from television cameras. The police delivered a daily briefing most afternoons, which never offered any new information. The childrens mother remained unnamed. Reporters were unable to reveal details of the couples custody disputes, because family courts in New Zealand strictly prohibit media from reporting on their proceedings.
Even after Phillips and his children returned, there [was no footage](https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/09/family-missing-in-south-waikato-found-safe-and-well.html) of the happy family waving from the front porch, no soft-focus newsmagazine interviews, no morning-show feature. Phillips never spoke to the press. The family issued a statement—“Tom is remorseful, he is humbled, he is gaining an understanding of the horrific ordeal he has put us through”—and Pethybridge gave a brief interview to the New Zealand Herald in which she [seemed shell-shocked](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/marokopa-mystery-family-of-missing-kids-on-weeks-in-dense-bush-didnt-do-it-hard-at-all/FGZYKWO6KWPJ4QPBHOQ6WXRRIY/?utm_campaign=nzh_tw&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=nzh_tw#Echobox=1633037862-1) by the situation. “Hope dwindled and we became more and more resigned and sad,” she said. Now, she added, she could “smile and laugh for the first time in three weeks, and not feel bad if you have a little smile.”
![A triptych of the three missing kids.](https://compote.slate.com/images/60367ead-248c-48c6-964b-81d75dba9c70.png?crop=1400%2C840%2Cx0%2Cy0)
The Phillips kids: from left, Maverick, Jayda, and Ember. Courtesy of NZ Police
She did not, however, smile once in the entire interview. The family closed ranks, and reporters were stuck combing social media for clues. (“Pethybridge also shared a song [titled Hey Brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cp6mKbRTQY) by Swedish DJ Avicci,” one report noted.)
The residents of Marokopa, too, had little to say once the children were safe, one reporter told me. “After he was found, no one wanted to talk,” [said Karen Rutherford](https://newsroom.co.nz/2021/10/04/man-found-mystery-continues/) of Newshub. “He has put people through the wringer, to be honest.” After all, what had all that work been for? Theyd served meals to rescuers, opened the community center 24/7. Many residents had tramped along the shoreline, looking for bodies. Even after the police had called off the search, members of the local hapū went out every day. Then it turned out that Phillips simply had not bothered to tell anyone he was taking the children to the deep bush, pitching a tent 15 kilometers south of the beach where his car was found. “Hes done this before. Its not the first time,” a [local farmer said](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/300420778/from-joy-to-frustration-over-marokopas-lostthenfound-family). “Were glad to have him back, but he should be held accountable. What was he thinking?”
And why had he left the car there, anyway? Though one friend suggested that the pickup had been stolen by joyriding kids, most everyone assumed that Phillips had parked on the beach to throw searchers off the trail. But for what purpose? Some [noted Pethybridges comment](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452625/missing-marokopa-family-found-safe-and-well) that Phillips was in “a helpless place” and wanted to “clear his head.” A [Reddit user mused](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/py73jy/missing_marakopa_family_found_safe_and_well/): “Its one thing for him wanting to clear his head but what about the kids? Hope theyre OK, might need some therapy stat.” Others leaped in to assure everyone that a trip to the bush was just what any kid needed: “Going camping with dad and forgetting about the rest of the world would be pretty sweet.”
Indeed, theres a long tradition in New Zealand of valorizing backcountry adventure—getting lost in the bush for a while—shared by parents and children. “Its a [*Man Alone* thing](https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/29-04-2021/locked-down-and-far-from-home-with-man-alone),” the Auckland education researcher Stuart McNaughton told me, referring to the 1939 novel by John Mulgan still viewed by many as essential to understanding the “Kiwi character.” “Getting on with stuff, taming a difficult environment, getting hurt in the process.” To many New Zealanders, a proper father figure is a guy who knows how to handle the wilderness, a place where increasingly citified Kiwi kids seem less and less comfortable. McNaughton summarized the attitude: “If theyre gonna have an accident, theyre gonna have an accident—itll probably do them good.”
The modern urtext on this subject is Taika Waititis 2016 comedy [*Hunt for the Wilderpeople*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_for_the_Wilderpeople), still the most successful locally produced film in the nations history. In the movie, a troubled Māori kid from the Auckland streets bonds with a brusque Pākehā outdoorsman in the deep bush. The movies villain is a maniacal child protection officer who hunts them down—the overweening nanny state, in the flesh. Its based on a book by the late Barry Crump, famous for his reputation as a rugged bloke; New Zealanders know him best for [his long-running ads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyHBKX29_Q8) for the Toyota Hilux ute, the official truck of bushmen—unsurprisingly, the truck Tom Phillips owned and parked on Kiritehere Beach.
After he returned, [Phillips was charged](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126656040/man-charged-over-search-for-father-and-children-in-marokopa-waikato?rm=a) with wasting police resources and ordered to appear in court. He was “reckless as to whether wasteful deployment of police resources would result,” the charges read. He “behaved in a manner that was likely to give rise to serious apprehension for the safety of himself, Jayda Phillips, Ember Phillips and Maverick Phillips, knowing that such apprehension would be groundless.” The charges carried a maximum penalty of three months in jail or a $2,000 fine.
In neighborhood Facebook groups and on playgrounds across New Zealand, parents debated the news. How dare this screw-up risk the lives of searchers and terrify his family because he hadnt bothered to tell anyone where he was going. Shouldnt he at least pay the government back for what it spent on that search plane? Or: How dare the government charge a parent for going camping with his children! Wasnt he the kind of throwback dad we didnt see enough of anymore, as modern kids become coddled and soft?
I was certainly sympathetic to this second argument. Id taken my own family to New Zealand to live for a period in 2017, specifically to capture that spirit of adventure, something that felt sorely lacking in our suburban American lives. Our daughters—just a little older than Phillips kids were when they disappeared—rarely left their comfort zones, and no one we knew let their children roam our neighborhood freely. We hoped that New Zealand might help shake us up. I was no bushman like Tom Phillips, but the four of us [did go tramping](https://longreads.com/2019/09/17/tramp-like-us/) across graywacke streams, into the forest primeval, even along a remote shore that looked quite a bit like the Marokopa coast. Unlike Phillips, I told my friends where we were going, but still: Were the police really charging this guy for giving his kids what might have been a wondrous adventure?
Reporters, struggling to [advance the story](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126543524/the-marokopa-mystery-what-we-still-dont-know-about-the-phillips-familys-disappearance-and-survival), asked experts what they thought about it all. One family lawyer admitted he knew nothing about the childrens custody arrangement but said, “If there was no parenting order, and he was just going on holiday, legally hes done nothing wrong.” The same outlet asked a “human rights lawyer” what she thought about a parent taking children out into the deep bush without letting anyone know. “Its not best practice,” she replied, in a tone I could almost hear from the page.
![A balding white man in his 30s wearing a gray sweater.](https://compote.slate.com/images/0eae91df-9f97-4395-9e92-8daaec890b6e.png?crop=1086%2C1086%2Cx0%2Cy0)
Tom Phillips. Courtesy of NZ Police
Then, in December, as summer vacation season began, the New Zealand Herald found a Facebook post—seemingly from someone close to the childrens mother—stating that Phillips had once again [taken his kids](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/marokopa-family-missing-again-tom-phillips-and-his-children-havent-been-seen-for-a-week/FJCUY5RR5MG7NTVX6Z4L6NHWZU/) on walkabout. “He notified family of where he was going,” the local police commander said in response. “In terms of current court restrictions of what he can and cant do, hes doing nothing wrong.” Commenters online were aghast that the paper had [pursued the story](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/rk40i0/marokopa_family_missing_again_tom_phillips_and/). “So this is just literally a man taking his kids camping?” one wrote. “Correct,” replied another. “His ex-missus has gone to NZH and theyve run with it.”
Phillips scheduled court date was Jan. 12, 2022. That morning, reporters packed the tiny wooden courthouse in Te Kūiti, lured by the chance to finally ask questions of the enigmatic father who had made news and driven debate across the country for months. More media spilled onto Queen Street outside, pacing in the warm summer sun.
Tom Phillips [never showed up](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/127475663/marokopa-dad-thomas-phillips-a-noshow-in-court-on-charge-of-wasting-police-time). Appearing via video, his lawyer told the judge that hed informed his client of the appearance date and never spoken to him again. He also asked to withdraw as counsel in the case.
The judge issued a warrant for Phillips arrest. But the police couldnt locate Phillips or his three children. They had disappeared into the bush. And this time, they didnt come back.
When I spoke to New Zealanders in the months after the second disappearance of Tom Phillips, it was clear that some in the country still viewed him as a kind of quirky folk hero whod taken his kids out into the wilderness to avoid the oppressive, overreaching government. “There was a lot of talk like that,” said Max Baxter, the mayor of Ōtorohanga, where Phillips house sat empty, weeds growing over his fence. “He felt that his personal protection of the children was paramount, and the result was that he was opening them up to experiences that kids nowadays dont get. Hes teaching them to be bushmen.” He laughed. “My grown children probably couldnt survive two weeks in the bush!”
“A lot of people are like, Leave him alone, those kids are probably having the time of their lives, ” said Karen Rutherford, the New Zealand reporter who got the [only on-camera interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0e5AT4EhTw) with Phillips ex-wife. But others, she told me, felt that “now hes skipped court hes stuffed all his chances of being a good dad.”
In the United States, I felt my admiration of Phillips wash away like the road to Marokopa [as heavy rains](https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/300516303/marokopa-locals-caught-off-guard-as-rain-dump-floods-the-village) [swept through the region](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/128843903/marokopa-cut-off-as-floods-make-road-unpassable). Was he really hiding his kids in the bush during *this* kind of weather? The childrens mother made a public [appeal for assistance](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/468228/desperate-mum-pleads-for-safe-return-of-missing-phillips-children-from-marokopa) in May, as New Zealand winter approached. Other relatives on the mothers side [launched an online petition](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/128560653/adult-sisters-of-missing-marokopa-children-launch-petition-asking-authorities-to-do-more-to-find-them) urging police to do more. They complained that Phillips parents were refusing to let anyone onto their enormous Marokopa compound to search the wilderness around the farm—or the baches, the guesthouses the family [used to rent out](https://www.oocities.org/marokopa2002/Accommodation.htm) to tourists.
The Phillips family remained silent objects of fascination for the news media. On the day of Phillips courthouse no-show, his mother had told reporters assembled outside the gates of the family farm, “I am trespassing all media from this property.” According to one outlet, asked if she knew where her son was, “Julia Phillips simply answered with a shrug and a smile.”
“Theyre real sort of rugged, coast-y people who dont come into town much,” a local reporter told me. “Theyre kind of unusual. Youd call them rednecks, I think.” (Being “coastal” has a very different connotation in New Zealand than it does in the U.S.) Tony Wall, a reporter for the newsmagazine Stuff, told me that Phillips parents have been “very uncooperative. If you read between the lines, it definitely seems like they know something but theyre not telling us.”
Someone, everybody assumed, was shopping for supplies and ferrying them out to Phillips, wherever he was hiding out. “Its almost unfathomable to think a father could survive with three small children without someone buying them supplies,” Baxter told me. “But whats the endgame? Im looking out my window now, and its pouring down rain.”
The lack of urgency on the part of Waikato police was often commented upon. “Its very strange,” one reporter whos been covering the case said. “The cops are not pouring any resources into looking for him and those children. I think they are of the view that hes not going to hurt them and hell eventually come out.” The department responded to press requests with a not-particularly-inspiring statement: “Police continue to make enquiries to establish the whereabouts of Tom Phillips, who we believe is currently with his three children. While Police understand the ongoing interest in this matter, we will not be disclosing the details of the enquiries that are under way.”
Whatever enquiries were under way, that cold and wet winter passed with no sign of Tom Phillips. As 2022 turned into 2023, Phillips and his children had been missing without a trace for more than a year. Then came the bank robbery.
The two figures were dressed in all black—motorcycle helmets, puffer jackets, and boots—when they walked into the ANZ bank branch less than half a mile from the courthouse in Te Kūiti, just before noon on May 16, 2023. When the banks anxious staff asked them to take their helmets off, the pair displayed guns and demanded money. Tellers quickly gave them cash and, within moments, the pair ran out the front door.
As the robbers hurried down Rora Street, one witness later said they were dropping cash out of their pockets, “heaps of $50 notes.” The street was strewn with money. The confused passerby asked one of them, a slight figure whom they described as “a girl,” if she needed help picking up the money. Up ahead, the girls companion—a man, it seemed—turned back to look at what was happening. Right then, he was tackled to the ground by the owner of the SuperValue supermarket theyd been hurrying past.
![Surveillance camera footage of two figures, one an adult and the other a child, in face masks and camo gear walking down a sidewalk.](https://compote.slate.com/images/55de22c4-4326-457e-9cc8-b1bedc3ddfea.png?crop=602%2C360%2Cx0%2Cy0)
Courtesy of NZ Police
Suddenly, the girl brandished her gun. The passerby backed away. Someone called, “Fire the gun!” No ones quite clear who did what, or whom they were aiming at, but someone did fire, more than once. The passerby froze in their tracks, and the supermarket owner retreated.
The robbers ran past a vape shop and around a corner to a parking lot, where they climbed onto a motorbike and rode off to the north. Behind them, bank notes littered the pavement, 20s and 50s—as much as $1,000, one witness estimated.
The armed robbery shocked the town, which bills itself as the nations sheepshearing capital. A week later, the robbery led a Waikato Times feature about growing [youth crime concerns](https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/a/nz-news/350015252/very-country-robbery) in Te Kūiti, full of nervous quotes from residents and shop owners about meth, burglary, and car thefts broadcast on TikTok.
Yet on the subject of the bank robbery itself, one Maōri warden had only to say that he reckoned locals already knew who did it. It wasnt some wayward Te Kūiti youth or a more organized criminal element. Even in those early days, speculation was running rampant among residents that the bank robbers were, in fact, Tom Phillips—and one of his children.
It took four months for police to [officially name Phillips](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300964573/arrest-warrant-issued-for-missing-marokopa-dad-tom-phillips-over-alleged-bank-robbery) for the crime, charging him with aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding, and unlawful possession of a firearm. They believe that he was the larger of the two robbers, the one who seemed to be leading things, and have not identified the second, smaller robber, other than to say that they think she is “female.” At the time of the robbery, Jayda was 10.
The September 2023 charges in the Wild Weststyle bank robbery—guns blazing, bank notes blowing in the wind—eliminated any residual goodwill Phillips had accumulated in his long months on the run. They capped off an eventful winter, Phillips second on the run with his children.
The month before, Phillips had stolen a truck—naturally, a Toyota Hilux—and driven to Hamilton, the biggest city in the Waikato region, about 40 miles north of Ōtorohanga. An acquaintance recognized him in the parking lot of Bunnings, a Home Depottype home improvement store, where Phillips, [wearing a surgical mask](https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/police-reveal-items-marakopa-father-bought) and a woolen hat, used a large amount of cash to buy headlamps, batteries, seedlings, buckets, and gumboots.
That evening, Phillips got into an altercation on a road about an hour up the coast from Marokopa. The owner of the Hilux—who had also realized that winter clothing had been stolen from his property—fought with Phillips, then chased him along the winding highway, reportedly attempting to run him off the road. Eventually multiple vehicles were pursuing Phillips, who switched off the Hiluxs headlights and turned sharply into the parking lot of the Te Kauri Lodge, driving through a gate and into a paddock. “He went in there and he hid,” a lodge custodian told [Radio New Zealand](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/495109/tom-phillips-father-of-missing-marokopa-children-evaded-multiple-pursuers-residents-say). “These fullahs drove straight past.” The police sent out a search helicopter, to no avail. A few days later, the [Hilux was found](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300943316/stolen-ute-driven-by-tom-phillips-found-by-police-in-marokopa-bush) deep in the undergrowth, about 25 meters off Marokopa Road, not far from the Phillips farm.
A few weeks later, a private investigator—he tells reporters he “follows the case on his own time”—tipped off Tony Wall, the reporter at Stuff, that the property to which the Hilux was returned had hosted Phillips for a visit the year before. (The P.I. says he reported the sighting to the police but nothing came of it.) According to an informant, Phillips had been receiving help from a network of local residents “since day one.”
Wall chronicled his visit to the steep, densely wooded property near Ōtorohanga in a hair-raising story [published last August](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300957682/marokopa-mystery-police-knew-of-possible-fugitive-sighting-last-year-at-property-where-he-later-stole-a-ute). A neighbor, who was reportedly also present when Phillips visited the property in 2022, launched into a coy, taunting conversation about the disappearance. “I cant say if I have or havent seen him in the last few years,” the man said. “Its like a good game of hide-and-go-seek. Hes fucking good at it. Never, ever play hide-and-go-seek with him because youll give up, and he wont come out.” When Wall asked the man how someone like Phillips could simply vanish, the man scoffed. “Its easy in New Zealand. The justice system is shit, the court system is shit, the police are shit, the media is shit. Thats the facts of it.”
As Wall drove away, his car was overtaken by two other drivers, who boxed him in and forced him to pull over to the side of the road. One of the vehicles was driven by the owner of the stolen Hilux, who accused Wall of “snooping around” and “causing havoc.” “Youre in the wrong fucking place for this, man,” he said. “You want to come and harass us out here, on my own turf?” He tried to force open Walls car door, telling him, “Im gonna fuck you up, mate.”
Wall finally managed to drive away, but the utes owner had one last thing to say. “Youre fucking lucky were letting you out of here, cunt. You want the truth about the whole fucking scenario, mate, youd better be on your game, cause youre pushing shit uphill now.”
After the police named Phillips in the bank robbery, [residents phoned in](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/missing-marokopa-fugitive-tom-phillips-police-reveal-12-more-sightings/IVMXVESFAZFMNPHP4I72R5NAKQ/) more than a dozen sightings, but the police could never seem to catch him. Late one night in November, Phillips and one of his children rode a stolen quad bike to the town of Piopio and smashed the window of a superette in an attempted burglary, police say. [Security footage showed](https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/350110471/missing-marokopa-dad-tom-phillips-allegedly-used-stolen-quadbike-smashed) a pair dressed in full camo gear approaching the stores camera with a spray can. When an alarm sounded, they fled south.
This January, the two-year anniversary of Phillips second flight passed with just another wan police announcement—this time that [they had narrowed](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350155353/police-narrow-marokopa-search-phillips-family) Phillips hiding place to the Marokopa area, a development that surprised absolutely no one whos been following the case. Yet I feel for the police, who are looking in an area spanning hundreds of square miles, where a number of residents clearly still have no desire to share information with them. (The owner of the stolen Hilux—a guy who disliked Phillips enough that he tried to run him off the road—nevertheless referred to the police as “fucking pigshits.”) “If a plane crashed in this bush, youd be fortunate to find it,” Max Baxter told me. “Its really, really hard to begin somewhere, unless theres someone who knows and decides its time to come forward.”
Few New Zealanders still believe that Phillips and his kids—now 10, 8, and 7—are roughing it, stalking game in the deep bush like the wilderpeople of old. Most everyone thinks that hes hiding on or near his family farm, aided by a network of friendly locals that may or may not include his parents. (Thats certainly what Wall, still trying to [crack the case](https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350166823/could-wanted-man-tom-phillips-be-or-near-his-family-farm), believes.) On social media, its been a long time since anyone has called Phillips a good dad merely fighting authority. “Hes just a piece of shit human being with anger and control issues who is subjecting his children to child abuse,” went [one typical comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/17upm0f/missing_marokopa_family_in_piopio_tom_phillips/).
And few anticipate any ending to this story that feels happy at all. In the worst-case scenario, Phillips and his kids are injured, or killed, robbing another bank or battling it out with the cops. But even the best-case scenario at this point feels grim. Phillips children have spent the past two and a half years with a father whos surely told them that everyone is out to get them, that they can trust no one but him, that the only way to stay safe is to hide out far from the rest of the world. Hes relayed to them that their future depends on smashing windows, stealing cars, waving guns.
Someday those children will be found, and their father will almost certainly be sent to jail. Every news report about the case—a dwindling number, as the months go on—features the same photos of the children: the girls in fairy dresses, all three of them grinning widely. In the next photos we see of Jayda, Maverick, and Ember, they wont be smiling. I once thought perhaps their father was giving them a gift, the adventure of a lifetime. Instead, he stole their childhoods. When its all over theyll be as alone as that truck was, parked on the gray sand, the implacable sea rushing up to meet it.
- [Crime](https://slate.com/tag/crime)
- [Family](https://slate.com/tag/family)
- [Parenting](https://slate.com/tag/parenting)
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# A racial slur and a Fort Myers High baseball team torn apart - ESPN
*This story has been corrected. Read below*
## ACT I: ERUPTION
**ON APRIL 6, 2023,** at Terry Park in Fort Myers, Florida, the Fort Myers High Green Wave and Estero Wildcats met as part of the annual Battle of the Border, the in-season tournament between Lee County high school baseball teams.
Tate Reilly batted leadoff that day. The Fort Myers senior outfielder was surprised by the plum assignment. He had been on the varsity two seasons and batted in the bottom third of the order. Leading off should have buttressed the even better news he held in his heart: He received an offer to play at Albertus Magnus College, a Division III school in New Haven, Connecticut. He would soon be a college player, and receiving a firm scholarship represented a vindication of the hard work he'd put into a difficult game.
Madrid Tucker was to bat second. Tucker's father is Michael Tucker, who was the 10th overall pick by the Kansas City Royals in the 1992 draft. Tucker played for seven teams over a 12-year big league career, appearing in the National League Championship Series three times. Just a sophomore, Madrid played varsity as a freshman and already had been offered a dozen scholarships to play baseball, some at Power 5 schools. Six-foot tall and widely considered by his coaches to be the most promising player on the team, Madrid Tucker played in the prestigious Hank Aaron Invitational, the joint MLB/Players Association tournament in Vero Beach, Florida, designed to develop and increase the shrinking number of Black players in the majors. He was a high-level prospect, a three-sport star on a trajectory for Division I or the Major League amateur draft by the time he graduates. According to one national prep tracking service, in 2023 he was ranked second at shortstop in talent-rich Florida and 75th overall in the nation.
While Madrid stood in the on-deck circle taking practice cuts, Reilly saw two pitches. On the second, Robert Hinson, the Fort Myers third-base coach -- his coach -- walked off the field. Seconds later, two more coaches and at least nine Fort Myers players followed out of the dugout. One player walking off the field said, "I'm out," to which Hinson added, "I'm out of here."
As the players headed for the parking lot, chaos ensued. According to later testimony, some parents and fans in the bleachers "began applauding, cheering and fist-bumping the players walking out." One Fort Myers administrator who witnessed the walkout and ensuing cheering called the scene "so selfish ... an injustice to the kids." She would later tell investigators, "This is just sickening."
![](https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312914_2_880x880cc.jpg&w=180&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)![](https://a2.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312917_1126x1126cc.jpg&w=180&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
In the parking lot, adults traded insults. John Dailey, a hulking man identified in one video, approached Tate Reilly's mother, Melanie, and told her, "I'm going to pray for the evil in your heart to go away." Police arrived. As various onlookers began taking cellphone video, the sound of metal baseball cleats crunching against the pavement best told the story: Led by their adult coaches and supported by their parents, members of the Fort Myers high school baseball team quit a game and left their two teammates, Reilly and Tucker, who happened to be the only two players of color on the team, alone on the field.
Xavier Medina, an assistant coach for Estero, watched from across the diamond. In all his years coaching youth sports, he had never seen a team abandon its own players. As the bizarre scene unfolded, he was witnessing the antithesis of what sports were supposed to be about. The cliches of teamwork and togetherness were collapsing in real time. Players wearing the same uniform were not united against Estero. They were divided against themselves. His second conclusion was even worse: The walkout did not appear to be a reckless act concocted by teenagers, but rather orchestrated and blessed by coaches and parents. The kids were taking the lead from the grown-ups.
"In my mind, yes, the adults were behind it," Medina said. "If that were my team and we saw the players doing that, we would have immediately asked what they were doing and why. And we would have told them to go back to playing baseball. But here's why I don't think it was the players' idea: When they started walking off of the field, not a single adult, parent or coach, tried to stop them. Not one."
![](https://a2.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312918_1819x2215cc.jpg&w=148&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
**THE WALKOUT RESULTED** in the cancellation of the remainder of the baseball season; multiple local and state investigations; the resignation, firing or reassignment of virtually every coach and school administrator involved with the incident; and two federal discrimination lawsuits, one filed in February by the Tucker family and another in early April by the Reillys. It was the product of simmering fractures within the Fort Myers baseball community that had been allowed to fester long before the first pitch of the season.
The avalanche of broken relationships within this baseball community at Fort Myers High -- a school considered the "crown jewel" of the Lee County high schools -- served as a microcosm for a polarized country: the small handful of Black players on both the junior varsity and varsity felt hostility within the baseball environment, and many of the white parents, whose children comprise an overwhelming majority at both levels, insisted it was they who have endured unfair treatment -- because they were white.
ESPN interviewed Fort Myers High parents, reviewed three completed school district investigation reports into the baseball team -- a state investigation is still pending -- along with hundreds of pages of school personnel records of coaches and administrators and bodycam footage from the Fort Myers Police Department, all acquired via Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as cellphone footage from the walkout. Before the Tucker and Reilly families filed their lawsuits, Rob Spicker, assistant director, media relations and public information for the school district of Lee County, declined all requests to be interviewed or to make any employee of the school district of Lee County -- administrators, or coaches -- available for comment. "Our comment is the report speaks for itself," Spicker told ESPN in September. Two active members of the Lee County School Board, Melisa Giovannelli and Jada Langford-Fleming, also declined to be interviewed. After the lawsuits were filed, Spicker declined subsequent interview requests from ESPN, citing ongoing litigation. John Dailey, one of the adults who encouraged the walkout, declined to comment when approached by ESPN in April. The parents of three players who participated in the walkout also declined to be interviewed by ESPN.
While many team issues fell under the common soap opera of high school sports -- a nationwide epidemic of meddling parents and overbearing coaches, the unending battle between fair participation and winning at all costs -- virtually the entirety of the grievances that destroyed the 2023 baseball team can be traced to two specific areas: the internecine racial history of Fort Myers, and, more urgently, the enforcement of conservative mandates playing out in education in Florida and around the nation.
The baseball team provided an explosive stage even before last season began. Untrusting of the overall competence and values of the coaching staff, one white player quit the team before the season started. Another Black player, unconvinced varsity head coach Kyle Burchfield would give him a fair chance to compete and wary of the racial attitudes of Burchfield's second-year assistant coach Alex Carcioppolo, chose not to try out at all.
Another parent would tell school district investigators that in 2022, a white player on the junior varsity said he "wanted to punch those two n-----s in the face," referring to two of his Black teammates. When some parents -- both white and Black -- complained first to Chris Chappell, the head junior varsity coach, and later to Burchfield, Burchfield told investigators he successfully handled the incident. Parental sources said otherwise, that the coaches left the wound undressed. One source said Carcioppolo told the players and their parents to "get over it." The N-word, he reportedly reasoned, was "just a word." Carcioppolo, the source concluded, was frustrated that an oversensitive country was just making everything worse. In January 2023, Michael Tucker says he and his wife, Dee, met with Burchfield to tell the coach they did not want Carcioppolo associating with their son. Burchfield, they say, did nothing.
By allowing issues to simmer, several people associated with the situation thought the coaches already had lost control of the team. "Had they dealt with it a year ago," one white parent said, "all the things that happened would have never happened."
![](https://a1.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312919_2021x1349cc.jpg&w=269&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)![](https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312921_1046x947cc.jpg&w=199&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
## ACT II: FRACTURES
**THE FIRST FRACTURE** of the season occurred Feb. 14, 2023, a week before Fort Myers' first game. Burchfield sent a routine message into the team group chat regarding upcoming scheduling, to which Carcioppolo responded, "Happy Valentines Day, n---as." The offensive message was either deleted "within seconds," or according to some players, several minutes before Carcioppolo responded, "Yikes," and deleted the text. Carcioppolo said the text was intended for a group of Black military friends and wound up mistakenly on the team group chat, an alibi some parents found flimsy. "If it was for them," Michael Tucker said, "why didn't any of his Black war buddies come to his defense?"
Carcioppolo was fired within 48 hours and, as mandated by state law, the school district opened a Title VI discrimination investigation, named after the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. The viral text likely had been copied and shared dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times before Carcioppolo deleted it, but a certain conventional wisdom raced through the Fort Myers High baseball ecosystem: The Reillys and the Tuckers -- the only two families of color on the team -- had to be the ones who alerted school officials.
Carcioppolo's dismissal immediately was seen by many parents largely through the lens of race: White parents in his defense reasoned that a good man, an Afghan War veteran, Purple Heart recipient and a popular coach, had made an honest mistake and should be forgiven. Only the combination of "political correctness" and the racial pressure of appeasing the "troublemaker parent" pair of the interracial Reilly family and the African American Tuckers prevented Carcioppolo from receiving grace -- and an explosive issue from being quietly resolved by an apology and a second chance.
Furthermore, many white parents and players were enraged that a white coach was fired for using a word Black people used routinely as a figure of speech. It was an unfair racial double standard that galvanized the grievance of the white players and parents. In a group text chat that comprised only the team's seniors, some players argued if Carcioppolo were Black, no one would have cared.
Several players decided the best way to make themselves heard was to boycott the first game of the season in protest unless Carcioppolo was not immediately reinstated. The Tuckers and Reillys were stunned that an adult making a racial slur would be the issue around which the team would unify.
"They don't understand the magnitude within itself. You were going to boycott -- for *this?* That makes you racist," Dee Tucker said. "You don't fight to say Jewish slurs. You don't fight to say LGBTQ words. You don't fight for any other words, but you fight for this one. This one particular word is the one you're OK with because you think we're beneath you."
Burchfield would tell investigators that Carcioppolo's firing was the first time he had heard the word "walkout" around his team. Tate Reilly recalled being asked by his white teammates to join the movement. When he declined, alienation from his teammates ensued.
"It changed the course of the rest of the year compared to what we had in the fall," Tate Reilly recalled. "All of the friendships that we made were kinda on thin ice. All of the relationships with the coaches were on thin ice. It was who you wanted to walk on eggshells around. You didn't have a safe place unless you fit in with the herd. You had to go with what everyone else said, and if you weren't with them, then you were against them."
His isolation increased, he recalled, by his decision to sit in the cafeteria with teammate Madrid Tucker. "As soon as he didn't support boycotting for Carcioppolo, the players and the coaches targeted my son," said Tate's father, Shane. Added Dee Tucker: "Tate was part of the in-crowd until he refused to join the boycott for Coach Alex. Once he started sitting with Madrid, they went after him."
![](https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312922_2000x1298cc.jpg&w=277&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
**CARCIOPPOLO'S FIRING IGNITED** a chain of smoldering racial resentments. Contentious school board meetings, simmering individual tensions between Burchfield and parents, Black and white. Angry white parents believed Carcioppolo's firing should have ended the controversy, but the Reillys and Tuckers refused to, as both families said they were told to "move on." Feeling silenced by the majority only deepened the chasm, Dee Tucker said.
The Green Wave also were losing -- Fort Myers lost its first seven games of the season -- but not all the losses could be attributed to racial turmoil; they were a young team. Still, race and cultural grievance permeated the dysfunction. Some white parents, community members and often Burchfield himself privately pointed to Madrid Tucker as the problem.
Carcioppolo was fired for using the N-word, they reasoned, but Black people used the word frequently and without penalty -- in routine speech and in popular music -- while a white coach had used it and was fired. The anger over use of the word at Fort Myers mirrored conversations and controversies around the country. The word was ubiquitous, and yet a white coach was now unemployed. On the baseball team, Tucker had been heard by several players and coaches using the N-word, just as Carcioppolo had, and they saw his use of the word without sanction an example of a double standard unfair to them. To angry parents, Tucker was proof of an America that punished only white people. A 2022 University of Maryland poll found that half of white Republicans saw "a lot more" discrimination against white Americans over the previous five years. That Tucker at the time was a 16-year-old sophomore and Carcioppolo was a 35-year-old coach did not assuage the collective anger of many parents.
On Feb. 23, nine days after Carcioppolo's text message, Burchfield held a meeting announcing tougher discipline. The following day, Burchfield emailed his zero-tolerance mandate to parents: "If a player strikes out and throws his hands up at the umpire and starts cussing, they will be removed from the game. No excuses. ... Actions will be taken that may look severe, but it is necessary to end the disrespect they have created for themselves, you as parents, our program, and the game of baseball." The email continued: "If any racial slurs are used at any point, the player will be removed from the game and suspended. ... Depending on the manner it was used it could be multiple game suspensions, it could be removal from the team."
![](https://a1.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312923_2000x1306cc.jpg&w=276&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
Burchfield concluded his email with a tough love message delivered in all caps: "These steps taken by the coaching staff is FOR THE BOYS." The Tuckers interpreted the message as a vindictive response to Carcioppolo's firing, and now they felt Burchfield was pandering to white parents who claimed Madrid Tucker to be the beneficiary of "reverse racism" while Carcioppolo was a victim of "cancel culture." From the Tuckers' viewpoint, a moment adults could have used to constructively discuss racism was transformed into a weapon against their son.
Burchfield's tough-love message produced an unintended consequence: Instead of treating each other as teammates, players and parents began policing each other's behavior to coaches, each action or inaction proof of unfair double standards. Relations on the team grew so toxic that the school principal, Dr. Robert Butz, decided to place a school administrator in the Fort Myers dugout for every game.
Soon after, Tucker joked with a Black friend on the junior varsity, and while both were in the locker room laughing, Tucker at one point said, "N---a, pay attention." As the two Black kids continued conversing, some white players raced straight to their parents. The parents immediately went to Burchfield, who suspended Tucker for the first four innings of the next game. In another moment, Tucker threw his helmet to the ground during a three-strikeout game. Two teammates with whom Tucker was not particularly friendly engaged him to calm down -- but instead of support, Tucker saw their presence as goading. Words were exchanged. When a player suggested Tucker was all talk, he assured them he wasn't -- investigators reported Tucker told his teammate to "shut the f--- up or imma beat your ass" -- and his response netted him a five-game suspension.
The Tuckers were furious. A five-game suspension was disproportionate to the crime. Two Black kids talking to each other using common language did not constitute "hate speech." The Tuckers argued their son made no racial slur against another race -- he was talking to a friend, speaking the way people of the same race joke with one another. The sanction left the Tuckers with another conclusion: By attempting to suspend their son for 40% of the remaining season, Burchfield and the coaches were trying to make Madrid quit.
"The whole thing didn't make sense to me," Dee Tucker said. "Madrid used the word to another Black kid, and all the white kids ran and told the coach. The kid he said it to wasn't white. It wasn't like he called a white kid a cracker."
Michael Tucker began derisively calling Burchfield's new mandate "The Madrid Rules." In a charged private meeting with the Tuckers, Burchfield, athletic director Steven Cato and an assistant principal, Kelly Heinzman-Britton, Burchfield told the Tuckers that of all the players he'd ever coached, their son was "the worst" at handling his emotions. In the meeting, which Michael and Dee Tucker say they recorded with the room's knowledge and Cato's permission, Michael Tucker said to Burchfield, "No offense to you, Kyle, but how is it that we've been talking about racial issues, big bombshells being dropped for over six weeks, kids have been doing stuff, and the only kids that have been disciplined are the kids of color? How is that?" According to the recorded conversation, Burchfield did not respond to Tucker, nor did any administrator in the room.
Before the suspension was to go into effect, Burchfield was told by Butz that district regulations against the appearance of retaliation prevented Madrid's suspension because the Carcioppolo investigation was not yet complete. That triggered more outrage from white parents: Madrid was receiving "preferential treatment" not because of an ongoing investigation, but because he was Black.
Trust between the Tuckers and Burchfield deteriorated. The Tuckers were once advocates of Burchfield. Four years earlier, they supported his hire. Michael Tucker attended Burchfield's wedding. Michael Tucker now saw Burchfield as duplicitous, assuring the family he was an ally, telling the Tuckers he understood the distinction between colloquial Black speech within the racial group while privately stoking the anger of white parents. Burchfield would confirm Michael Tucker's fear, later telling investigators that Madrid Tucker "dropped the N-word twice, with little to no consequences. It created a caustic environment showing the team there are no consequences to breaking the rules. The district tied my hands throughout the balance of the season."
Burchfield sanctioned Tucker in other ways: extra running, and twice sitting him for the early innings of games. Without a suspension, however, parents believed Madrid received no punishments, which led to players again discussing a boycott of the team.
Burchfield told investigators that on at least two occasions he had heard rumors of walkouts but nothing definite. Cato said the same, telling investigators walkout rumors had been discussed internally at the administrative level, with principal Butz, but no one confronted the players about the purpose of such a move or its consequences. Nor did Cato, Butz or anyone else who was aware of a possible walkout alert the Tucker family that some of Madrid's teammates were planning to target their child with a protest action.
"Do I feel like Fort Myers High School protected my son?" Michael Tucker asked. "No. No, I don't."
![](https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312924_3000x1682cc.jpg&w=320&h=179&scale=crop&location=origin)
**MEANWHILE, SHANE REILLY** was convinced his son was being targeted by teammates, instigated by the coaches. A month before the walkout, Shane Reilly emailed Fernando Vazquez, a school district investigator, recommending Burchfield be fired as a coach and the "student(s) involved in the malicious targeting of my son to be kicked off the team." School documents contain several emails from Shane Reilly to school administrators demanding action. On April 8, 2023, Shane Reilly emailed Butz and told him he ordered Tate to "call 911 immediately" should he face any threat because "we have little confidence in Fort Myers High School's willingness to protect ALL kids."
There was nothing about Tate Reilly's senior year he would recall fondly. After he refused to support Carcioppolo, many of the white friends he believed he'd made on the baseball team were not friends at all. He increasingly believed Burchfield -- whom he'd known since he was 11 years old -- did not believe in him as a player. "I have nothing good to say about Coach Burchfield," he said.
Tate Reilly's instincts were correct. When his offer from Albertus Magnus was announced, Burchfield celebrated the senior publicly, but privately he held a dim view of Reilly's toughness and raw ability. "He is the slowest outfielder, he has the weakest arm, he's an OK hitter," Burchfield would later tell investigators. "He's going to play Division III baseball. There is no Division III baseball in Florida. A good high school team would beat a Division III school. I tried to help him with Division II schools. No school wanted him. I tried to help him with travel teams. No travel team wanted him." In a separate interview with investigators, Burchfield said he batted Tate Reilly low in the order "because of his speed. He's very slow. He doesn't have the best baseball IQ. When he's on base, he gets picked off. ... He gets signs wrong. It costs us wins."
Burchfield cut an imposing figure: about 6-foot-6, he headed travel teams and boasted his coaching bona fides -- the number of well-known MLB stars he'd played with, and the best calling card of them all: On his Facebook page and lesson sign-up sheets, he listed himself as a scout for the Atlanta Braves.
The Valentine's Day text was compounded by a series of incidents during the season. On April 4, at the apex of his frustration, Shane Reilly began filing what would become three separate complaints that would lead to Burchfield's suspension. One allegation stemmed from a March 10 game against Riverview High School in Sarasota. Burchfield was said to have forcibly redirected Tate Reilly toward the dugout by grabbing him between the neck and shoulder. Another alleged Hinson intentionally provided false information to the coaching staff, which led to Tate being benched. Reilly also alleged his son's baseball glove was stolen in retaliation for not supporting the aborted Carcioppolo boycott.
Shane Reilly's complaints led to Burchfield being investigated for physically confronting a student as well as the two other charges, but players and parents were given no explanation. Per district rules, a person who is the subject of an investigation is temporarily removed with pay from their position.
White players and coaches reached their boiling point. Days earlier, a Fort Myers parent, Krista Nowak Walsh, posted an article on social media from the People magazine website about Mississippi meteorologist Barbie Bassett, who was taken off the air at NBC affiliate WLBT for apparently quoting a Snoop Dogg lyric that translated into the N-word:
"OMG! But if it was the other way around, that person would still be on the air. Just like when a kid on a HS baseball team calls another teammate the N-word, that kid is still on the team, not suspended, etc...but my kid doesn't start because he cussed \[to himself in frustration\]. Can you guess who's white?" 
Throughout the controversy, white parents believed the Tuckers and Reillys were the only voices being heard. In response to a social media post, Nowak Walsh said, "They're only listening to 1 of trouble maker family!"
Nowak Walsh declined to be interviewed by ESPN.
## INTERLUDE: POLITICS
![](https://a1.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312925_1600x1066cc.jpg&w=270&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
**ON JUNE 4, 1940,** with Germany having already conquered the Netherlands, France and much of Western Europe, and five weeks from his nation being invaded by the Nazis, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his greatest oratory, the "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech. "We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender," Churchill told the British House of Commons. His famous defiance was broadcast on radio throughout the United Kingdom and would symbolize what would become the resilient Allied effort in World War II.
More than 82 years later, in his November 2022 speech after sweeping to a second term as governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis chose a similar cadence against a dissimilar enemy -- citizens of his own country and the teaching of multiculturalism. "We reject woke ideology. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die."
DeSantis repackaging of one of the world's darkest moments, and by extension conjuring a disturbing parallel between American citizens of different viewpoints and Nazi Germany, came with serious and disturbing implications. The southwest coast of Florida is heavily conservative and Republican, fertile ground for the divisions playing out across the country -- and on the Fort Myers baseball team. A 2021 Pew Research Center study of more than 10,000 adults found that more than half of white Americans do not believe being white provides them societal advantages. Ninety percent of Black Americans surveyed believed white people benefited "a fair amount" from being white.
In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won Lee County by 20 points over Hillary Clinton, and margins of victory of 27.6 and 25.7 points in bordering Charlotte and Collier counties, respectively. In 2020, Trump lost the general election but won Lee County by 19 points, Charlotte and Collier counties by 27 and 25 points, respectively.
In his two gubernatorial races, DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum by 22 points in Lee County, and in 2022 crushed Democrat and former Florida governor Charlie Crist by nearly 40 points.
![](https://a4.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312926_1914x866cc.jpg&w=320&h=145&scale=crop&location=origin)![](https://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0401%2Fr1312927_1811x1672cc.jpg&w=195&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
Within that mandate, Florida has taken one of the most prominent and aggressive stances against multiculturalism as often expressed from the nonwhite, non-straight viewpoint -- the "woke ideology," as DeSantis derisively calls it. Across the country, ABC News reported at least 10 states including Florida have passed legislation restricting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, with bills introduced in 19 other states. DeSantis had carried a running feud with the Walt Disney Company (the parent company of ESPN) for its opposition to DeSantis' Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, known publicly as the "Don't Say Gay" bill. The American Civil Liberties Union accused Florida of being one of the states leading the country in classroom censorship after DeSantis signed the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" -- which prohibits wide swaths of Black history to be taught -- into law. In response, grassroots movements in the state combined with the ACLU of Florida in November to announce Free to Be Florida, which describes itself as "a new coalition aimed at ensuring a safe and accurate learning environment free from government overreach and censorship." PEN America reported in September a 33% increase in public school book bans from two years ago, noting that, "Books about race and racism, LGBTQ+ identities have remained a top target."
"It's an embedded cultural acceptance of racism in this district and community," said Jacqueline Perez, a Fort Myers community organizer. "It is in every aspect of school, work, etc., of a child who is Black or brown in this community that a form of racism is affecting and impacting their lives and well-being." Within a nine-month span in 2015 and 2016, there were two separate incidents of racial images and epithets directed at the North Fort Myers High School baseball coach at the time, Tavaris Gary, who is Black. In 2015, video surfaced showing a previous baseball coach, David Bechtol, taking a sledgehammer to a wall in his home with a drawing of Gary with a noose around his neck. In 2016, the N-word and a swastika were found on a dugout wall at Joey Cross Field. These histories and sentiments permeated the baseball team. Another part of the Title VI investigation into the baseball team was hampered when a white interviewee felt "uncomfortable" being interviewed by two Black district administrators because both happened to be wearing T-shirts whose fronts read "Black History Month."
"This is Florida, and this is Robert-Period-E-Period-Lee County, and they live up to every drop of that name," Gwynetta Gittens said. In 2018, Gittens was elected to Lee County School Board -- she was the first Black person ever to be elected to the school board in the then-132-year history of Lee County. It was a historic achievement that spoke to the deeply entrenched hierarchy of the region. In 2022, she lost her seat. She sees the Fort Myers baseball team as a microcosm of the state and country, the result of the consequences of political rhetoric and polarization.
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"As a Black person and as a leader this was very difficult because there's enough blame on both sides," she said. "Did you used to call each other n----s and b-----s? Yes, you did. Was it right for the coach to talk like that? No, it wasn't. Was it right to walk out on your own teammates? No, it wasn't. Unraveling this to me shows the need for more conversation, more understanding, not less. When I decided to run for school board, I would collect signatures. I would say, 'I'm just asking for your signature to be on the ballot.' People would ask me, 'Are you woke?' They would tell me the schools were teaching hate, and I would say, 'Please give me an example where you think education is teaching children to hate each other.' And now we're here. Kids just want to play flipping baseball."
Baseball would now be part of the culture war. Mark Lorenz, father of Kaden Lorenz and one of the leaders of the Green Wave Booster Club, adopted the language of the civil rights movement while supporting the walkout. Initially, he was disapproving of his son participating but changed his mind as it unfolded.
"Our sons did peaceful, nonviolent protest intended to get people's attention," he said. "They got to a point where enough was enough. I'm not a racist guy, and neither are any of the kids."
Michael Tucker was unmoved by the report's conclusion that race was not central to the protest. "If this was a protest for Kyle, then why didn't they protest the administration? Why didn't they protest the principal, the people making the decisions?" Tucker said. "Who did they take their protest out on? They took it out on the only two Black kids on the team. That's who they directed the protest at."
During her successful 2022 campaign for Lee County school board, Jada Langford-Fleming posted an Instagram video where she stated: "I'm proud to endorse Governor Ron DeSantis' education agenda and put students first. ... I'm running to rid our schools of anti-American critical race theory to ensure our campuses are safe and secure for our kids. I'm running to end woke ideologies and stop the indoctrination of our students." Langford-Fleming declined to comment to ESPN.
Earlier this month, DeSantis signed SB 1264, a bill requiring public schools to start teaching K-12 students in 2026 the "dangers and evils of Communism." "We will not allow our students to live in ignorance, nor be indoctrinated by Communist apologists in our schools," DeSantis said in an April 17 news release, which added that the bill is designed to "prepare students to withstand indoctrination on Communism at colleges and universities."
On his Facebook page, Burchfield, who also taught social studies and economics at Fort Myers, revels in the political divisions by lampooning President Joe Biden. The night of DeSantis' victory speech, Burchfield posted a meme calling DeSantis the "G-GOAT: Greatest Governor of All Time."
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## ACT III: INVESTIGATIONS
**AFTER BASEBALL CAME** a dizzying array of investigations. The school district already had begun a Title VI discrimination investigation following the Carcioppolo text, but sources in the Fort Myers educational community were dubious of Chuck Bradley, the man handling the discrimination case. Some sources were pessimistic about Bradley's ability to conduct a thorough, impartial investigation. One source said Bradley seemed more concerned with being friendly rather than known for his rigorous casework. Gwynetta Gittens did not have an opinion on Bradley's professionalism but was very watchful of a well-practiced Lee County tactic.
"They won't ever admit any wrongdoing, and instead will just quietly reassign people to different jobs within the district," Gittens said.
Led by Fernando Vazquez, the district's office of professional standards then opened an investigation into the walkout by investigating Hinson, the third-base coach. The Tuckers and Reillys retained legal counsel.
As the investigations painted a picture of mounting frustrations and personal grievances that ultimately led to the walkout, two themes emerged from the slew of interviews, text messages and personnel files: the degree to which athletic director Steven Cato knew in advance a protest was imminent but took no initiative to prevent it and how much Xavier Medina's fears were realized; and Cato not only knew and did not act, but the coaches and parents encouraged the walkout and pressured Cato to allow it.
One player told Vazquez that Hinson called him the night before the walkout, and Hinson explained how he planned on guaranteeing a canceled game: He would demote several players to the junior varsity. "He was saying if three seniors walked out, we wouldn't have enough to play," the student told investigators. "I was on the fence. ... I was trying to understand the logic and the reasoning for the walkout. Coach Hinson told us he wouldn't leave us to dry. If one of us walked out, so would he."
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Hours before the game, the player's mother called Keeth Jones -- Jones had been brought in to assist during Burchfield's suspension and her son played basketball for him -- and told him of the call with Hinson. She added that she did not agree with the boycott, that her son did not want to jeopardize his chance to play college baseball.
According to his interview with Vazquez, Jones then told Cato of the walkout. "Cato did not say he would let admin know," he said. "I don't know what he did after I talked to him. I told Cato because of chain of command. He said if they decide to walk to let them go."
When Vazquez asked Cato if any administrators had spoken to the team and warned them of the consequence of a walkout, Cato responded, "No one presented that idea." He said one assistant principal, Kelly Heinzman-Britton, suggested the game be canceled, an idea he told investigators principal Butz rejected. "He said, it would be unfair to cancel a game as it would effect \[sic\] the kids who had nothing to do with it."
Hours before the boycott, Cato called Fort Myers Police Department officer Michael Perry, a former school resource officer at the high school, referring to the game as a "volatile situation." Yet Cato still maintained to investigators he had no previous knowledge the players would walk. When his story wavered, Cato would say there had been "rumors" of a walkout, but nothing definitive.
According to the details in Vazquez's Hinson report, Butz, Cato, Jones and Perry were all alerted in some way during the season of a possible protest action. None of them contacted parents, addressed the potentially striking players or took an action to cancel the game.
"It was like they let our kids walk into a trap," Shane Reilly said.
When it was over, the parent who had originally told Jones of its possibility, called Butz. "I talked to Dr. Butz the next day," she said. "I was embarrassed and sad due to the action of the coach, and admin knew and didn't stop it."
Piece by piece, the plan hatched. Before the first pitch, one Fort Myers player left the dugout demanding a reason from Jones why Burchfield was not coaching the game. Fort Myers assistant principal Toni Washington-Knight sat in the team dugout. As other players began packing their gear, she said to one, "We going to another dugout?" Washington-Knight told Vazquez the player "looked at me and smirked. They started to walk out."
Remaining on the field, Tucker and Reilly watched their teammates and classmates abandon them. Washington-Knight told investigators she urged Tucker and Reilly to remain on the field and "not get caught up in this." When Cato saw Hinson, the coach told him, "I'm going with my guys." Andrew Dailey, identified as a volunteer coach, told Cato: "You need to be a man and stand with us."
For nearly 20 minutes, the parents sparred. Perry ordered the boycotting parents to disperse. According to Fort Myers police bodycam footage, they did not. Dee Tucker and Melanie Reilly were convinced the players and parents did not want to leave. "They walked off the field, but wouldn't leave the park," Melanie Reilly said. "If they wanted to boycott, they should have gotten in their cars and gone home -- but they didn't." Under threat from Perry, the boycotters eventually dispersed. Andrew Dailey's wife was captured on Perry's bodycam footage telling him as she walked to her car: "I know it appears that they're the victims, but I'm going to tell you, we're the victims ... and these boys finally stood up for themselves."
![](https://a4.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0418%2Fr1320607_2995x2098cc.jpg&w=257&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
**NEITHER SHANE NOR** Melanie Reilly had any confidence the long-delayed Title VI report would provide them comfort. When it was finally released July 17, their pessimism was confirmed. Chuck Bradley's heavily redacted 36-page report concluded that "Fort Myers High School administration and baseball program staff did not intentionally discriminate against individuals based on race, color, or national origin," and that "interventions and actions were attempted without regard to individuals' race, color, or national origin." If Bradley did not outrightly contradict his conclusion, he did find "evidence of policy and procedural violations, as well as misapplications including...ineffective and/or inadequate intervention. Throughout this series of incidents, there were multiple attempts to remedy situations and/or address parent and student concerns. However, many of these attempts were not effective in addressing concerns, especially regarding racist comments, the team divide, team relationships, parent relationships and misbehavior."
The Tuckers and Reillys were frustrated by Bradley's interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that for discrimination to occur, it needed to be intentional. Intentional or unintentional, both families felt their children were harmed by Carcioppolo's text and the racial climate at Fort Myers High.
Adding to the anger of the Reillys and the Tuckers was another of Bradley's conclusions: The bulk of discrimination may have been against white players, additional grist for the culture war. "While the reason for bias was alleged by some to be racially motivated," the report read, "the majority of complaints alleged that the bias was toward those of non-minority status and/or those who are perceived as non-minority."
"They keep telling us this isn't about race, and yet the whole thing began with a racist text message," Shane Reilly said. "How can that be?"
Several supporters of the coaches and school loudly claimed victory. On social media, a poster with the handle Scott Allan wrote: "Sorry but the Tucker's \[parents\] ought to be ashamed of himself. The whole thing was obvious from the get-go." Mark Lorenz, who first did not want his son involved in the walkout and then found himself immensely proud to be a part of it said: "They found the coaches did nothing wrong. It was a witch hunt." In the comments section on Burchfield's Facebook page, Lorenz posted a face-palm emoji, adding, "All that for nothing and EVERYONE already knew."
Burchfield himself joined in. On his Facebook page, Burchfield said he "could not have asked for more love and support" in "probably the most difficult time" in his life. He already had told investigators that the Reillys were upset about their son's playing time and "are using race as an excuse." After the report was released, he added a quote that would prove for him unfortunately prescient: "The time is coming when everything that is covered up will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all. -- Luke 12:2."
On Sept. 1, however, the school district released an amendment to the Title VI investigation allegations that Hinson "may have walked out of a baseball game, while it was being played. It is alleged that the walkout was planned. It is also alleged that this act may involve equity/racism. The walking out may have exposed student(s) to unnecessary embarrassment or disparagement." The District "found just cause for disciplinary action" and Hinson was reprimanded due to "conduct unbecoming of a District employee." Hinson was transferred to Dunbar Middle School and banned from coaching for the 2023-24 school year.
Throughout the investigation, Burchfield told investigators how adversely he was being affected by the process, especially financially. He had told investigators he was concerned for his coaching prospects and told sources he was concerned about his scout position with the Braves. On his Facebook page, Burchfield prominently stated his affiliation with the club.
Burchfield, however, had been fabricating his involvement with the Braves. According to the team, Kyle Burchfield has never been associated with the club in any paid or official capacity.
"Mr. Burchfield was never an employee of the Atlanta Braves," the club told ESPN in a statement. "When we learned that he was representing himself as an employee of our club, we served Mr. Burchfield with a cease-and-desist letter demanding that he stop representing himself in this manner." In addition to the Braves' cease-and-desist to Burchfield, league sources said the Braves were required to refer Burchfield to MLB's security index.
In mid-October, following a public records request, the School District of Lee County released the Office of Professional Standards "investigation file" report by Vazquez on Hinson, detailing Hinson's role and Cato's inaction in a document that had less to do with Hinson specifically and more to do with the walkout. The Office of Professional Standards report provided the most damning portrait of adult behavior on the part of several parents and employees of Fort Myers High School.
The report was also nearly completed in early July, before the completion and release of the Title VI report but not released until mid-October. To the furious Reillys and Tuckers, it was another example of corruption within the school district. The combination of the three investigations revealed a far more damning picture of discrimination -- one to which the district would ultimately concur -- but Bradley's incomplete, largely exonerating report was the only one released to the public.
![](https://a3.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2024%2F0419%2Fr1321279_2646x1688cc.jpg&w=282&h=180&scale=crop&location=origin)
## ACT IV: AFTERMATH
**WHILE INVESTIGATORS CONDUCTED** their interviews, Fort Myers High cleaned house. By summer, virtually every adult connected with the Fort Myers baseball team would no longer be associated with the school. The principal, Dr. Robert Butz, resigned just a few weeks after the walkout. Christian Engelhart was named principal.
Gwynetta Gittens' prediction that the district would reassign administrators was realized. Darya Grote, the assistant principal who was one of the administrators assigned to the team during the season but was not in the dugout on April 6, was promoted to principal of Lehigh Senior High School. Toni Washington-Knight, who was in the dugout the day of the walkout, was sent to Fort Myers Middle Academy, where she is currently assistant principal -- but not before providing a coda for her experience to investigators.
"Throughout the whole process I tried to stay unbiased," she testified. "I kept relationships with lots of the players up until that moment. I look at the kids differently ... those that walked out. I also look at the ones who stayed back differently."
Before the Title VI investigation was complete, Burchfield resigned and joined the staff at Naples High School in nearby Collier County and serves as the baseball team's pitching coach.
Cato nearly hired JV coach Chris Chappell as head baseball coach. Chappell was at first base during the walkout. The Vazquez report listed him among the coaches who "most likely" left the game that day. Chappell told investigators he left after Jones told him the game was forfeited. As the summer turned to fall, Cato informed parents he would be searching for a different head coach.
One member of the Lee County School Board aware of the full scope of the reports was Melisa Giovannelli, but she declined to discuss the matter because she is up for reelection and many of the families who supported the walkout were, in her words, "her voters."
"It's unfortunate but that's kind of where it's at, and this situation's been dealt with," she said in a voicemail to ESPN. "And unfortunately, I think to rehash it would do more harm than good, for me especially, and, um, somehow we have to move on from here."
Steven Cato, the athletic director who said he had heard rumors of a boycott and called police ahead of time but did nothing to alert the parents or stop the walkout once it began, remained in his same position. He is the only adult still associated with the baseball team who was affiliated with it at the time of the walkout.
"Under no circumstance do I believe Steven Cato protected my son," Shane Reilly said.
The baseball team has a new coach, Brad Crone, who once played at Estero High. In February, Madrid Tucker -- who had long been undecided about returning to baseball -- chose to return to the baseball team. The season cancellation dropped his rankings to 186th in the nation.
On Feb. 14, represented by prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, the Tuckers filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the School Board of Lee County and the School District of Lee County, as well as seven individuals: Cato, Burchfield, Carcioppolo, Hinson, Chappell, former Fort Myers High principal Butz and Lee County School Superintendent Christopher Bernier, who resigned in mid-April.
Madrid Tucker enjoyed his junior year on the football team. He says his real friends are on the football team and associates with virtually none of his baseball teammates.
During a game March 12 against Cypress Lake, the opposing team yelled "Happy Valentine's Day" to Madrid Tucker.
"That just proves what the culture is here," Dee Tucker said.
Tate Reilly's high school baseball career ended. He says when he received his diploma, at least one former teammate booed as he walked across the graduation stage. Nearly completing his freshman year at Albertus Magnus, he says he is still "processing what happened."
"I am left wondering what they think I did to deserve all the hate," he said in an email to ESPN. "Coaches throw out things like 'tough love' or 'kids need discipline' ... The coaches made up lies to punish me. That is not discipline. That is abuse. ... Being a kid and having a fun year with family and friends was taken away from me. My future was not important to them ... and to this day, they don't care."
On April 8, like the Tuckers, the Reillys filed a federal lawsuit against Lee County Schools, the school board and seven defendants, alleging their actions "empowered students and adults to act in ways that caused further trauma and harm." The Reilly and Tucker lawsuits were assigned to Florida Middle District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell, a 2012 Obama District Court appointee. The wife of Chris Chappell, Polster Chappell recused herself from both cases.
To Dee Tucker, Lee County School Board member Giovannelli had produced a typical response. "So, the end result is to do nothing?" Tucker said. "That's what they do around here: Nothing." It was a sentiment reinforced by Gwynetta Gittens, who said, "You're in Robert E. Lee County, and these people don't accept any blame for anything. They never have."
*ESPN producer Nicole Noren and ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.*
*An earlier version of this story misidentified Andrew Dailey and John Dailey. Andrew Dailey was a volunteer coach at Fort Myers High School.*
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# An Atlanta Movie Exec Praised for His Diversity Efforts Sent Racist, Antisemitic Texts
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. [Sign up for Dispatches](https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches?source=www.propublica.org&placement=top-note&region=local), a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
When Ryan Millsap arrived in Atlanta from California a decade ago, the real estate investor set his sights on becoming a major player in Georgias booming film industry. In just a few years, he achieved that, opening a movie studio that attracted big-budget productions like “Venom,” Marvels alien villain, and “Lovecraft Country,” HBOs fictional drama centered on the racial terror of Jim Crow America.
As he rose to prominence, Millsap cultivated important relationships with Black leaders and Jewish colleagues and won accolades for his commitment to diversity. But allegations brought by his former attorney present a starkly different picture. In private conversations, court documents allege, Millsap expressed racist and antisemitic views.
Various filings in an ongoing legal fight show Millsap, who is white, making derogatory comments regarding race and ethnicity, including complaints about “Fucking Black People” and “nasty Jews.”
“Ryans public persona is different from who he is,” John Da Grosa Smith, Millsaps former attorney, alleges in one filing, adding: “Ryan works hard to mislead and hide the truth. And he is very good at it.”
Smith submitted troves of text messages between Millsap and his former girlfriend as evidence in two separate cases in Fulton County Superior Court. The messages, reviewed by ProPublica and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, represent a fraction of the evidence in a complex, yearslong dispute centered on compensation for the work Smith performed for Millsap.
In response to a request for an interview about the text messages and related cases, Millsap wrote that this “sounds like a strange situation,” asking “how this came up” and requesting to review the material. After ProPublica and the AJC provided the material cited in this story, he did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Many of the text messages filed with the court were sent in 2019, an important year for Millsap. He was planning an expansion of his Blackhall Studios that would nearly triple its soundstage space. Instead, Millsap ended up selling Blackhall, now called Shadowbox, for $120 million in 2021. The following year [he announced plans to build](https://www.ajc.com/life/radiotvtalk-blog/blackhall-studios-founder-investors-buy-1500-acres-in-newton-county/64W66WKDJZFRFFFHNXNT5ZHCJI/) a massive new complex in Newton County, about 40 miles east of Atlanta.
Smith started working for Millsap in August 2019, representing the film executive and his companies in a lawsuit brought by a business associate who claimed a stake in Blackhall. In May 2020, Smith became Blackhall Real Estates chief legal counsel.
Their relationship soured in early 2021. In the ensuing feud, Smith claimed that Millsap had promised him a third of his family company, as well as compensation for extra legal work — and, in a letter from his attorney, demanded that Millsap pay him $24 million within four business days: “We, however, have no interest in harming Mr. Millsap or disrupting his deal, his impending marriage, his future deals, or anything else.”
In the arbitration proceeding that followed, Millsaps attorneys described the letter as “extortionate” and claimed that Smith was trying to “blow up” Millsaps personal and business life and stall the sale of Blackhall Studios. \_“\_Smith breached the most sacred of bonds that exist between a lawyer and his or her clients: the duty of loyalty,” lawyers for Millsap later wrote.
In the same proceeding, Smith accused Millsap of firing him after he raised allegations of a hostile and discriminatory workplace, referencing Millsaps text messages. Smiths late father was Jewish.
In January 2023, an arbitrator sided with Millsap, ordering that Smith pay him and his companies $3.7 million for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. She ruled that Smiths conduct was “egregious and intended to inflict economic injury on his clients.”
Through his attorney, Smith declined to be interviewed. In response to a list of questions, he wrote, “This has been a tireless campaign of false narratives and retaliation against me for more than three years.” He claimed that his employment agreement with Millsap guaranteed him a cut of the profits he helped generate and that an expert estimated his share to be between $17 million and $39 million.
Even as Millsap won his legal fight with his former attorney, Smith has continued to press the court battle. In an April 2023 motion to vacate, Smith called the arbitration process a “sham” and the award a “fraud,” and he is now appealing a judges decision to uphold the award. In January, a lawyer for Smith filed hundreds of pages of Millsaps texts in a separate legal dispute in which Millsap is not a party.
In a city with dominant Black representation and a significant Jewish population, maintaining a positive relationship with these communities — or at least the appearance of one — is essential to doing business.
“Mr. Millsap knows,” Smith alleged in one filing, “these text messages are perilous for him.”
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On a Thursday night in January 2019, Millsap stood near the pulpit at Welcome Friend Baptist, a Black church 10 miles from downtown Atlanta in DeKalb County, near where he was planning the expansion of his movie studio.
Securing support from the community would be key in convincing the county commission to approve a land-swap deal that would be necessary for the expansion. Several commissioners saw the project, including Millsaps promise to create thousands of jobs, as a way to revitalize the area.
Dozens of longtime residents, most of them Black, sat in the sanctuarys colorful upholstered chairs. The attendees received information sheets on Blackhalls plans, which cited $3.8 million in public improvements, including the creation of a new public park. They asked about internship opportunities for their children and restaurants Millsap might help bring.
Millsap raised the possibility of a restaurant, one he said could offer healthy meals. Several older Black women in the church nodded in agreement and one clapped, Millsaps pitch seemingly helping him appeal to those whose buy-in he needed.
Two months later, Millsap sent his then-girlfriend a text that Smiths lawyers later alleged shows he “laments his political work with African Americans and his distaste for having to do it.”
In the text exchange, which was filed in court, Millsap wrote: “Well, its like me w black people in ATL!! Bahahahahaha!! Political nonsense everywhere!! … Im so ready to be finished w that.”
![Messages between Ryan Millsap (sent) and Christy Hockmeyer (read) in 2019. Read: Thats unlike us. Sent: Well, its like me w black people in ATL!! Bahahahahaha!! Sent: Political nonsense everywhere!!](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20240416_milsap_text_atl_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=186&q=75&w=800&s=70bde56b8ab55b79ae2645d81c49c67e)
Messages sent between Ryan Millsap (green) and Christy Hockmeyer (blue) in 2019 Credit: Screenshot from a court exhibit filed by John Da Grosa Smiths attorney in January
In another text filed in court, Millsaps girlfriend alluded to the damage shed caused another vehicle in a car accident: “So the black girl wants $2500 to fix her car on a quote that was $1800.” He responded that she should pay the woman rather than filing an insurance claim, adding, “Fucking Black People.”
![Messages between Ryan Millsap (sent) and Christy Hockmeyer (read) in 2019. Read: So the black girl wants $2500 to fix her car on a quote that was $1800. Should I just run that through insurance or pay it out of pocket? Sent: Pay it Read: Really? Insurance goes up that much? Sent: Idk Sent: But accidents are bad. Sent: Can you log out of your delta app? Sent: They are trying to change the flights. Sent: And for some reason that matters. Sent: Anyway - I think its better to keep off your record. Sent: Fucking Black People. Read: Logged out. Sent: Thx Read: Exactly.](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20240416_milsap_text_car-accident_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=905&q=75&w=800&s=66f532a1f0af6e0da588d176606378be)
Messages sent between Ryan Millsap (green) and Christy Hockmeyer (blue) in 2019 Credit: Screenshot from a court exhibit filed by John Da Grosa Smiths attorney in January
Court records and Millsaps own testimony show that his girlfriend at the time, Christy Hockmeyer, was an investor in his real estate company, and their text messages show she played an active role in his business dealings. In a filing that claims the company had a “hostile and discriminatory work environment,” Smith alleged that Blackhall Real Estate “through its CEO, Ryan Millsap, and one of its influential investors, Christy Hockmeyer, disfavors African- Americans and Jews.”
When Hockmeyer texted Millsap after a doctors visit, complaining that a nurse was “retarded,” Millsap responded: “Not shocked. Black or Asian?” Hockmeyer wrote back: “Black.” Millsap replied, “Yes.”
![Messages between Ryan Millsap (sent) and Christy Hockmeyer (read) in 2019. Read: The nurse I spoke to was retarded. Sent: Not shocked Sent: Black or Asian? Read: Black Sent: Yes](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20240416_milsap_text_nurse_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=298&q=75&w=800&s=479f1c3fb661334ce2fe8412df91cfc5)
Messages sent between Ryan Millsap (green) and Christy Hockmeyer (blue) in 2019 Credit: Screenshot from a court exhibit filed by John Da Grosa Smiths attorney in January
In other exchanges filed with the court, Hockmeyer complained to Millsap, “My uber driver smells like a black person. Yuck!” He echoed her sentiment, writing back, “Yuck!” While on a flight, Hockmeyer wrote to Millsap that a “large smelly black man is seated next to me.” Millsap wrote back, “Yucko!!”
And while passing through an airport in France, Millsap texted Hockmeyer, “The smells here are unreal” and “I can't even imagine if your sensitive nose was here!!”
Hockmeyer responded, “I am so self conscious about bodily smells because there is nothing worse. I mean. Makes you dread it when you see a black person.”
![Messages between Ryan Millsap (sent) and Christy Hockmeyer (read) in 2019. Sent: The smells here are unreal. Read: Oh man. Read: Just no deodorant at all huh? Sent: Zero Sent: And breath Read: That is so brutal. I would throw up. I just cant do it. Read: Oh god. Read: The bad black person breath is the worst. Sent: I cant even imagine if your sensitive nose was here!! Read: I am so self conscious about bodily smells because there is nothing worse. Sent: Indeeed Read: I mean. Makes you dread it when you see a black person hoe agog. Read: Honestly.](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20240416_milsap_text_france_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=774&q=75&w=800&s=7d1bcaa41486e27c8ab5fadbd657f201)
Messages sent between Ryan Millsap (green) and Christy Hockmeyer (blue) in 2019 Credit: Screenshot from a court exhibit filed by John Da Grosa Smiths attorney in January
Smith alleged that the conversations between Millsap and Hockmeyer reveal how they think about people with whom they conduct business. “The insidious belief that black people are beneath them and not worthy of being hired is a theme that persists in their private writings to one another,” Smith said in the filing.
At a time in 2019 when Millsap was looking to hire an executive with a track record in the Atlanta film industry, Hockmeyer texted him that he might consider bringing on someone from Tyler Perry Studios, a 12-stage southwest Atlanta lot named after its founder, one of the highest-profile Black film producers in the country. “And taking someone from Tyler Perry would be fine too,” she wrote in a text exchange filed with the court. “As long as they are white.”
She also offered another name for Millsap to consider, adding: “Hes even a Jew. Thats good for this role.” Millsap responded, “Teeny tiniest Jew.”
On another occasion, Hockmeyer “opined that Anglo-Americans do not do business with Jewish people,” Smith alleged in a court filing, referencing a text message exchange in which she wrote to Millsap: “You know why wasps wont do deals with Jews? Because they know that Jews have a different play book and they might get screwed.” Smith also claimed in a court filing that Millsap described to Hockmeyer “a terrible meeting with one of the most nasty Jews Ive ever encountered.”
In an email to ProPublica and the AJC, Hockmeyer wrote: “I severed all personal and professional ties with Mr. Millsap years ago because our values, ethics, and beliefs did not align. As a passive investor in Blackhall, I was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, nor have I been party to any of the lawsuits involving Blackhall. I consistently encouraged Mr. Millsap to treat his investors and community supporters with fairness and respect.”
In a subsequent email, she apologized for the texts between her and Millsap. “There were times when I may have become angry or emotional and tacitly acknowledged statements he made or said things that do not reflect my values or beliefs, and I deeply regret that,” she wrote, adding: “I made comments and used language that was inappropriate. I referred to people in ways I shouldnt have. Im sincerely sorry for what I said. Those comments do not reflect who I am and I disavow racism and antisemitism as a whole.”
Smith claimed in a court filing that Millsap regularly expressed disrespect toward Jewish people, describing three of his Jewish colleagues and investors as “the Jew crew,” calling one of them “a greedy Israelite” and saying another had “Jew jitsued” him. Millsap concluded, according to Smith, that “no friendship comes before money in that tribe.”
During the arbitration, Millsap testified in August 2022 that his remarks about people of the Jewish faith constituted “locker room talk.”
In December 2019, Millsap received several warnings from Hockmeyer, according to arbitration records that highlight excerpts from some of her text messages. (Other exhibits in the case show the couples relationship had become strained around that time.)
“Ryan you have to understand why people are over your bulls\*\*t,” she wrote that month, according to the records. “They feel lied to taken advantage of and stolen from.”
The following month, she wrote: “Wow. You are going to get lit the f\*\*k up. Holy s\*\*t you are such a bad person. You are a f\*\*king crook!”
During the arbitration hearing, one of Smiths attorneys asked Millsap about some of Hockmeyers December 2019 warnings. He responded, “These are the text messages of a very angry ex-girlfriend.”
---
As Smith began taking on more responsibility for his client in 2020, Millsap continued to connect with Black influencers and cement himself as a cultural force in Atlanta.
In December of that year, Millsap was a guest on an episode of actor and rapper T.I.s “Expeditiously” podcast. After discussing the differences between the Atlanta and Los Angeles entertainment markets, Millsap praised what he called “a very robust, Black creative vortex” in Atlanta. And he went on to offer more praise. “There seems like a particular magic in Atlanta about being Black.”
He also talked about his studio expansion plans amid the land-swap deal in a majority-Black DeKalb County neighborhood, telling T.I., “Its been a fascinating study in race actually.”
Millsap went on to explain how his business interests aligned with the desires of residents. “What pushed this through was Black commissioners supporting their Black residents who wanted to see this happen, right?” he said. “Theyre fighting against one white commissioner and a lot of her white constituents who took it upon themselves to be against this when theyre not even the residents who live nearby.”
One evening in August 2021, Millsap stepped onto the stage at the Coca-Cola Roxy theater in Cobb County. He and a dozen other people had been named the years Most Admired CEOs, an honor awarded by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The CEOs were recognized for, among other things, their “commitment to diversity in the workplace.”
As the dispute between Smith and Millsap unfolded, Millsap expanded his business interests to Newton County, where he purchased a $14 million, 1,500-acre lot in 2022. He said at the time that his vision is to make Georgia a “King Kong of entertainment” by building a production complex on the site and [launching a streaming service](https://saportareport.com/ryan-millsap-launching-blackhall-americana-as-rival-to-netflix/sections/reports/maria_saporta/) that, in his words, would be “something on the scale of Netflix.” He later invested in a vodka brand with the aim, he said, of it becoming “quintessentially” Georgia, “like Coca-Cola and Delta.”
---
Earlier this year, Millsap sat down in his stately home office, decorated with Atlanta-centric trinkets like a model Delta plane, to record an episode of his “Blackhall Podcast with Ryan Millsap.” T.I. has been a guest, as have Isaac Hayes III, son of the iconic soul singer Isaac Hayes and a social media startup founder, and Speech, the frontman for the Atlanta-based, Grammy-winning musical act Arrested Development.
On this day, Millsap talked about race and culture, pointing out that one of his best friends is a “Persian Jew in LA”
Millsap noted that his understanding of “Black and white” was formed on the West Coast, where he had “a lot of Black friends” — “very Caucasian Black people” who had adopted white cultural norms.
“I grew up thinking like I had no racial prejudice of any kind,” Millsap said. “I thought we were beyond all that stuff.”
[Rosie Manins](https://www.ajc.com/staff/rosie-manins/) of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed reporting.
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# Behind the New Iron Curtain, by Marzio G. Mian, Translated by Elettra Pauletto
This article was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Russia has become, to observers in the West, a distant, mysterious, and hostile land once again. It seems implausible, in the age of social media, that so little should be known about the country that has shattered the international order, but the shadows surrounding Russia have only grown since the days of the Soviet Union. Of course, it is one thing to observe the country from the outside; it is another to try to understand how Russians experience the war and react to sanctions from within, and what they hope the future holds. If Russia seems to have become another planet, it is largely because its regime has also waged war on foreign journalists, preventing them from straying beyond established perimeters.
Over the summer, hoping to do precisely that, I spent a month traveling down the Volga River. In a land of great rivers, the Volga is *the* river. They call it *matushka,* the mother; it flows from the Valdai Hills to the land of the Chuvash, the Tatars, the Cossacks, the Kalmyks, and into the Caspian Sea. Its where Europe and Asia meet or part, are bridged or blocked, depending on whether the compass of Russian history is pointing east or west. Its where it all started, after all, where the empire took root: Along the river one finds many of the cities that have established Russian culture and faith—from Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Lenin, to Stalingrad (now called Volgograd), the site of the infamous World War II siege. This is a history that weighs heavily on Russian identity today, as the country continues to look backward, sifting its vaunted past for new myths of grandeur. It seems prepared to resist and to suffer, acts at which Russians have always excelled, and to have resigned itself to a future of isolation, autocracy, and perhaps even self-destruction.
Before starting down the river, I met with Mikhail Piotrovsky, who is an old acquaintance and the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, in his office on the museums ground floor, where he has carved out a space for himself among piles of books, stacks of paper, and various sculptures. The photographs crowding the room, of him with eminent Western leaders—a smiling Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth—are now themselves relics, not unlike the tapestry of Catherine the Great hanging above his desk.
I asked him about the river. “The Volga was everything, and is still everything,” he told me. “Because it makes you aspire to greatness. It has a sort of intimacy, sheltering and bright skies, not like the wide-open spaces of the steppe or Siberian rivers, which make you feel like a speck in the cosmos.”
Piotrovsky is an illustrious scholar of Arabic studies. Ive known him for years, but we would normally talk about Canaletto and Byzantium, the great Islamic explorers and his beloved Sicilian wines. This time I found him in full war fervor. And, I was convinced, it was not only to defend his prestigious position: At his age, seventy-nine, he could easily keep his head down and carry on quietly, like most Russians have elected to do. He spoke with his usual calm but looked feverish, as if something were devouring him from the inside.
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_11-1.jpg)
Map by Mike Hall
Piotrovsky, who is mild-mannered and cerebral, and who wore his jacket loosely over hunched shoulders, seemed to have become a warrior. “Russia is many people, but one nation,” he asserted. “Russia along the Volga was able to incorporate everyone. Islam is just as much a religion of Russian tradition and identity as is Christian Orthodoxy. In Europe, in America, you speak of nothing but multiculturalism, but your cities are bursting with hate. For us, it didnt take much to include everyone, because were an imperial civilization.” Then he grew more animated. “Look at the Hermitage!” he said, opening his arms to the room around us, widening his eyes. “Its the encyclopedia of world culture, but its written in Russian because its our interpretation of world history. It may be arrogant, but thats what we are.”
He took a deep breath, and began to talk of Stalingrad, his Jerusalem. “I dont call it Volgograd, but Stalingrad,” he clarified for my sake. “It is our reference point now more than ever, an unparalleled symbol of resistance, our enemies worst nightmare. During the Great Patriotic War, we used it to defend the Volga as a vital corridor.” He continued to press the analogy: “And its been the same in the last few months. The Volga and the Caspian feed our trade with Iran to oppose the sanctions, while we use them to export oil to India and import what we need.” He removed his glasses and cleaned them with his jacket. “Stalingrad is a lucky charm, its destiny. If the Nazis had taken it, they would have cut off the Volga and conquered all of Russia. A very material thing that became spiritual. A warning. Whosoever tries it will meet the end of all the others—Swedes, Napoleon, the Germans and their allies.” He went on. “Russians are like the Scythians: they wait, they suffer, they die, and then they kill.”
I would think back to this meeting often over the course of my trip; following the river, I recalled the odd look in Piotrovskys eyes and felt the echo of his words. In fact, when I visited a sturgeon farm in Astrakhan, in the Volga Delta, I saw that his view was, in certain respects, correct. Olesia Sergeeva, a biologist who heads the company that owns the farm, reiterated the importance of the ongoing trade between Iran and Russia. In her own small way—I mean this only as a figure of speech; Sergeeva supplies the Kremlin with caviar—she skirted the sanctions, buying feed from Iran instead of Europe, as she had done before. She spoke of this as if it were public knowledge. “Everything passes through here,” she said. “Theyre building new docks on the delta for container ships and oil tankers.”
Sergeeva took me to see the Jewish, Armenian, and Iranian neighborhoods of Astrakhan. An exhibition of photographs highlighting the civilian volunteers supporting the military was being set up outside of a park. At sunset, the elegant riverfront was swarmed with families and groups of young people talking and laughing in hushed tones. Couples sat on railings eating watermelon while food stalls projected multicolored lights on the Volga. There was a fin de siècle quality to the atmosphere, curls of smoke emanating from shashlik grills, a warm breeze delivering the lament of a distant violin. No military uniforms in sight.
The café façades and the wrought-iron balconies reminded me of New Orleans. Sergeeva pointed out the renovations along the canal that runs through the old town, indicating the nineteenth-century wooden villas that will soon become hotels and luxury homes. “They seemed destined to crumble,” she said. “But now that money is going around, Astrakhan is once again the gateway to European Russia, Central Asia, and India. This is how it is for now. Later, well see.”
On the delta, which fans out for sixty miles before reaching the Caspian Sea, pairs of fighter jets zoomed by at low altitude. I tried catching a glimpse of customs at the commercial port, but I couldnt see past the checkpoints, and the tourist port was closed. Even the ferry was no longer in service. But one could still see cranes loading and unloading a dozen cargo ships, and three barges waiting at the widest point. Sixty-three miles long, the VolgaDon Canal was built under Stalin with the labor of seventy-five thousand prisoners, and opened in 1952. It is part of the waterway that connects the Volga to Rostov on the Don River, from which one can reach Mariupol, which is now controlled by the Russians. South of Volgograd, I tried taking a dirt road leading to the mouth of the canal but was intimidated by the presence of a helicopter hovering some three hundred feet above me. I decided instead to gather wild strawberries.
In Astrakhan, it was rumored that the Iranians had invested billions in the development of the Caspian-Volga-Don corridor. There was talk of trafficking agricultural products and oil, but also turbines, spare mechanical parts, medicine, and nuclear components. I couldnt verify this, but it was clear that Astrakhan is central to the anti-Western economic blocs efforts to turn east.
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_12.jpg)
Industrial harbor entrance, Astrakhan
Sergeevas caviar is refined and humanely produced. She explained that this was the result of a process that she had invented: she extracts the eggs from the sturgeon with a small incision, without killing it. This procedure can be performed three times on the same fish. She has endeavored to ensure that the production and sale of her caviar remains the same as it was before the war. “In Russia its not a real party unless theres caviar,” she said—even, apparently, in the current situation. She told me that since Russia had banned wild sturgeon harvesting in the Caspian, farms in this Volga region have proliferated, their numbers rising from three to sixty in the past five years.
Sergeeva is well-traveled and known widely for her aquaculture expertise. She could get a job anywhere, it seemed to me, so why stay? “I was born here, I studied here, my husband is Russian, my son is Russian, Im Russian,” she said. “I wouldnt say Im a patriot, and I dont want to express my thoughts on Putin and the war. But I can assure you that my life hasnt changed. Not in the least.” She blushed as she spoke, as if the subject were uncomfortable. “The Russians are reacting to the sanctions in an extraordinary way, even with a weak ruble and the inevitable inflation. The prices of essential goods have held steady. And now were consuming better and healthier products than before the war, even exceptional cheeses.”
I had never imagined that the rise of hyperlocal food would be one of the recurring themes of this trip. But it appears that the Western sanctions and war economy have intensified a traditional Russian gastronomy movement. Western products had piqued the palates of average urban Russians, and local producers were trying to fill their vacuum, proudly offering Russian-made Camembert and prosciutto, as if to provide some material evidence of *Russkiy Mir,* Putins ideology of Russian supremacy. As I dined along the Volga, menus often specified the farms from which ingredients had been sourced. Restaurants served *svekolnik* and *okroshka,* simple cold summer soups, exalting the quality of local radishes grown without Western fertilizers.
And fishing has largely ceased in Rybinsk, the city once known as the fishery of the tsar. Instead, the area has reinvented itself as something like the oven of Moscow. Every day, trucks set off for the capital full of warm loaves. Bakeries abound: wheat and rye farming in the region has increased by 40 percent.
Among the first to fire up an oven was fifty-four-year-old Andrei Kovalev, who knew nothing about baking bread until three years ago. “I learned to use *zakvaska*, a bread starter,” he told me in his large bakery in the Red Square of Rybinsk, where a statue of Lenin replaced one of Alexander II and has loomed ever since. Kovalev was popular among the locals—he hands out samples to passersby, sporting a beard and a rough tunic made of linen and burlap. He saw opening a bakery as a political act, one salvaging rural Russian values “against consumerism copied from America,” as he put it. “Over the past thirty years people hated Russian bread,” he said, “they thought it was beneath them. They wanted baguettes, the little brats! Mine are old recipes, from long before the perestroika, from back when we were happy.”
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_13-1.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_13-1-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
A Communist Party sign, Mari El Republic.
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_15.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_15-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
A farmer north of Volgograd.
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_14-1.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_14-1-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
Farmers in the upper Volga region.
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_16-1.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_16-1-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
Train tracks, Tver.
Had it not been for a massive poster looming over a lonely intersection in the steppe, showing Sergei Kazankov alongside Lenin and Stalin, I might have missed another quite surreal thing: Soviet Union revivalism. Using a VPN to protect my online searches, I learned that Kazankov had been reelected to the State Duma in 2021 as a Communist, that he was sanctioned for supporting the invasion of Ukraine, and that his father, Ivan Kazankov, has long been a Communist power broker. Sergei himself had been the director of a meat-processing plant and agricultural combine in the Zvenigovsky District, owned by his father.
By this point I was traveling across the Mari El Republic, some ninety miles from Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. More specifically, I was in the Zvenigovsky District, which lends its name to Kazankovs company, Zvenigovsky LLC, which has become known in town as the last *sovkhoz,* or large-scale collective farm. I had only to make a small detour, cross a field of sunflowers, and get directions at a gas station (“when you see the monument to Marx youre practically there”) to arrive at its building, which, on first glance, seemed like a memorial to the old Soviets. The red flag of the USSR fluttered above the white and yellow complex. According to the company, its the same size as the one lowered from the Kremlin on December 25, 1991, when Communism fell. The walls of the plant were covered in red inscriptions marked by the exclamation points the Bolsheviks had so loved to use: “Honor and glory to the workers of the Zvenigovsky combine!”; “Comrades, let us fight for our village, let us fight for Russia!”; “Now and forever, war on Fascism!”
The road to the entrance was lined with modern Stakhanovite-esque photographs, presenting, for instance, one worker as the best sausage stuffer, another as the best tractor driver, and a final one, sporting a mustache and a Nike T-shirt, as the mechanic of the year. Trucks and vans marked with a hammer and sickle poured out of the gates. A statue of Stalin presided over it all, his pants tucked into his boots from his place on a four-tiered pedestal. Off to the side, a metallic Lenin looked on, his brow furrowed; his dais had only two tiers, and was partially covered by the branches of a birch tree.
The entrance to the management building, a stolid modernist structure, was dominated by bronze letters reading cccp. The security guards at reception wore fatigues. I would soon realize this was one of Russias most successful agricultural producers, delivering tens of thousands of tons of meat and dairy to the market each year. The business, established in 1995, well after the USSR was dead and gone, identified itself as a Communist-Stalinist enterprise.
Ivan Kazankov is eighty-one years old and has a gray, wolf-like gaze. Hes tall and robust, a wide red tie resting on his belly. He showed interest in my unexpected visit without too much reservation: you could tell hes a real boss, one who doesnt answer to anybody—a top dog of this agrarian Stalingrad, this rural empire on the Volga, paradoxically inspired by the greatest peasant exterminator in history. His office seemed to have been designed with the express purpose of disorienting anyone hoping to understand Russia in 2023: busts of Stalin standing alongside Russian Orthodox icons, a portrait of Nicholas II looming over a Soyuz statuette, a picture of Vladimir Putin hanging next to an image of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Russia. To the chaos of this pantheon was added a general sense of opacity about the nature of the combine itself, which at first was presented to me as a “state-run agricultural coop, exactly like in the days of the USSR,” but had turned out to be a private family holding. Ivan had made his daughter director after his son left to join the Duma. “What matters is that it runs as before,” he explained. “Profits are used to increase the salaries of the four thousand employees and grow the business.”
In Kazan, they would later tell me that amid the robbery and corruption of the Nineties, when hardened racketeers pilfered Soviet industrial and military equipment, Kazankov had taken his own modest cut. He had gotten his hands on a run-down farm and deftly transformed it into this industrial colossus that had adapted the socialist combine production system to the wild post-Soviet market. The sausage oligarch Kazankov knows just how much Russian consumers still suffer the loss of state collectivism.
Since then, the companys net worth has become the stuff of legend. But Kazankov, too, is a great supporter of Western sanctions: “Theyre an incredible developmental tool for Russia,” he told me. “The West should have imposed them back in the Nineties. Wed be the engine of the world by now. Too bad.” For him, the sanctions are pure adrenaline, and to prove it he added that his company has copied Italian, German, and Israeli “production means” to the letter: “We doubled processing in one year and we supply almost a thousand supermarkets in all of Russia.” Ivan believes that his “full-circle communist company” is the ideal model for “rebuilding a new Soviet Union with healthy local food from our lands.”
He offered to show me their newest stable, about ten miles away, where he had replicated Israeli dairy plants. The herd there grazed in large, well-defined clearings. His driver ferried us around in a brand-new armored Mercedes that I assumed had been imported from Kyrgyzstan, a preferred route for German contraband. For the excursion, Kazankov donned a baseball cap that seemed designed to make him appear younger, with cccp stitched in red on the front and a hammer and sickle on the side. He said he was thinking of branding the cows in the same fashion. “We grow fodder and cereal on thousands of hectares of land,” he explained, watching his property from the tinted window. “We raise dairy cows and pigs and take care of them all the way until the packaging of the finished product, which are meats, cheeses, kefir. Even ice cream, good like the ice cream from my childhood. Gorbachev and Yeltsin ruined ice cream, the cowards.”
The fighting in Ukraine, it seemed, would lead to a mountain of rubles for Kazankov. “Cheese production has grown eighty percent,” he said. “Were filling in for French and Italian cheeses. Were still buying cows.” He told me that meat production generally has thrived. What was his opinion on the war? “Obviously well win,” he said, “because we know how to fight and because we cant lose. If we have to, well use atomic weapons, well destroy the earth, well destroy everything.”
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_17-1124x844.jpg)
Ivan Kazankovs office, Mari El Republic
While in Kazan, I was invited to lunch by Farid Khairutdinov, a forty-eight-year-old businessman who had been referred to me as a “very influential Tatar in town.” Messaging over an encrypted channel, he had promised me an interesting conversation. When I arrived at Tatarskaya Usadba, a renowned local restaurant, I found him waiting for me in a private room with Mansur Hazrat Jalaletdinov, a mullah at the Marjani Mosque, the only one active in Kazan until 1990, after which about a hundred more sprang up. Khairutdinov told me that they had recently, at this very table, hosted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian prime minister and president, now deputy chairman of the Security Council. He then explained that he considered me “an enemy,” and said that no one wanted to meet with me or answer any of my questions. I was better off visiting a museum, he added. He had served in the FSB, he reminded me, and the mullah nodded along, clearly pleased.
That said, in a demonstration of Russian Tatar hospitality, they offered me an unforgettable lunch: twelve courses and three hours of conversation that was as absurd as it was instructive. They claimed that, in the Tatar language, “there is no word for retreat”; that the Tatars had been the best archers under Peter the Great; and that Mikhail Kutuzov, the general who defeated Napoleon, had been a Tatar. I pointed out that Kutuzov was the one who put down the Tatar resistance in Crimea in the late eighteenth century. “In fact, he lost an eye,” said Khairutdinov, and the mullah nodded. “We love to wage war. Am I right, Mansur?”
“Its true,” he said. “We also fight against our demons.” I hoped to pursue the topic, but Khairutdinov changed the subject: “Sanctions have united us even more as a people.”
As the skewered lamb arrived, Khairutdinov said that before the war I would have been eating “shit lamb from New Zealand,” but that this meat, tender and tasty, was Russian. Not only that, but up until yesterday the lamb had been grazing just a few miles away. He had raised it himself, he claimed. His business was in organic lamb and goose meat. He had opened stores all over Tatarstan. “Theres no competition, its amazing,” he said. “Just think, we used to import geese from Romania and France. Now I export goose legs and cured meat to Turkey.”
I asked why they hadnt raised lamb and geese before the war, or why Russia, with all its intelligent and industrious entrepreneurs, produced so little and imported almost everything without generating significant income outside of the oil and gas industry. The mullah looked me in the eyes and told me that this was precisely the Russian genius: “Buying without producing,” he said. “Why should I make a bicycle if I can just buy one? I spend less money. Easy.”
More than thirty years ago, I wrote about the first stirrings of conflict from the beaches of Yugoslavia, which was then collapsing. I remember an orchestra of elderly musicians playing the foxtrot just for me, the only guest at a grand hotel on the isle of Rab. At the time, mortars were falling and people were dying just a few miles from the Dalmatian coast. Here along the Volga, war and death felt like spectral presences. People danced to techno and indulged in cocktails with improbable names: Hiroshima, RussianJapanese War, and Drunken German. In almost a month of traveling, I saw only four bombers, passing over Tver, near the source of the Volga; felt the rumbling of fighter jets just once, in the low course of the river; encountered a few unarmed soldiers on leave; and saw a column of twenty trucks with tanks covered by tarps probably setting off for the front, hundreds of miles away. The rest was Russia as usual. But an unusually dynamic Russia, to be sure. I saw construction sites and cranes operating in the suburbs, buildings and churches being restored, significant repairs being made to the federal roads (although the famous potholes were still there), workers installing new pipelines, teams of gardeners in the parks, diligent garbage collectors emptying trash cans. Cars flooded the streets each weekend, when Russians went out to their country homes.
Was this fatalism? Indifference? Or arrogance, as Piotrovsky had implied back at the Hermitage? I struggled to find room in hotels or on ferries, all of which were overflowing with tourists forced to give up on the Mediterranean and make do with the Volga. Take Tatiana, the middle-aged manager of a supermarket chain. When I met her on a ferry in Yaroslavl, she wore a Panama hat, Gucci sunglasses, and capri sandals; she was heading downstream, to the same dacha where she had spent her summers as a girl. “Ive had a boat docked in Mykonos for three years—who knows when Ill see it again,” she told me. “Im getting to know my river again. Im running into friends I havent seen in thirty years. An interesting vacation.” I told her she looked a bit sad and resigned. “Russians have been sad and resigned for thousands of years,” she replied. “Its how we stay resilient. Im against this war, but I cant do anything but wait, like everyone else. They manipulate us with artificial ideas. Garbage. But the West has been humiliating us for too long. Dont we also have a right to be who we want to be without feeling like barbarians?”
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_18-1124x749.jpg)
Tourists, St. Petersburg
To think that the anti-Western ideas coursing through the countrys veins are simply the fruits of regime indoctrination would be to overestimate Putin—and to ignore what has driven Russia throughout its history, at least since the time of Peter the Great: a fascination with the West, paired with a proud and slightly overbearing defense of its own vast territory and resistance to assimilation. Russians have always vacillated between wanting to be included and fearing contamination or corruption, from harboring an inferiority complex to delusions of grandeur. Its a clash that could be understood in terms of the intellectual conflict between the pro-Western Turgenev and the Slavophile Dostoevsky. Unfortunately, were no longer cruising at that altitude. There is arguably even less debate today than in the days of the USSR, and its clear that Russians are now more fully in a Dostoevsky phase: their desire to lock themselves in a small but boundless world is reemerging, even among those who reject Putin and the Orthodox Churchs revanchist narrative.
I met a woman named Anna, for example, who described herself as an “anti-establishment, pacifist, pagan environmentalist,” and said that “we must be zombies to be killing our own brothers.” Yet she defended “family values” and “love of the ancestors.” Her priority, she said, was to “preserve Russian tradition.” She rejected “modern Western culture where anything goes and everything is easy and fun. Because its obviously a sham.” She went so far as to say that its people like her “who keep old Russia in their hearts, who are the ones who safeguard the roots of Europe.” Her hair was as long and blond as grain, her eyes emerald-green, and she wore traditional necklaces and a long jade dress. She was thirty-four years old and lived in the “Jamaica of the Volga,” at the foot of the Zhiguli—the only mountains in the Russian plains until the Urals—which plunge into the river and create incredible botanical effects, including the growth of wild marijuana. Volunteers come from all over Russia to harvest it. “Memorable parties,” Anna assured me, “but now the government has practically banned non-official gatherings, its like being in jail.” She told me that she is a shamanic healer, even if her official title is nurse. “If I didnt have four children I would have been sent to the Donbas for sure,” she said. Her partner composes and plays Volga dub, a kind of Russian reggae—the soundtrack of the pacifist pirates of the river.
To reach their secret island hideout, I set out after sundown on a ramshackle raft made of pallets and surfboards. I was hosted by locals named Shukhrat and Albert: they had christened the island “Shubert.” Their friendship was changed and deepened by the war—Shukhrat lost a son, Albert sent his to Sweden. They had decided to abandon reality, taking over a strip of sand that magically emerged from the Volga in the spring. They camped out with their families and were gradually joined by other fugitives. Thus began an independent community with its own rules, foremost of which is to avoid the news. They hold meetings, yoga classes, meditation sessions. They sing antiwar reggae songs, using only traditional instruments such as balalaikas, domras, and bayans. Every Friday night, friends and musicians arrive from Kazan, Samara, and Tolyatti and put on a music festival. “Were not distancing ourselves from the world,” said Albert, a former security systems engineer, “but creating our own separate world. This is our country now, based on authentic Russian values. Everything is scary out there.”
But Shubert Islands remoteness hadnt assuaged all his concerns. He had established a special relationship with two Ukrainian YouTubers who spoke Russian and was planning on biking out to visit them in the Donbas during that fateful February 2022. “They left me voice messages asking if I was their enemy now and why were we bombing them and killing them,” he told me. “I still dont know how we ended up on the other side—its terrible. I can only cry, but my mom used to say that boys dont cry.” These were the only tears I saw on my voyage.
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_19.jpg)
Zarina and Valentina hold a photograph of Pavel, Nizhny Novgorod
One Friday evening in Nizhny Novgorod, the birthplace of Maxim Gorky, I ended up on the main thoroughfare alongside the Kremlin, where I was almost trampled by a horde of drunken youths. The bars were overflowing with people dancing on the sidewalks, drinks in hand. The façade of a six-story building was covered with the letter *Z,* a symbol of support for the war. I was walking with Artjom Fomenkov, a historian and political science professor. I asked what he thought of the scene, of the unsettling contrast between the partiers and their peers being sent to the front. “Those fighting arent from big cities, but from small towns,” he explained. “The most downtrodden places,” that is, where they only enlist for the money. “Its unlikely that the bulk of the urban population would feel directly affected by the war.” He thought for a moment and added, “and thats why they go on living like that. Theyre not involved, and so they do the same thing they were doing two years ago, one hundred years ago, two hundred years ago—marinating in their despair.” This is what I would hear referred to as the “Russian syndrome,” which is a mixture of nostalgia, melancholy, and affliction. “Putin is just the latest to exploit this passive attitude,” he said. “Remember, Russians are agents of their destiny, not victims.”
But just five hundred meters from the chaos, we encountered a sobering scene. Osharskaya Ulitsa is still known as the brothel street, because of its reputation in Gorkys day. A building that once served as a brothel now supposedly hosts military offices. Anyone dragged in there at night has a high chance of being sent to a training camp the next morning, and then to the front. Fomenkov seemed to reconsider his earlier comments. “The kids you saw are actually terrified, they drink much more than before,” he said. “They know not to be found in certain places alone, drunk, and without a solid alibi, or at least an important last name.”
The next day I ended up on a nameless street, in the living room of a blue cottage besieged by skeletal hens and the carcasses of old cars repurposed as chicken coops. This was the home of Pavel, who died in the Donbas in the fall of 2022, only forty days after enlisting. His eighteen-year-old daughter, Zarina, was pregnant, and looked at me with astonished eyes, green and yellow like the grass of the steppe in summer. She was sitting on a burgundy couch next to her mother, Valentina, who looked worn out. They told me that Pavel had been a taxi driver and had gone into debt. One night, he came home drunk and said he had enlisted. He showed Valentina the contract, for just over two hundred thousand rubles a month. Driving a cab had earned him fifty thousand rubles at most, and some months almost nothing.
The ceiling was low and had been painted to resemble the sky. On the walls hung pictures of the kids—one showed them swimming in the Volga with their father. Then there was Pavel, beaming with his new weed wacker. “He was a good man, respected,” Valentina said. “I couldnt stop him. He did it for his three children, to pay off the mortgage.” Ten days of training and he left. Apparently he had stepped on a mine. “They sent him ahead to check out the terrain. But well never really know,” said Zarina, biting her lip. Two military officers had arrived on their doorstep to deliver Putins form letter and a medal. Valentina assured me that people were there for her—even neighbors whom she hadnt spoken to in years had come by with bread and vodka. She and Pavel had loved each other, she told me, but they had never married. Valentina was now suing his mother to obtain the millions of rubles the state provided to compensate the families of the fallen. “What was he thinking?” she said. “Pavel had his own ideas. He used to say it was time to stick it to everyone who left the USSR. But he left to make a few bucks, so in the end he was just a mercenary, right?”
In the corner, near the stereo and CDs, lights illuminated a small shrine flanked by the Russian flag: Pavels accordion, his straw hat, fake sunflowers, images of the Madonna, whom he worshiped, and the teddy bears he had bought Zarina. And then, smiling above it all like a kindly uncle, Stalin. “His beloved Stalin,” Valentina said.
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_20.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_20-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
A teenager wearing a Stalin T-shirt on a ferry
![https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_21.jpg](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_21-1400x0-c-default.jpg)
A roadhouse in Balakovo
Stalin, as far as I could tell, had become the symbol of the summer, a totemic figure along the lines of Che Guevara. Lenin may be one of the most common statues in the world, with seven thousand in Russia alone—but it is no longer Lenins arm that points to the future. Stalin is experiencing a Second Coming, his name recurring like a mantra. He even has his own namesake sausage brand. His biggest sponsor, perhaps, is Putin, who knows that by invoking him he is pulling on a magic string that will reawaken secret dreams of glory.
“Putin cant compare himself to Lenin,” the historian Dmitry Rusin told me. “He was too intellectual and complex in these days of easy approximations. Its too European.” Rusin is a professor at Ulyanovsk State University. In 1970, they built an enormous Lenin memorial in the city center. “Putin prefers to be compared to Stalin, just as Stalin drew his ruthless idea of Russian power from Ivan the Terrible,” said the professor as we approached the memorial. “Not a European idea, but an Asian one, that doesnt hold the life of the individual in consideration. I find this return to the cult of Stalin, especially among young people, horrifying. I feel a catastrophe coming.” The fountain in front of the complex had run dry. “They closed the complex for renovations five years ago,” Rusin said. “It was supposed to reopen in 2020, now theyre saying 2025. But no funds are coming from Moscow. They want to make Ulyanovsk poor.”
Volgograd is a different story. Putin wants to change its name back to Stalingrad, the better to exploit the symbol of the battle. “We are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks,” the president said in February 2023, inaugurating a new monument to Stalin at the museum dedicated to the two-hundred-day siege, when more than a million Soviet and German soldiers were reported dead, wounded, missing, or captured. “Again and again, we have to repel the aggression of the collective West.”
Yet Samara, five hundred miles north of Volgograd, is where the ghost of Stalin really makes one realize just how little the outside world understands about Russia. The city is located at the point where the Volga veers east, as if attracted by the pull of the Urals. The city is generally known as the Russian Chicago, because of its great industrial vitality and popularity with merchants and criminals. But in the summer, Samara becomes the Saint-Tropez of the Volga, with elegant beaches and a fashionable riverside promenade that is second only to Sochis. And just like Sochi, it seems to be a destination for hardcore Putin supporters. Bourgeois kids traverse its streets on scooters, wearing expensive American sneakers and the hottest T-shirt of the season—one bearing Stalins face and the phrase if i were here, we wouldnt be dealing with all this shit.
Stalin built a secret bunker under an old Communist Committee building in town in 1942, just after the narrow Soviet victory at the Battle of Moscow. These days its a pilgrimage destination. I went on a tour of the bunker, in which at least half my group consisted of people in their twenties. We descended to find the control room and apartment for the head of the USSR. The bunker was never used, but the guide explained that it was updated during the Cuban Missile Crisis and again after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Today it can hold up to six hundred people for five days and “even gets cell phone service.” Andrei, a twenty-four-year-old electrical engineer who was visiting from Moscow with three friends, spontaneously told me of Stalin that “he was a winner.” We were in front of an original military map of the Soviet counteroffensive. “For us young people, Stalin is number one. We must fight evil like during the Great Patriotic War.” Did any negative associations come to mind? “They say a lot of things, but what matters is the results,” he said. “I think there were more deaths in the Nineties with the gang wars and alcohol. That was our first experience with democracy—the worst period of our history.”
In this second summer of what Andrei called the “war on evil,” even the most zealous popes indulge the Stalin worship, despite his confiscation of Orthodox Church assets and the fact that he has turned many of their cathedrals into prisons, factories, and army barracks. It was Piotrovsky, at the Hermitage, who suggested I meet a young priest named Mikhail Rodin, whom he called “an emerging voice.” He lived in Balakovo, Piotrovsky added, “a place forgotten by God.”
Father Rodin, who is forty-four and has four children, belongs to the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church, which was born out of a seventeenth-century schism with the official Orthodox Church. A long history of repression and semi-clandestine masses followed. But today, the conflict with the main church, presided over by the crusading Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, seems to have subsided, with both factions supporting Russias sacred mission in Ukraine.
I arrived in Balakovo in the evening, the smell of ammonia in the air. Though the city revolved around two of the biggest power plants on the Volga, all its roads were dark. The only sign of life came from the Lucky Pub, which was hosting a concert by the Kiss, a popular local rock band—all the kids seemed to know their songs. I entered and felt like I was in the Midwest; there were pool tables, darts, French fries in baskets with checkered paper, and a sign reading make love not war.
Batyushka Rodin, who speaks excellent English, said that his church near Balakovos squalid industrial zone—a luxury lodge with fragrant pine logs, an oven to make the communion bread, icons donated by parishioners—had been financed by one Robert Stubblebine, an American native who relocated to Moscow. Hes known as a VP and early shareholder of Yandex, the Russian Google, started by his business partner Arkady Volozh, an oligarch who has called the war “barbaric” (probably just in an unsuccessful bid to be taken off the list of sanctioned billionaires).
![](https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/CUT_22-1124x844.jpg)
Holy Trinity Cathedral choir, Saratov
Rodin had other ideas. “The war is the last opportunity to bring salvation to the human soul,” he said with a beatific smile. “In the Book of Revelations, John the Apostle wrote of these last trying times for the human race, when everyone would have to choose their own path: they will either stay with God or go forth to great pain and suffering forever.” His tone didnt change when I asked about Stalins resurgent popularity. “I dont want to judge, because God cant be removed from the hearts of Russians,” he said. “No one called Stalin for help, no one called the Party for help. Everyone cried out to God!”
I know Russian priests fairly well—they tend to be rough and arrogant. Rodin was different, at once modern and archaic. He uses social media and medieval mannerisms. He has traveled a bit, but for him there is no place like Russia. I asked him what being Russian meant to him. “Were influenced by the immense nothingness around us, and by the harsh climate,” he said. “In a land like this, you have to have an objective, a dream. We Russians need to have something big to strive for. We dreamed of communism, equality, and of a life where no one is exploited by anyone. Every person the same as the next.” He went on: “If Russians believe in something, they believe until the end. They believe in God. Theyre ready to die for their faith. They believe in communism. Theyre ready to die for that. They believe in Russia and theyre ready to sacrifice themselves for Russia.”
Even the atomic bomb, *batyushka*?
“Of course,” he replied quickly. “Were ready to sacrifice ourselves. Because if we dont win, well burn it all down. If we cant achieve this bright future, then whats the point in living?” He grew more heated. “Our president is saying what everyone is thinking. If we dont have the Russia we want, were ready to martyr ourselves, sacrifice ourselves and the whole world if its unjust and evil. Theres no need for a world like that.”
I was back out on the street when I saw that I had a voicemail from Albert, from Shubert Island. He had composed a new reggae song: “At sunset the Volga is bathed in pure light,” he sang, “when illuminated by love, my heart is the same.”
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# Cabarets Endurance Run: The Untold History
A**s director Rebecca** Frecknall was rehearsing a new cast for her hit London revival of *Cabaret,* the actor playing Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer living in Berlin during the final days of the Weimar Republic, came onstage carrying that days newspaper as a prop. It happened to be *Metro,* the free London tabloid commuters read on their way to work. The date was February 25, 2022. When the actor said his line—“Weve got to leave Berlin—as soon as possible. Tomorrow!”—Frecknall was caught short. She noticed the papers headline: “Russia Invades Ukraine.”
*Cabaret,* the groundbreaking 1966 Broadway musical that tackles fascism, antisemitism, abortion, World War II, and the events leading up to the Holocaust, had certainly captured the times once again.
Back in rehearsals four months later, Frecknall and the cast got word that the Supreme Court had overturned *Roe v. Wade.* Every time she checks up on *Cabaret,* “it feels like something else has happened in the world,” she told me over coffee in London in September.
A month later, as Frecknall was preparing her production of *Cabaret* for its Broadway premiere, something else *did* happen: On October 7, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages.
The revival of *Cabaret*—starring [Eddie Redmayne](https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/careert-timeline-vf-career-timeline-eddie-redmayne) as the creepy yet seductive Emcee; Gayle Rankin as the gin-swilling nightclub singer Sally Bowles; and Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider, a landlady struggling to scrape by—opens April 21 at Manhattans August Wilson Theatre. It will do so in the shadow of a pogrom not seen since the *Einsatzgruppen* slaughtered thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe and in the shadow of a war between Israel and Hamas that continues into its fifth month, with the killing of thousands of civilians in Gaza.
Nearly 60 years after its debut, *Cabaret* still stings. That is its brilliance. And its tragedy.
R**edmayne has been** haunted by *Cabaret* ever since he played the Emcee in prep school. “I was staggered by the character,” he says. “The lack of definition of it, the enigma of it.” He played the part again during his first year at Cambridge at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where nearly 3,500 shoestring productions jostle for attention each summer. *Cabaret,* performed in a tiny venue that “stank,” Redmayne recalls, did well enough that the producers added an extra show. He was leering at the Kit Kat Club girls from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m. and then from 11 p.m. till two in the morning. “Youd wake up at midday. You barely see sunshine. I just became this gaunt, skeletal figure.” His parents came to see him and said, “You need vitamin D!”
In 2021, Redmayne, by then an Oscar winner for *The Theory of Everything* and a Tony winner for *Red,* was playing the Emcee again, this time in Frecknalls West End production. His dressing room on opening night was full of flowers. There was one bouquet with a card he did not have a chance to open until intermission. It was from [Joel Grey](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/02/cabaret-joel-grey-donald-trump-cautionary-tale-nazis), who originated the role on Broadway and won an Oscar for his performance alongside Liza Minnelli in the 1972 movie. He welcomed the young actor “to the family,” Redmayne says. “It was an extraordinary moment for me.”
*Cabaret* is based on *Goodbye to Berlin,* the British writer Christopher Isherwoods collection of stories and character studies set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis are clawing their way to power. Isherwood, who went to Berlin for one reason—“boys,” he wrote in his memoir *Christopher and His Kind*—lived in a dingy boarding house amid an array of sleazy lodgers who inspired his characters. But aside from a fleeting mention of a host at a seedy nightclub, there is no emcee in his vignettes. Nor is there an emcee in *I Am a Camera,* John Van Drutens hit 1951 Broadway play adapted from Isherwoods story “Sally Bowles” from *Goodbye to Berlin.*
The character, one of the most famous in Broadway history, was created by [Harold Prince](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2016/1/hal-prince), who produced and directed the original *Cabaret.* “People write about *Cabaret* all the time,” says [John Kander](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/11/two-men-and-a-star), who composed the shows music and is, at 96, the last living member of that creative team. “They write about Liza. They write about Joel, and sometimes about us \[Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb\]. None of that really matters. Its all Hal. Everything about this piece, even the variations that happen in different versions of it, is all because of Hal.”
In 1964, Prince produced his biggest hit: *Fiddler on the Roof.* In the final scene, Tevye and his family, having survived a pogrom, leave for America. There is sadness but also hope. And what of the Jews who did not leave? *Cabaret* would provide the tragic answer.
But Prince was after something else. Without hitting the audience over the head, he wanted to create a musical that echoed what was happening in America: young men being sent to their deaths in Vietnam; racists such as Alabama politician “Bull” Connor siccing attack dogs on civil rights marchers. In rehearsals, Prince put up Will Countss iconic photograph of a white student screaming at a Black student during the Little Rock crisis of 1957. “Thats our show,” he told the cast.
A bold idea he had early on was to juxtapose the lives of Isherwoods lodgers with one of the tawdry nightclubs Isherwood had frequented. In 1951, while stationed as a soldier in Stuttgart, Germany, Prince himself had hung around such a place. Presiding over the third-rate acts was a master of ceremonies in white makeup and of indeterminate sexuality. He “unnerved me,” Prince once told me. “But I never forgot him.”
Kander had seen the same kind of character at the opening of a [Marlene Dietrich](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1997/9/dietrich-lived-here) concert in Europe. “An overpainted little man waddled out and said, *Willkommen, bienvenue,* welcome,’ ” Kander recalls.
The first song Kander and Ebb wrote for the show was called “Willkommen.” They wrote 60 more songs. “Some of them were outrageous,” Kander says. “We wrote some antisemitic songs”—of which there were many in Weimar cabarets—“Good neighbor Cohen, loaned you a loan. We didnt get very far with that one.”
They did write one song *about* antisemitism: “If You Could See Her (The Gorilla Song),” in which the Emcee dances with his lover, a gorilla in a pink tutu. At the end of the number, he turns to the audience and whispers: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldnt look Jewishhh at all.” It was, they thought, the most powerful song in the score.
The working title of their musical was *Welcome to Berlin.* But then a woman who sold blocks of tickets to theater parties told Prince that her Jewish clients would not buy a show with “Berlin” in the title. Strolling along the beach one day, Joe Masteroff, who was writing the musicals book, thought of two recent hits, *Carnival* and *Camelot.* Both started with a *C* and had three syllables. Why not call the show *Cabaret*?
To play the Emcee, Prince tapped his friend Joel Grey. A nightclub headliner, Grey could not break into Broadway. “The theater was very high-minded,” he once said. When Prince called him, he was playing a pirate in a third-rate musical in New Yorks Jones Beach. “Hal knew I was dying,” Grey recounts over lunch in the West Village, where he lives. “I wanted to quit the business.”
At first, he struggled to create the Emcee, who did not interact with the other characters. He had numbers but “no words, no lines, no role,” Grey wrote in his memoir, *Master of Ceremonies.* A polished performer, he had no trouble with the songs, the dances, the antics. “But something was missing,” he says. Then he remembered a cheap comedian hed once seen in St. Louis. The comic had told lecherous jokes, gay jokes, sexist jokes—anything to get a laugh. One day in rehearsal, Grey did everything the comedian had done “to get the audience crazy. I was all over the girls, squeezing their breasts, touching their bottoms. They were furious. I was horrible. When it was over I thought, This is the end of my career.” He disappeared backstage and cried. “And then from out of the darkness came Mr. Prince,” Grey says. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, Joely, thats it.’ ”
*C**abaret*** **played its** first performance at the Shubert Theatre in Boston in the fall of 1966. Grey stopped the show with the opening number, “Willkommen.” “The audience wouldnt stop applauding,” Grey recalls. “I turned to the stage manager and said, Should I get changed for the next scene?’ ”
The musical ran long—it was in three acts—but it got a prolonged standing ovation. As the curtain came down, Richard Seff, an agent who represented Kander and Ebb, ran into Ebb in the aisle. “Its wonderful,” Seff said. “Youll fix the obvious flaws.” In the middle of the night, Seffs phone rang. It was Ebb. “You hated it!” the songwriter screamed. “You are of no help at all!”
Ebb was reeling because hed learned Prince was going to cut the show down to two acts. Ebb collapsed in his hotel bed, Kander holding one hand, Grey the other. “Youre not dying, Fred,” Kander told him. “Hal has not wrecked our show.”
*Cabaret* came roaring into New York, fueled by tremendous word of mouth. But there was a problem. Some Jewish groups were furious about “If You Could See Her.” How could you equate a gorilla with a Jew? they wanted to know, missing the point entirely. They threatened to boycott the show. Prince, his eye on ticket sales, told Ebb to change the line “She wouldnt look Jewish at all” to something less offensive: “She isnt a *meeskite* at all,” using the Yiddish word for a homely person.
It is difficult to imagine the impact *Cabaret* had on audiences in 1966. World War II had ended only 21 years before. Many New York theatergoers had fled Europe or fought the Nazis. There were Holocaust survivors in the audience; there were people whose relatives had died in the gas chambers. Grey knew the shows power. Some nights, dancing with the gorilla, hed whisper “Jewish” instead of “meeskite.” The audience gasped.
*Cabaret* won eight Tony Awards in 1967, catapulted Grey to Broadway stardom, and ran for three years. Seff sold the movie rights for $1.5 million, a record at the time. Prince, about to begin rehearsals for Stephen Sondheims *Company,* was unavailable to direct the movie, scheduled for a 1972 release. So the producers hired the director and choreographer [Bob Fosse](https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/bob-fosse-biography-review), who needed the job because his previous movie, *Sweet Charity,* had been a bust.
Fosse, who saw Prince as a rival, stamped out much of what Prince had done, including Joel Grey. He wanted Ruth Gordon to play the Emcee. But Grey was a sensation, and the studio wanted him. “Its either me or Joel,” Fosse said. When the studio opted for Grey, Fosse backed down. But he resented Grey, and relations between them were icy.
A 26-year-old [Liza Minnelli](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2002/03/happyvalley200203), on the way to stardom herself, was cast as Sally Bowles. The handsome Michael York would play the Cliff character, whose name in the movie was changed to Brian Roberts. And supermodel [Marisa Berenson](https://www.vogue.com/article/marisa-berenson-a-life-in-pictures) (who at the time seemed to be on the cover of *Vogue* every other month) got the role of a Jewish department store heiress, a character Fosse took from Isherwoods short story “The Landauers.”
*Cabaret* was shot on location in Munich and Berlin. “The atmosphere was extremely heavy,” Berenson recalls. “There was the whole Nazi period, and I felt very much the Berlin Wall, that darkness, that fear, all that repression.” She adored Fosse, but he kept her off balance (she was playing a young woman traumatized by what was happening around her) by whispering “obscene things in my ear. He was shaking me up.”
Minnelli, costumed by Halston for the film, found Fosse “brilliant” and “incredibly intense,” she tells *Vanity Fair* in a rare interview. “He used every part of me, including my scoliosis. One of my great lessons in working with Fosse was never to think that whatever he was asking couldnt be done. If he said do it, you had to figure out how to do it. You didnt think about how much it hurt. You just made it happen.”
Back in New York, Fosse arranged a private screening of *Cabaret* for Kander and Ebb. When it was over, they said nothing. “We really hated it,” Kander admits. Then they went to the opening at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The audience loved it. “We realized it was a masterpiece,” Kander says, laughing. “It just wasnt our show.”
The success of the movie—with its eight Academy Awards—soon overshadowed the musical. When people thought of *Cabaret,* they thought of finger snaps and bowler hats. They thought of Fosse and, of course, Minnelli, who would adopt the lyric “Life is a cabaret” as her signature. Her best-actress Oscar became part of a dynasty: Her mother, [Judy Garland](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2000/4/till-mgm-do-us-part), and father, director [Vincente Minnelli](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2000/4/till-mgm-do-us-part), each had one of their own. “Papa was even more excited about the Oscar than I was,” she says. “And, baby, I was—no, I *am* still—excited.”
By 1987—in part to burnish *Cabaret*s theatrical legacy—Prince decided to recreate his original production on Broadway, with Grey once again serving as the Emcee. But it had the odor of mothballs. The *New York Times* drama critic Frank Rich wrote that it was not, as Sally Bowles sings, “perfectly marvelous,” but “it does approach the perfectly mediocre.” Much of the show, he added, was “old-fashioned and plodding.”
I**n the early 1990s,** [Sam Mendes](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/03/sam-mendes-rules-for-directors), then a young director running a pocket-size theater in London called the Donmar Warehouse, heard [the novelist Martin Amis](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/05/martin-amis-is-dead-at-73) give a talk. Amis was writing *Times Arrow,* about a German doctor who works in a concentration camp. “Ive already written about the Nazis and people say to me, Why are you doing it again?’ ” Amis said. “And I say, what else is there?”
“At the end of the day,” Mendes tells me, “the biggest question of the 20th century is, How could this have happened?’ ” Mendes decided to stage *Cabaret* at the Donmar in 1993. Another horror was unfolding at the time: Serb paramilitaries were slaughtering Bosnian Muslims, “ethnic cleansing” on an unimaginable scale.
Mendes hit on a terrific concept for his production: He transformed his theater into a nightclub. The audience sat at little tables with red lamps. And the performers were truly seedy. He told the actors playing the Kit Kat Club girls not to shave their armpits or their legs. “Unshaved armpits—it sent shock waves around the theater,” he recalls. Since there was no room—or money—for an orchestra, the actors played the instruments. Some of them could hit the right notes.
To play the Emcee, Mendes cast [Alan Cumming](https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2014/4/alan-cumming), a young Scottish actor whose comedy act Mendes had enjoyed. “Can you sing?” Mendes asked him. “Yeah,” Cumming said. Mendes threw ideas at him and “he was open to everything.” Just before the first preview, Mendes suggested he come out during the intermission and chat up the audience, maybe dance with a woman. Mendes, frantic before the preview, never got around to giving Cumming any more direction than that. No matter. Cumming sauntered onstage as people were settling back at their tables, picked a man out of the crowd, and started dancing with him. “Watch your hands,” he said. “I lead.”
[Cummings Emcee was impish](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/alan-cumming-is-a-fountain-of-youth-unto-himself), fun, gleefully licentious. The audience loved him. “I have never had less to do with a great performance in one of my shows than I had to do with Alan,” Mendes says.
When Joe Masteroff came to see the show in London, Mendes was nervous. Hed taken plenty of liberties with the script. Cliff, the narrator, was now openly gay. (One night, when Cliff kissed a male lover, a man in the audience shouted, “Rubbish!”) And he made the Emcee a victim of the Nazis. In the final scene, Cumming, in a concentration camp uniform affixed with a yellow Star of David and a pink triangle, is jolted, as if hes thrown himself onto the electrified fence at Birkenau.
“I should be really pissed with you,” Masteroff told Mendes after the show. “But it works.” Kander liked it too, though he was not happy that the actors didnt play his score all that well. Ebb hated it. “He wanted more professionalism,” Mendes says. “And he was not wrong. There was a dangerous edge of amateurishness about it.”
The Roundabout Theatre Company brought *Cabaret* to New York in 1998. Rob Marshall, who would go on to direct the movie *Chicago,* helped Mendes give the show some Broadway gloss while retaining its grittiness. The two young directors were “challenging each other, pushing each other,” Marshall remembers, “to create something unique.”
Cumming reprised his role as the Emcee. He was on fire. [Natasha Richardson](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/07/micheal-richardson-pays-sweet-homage-to-late-mother-natasha), the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, played Sally Bowles. She was not on fire. Shed never been in a musical before, and when she sang, “There was absolutely no sound coming out,” Kander says.
“She beat herself up about her singing all the time,” Mendes adds. “There was a deep, self-critical aspect of Tash that was instilled by her dad, a brilliant man but extremely cutting.” He once said to her out of nowhere: “Were going to have to do something about your chin, dear.” As Mendes saw it, she always felt that she could never measure up to her parents.
Kander went to work with her, and slowly a voice emerged. It was not a “polished sound,” Marshall says, but it was haunting, vulnerable. Still, Cumming was walking away with the show. At the first preview, when he took his bow, the audience roared. When Richardson took hers, they were polite. Mendes remembers going backstage and finding her “in tears.” But she persevered and through sheer force of will created a Sally Bowles that “will break your heart,” Masteroff told me the day before I saw that production in the spring of 1998. She did indeed. (Eleven years later, while learning how to ski on a bunny hill on Mont Tremblant, she fell down. She died of a head injury two days later.)
The revival of *Cabaret* won four Tony Awards, including one for Richardson as best actress in a musical. It ran nearly 2,400 performances at the Roundabouts Studio 54 and was revived again in 2014. And the money, money, money, as the song goes, poured in. Once Masteroff, having already filed his taxes at the end of a lucrative *Cabaret* year, went to the mailbox and opened a royalty check for $60,000. “What the hell am I supposed to do with *this*?” he snapped.
R**ebecca Frecknall grew** up on Mendess Donmar Warehouse production of *Cabaret.* The BBC filmed it, and when it aired, her father videotaped it. She watched it “religiously.” But when she came to direct her production, she had to put Mendess version out of her mind.
Mendes turned his little theater into a nightclub. Frecknall, working with the brilliant set and costume designer Tom Scutt, has upped the game. They have transformed the entire theater into a Weimar cabaret. You stand in line at the stage door, waiting, you hope, to be let in. Once inside, youre served drinks while the Kit Kat Club girls dance and flirt with you. The shows logo is a geometric eye. Scutt sprinkles the motif throughout his sets and costumes. “Its all part of the voyeurism,” Scutt explains. “The sense of always being watched, always watching—responsibility, culpability, implication, blame.”
Mendess *Cabaret,* like Fosses, had a black-and-white aesthetic—black fishnet stockings, black leather coats, a white face for the Emcee. Frecknall and Scutt begin their show with bright colors, which slowly fade to gray as the walls close in on the characters. “Color and individuality—to grayness and homogeneity,” Frecknall says.
As the first woman to direct a major production of *Cabaret,* Frecknall has focused attention on the Kit Kat Club girls—Rosie, Fritzie, Frenchie, Lulu, and Texas. “Often what Ive seen in other productions is this homogenized group of pretty, white, skinny girls in their underwear,” she insists. Her Kit Kat Club girls are multiethnic. Some are transgender. Through performances and costumes, they are no longer appendages of the Emcee but vivid characters in their own right.
Her boldest stroke has been to reinvent the Emcee. She and Redmayne have turned him into a force of malevolence. He is still sexy and seductive, but as the show goes on, he becomes a skeletal puppet master manipulating the other characters to, in many cases, their doom. If Cummings Emcee was, in the end, a Holocaust victim, Redmaynes is, in Frecknalls words, “a perpetrator.”
U**nwrapping a grilled** cheese sandwich in his enormous Upper West Side townhouse, Kander says that his husband had recently asked him a pointed question: “Did it ever occur to you that all of you guys who created *Cabaret* were Jewish?”
“Not really,” Kander replied. “We were just trying to put on a show.” Or, as Masteroff once said: “It was a job.”
Its a “job” that has endured. The producers of the Broadway revival certainly have faith in the shows staying power. Theyve spent $25 million on the production, a big chunk of it going to reconfigure the August Wilson Theatre into the Kit Kat Club. Audience members will enter through an alleyway, be given a glass of schnapps, and can then enjoy a preshow drink at a variety of lounges designed by Scutt: The Pineapple Room, Red Bar, Green Bar, and Vault Bar. The show will be performed in the round, tables and chairs ringing the stage. And theyll be able to enjoy a bottle (or two) of top-flight Champagne throughout the performance.
This revival is certainly the most lavish *Cabaret* in a long time. But there have been hundreds of other, less heralded productions over the years, with more on the way. A few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, *Cabaret* was running in Moscow. Last December, Concord Theatricals, which licenses the show, authorized a production at the Molodyy Theatre in Kyiv. And a request is in for a production in Israel, the first since the show was produced in Tel Aviv in 2014.
“The interesting thing about the piece is that it seems to change with the times,” Kander says. “Nothing about it seems to be written in stone except its narrative and its implications.”
And whenever someone tells him the show is more relevant than ever, Kander shakes his head and says, “I know. And isnt that awful?”′
- [Anne Hathaway](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/anne-hathaway-cover-story) on Tuning Out the Haters and Embracing Her True Self
- And the [MAGA Mutiny](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/steve-bannon-maga-mutiny-mccarthy-gaetz-trump) That Brought McCarthys House Down
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# Can a Film Star Be Too Good-Looking?
The weather for New York on Friday, April 12th, is set to be overcast, with an average temperature of fifty-two degrees. Rain may be waiting in the wings. So, heres an idea. Escape to Film Forum and watch Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, dripping wet and lightly broiled by a Provençal sun, make out beside a swimming pool. That should suck the grayness from your day.
The movie—“La Piscine” (1969), directed by Jacques Deray—is one of eleven features that are being screened at Film Forum in tribute to Delon. He is still alive, at the age of eighty-eight, though reportedly in poor health. Of late, he has found himself at the center of a sour feud, involving his children and his housekeeper-companion, and the press has reported every wrinkle in the dispute. What better way to wish him well, and to register our scorn at the treacherous flow of time, than to behold him in his pomp? The retrospective, which runs to April 18th and has been preceded by a two-week run of “Le Samouraï” (1967), moves from the late springtime of Delons career to its high summer. The earliest works are “Purple Noon” and “Rocco and His Brothers,” both of which were first screened in 1960, and the last is “[Mr. Klein](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-hour-of-reckoning-descends-in-mr-klein)” (1976). Cultists will be gratified by the inclusion of the overheated “Red Sun” (1970), which stars Toshiro Mifune, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress, and Delon. What a cast! Its like a salad bar at the United Nations.
To be an international figure, in movies, is something of a glamorous embarrassment. As far back as 1964, Delon had to climb on board the “Yellow Rolls-Royce,” a juddering M-G-M vehicle, in the company of Rex Harrison, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, and Omar Sharif—the internationalist par excellence, a frictionless all-purpose “foreigner,” ever ready for a deft hand of bridge. Fifteen years later, I clearly remember staring, mouth agape, at “The Concorde: Airport 79.” Delon, as the harassed captain of the plane, was joined by Bibi Andersson (an incandescent stalwart for Ingmar Bergman), Mercedes McCambridge (formerly the voice of Beelzebub in “The Exorcist”), and, as a flight attendant, Sylvia Kristel (no stranger to airborne tumult, as scholars of “Emmanuelle” could tell you). Delon looked weary and resentful, probably because, for once, he was in danger of being outshone by a co-star more gorgeous than him. More galling still, she was made of metal. Appealing Delon may have been, but, in the gorgeosity stakes, the Concorde won by a nose.
As for American fame, Delon never quite broke the code, though it was not for want of trying. Look at him, hilariously suave, in white tie and tails, invited to present an Oscar at the Academy Awards in 1965 and, in so doing, to lay on the Frenchness like *crème Chantilly*. “I am delighted to be over here, even though it is now spring in Paris and the chestnuts are in bloom,” he says. Bob Hope, standing beside him, cracks up, takes a beat, and adds, “You should feel right at home. Some of minell bloom tonight, too.” Delon duly announces “Mary Poppins”—or, as he calls it, “Marry Poppins,” like somebody issuing an instruction—as the winner for visual effects, and you can imagine his publicists, behind the scenes, planning their campaign. Maybe this cute kid could become, after Louis Jourdan, Hollywoods next in-house Gaul. Maybe they could find him another “Letter from an Unknown Woman” (1948). Or, better still, another “Gigi” (1958).
If the plan faltered, it may be because neither the melancholic grace that Jourdan brought to the first of those films, not the charm-laced levity that he displayed in the second, lay within Delons ambit. In truth, his skills are fairly restricted. Fine actor though he is, no jury would convict him of being a great one. Yet he is a star of enduring magnitude, especially in France, and what he *did* do, when he was shrewd enough to operate within his limits, was so compelling that a formidable squad of directors was drawn toward him: Joseph Losey for “Mr. Klein,” Michelangelo Antonioni for “LEclisse” (1962), and Jean-Pierre Melville for the bleak triad of “Le Samouraï,” “Le Cercle Rouge” (1970), and “Un Flic” (1972). Luchino Visconti used Delon twice, once for “Rocco and His Brothers” and again for “The Leopard” (1963). When asked why he had chosen Delon to play Rocco, the most saintly of the siblings, Visconti replied, “Because Alain Delon *is* Rocco. If I had been obliged to use another actor, I would not have made the film.”
What is it about this particular actor, then, that marks him out and favors him with that uncanny, self-enclosing remoteness that we associate with stardom, even at its most gregarious? It was not his voice, for sure; when he is dubbed into Italian for Visconti and Antonioni, there isnt much of a letdown. If we watch him greedily, asking for more, it is for a reason so obvious, and so elemental, that stating it plainly seems almost indecent, but here goes. Alain Delon, in his prime, was the most beautiful man in the history of the movies.
The defining of beauty is a thankless task. It has taxed and eluded professional thinkers, bibulous poets, and writers of *billets-doux* so cheesily heartfelt that they have to be kept in the fridge. In the dusk of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant argued for a disinterested evaluation of beauty—“the beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is represented as the object of a UNIVERSAL delight”—and was roundly abused, almost a hundred years later, for his presumption:
> From the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kants famous definition of the beautiful. That is beautiful, says Kant, which pleases *without interest*. Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an artist, an observer truly capable of aesthetic appreciation—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful *une promesse de bonheur*.
That could only be Nietzsche. No other philosopher would get away with hurling worm-based invective at his peers. As it happens, he slightly misquotes Stendhal, who proposed, in a footnote to his study of love, that beauty “is only the *promise* of happiness.” That “only” adds a wonderful shrug; it hints that happiness may not be such a big deal, after all, and reminds us that promises are as often broken as kept.
Is even Stendhals attitude, worldly and accommodating as it sounds, permissible these days? The broaching of beauty, as a theme, is no longer to be encouraged. Ruminations on the subject now call for a handling so delicate that it verges on the paranoid, and they carry a high risk of nonsense: bullshit in a china shop. As moviegoers and critics, say, we hesitate to pass comment upon the appearance of a person onscreen, especially if that appearance makes us catch our breath, and we have good cause to pause. The dread of objectification cuts deep. Easier, by far, to approach the matter as a born-again Platonist, peering through the visible veneer of the characters, while you gnaw your popcorn, to discern the immanent forms below. Force of personality can be praised to the hilt, as can dramatic dexterity. If anything about the character gladdens the eye, however, its probably best to keep quiet. Even haircuts can be a minefield.
In one respect, this is nonsense. Movies, from their infancy, have been in the objectifying racket. The making of an appearance, however fiercely we may object to its methods, is their raison dêtre. Celluloid is a strip of flammable skin, coated with photosensitive chemicals, and unsurpassed in its registration of human flesh—the warm and no less sensitive exterior of living creatures. If all that counts is inward essence, what the hell were those teams of makeup artists, coiffeurs, and cinematographers employed by the major studios, in the golden age, doing all day? What was the point of the costume tests, for example, that William H. Daniels, the director of photography on “Queen Christina” (1933), ran on Greta Garbo almost ninety years ago? Silently she smiles, poses, turns, casts her gaze upward and sideways, and confronts the camera head-on; at one dumbfounding moment, Daniels cuts her face in half, diagonally, with a scarf of black shadow, leaving just one eye exposed. She rests her hand on her chin, as though lost in thought. Garbo showed us all how to get lost.
And thats the kicker. Of all the stars that ever were, it is Garbo who best perpetuated the possibility—or the captivating lie—that film could be more than a simple surface. Beauty *is* skin-deep, but somehow, if youre Garbo, you can intimate the blood flow of feelings beneath. Daniels, who photographed her in twenty-one films, had a keener grasp of that mystery than anyone else, though he was left with a specific regret. In 1969, the year before his death, he confessed, “The saddest thing in my career is that I was never able to photograph her in color. I begged the studio. I felt I had to get those incredible blue eyes in color, but they said no. The process at the time was cumbersome and expensive, and the pictures were already making money. I still feel sad about it.” I like to think that, before he died, Daniels might have seen “Purple Noon,” and the eyes of Alain Delon. Here was a new kind of blue.
René Cléments “Purple Noon” is adapted from Patricia Highsmiths novel “[The Talented Mr. Ripley](https://www.amazon.com/Talented-Mr-Ripley-Patricia-Highsmith/dp/0393332144).” So is Anthony Minghellas film of that title from 1999, and also “Ripley,” now on Netflix, which is determined to winnow away any specks of pleasure, energy, or guilty fun from the tale. Not so “Purple Noon,” in which Ripley starts off at the edges of the action and gradually oils his way into the core. Casting is everything; Minghella arranges for his most handsome performer, Jude Law, to play Dickie Greenleaf, the wealthy wastrel whom Ripley (Matt Damon) slays and then seeks to replace. But the earlier Ripley is played by Delon; in all the plenitude of his splendor, *he* is the murderer, and that makes it much easier—indeed, compulsory—for us to be wooed by his cunning machinations, just as Highsmith intended. Late in the film, in an unforgettable closeup, he trains those eyes of his, as clear and as cloudless as the Mediterranean sky, upon Dickies girlfriend, who still knows nothing of the crime, and who considers Ripley an odd fellow but a loyal pal. We know better, or worse. We know that beauty is the beast.
All of which is a brazen refutation of Stendhal. This Ripley doesnt promise happiness. He promises trouble, and from that springs the fundamental doubleness of *Delonisme*. Here is someone, evidently, from whom we ought to steer clear, yet we cant get away from him. We cant even look away. Whats more, Delon is highly unusual, among those of divine aspect, in that he is said to have cultivated connections with the actual underworld. Murmurs of scandal and impropriety dogged him for decades. In 1968, the body of a Serbian man named Stevan Marković, who was a friend of Delons and had been his bodyguard, was found on a garbage dump in a village outside Paris. A Corsican gangster was arrested, charged with the killing, but then released. Darkly exciting rumors of parties attended by Marković, Delon, and Claude Pompidou—the wife of the French Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, who was campaigning for the Presidency—added to the mix. Markovićs death remained unsolved, and Delon was thereafter shadowed, though never overshadowed, by an air of menace. Indeed, he did little to dispel it. What better way to nourish, or to intensify, the fictional figures whom you are hired to portray than to allow your life, offstage, to feed into them?
With that murk in mind, its tempting to trace a direct line from Ripley to the assassin played by Delon in “Le Samouraï,” who, in a delicious gesture of prëemption, already dresses like an undertaker: dark suit, dark tie, white shirt. Its like a uniform—a lethal update, so to speak, on the calculated nattiness of Piero, the broker played by Delon in “LEclisse.” Piero is no villain, but he strikes us as morally null; when a drunkard steals his Alfa Romeo, crashes it into a river, and dies, all that really concerns Piero are the dents in the bodywork. “I think Ill sell it,” he says. We first observe him darting to and fro at the stock exchange in Rome, but later he slows to wandering pace, strolling around half-empty streets, meeting up (or, famously and climactically, failing to meet up) with a woman named Vittoria (Monica Vitti). Whether they can summon the strength to be in love is open to question. One of their most impassioned kisses is impeded by a pane of glass. Even their lips cant meet.
Stand back from the retrospective at Film Forum; stop swooning for a minute; try to be as Kantian as you can, suppressing the thirst of your personal interest; and consider how the idea of beauty has been reconfigured by the case of Delon. First, beauty is *lonely*. In a relationship, one side of him remains unreachable; in a crowd, he is set apart. (Watch him ambling through a fish market, in “Purple Noon,” tracked by a handheld camera. People keep glancing at him, as if this were a documentary. The very fish take a peek.) Second, beauty is *modern*. The clean, carved lines of Delons face require outfits to match; in “The Leopard,” he is dashing enough, yet oddly uneasy in period costume. He also sports a mustache, as slender as a rapier, and even that feels a little excessive. There are certain glories of cinema that we deface at our peril. (I have always refused to see the 1964 comedy “Father Goose,” on the ground that the trailer depicts Cary Grant with stubble. Blasphemy!) Third, beauty is *vulnerable*. There is a mournful sadism in the spectacle of Delon, in “Rocco and His Brothers,” being hurt by a nocturnal brawl, and in the boxing ring. Hes no featherweight, but he lacks bulk, and you wince to see him take his lumps. The tape applied to a cut on his eyebrow stays there, in the ensuing scenes, like the bruise on the cheekbone of Michael Corleone. Fourth, beauty is *serious*. For optimum effect, Delon should be neither laughing nor cavalier. His stabs at comedy, thankfully infrequent, are no joke.
Needless to say, that yen for solemnity is not exclusive to Delon. George Folsey was the director of photography on “Lady of the Tropics” (1939), and his mission was to lend lustre to Hedy Lamarr. Not exactly demanding, youd think, but there was a hitch. “She was a very, very beautiful woman to photograph—until she smiled. It was difficult for her to smile and be attractive,” Folsey said. By common consent, no one lovelier than Lamarr ever set foot on Californian soil; if only Kant had hung around and seen her in “Algiers” (1938), he would have leapt from his seat and shouted, “Hey, *meine Herren,* check it out! Universality! Just like I told you!”
Yet the fact remains that Lamarr, like Ava Gardner or Gene Tierney—or Delon—is stuck on the lower slopes of Mount Olympus. It is paradoxical (and, for mere mortals, cheering) that some of the greatest stars, the occupants whose slot at the top of the mountain is secure, were scarcely good-looking at all, and certainly conformed to no classical ideal of pulchritude. Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford: they knocked an audience sideways, but no one could mistake them for knockouts. Only very rarely do we encounter beings who simultaneously dazzle the senses, command the box-office, and remain, as it were, in communion with themselves. When I first glimpsed Edward Steichens *Vanity Fair* portrait of Gary Cooper, from 1930, I thought, O.K., so perfection *has* been achieved. Game over.
If I could cram one more movie into the Delon package at Film Forum, it would be Volker Schlöndorffs “Swann in Love.” I havent seen it since it was released in 1984. But I recall Jeremy Irons, as Charles Swann, pretty much fainting as he drinks in the fragrance of the corsage worn by Odette (Ornella Muti) between her breasts, which struck me as a useful guide to the etiquette of desire. Above all, I remember Delon as the Baron de Charlus—a trifle stiff, the bloom gone from his youthfulness, and a touch of twilight in the azure of his gaze. Grace notes of the homoerotic had been perceptible in Delon ever since “Purple Noon,” and now they evolved into a sad music, in the person of Charlus. With a white-gloved hand, as if flirtation had become an effort of will, he pinched the cheek of a beau.
Can we, or should we, cut beauty out of the conversation altogether? So natural an insult to our faith in human equality seems, well, unnatural. Yet there it is, no more liable to extinction than a peacock. In any case, the overwhelming majority of us will never know how it feels, or what it might mean, to be beautiful. Simply imagining that status, with its unearthly blessings and its many complications (whod want to be stared at just for walking into a room?) is a challenge. What we *can* conceive of, perhaps, is the fading of the glow: having the world at your feet, and your fingertips, and feeling it slip away as age dims the lights on your looks. Its the oldest story of all. Helen must have told it to herself, in her dotage, long after the ships had sailed home from Troy. In the messy mythology of our own era, Alain Delon—the blue-eyed boy, the bad guy in the excellent suit—told the story from the start. No doubt he will see it through to the end. ♦
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# Chinese Organized Crimes Latest U.S. Target: Gift Cards
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive [our biggest stories](https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/the-big-story?source=www.propublica.org&placement=top-note&region=national) as soon as theyre published.
Federal authorities are investigating the involvement of Chinese organized crime rings in gift card fraud schemes that have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars or more from American consumers.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has launched a task force, whose existence has not previously been reported, to combat a scheme known as “card draining,” in which thieves use stolen or altered card numbers to siphon off money before the owner can spend it. The initiative has been dubbed “Project Red Hook,” for the perpetrators ties to China and their exploitation of cards hung in store kiosks on “J-hooks.”
This marks the first time that federal authorities have focused on the role of Chinese organized crime in gift card fraud and devoted resources to fighting it. Homeland Security Investigations, a DHS agency, began prioritizing gift card fraud late last year in response to a flurry of consumer complaints and arrests connected to card draining.
Over the past 18 months, law enforcement across the country has arrested about 100 people for card draining, of whom 80 to 90 are Chinese nationals or Chinese Americans, according to Adam Parks, a Homeland Security assistant special agent in charge based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parks, who is leading the task force, estimates that another 1,000 people could be involved in card draining in the U.S., mostly as runners for the gangs.
“Were talking hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially billions of dollars, \[and\] thats a substantial risk to our economy and to peoples confidence in their retail environment,” he told ProPublica.
Card draining is when criminals remove gift cards from a store display, open them in a separate location, and either record the card numbers and PINs or replace them with a new barcode. The crooks then repair the packaging, return to a store and place the cards back on a rack. When a customer unwittingly selects and loads money onto a tampered card, the criminal is able to access the card online and steal the balance.
Federal investigators believe multiple Chinese criminal organizations are involved in card draining and are using the proceeds to fund other illicit activities, from narcotics to human trafficking, according to Parks. ProPublica recently revealed [Chinese organized crimes involvement](https://www.propublica.org/article/chinese-organized-crime-us-marijuana-market) in the illegal U.S. cannabis industry and the [laundering of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl profits](https://www.propublica.org/article/china-cartels-xizhi-li-money-laundering). ProPublica has also exposed how [Walmart and other retailers have facilitated the spread of gift card fraud](https://www.propublica.org/article/walmart-financial-services-became-fraud-magnet-gift-cards-money-laundering) and has revealed the role of Chinese fraud rings in gift card laundering.
The DHS team in Baton Rouge led an investigation that resulted in the conviction and [2023 sentencing](https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdla/pr/canadian-man-sentenced-lengthy-federal-prison-sentence-scheme-operate-illicit-online) to prison of a Canadian man who stole more than $22 million by operating an illicit online gift card marketplace that victimized American consumers and businesses. As arrests for card draining began piling up around the country, Parks and special agent Dariush Vollenweider saw the need for a national response.
Last November, they convened a two-day summit at DHS headquarters in Washington, D.C., attended by many of the countrys top retailers and gift card suppliers. Federal authorities pushed the industry to share information and help thwart the gangs. The agency then issued a bulletin in December alerting law enforcement across the country about the card-tampering tactics. Parks said about 15 Homeland Security agents are now spending most of their time on Project Red Hook.
“Its not just a one-store problem,” Vollenweider said. “Its not just a Secret Service or DHS or FBI problem. Its an industry problem that needs to be addressed.”
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/Target-Gift-Cards.png?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=444&q=80&w=800&s=993a4a41a586ebcc47cb9b71e68ee7b6)
The Illinois State Police found hundreds of altered gift cards in the back of a car during a traffic stop in January 2023. Credit: United States District Court
Americans are expected to spend more than $200 billion on gift cards this year, according to an industry estimate. Retailers love gift cards because they drive sales and profit: Consumers typically spend more than a cards value when they shop, and chains like Walmart and Target earn a profit when someone buys a third-party gift card, such as those from Apple or Google.
Data from retailers and consumers shows that card draining has skyrocketed in recent years. Target alone has seen $300 million stolen from customers due to card draining, according to comments last June from a company loss prevention officer contained in [a Florida sheriffs office report](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24536188-gainesville-case-detailed-arrest-report). A recent survey by AARP, the nonprofit advocacy group for people over age 50, found that almost a quarter of Americans have [given or received a card with no balance](https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/work-finances-retirement/fraud-consumer-protection/gift-card-scams-survey.html) on it, presumably because the money had been stolen. More than half of victims surveyed said they couldnt get a credit or refund. (Apple, Walmart and Target say, in their terms and conditions, that they are not responsible for lost or stolen gift cards.)
More broadly, almost 60% of retailers said they experienced an [increase in gift card scams](https://nrf.com/research/national-retail-security-survey-2023) between 2022 and 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, Americans lost close to $1 billion to card draining and other gift card scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Target and Walmart have faced class-action suits from consumers who bought or received gift cards only to discover the balance had been stolen. In each case, the plaintiffs alleged that the companies have failed to secure the packaging of gift cards and to monitor their displays. “The tampering of Gift Cards purchased from Target is rampant and widespread and Target is well-aware of the problem, yet Target continues to sell unsecure Gift Cards susceptible to tampering without warning consumers of this fact,” reads the complaint in the Target case.
The Walmart case was resolved in 2022 with an undisclosed settlement, and Target is engaged in settlement talks. [Apple settled a similar card-draining class-action case](https://www.shaygiftcardsettlement.com/) in January, agreeing to pay $1.8 million. Walmart and Apple did not admit liability.
Apple declined to comment about card draining and the DHS investigation. In court filings in the class-action, Apple said that since the cards were purchased at Walmart, “the fraud occurred as a result of Walmarts security protocols, rather than Apples.” A Walmart spokesperson told ProPublica, “Although we will not comment on ongoing investigations, we are proud of our routine work with federal law enforcement to stay ahead of these fraudsters and help keep customers safe.”
Target denied in court filings that its gift card security practices were inadequate and that its cards were susceptible to third-party tampering. “We are aware of the prevalence of gift card tampering and take this issue very seriously,” Target said in a statement to ProPublica. “Our cyber fraud and abuse team uses technical controls to help protect guests, and our store teams inspect cards for physical signs of tampering.” Target said it encourages employees to watch for people buying “high dollar amounts or large quantities of gift cards, or tampering with gift cards in stores.” Like Walmart, Target said it works closely with law enforcement.
Gift card scammers linked to Chinese criminal organizations trick their victims in many ways besides card draining. Some scams dupe victims into unwittingly paying criminals with gift cards. Whatever the ruse, the crime rings make use of low-level “runners” in the U.S., who are almost exclusively Chinese nationals or Chinese Americans. In card draining, the runners assist with removing, tampering and restocking of gift cards, according to court documents and investigators.
A single runner driving from store to store can swipe or return thousands of tampered cards to racks in a short time. “What they do is they just fly into the city and they get a rental car and they just hit every big-box location that they can find along a corridor off an interstate,” said Parks.
In a 24-hour period last December, an alleged runner named Ming Xue visited 14 Walmarts in Ohio before being arrested, according to court documents. Police said they found 2,260 Visa, Apple and Mastercard gift cards in his car. Xue entered the U.S. illegally months before his arrest, according to a prosecution motion. He has pleaded innocent.
DHS is looking at whether Chinese criminal organizations bring people into the U.S. to use them as card-draining runners. John Cassara, a retired federal agent and the author of “China-Specified Unlawful Activities: CCP Inc., Transnational Crime and Money Laundering,” said Chinese criminal enterprises often smuggle workers across the border for other enterprises such as prostitution or growing marijuana.
Parks said investigators are aware that “some of the individuals who were arrested were within weeks to months of being encountered illegally crossing the southern border.”
Other alleged card-draining runners entered the U.S. legally and told police they were hired via online postings. Donghui Liao was arrested at a Florida Target after employees noticed him removing gift cards from a bag and placing them on racks. Through a translator, he told police that his employer hired him online and mailed gift cards to him, according to court documents. He was paid 30 cents for each card he returned to the rack. Police said they found $60,000 worth of tampered cards in his possession. Liao remains in custody and his case was recently transferred to federal court. The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment and Liao has pleaded innocent.
In New Hampshire, police arrested three people between December and March for, among other alleged crimes, using stolen gift card balances to purchase millions of dollars worth of electronics such as iPhones. An apartment used by two of the suspects contained “a large quantity of Apple brand devices, cash, and a computer program that appeared to be running gift card numbers, in real-time,” according to a police report. (Criminals use software to automatically check gift card balances so they can be alerted when a customer buys and loads money onto a tampered card.) The fraudsters typically export the electronics back to China to resell them, according to Vollenweider.
Parks said Red Hook is recommending anti-fraud measures to retailers, such as closer scrutiny of gift card displays, while also heightening awareness of the problem among merchants and local law enforcement. Store security and local police have sometimes treated runners as small-time annoyances and booted them from stores, rather than arresting and prosecuting them, according to Parks. The task force hopes to work with local police to locate and charge previously released runners.
“Its important for us to start delivering consequences,” he said.
Correction
**April 10, 2024:** Based on information provided by a Walmart spokesperson, this story originally stated incorrectly that Walmart attended a two-day summit between DHS and top retailers to address gift card fraud. Walmart subsequently said it did not attend the November meeting. Walmart is participating in Project Red Hook.
**Clarification, April 10, 2024:** This story has been clarified to note that the investigation described in the article is being conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a DHS agency.
Doris Burke contributed research.
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# Dark Matter | Hazlitt
**In the early aughts**, Frank Warren ran a medical document delivery business in Germantown, Maryland. It was a monotonous job, involving daily trips to government offices to copy thousands of pages of journal articles for pharmaceutical companies, law firms, and non-profits. By his early forties, he had a house in a nice subdivision, a wife, a young daughter, and a dog. His family fostered children for a few weeks or months, and he felt a sense of purpose in helping kids who were suffering acute crises in their own homes. From the outside, things appeared to be going better than well. But inside, something was missing: A sense of adventure, or at least a little fun. An outlet to explore the weirder, darker, and more imaginative parts of his interior world. Hed never been one for small talk, preferring instead to launch into deep discussions, even with people he barely knew. He wondered if he could create a place like that outside of everyday conversation, a place full of awe, anguish, and urgency.
In the fall of 2004, Frank came up with an idea for a project. After he finished delivering documents for the day, hed drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards—three thousand in total. At metro stops, hed approach strangers. “Hi,” hed say. “Im Frank. And I collect secrets.” Some people shrugged him off, or told him they didnt have any secrets. Surely, Frank thought, those people had the best ones. Others were amused, or intrigued. They took cards and, following instructions hed left next to the address, decorated them, wrote down secrets theyd never told anyone before, and mailed them back to Frank. All the secrets were anonymous.
Initially, Frank received about one hundred postcards back. They told stories of infidelity, longing, abuse. Some were erotic. Some were funny. He displayed them at a local art exhibition and included an anonymous secret of his own. After the exhibition ended, though, the postcards kept coming. By 2024, Frank would have more than a million.
\*
After his exhibit closed, the postcards took over Franks life. Hundreds poured into his mailbox, week after week. He decided to create a website, PostSecret, where every Sunday he uploaded images of postcards hed received in the mail.
The website is a simple, ad-free blog with a black background, the 4x6 rectangular confessions emerging from the darkness like faces illuminated around a campfire. Frank is careful to keep himself out of the project—he thinks of the anonymous postcard writers as the projects authors—so theres no commentary. Yet curation is what makes PostSecret art. Theres a dream logic to the postcards sequence, like walking through a surrealist painting, from light to dark to absurd to profound.
*Im afraid that one day, well find out TOMS are made by a bunch of slave kids!*
*I am a man. After an injury my hormones got screwed up and my breasts started to grow. I cant tell anyone this but: I really like having tits.*
*Im in love with a murderer… but Ive never felt safer in anyone elses arms.*
*I cannot relax in my bathtub because I have an irrational fear that its going to fall through the floor.*
Even if you dont see him on the website, Frank is always present: selecting postcards, placing them in conversation with one another. Off-screen, hes a lanky, youthful 60-year-old emanating the healthy glow of those who live near the beach. Last August, we met at his house in Laguna Niguel, in a trim suburban neighbourhood a few miles from the ocean; when I asked about his week, he told me his Oura Ring said hed slept well the night before. He offered me a seat on his back patio, and the din of children playing sports rang out from a park below. His right arm was in a sling. Hed fractured his scapula after a wave slammed him to the sand while he was bodysurfing.
As we spoke, I gathered that his outlook on most everything is positive—disarmingly so. The first time he had a scapula fracture, after a bike accident a few years ago, “I had this sense of release, I would say, from my everyday concerns and burdens,” he said. Physically exhausting himself through endurance exercise is his relief from the postcards, which skew emotionally dark. “Ive had to become the kind of person that can do this every day,” he told me.
For years, Frank has been interested in postcards as a medium of narrative. Before PostSecret, he had a project he called “The Reluctant Oracle,” in which he placed postcards with messages like *Your question is a misunderstood answer* into empty bottles and deposited them in a lake near his house. (A *Washington Post* [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2004/10/04/postcards-from-the-waters-edge/316c1548-a0c0-45b4-aaf1-ee023bd8a071/) from the time said “The form is cliche: a message in a bottle,” but called the messages themselves “creepy and alluring.”)
What he considers his earliest postcard project, though, dates from his childhood. When he was in fifth grade, just as he was about to board the bus to camp in the mountains near Los Angeles, his mother handed him three postcards. She told him to write down any interesting experiences he had and mail the cards back home.
Frank took the cards. “Its a Christian sleep-away camp, so of course a lot of crazy stuff happened, and of course I didnt write my mom about any of it,” he said. But just before camp ended, he remembered the postcards, jotted something down, and mailed them. When he saw them in the mailbox a few days later, he wondered, *Am I the same person that wrote this message days ago?* The self, he had observed as a grade schooler, was always in a state of flux.
Examining secrets was part of a lifelong inquiry into what it means to speak. Franks parents split up when he was twelve—a shocking and destabilizing event that would define his adolescence. Soon after, he moved with his mother and brother from Southern California to Springfield, Illinois. Messed up by his parents divorce and his cross-country move, Frank became anxious and depressed.
While he was in high school, Frank went to a Pentecostal church three or four times a week, searching for a sense of connection with others. At the end of every service, churchgoers would pray at the altar to receive the Holy Spirit. Then, they spoke in tongues. All around him, the Spirit took hold, and people flailed their arms, wept, and danced. Frank looked on with envy and shame. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how many people tried to help him, he never spoke in tongues. It was a spiritual failure, this failure of language.
After college, while living in Virginia, he met a guy named Dave on the basketball court. They became close fast. Dave was funny and sensitive, and also athletic: he and Frank played hundreds of pickup games together. But Dave seemed to be struggling. He was living with his parents, couldnt land a job. He spent a lot of time on computers, and confided in Frank that he was being bullied online. “Youve got to get out of here,” Frank told him. That was one of the last things he ever said to Dave. Frank moved to Maryland, and not long after, he got a call from Daves father. Dave had killed himself. Frank was crushed. He felt like he should have seen more warning signs, and at the same time, felt helpless. He ruminated on how Dave might have interpreted their final conversation. *Out of his parents house*, hed meant. *Not out of this life.*
In the wake of his loss, Frank wanted “to do something useful with his grief,” so he decided to volunteer on a suicide prevention hotline. In training, his supervisors modelled how to inflect his voice to sound non-judgmental, how to ask open-ended questions and get below the surface of everyday conversation—lessons he would carry into his later life. He felt catharsis in listening to other peoples pain, and, in turn, sensed that they appreciated his presence. Simply by talking about their struggles, he found, they sometimes gained new understanding. Once every week or two, Frank listened for six hours, up until late in the quiet of his house, as people unravelled. He let them talk, and he let them stay silent. Listening to peoples confessions in the wee hours of the morning, Frank realized that people needed a way to talk about the messy topics often off limits in everyday conversation.
PostSecret contains echoes of his time volunteering on the suicide prevention hotline. Like the hotline, the project draws attention to the ways people conceal parts of themselves, and encourages disclosure. But the postcards go even further: Theyre public, available for anyone to see. They show us the types of stories people normally keep guarded, creating, in the aggregate, a living inventory of our taboos.
\*
What is a secret? Knowledge kept hidden from others, etymologically linked to the words *seduction* and *excrement*. To entice someone to look closer; to force them to look away.
Secrecy, writes psychologist Michael Slepian in his 2022 book, *The Secret Lives of Secrets*, is not an act, but an intention — “I intend,” he writes, “for people not to learn this thing.” “To intend to keep a secret,” he continues, “you need to have a mind capable of reasoning with other minds.” Thus, psychologists believe we start to develop a concept of secrets at around the age of three years old, when we also begin to understand that other people have minds—beliefs, desires, emotions—different from our own. At that point, researchers believe, we also develop the ability to experience self-conscious emotions like guilt, shame, and embarrassment. As our theory of the mind develops, we begin to worry that other people are unable or unwilling to understand us, which, in turn, motivates secrecy. Our teenage years are especially ripe for secret-keeping. As we develop stronger senses of self, we distance ourselves from our parents in a bid to assert control over our lives. Keeping secrets from our parents “allows an escape from \[their\] criticism, punishment, and anger,” Slepian writes, “but it also precludes the possibility of receiving help when its most needed.”
Cultural taboos create secrecy. Systems and structures uphold it. The nature, and content, of secret-keeping varies across cultures, but we have always hidden things from one another. The Greek gods had secret affairs; for centuries, women in central China wrote to each other in a secret language to evade the ire of oppressive husbands. Today, people keep secrets for safety: They conceal medical conditions to receive better insurance coverage, and hide their legal status so they dont get deported. Even scripture has something to say about secrets, which is, mostly: dont keep them. Proverbs 28:13 reads, “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses them and renounces them finds mercy.” God, in other words, wants full disclosure.
We keep secrets because we are ashamed or afraid; we tell them because we want an escape. We want to feel accepted, seen. Naturally, we share some secrets with our friends and partners, but sometimes those relationships are the source of a secret, so instead we seek out neutral interlocutors. A bartender in Las Vegas told me the same client came, week after week, to talk specifically with him about her anxiety and troubled dating life. A hairdresser in Salt Lake City told me that Mormons grappling with their faltering faith came to her, an ex-Mormon, to work through family conflict. A therapist I met in Arkansas observed that many of her clients were leaving Christianity and using therapy as their new religion, which she found “a little spooky.”
When I asked what she meant, she told me that people, ex-Christian or otherwise, often look to therapy to find a source of meaning and release in their life—to fill a spiritual and emotional vacuum. Evangelicalism, she said, values “inappropriate vulnerability,” where people share testimonies and break boundaries in public venues. Shes wary when she hears those same stories within the context of therapy—when clients come in and feel obligated to spill everything up front, then ask for cures to their emotional ailments.
Later, thinking about secrets, I remembered this conversation and the phrase “inappropriate vulnerability.” How much vulnerability with strangers is appropriate? How much is too much? 
\*
For a while, PostSecret was my secret. The website existed in the internet nest I made for myself during adolescence, along with sites like fmylife.com, where users each posted a few lines about the tediums and mishaps of their days, often involving anxiety, depression, alcohol, and sex. They were websites that revealed glimpses of how other people lived, where I could gather anecdotes about adult life and begin to construct an idea of how my own world might look one day.
I grew up in Temecula, a California suburb not too far from where Frank currently lives. My friends and I wandered around the mall to try on skinny jeans, and sprinted around after dark to toilet-paper our classmates yards. Suburban life often felt stifling, so I had a habit of inventing stories to make my world seem more interesting. I recounted to friends, with narrative flourish, an encounter Id had with a freshwater shark in an alpine lake. I created a mysterious, dark-haired boyfriend who Id met at a soccer tournament. Id never actually had a boyfriend.
Temecula had a distinctly conservative atmosphere, and it was impossible to escape the shame that accompanied any stray thought about boys, or my changing body. Ours was a town where, in 2008, neighbours supported a California ban on gay marriage. Residents protested the citys first mosque with signs reading “no to sharia law” in 2010. Arsonists set fire to a local abortion clinic in 2017, and, just in the past two years, the school board would ban critical race theory and reject an elementary school curriculum that referenced Harvey Milk. My family went to a Methodist church, but I sometimes went to Mormon dances with friends; at one such dance in middle school, my dress was too short, so a chaperone made me staple cloth to the hem to cover my knees. During slow dances, we held on to boys shoulders from an arms length away.
Most everyone I knew in Temecula went to church on Sundays. But I found church boring. Id excuse myself to go to the bathroom and linger there during sermons, counting the flowers on the wallpaper. I didnt understand how God, who I didnt see or hear, could exist.
But even if I didnt believe God was real, my family did, and religious ideas subtly permeated our home life, shaping what we did and did not talk about. We talked about doing well in school and sports; we didnt talk about our feelings, or puberty, or dating. My body was a secret, softening and bleeding, fascinating and repulsive.
I didnt really speak to anyone about these changes, though I do remember one car ride to school with a friend. Her mom was driving, and my friend slipped me pieces of paper in the backseat. In her scrunched-up handwriting, she asked: *Do you wear bras? Do you have hair down there?* When I was a freshman, my period bled through my capris, and upperclassmen stared as I waddled across campus to the cross-country teachers classroom for gym shorts, sweat slicking down my back. Id only ever used thin pads, and I was too anxious to ask about buying tampons. I didnt want to talk about it, and no one ever asked.
I can barely remember sex ed programming in school; for years, I thought just sleeping next to a boy could get me pregnant. When, in high school, I started the drug Accutane to tame my unruly face, my dermatologist listed off options for pregnancy prevention to avoid harm to an unborn fetus. A family member who was in the room interjected: “Shell choose abstinence.” It was only after I left and my world opened up that I understood where I came from. That my hometown, and even my own family, bred secrecy.
If I wanted answers to questions—Should I be shaving? Why do I sometimes feel sad?—I had to find them elsewhere. So I swivelled for hours on an office chair in front of a wheezing PC. It was here I learned of Franks work.
I remember the glow of the monitor in the dark upstairs hallway, the feeling of the mouse under my hand as I scrolled through secrets. I remember the padding of feet on stairs, the quick click of the X. Browser window vanished.
\*
Over the years, Frank has developed a process for selecting secrets. He sorts the most promising ones into a few boxes. A good secret involves a particular alchemy of art and content. He likes secrets hes never heard before—there are fewer and fewer these days, but every once in a while something new will pop up—and secrets he has seen but which are presented in a surprising way. At this point, twenty years after the project began, he mostly relies on intuition to select those he posts to the website. Hes kept every postcard over the years, even during a cross-country move. (The secrets hes posted in the past decade are stored in his upstairs closet and garage; the rest are mostly on loan to the Museum of Us, in San Diego.) Every postcard, that is, except one. He blames a relative for losing it.
On the website, the scrolling experience is simple enough—scroll, rectangle, scroll, next rectangle—but within the rectangles, something else is happening: a cacophony of colour, scrawl, scribble, cross-outs, stickers, stamps, maps, photographs, sketches. Once, I saw locks of hair taped to a postcard; the writer said they collected the hair of children they babysat. The spectre of tactility, if not tactility itself, reminds the viewer that there are thousands of people behind these postcards, and thousands of hours over the course of twenty years were spent creating them.
Is this sociology? Psychology? Voyeurism? The postcards are shaped like little windows, glimpses into someones life, devoid of context. Frank likes to think of them, in the collective, as a cross-section of human nature, and each week he tries to select a range of moods, including a smattering of lighthearted secrets to round out his postcard representation of the psyche, even though most of what he receives is dark. I wondered if reading all these secrets gave him some sort of unique lens into who we are, but hes not sure. Everyone has different parts of themselves or their lives that theyre afraid to acknowledge. Today, most secrets he receives are about relationships—either feeling dissatisfied with a partner or revolving around loneliness.
“My hope is when people read the secrets each week they have no idea what I think about religion, politics, or feminism. I want to be across the board, so anyone can see themselves in a secret,” he said. “If its strong and offensive, guess what, people keep offensive, racist secrets in their heart. Thats part of the project—exposing that.” He doesnt intentionally seek out racist or sexist secrets, and doesnt post anything thats “hardcore racist,” but he thinks theres value in representing the less-than-savoury aspects of human nature, because thats a true representation of who we are as a whole.
That said, there are some kinds of secrets he generally doesnt post. He often doesnt upload postcards written from the throes of suicidal ideation. He doesnt want the website to become a toxic cesspool of hopelessness. He also doesnt generally post the photos included with secrets when doing so might share with someone intimate knowledge that they didnt know themselves. One postcard, for example, included a family photograph alongside a secret reading, *My brother doesnt realize his father isnt the same as our father*. All the faces were visible. What if the brother saw it and recognized himself? “I dont feel like I have ownership of that secret,” Frank said. Instead, he posted the text.
Theres no way to fact-check the secrets; Frank takes those sharing them at their word. In 2013, he posted a secret depicting an image from Google Maps and a red arrow. It read: *I said she dumped me, but really, I dumped her (body)*. After an internet uproar, Reddit users found that the location was in Chicago, someone called the police, and the police found nothing, eventually determining the secret was a hoax. Legally, Frank told me, the postcards are considered hearsay.
\*
The secrets come without context, so Frank put me in touch with a handful of their authors so I could  understand what inspired them to send him their postcards. (Occasionally, the authors email him and reveal their identities.) One of them, Casey, was possessed by secrets for all of her childhood. (Casey is a pseudonym; some people in this piece asked that their names be changed to maintain their privacy.) Her father discouraged his kids from making friends and conditioned in them a suspicion of other people. Because he didnt work, and because her mother, who she suspected had undiagnosed schizophrenia, was shuttered inside all day, Casey was forced to support the family financially. At age fourteen, she was collecting soda bottles for money. The roof was falling in. She was afraid to tell her family she was gay.
When she left home for college in the early 2000s, she was finally able to make friends of her own accord. All of them knew about PostSecret—it was, at the time, in its heyday—and theyd scroll through the entries every Sunday to compare favourites. 
Casey liked the honesty of PostSecret, how it gave voice to the unspoken. Her father still had a psychic hold over her life, but she started opening up about her family to her new friends. One of them, Ramón, was gay, too, and not out to his family. They soon became close. He was an aspiring actor, extroverted and funny. It seemed like he knew everyone, and in turn, everyone said he was their best friend. Casey and Ramón were the only people in their friend group who didnt drink. Theyd both grown up with unstable families and were afraid that alcohol would make them lose control.
But when, in junior year, she started experimenting with drinking, he cut off their friendship, accusing her of betraying her values. She was baffled and frustrated; she thought his response was extreme. To do something with her frustration, she submitted a secret decorated with a photo of him in a Halloween costume reading: *A real friend would have stayed around and helped me*. She heard hed seen the postcard and was furious, but they never really talked about it, and today, decades later, theyre no longer close. Casey doesnt keep secrets anymore. She doesnt tolerate them.
Some secret-keepers described their postcard as liberating. One woman, V., sent in a secret acknowledging that her infertility was a relief because she wouldnt have to go off her bipolar medications while pregnant. She wanted to become a mother, but she felt that, even if fertile, her body wasnt capable of carrying a baby, and she didnt know how to tell her husband. When she wrote her secret, she stared at it on her table, and when it was posted, she stared at it on her screen. She was struck by the fact she could reveal her secret to the public but not to her partner, and decided to tell him how she felt. Last September, they adopted a son.
Others didnt seem to think much about their secrets after the fact, I learned when I talked to Carl, aged sixty-seven, a former federal law enforcement agent who lives in Washington State. His postcard depicted a hand of eight playing cards. With a Sharpie, hed written in all caps: *GAMBLING DESTROYED MY 4TH AND LAST MARRIAGE.* 
As we talked, he was to the point, answering questions in a sentence or two and never elaborating. I could picture him: a gruff, single, middle-aged man who left the house every once in a while to get a cup of coffee with a buddy. He must be lonely, though hed never admit it, and gambling must have distracted him from his loneliness. “I dont have any secrets,” he said. “And if I did, I wouldnt be telling you.”
In 2007, he found a postcard among the “boxes and boxes of crap” in his dead mothers house. At the time, the divorce from his fourth wife was fresh and he was feeling bitter, so he grabbed a Sharpie, scrawled his message, and put it in the mailbox. “That was that. I was blowing off steam,” he said. “It wasnt some contemplative therapeutic thing.” Then, he told me something that upended my assumptions about him. “It wasnt my gambling,” he said. “It was her gambling.”
Some postcards are impulsive, I realized. And because the postcard hadnt specified whose gambling was the issue, Id filled in the gap. Fascinated by my own mental jump, I asked more questions. How long had they been married? How did he learn about the gambling? Four marriages? What about the other three? To that last question, Carl said, “I dont think that applies.”
I wanted to tell him: *Of course it applies!* I felt like his whole life was bound up in that postcard. Something led to the breakup with his first wife, and his second, and his third, which then led him to his fourth, and to their breakup, and to this piece of mail that ended up on Franks website. I wanted his autobiography. I wanted to know everything.
\*
Frank told me, “Most of our lives are secret. I think that in the same way that dark matter makes up ninety percent of the universe—this matter that we cannot see or touch or have any evidence of except for its effect on gravity—our lives are like that too. The majority of what we are and who we are is kept private inside. It might express itself in our behaviours, and our fears, and even in human conflict and celebration, but always in this sublimated way.”
Carl was less philosophical. “This thing happened, I forgot about it, and now Im talking to you.”
\*
In the years after he created the website, Frank wrote several books and held live events, which were often sold-out with more than a thousand people in the audience. The events were usually scripted: Frank shared secrets hed received and secrets of his own. He was no longer the invisible curator. He was, instead, the very reason people gathered. Today he doesnt do many events, and he says hes finished writing books. But at the height of PostSecret a decade ago, the events were central to his work—and underscore how much he values the catharsis that follows disclosure.
In 2013, Frank travelled to Australia for a PostSecret tour. At an event in Melbourne, he seemed comfortable assuming his central role; midway through the evening, he shared his own story. He played a voicemail from his mother, whod seen a copy of Franks first book. “Im not too happy with it, so forget about mailing me one,” she said. This, Frank told the audience, was not a surprise. “My mom has been like that as long as Ive known her.” His brother and father were estranged from her, but he and his mother still had a functional relationship. “Even so, my earliest memories being around my mom are memories of having to have my defences up. I couldnt let my guard down. My earliest memories keeping secrets were from my mom,” he said.
He told the audience about his experience with the Pentecostal church. At the end of every service, he explained, members would share their testimonies, and the congregation would cheer and shout, “Amen!”
Evoking that part of the service, Frank said he wanted to share his own testimony with the audience: If he could go back in time and erase all the moments in his life that had caused him pain and humiliation and suffering, he wouldnt. Each one of those moments, he said, had brought him to this moment and to the person he is today. He likes who he is today. Suffering in silence led him to make PostSecret; the darkest parts of his past were inseparable from the parts of himself he liked now, and they made him a better father. If you can get through your own struggles, he told the audience, “youll have this beautiful story of healing, a story that you can share with others, others who are in that struggle.” Adopting a faint Southern accent, he asked, “Can I get a witness? Can I get an amen, brother?” Someone shouted amen. “Thank you, sister.” The theatre erupted into applause.
Then, Frank invited people to line up in the aisles and share their secrets. When one woman stepped up to the microphone, she said, “About a year ago, my ex-boyfriend raped me.” Her voice broke, and through tears, she continued, “And then told me he was getting engaged the next day. I think its about time I ask for help.” The audience applauded, and Frank commented that often the first step to making change in ones life is sharing a secret. The woman left the microphone. The next person stepped up to share.
There was something both beautiful and garish about this spectacle. I remembered my conversation with the Arkansas therapist and the idea of inappropriate vulnerability. Watching the woman speak, I felt a mix of queasiness and regret and rubbernecking and curiosity. It was the feeling I have when I reveal too much about myself too quickly, without the slow buildup of trust and intimacy. Then the microphone went to another person, as if this were a conveyor belt of secrets, and there was no time to grapple with the weight of what had just been said. 
In a 2016 LitHub essay, the writer Erik Anderson accused Frank of profiting, however indirectly, from other peoples traumas with his books and speaker fees. Frank often refers to secrets as the currency of intimacy—we exchange our secrets and become deeper friends or partners—but to Anderson, theyre also Franks professional currency, the reason he has a career at all. What happens to the secrets of PostSecret, he asks? Does having a secret posted actually do anything beneficial for the sharer? “Warrens feel good message about the healing benefits of disclosure, about self-actualization through confession, may elide a painful truth about secrets,” he writes. “Once shared, especially anonymously, they become secrets again, hidden by and in the very excesses of the internet that made them possible.”
Frank told me hes aware of the delicate role he plays as the keeper of peoples secrets. People trust him to treat their stories with care, so hes never tried to monetize the website. Its true, he says, that most of his income from the past decade has come from book advances and speaker fees. But, he told me, “I dont get too much negative feedback from anyone in the community.” And as for what happens to the secrets, he says he hopes that by sharing them, people might be motivated to take action. Or perhaps, like on the suicide hotline, they can begin to see their secrets differently. We often assign secrets a physical weight; maybe by making them public, we can make them lighter, or smaller. But none of that is guaranteed. 
For an hour, the theatre in Melbourne was transformed into a church of secrets. In the church of secrets, pain is pedagogy. Pain must teach us something, must have meaning, or else how could we live through it? We turn pain into a story, and make that story public in the hopes that we might get something in return. Empathy. Action. Friendship. Money. If I could go back, I would never choose pain. 
\*
*I have a secret*—this is the language we use. We possess secrets, hold them close, though sometimes, perhaps, its better said that secrets possess us. And by secrets I mean the things we feel we cannot say, and so no one says them. What I mean by secret is taboo. What I mean by secret is fear.
Around a year ago, when I was in California for the holidays, a high school friend who Ill call Sam invited me to meet in a park. Another friend, Alex, was in town too. I hadnt seen either of them in years. We sat underneath a cypress tree and threw a rubber Frisbee to the Australian shepherd Sam was dog-sitting. The air smelled of salt. The grass itched our legs. Sam told us shed been going to sex therapy with her husband, who she married when she was twenty-three. She was now twenty-seven. She and her husband were both deconstructing from the church, a painful personal reckoning with a culture that preached sexual purity. Shed always felt guilty about sex, and she didnt know about pleasure. 
“I didnt start going to the gynecologist until after college,” I offered in commiseration. “Until tenth grade I thought having sex was just sleeping next to each other.”
“I always felt so observed,” said Alex, the first of us to have a boyfriend in high school.
“You were observed,” I said. We laughed, and I sat back and marvelled. The three of us had slept together on blow-up mattresses and swum at the beach and splashed in backyard pools but had never really talked—at least, not about the things we considered secrets. We were women now. All these years later, wed finally found the words.
I wondered if Frank had ever been able to talk openly with his family. PostSecret was, after all, partly inspired by the difficulties of his upbringing. Frank told me his father was initially skeptical of the project, finding it voyeuristic, and maybe unnecessary. But eventually he began to appreciate the project and even told Frank something hed been holding in for a while. 
But Franks mother never came around. When we were sitting on his patio in Laguna Niguel, I asked about her a few times, and he told me a story. When he was a teenager, after hed moved to Illinois, Frank got into a fight with her. He cant remember what happened, only that hed probably done something to anger her. He ran to his room and locked the door. His mom pounded on the door with a mop, broke through one of the panels, and reached her hand through to unlock the door. Frank ran into his bathroom and opened the window. It was snowing and dark outside, around 9 p.m. He climbed through the window and ran a block down the street to his friends house. He and his friend started talking as though this were a normal hangout, but eventually, his friend looked down at his feet. “Where are your shoes?” Frank was wearing only socks.
I asked another question. Gently, without drawing attention to what he was doing, Frank changed the subject. It was the first time Id seen him withhold information. He didnt want to talk about his mother anymore, and I didnt need to know.
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Date: 2024-03-31
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# Evan Gershkovichs Stolen Year in a Russian Jail
Updated March 29, 2024 12:10 am ET
[Evan Gershkovich](https://www.wsj.com/topics/person/evan-gershkovich) was supposed to be with his friends in Berlin the first week of April 2023.
The Wall Street Journal Russia correspondent was set to stay in an Airbnb in the edgy Neukölln neighborhood, a base to explore the citys cobble-lined streets with his tightknit crew of journalist pals exiled there from Moscow. He was going to drink coffee in hipster cafes and chat into the night over glasses of beer.
Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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# Frank Carone on Eric Adamss Smash-and-Grab New York
## Its a brazenly transactional era of government here in New York City. Frank Carone is its master practitioner.
![](https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/066/e74/5ea786754f3ffb21a08c673c0fbf219cde-frank-carone.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg)
At Casa Cipriani. Photo: Dolly Faibyshev for New York Magazine
One afternoon last spring at Casa Cipriani, a members-only club at the foot of Manhattan, [Frank Carone](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/tags/frank-carone/) was sitting in a plush upholstered chair, barking into his phone. “You dont have Waze?!” he said. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Apparently his app is broken.” Carone, a lawyer whose connections to Mayor [Eric Adams](https://nymag.com/tags/eric-adams/) allow him to charge clients with business before the city $20,000 a month, was on the line with a driver who was attempting to deliver several palm trees to his waterfront mansion in Mill Basin. The trees have to be planted anew every year after northeastern weather takes its toll.
Carones neighborhood, in the furthest reaches of Brooklyn, can feel more like Miami Beach than New York. His extravagantly decorated property — “*Baroque* is the word I would use,” says a visitor — is where he began hosting fundraisers in the early aughts for a rising generation of then-obscure Brooklyn Democrats, including Bill de Blasio and Hakeem Jeffries. One of the regulars at his soirées was Adams, who was just getting into politics after a career as a police officer. Years before the 2021 mayoral race began in earnest, Carone went all in on Adams, soliciting donations and acting as one of his most trusted advisers. When Adams won, in part by following Carones advice to position himself as a centrist and ignore the partys left wing, he rewarded Carone by naming him chief of staff.
Like Adams, Carone took an unusual delight in his new job. While the role is usually about managing downward, keeping the bureaucratic trains running, Carones Instagram feed showed a man living his best life: speaking at a conference in Istanbul, touring the Holy City with the mayor of Jerusalem, talking whiskey with Liev Schreiber, hanging out on the sidelines of New York Giants games. At the same time, powerful developers and businessmen say Carone was remarkably responsive to their needs, with an ability to get any government official on the phone and smooth things that needed smoothing. “Things he got involved in got done,” said one lobbyist. “Things he didnt, didnt.”
Carones priorities reflected that Adams, for all his talk of being the new face of the national Democratic Party, was at heart an old-school Brooklyn clubhouse pol. Before 2022, Carone had never spent a day working in an elected officials office, and in his career he had represented any number of outer-borough scoundrels, including slumlords, insurance fraudsters, and disreputable operators of homeless shelters. People in the citys permanent government wondered if Carone was treating his time in power as a chance to level up, prospecting for richer clients — suspicions that hardened when after just nine months he announced he was quitting to run both a consultancy, Oaktree Solutions, and Adamss reelection campaign. One labor leader told me, “Its the worst smash-and-grab operation in the history of city government.”
“I am only 39, and my memory only goes back a couple of decades, but I cant recall anything like this in New York City,” said Lincoln Restler, a City Council member from Brooklyn. “I cannot remember another person who was in the inner circle, among the closest of advisers to the mayor of New York, trading on his influence at the beginning of that mayors term in office. By going into government and becoming the most powerful person in the administration of Eric Adams, he dramatically enhanced his rolodex and his ability to make boatloads of cash on behalf of special interests and translate it into a Fifth Avenue firm with global reach. I guess this is what you get when you appoint a hacky Brooklyn apparatchik as chief of staff.”
At Casa Cipriani, an opulent space that resembles a Gilded Age ocean liner, Carone and I were approached by Boyd Johnson, a lawyer who leads the New York office of the white-shoe firm WilmerHale. It was hard to imagine a more disparate pair. Carone, who is 55 and stocky, with a nearly permanent five-oclock shadow, is from the streets of Canarsie and went to community college, St. Johns, and Brooklyn Law. Johnson is lantern-jawed, tall, and lean with degrees from Hamilton and Cornell. Carone had just been discussing the reprobates he used to associate with, while Johnson is a former deputy U.S. Attorney and represents some of the citys most powerful corporations. And yet here they were sidling up next to each other.
“I think you are setting the example for the new kind of back-and-forth between government and industry,” Johnson said. “You are like the unicorn at the stuff that you do. Folks think that you are about fixing peoples problems. You do fix problems — but that is not the client you are trying to get or that WilmerHale is trying to get. Were all trying to get clients who have to interact with the government because that is their industry, who care about their reputation with the government, and who care about their brand and the sustainability of their business. So onetime fixes, or fixing a parking ticket, doesnt do anything for anybody. But having a situation where you have a different kind of car that you can park in different places, consistent with the law? Thats durability.”
If Johnsons vehicular metaphor wasnt entirely clear, the upshot of his tribute was unmistakable: Far from being a liability or something to be ashamed of, Carones spin through the revolving door is something to be celebrated in the Adams era. After 20 years in which mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio made an effort toward transparency and good government, the people now running New York are grubbier, more transactional, and not at all embarrassed about it. Not since Ed Koch has the pay-for-play spirit been so manifest.
“I have been able to make great friends and good relationships in City Hall,” Carone said. “And the circle grows.” Johnson got up to leave, and Carone called after him: “That other topic. Lets follow up on it.”
The dynamic that powered Carones rise could take him higher if Adams wins a second term. It could also destroy him if Adams — or Carone himself — is indicted. Investigators from the Southern District of New York are engaged in a sprawling probe into whether the mayor and his top advisers broke fundraising laws. In November, FBI agents made coordinated raids on the homes of Adamss chief fundraiser, an aide in his office of international affairs, and a Turkish businessman who had a position on his transition team. A few days later, in a dramatic confrontation on a Manhattan street, federal agents climbed into Adamss official government vehicle, ordered his security detail out, and demanded the mayor turn over his phones and devices. Adams denied wrongdoing and hired a criminal-defense attorney to represent him: Boyd Johnson.
The legal peril is getting more complex. Recently, the FBI raided properties tied to Winnie Greco, a senior Adams aide, fundraiser, and liaison to the Chinese community, as part of an investigation launched by prosecutors in New Yorks Eastern District — an entirely separate inquiry.
Many City Hall watchers have been surprised that the probes have not, to anyones knowledge, touched on Carone yet. Adams never listed him as an official bundler while running for office, but he was instrumental to his fundraising efforts. Carone was so intimately involved with Adamss campaign that for a time much of it operated out of his law office free of charge — an illegal in-kind contribution that Adams fixed only after it became the subject of news reports. To some, Carones apparent distance from the federal investigations suggests the possibility that hes informing on Adams. In January, Carone flatly disputed it. “I have not been contacted by any law enforcement ever,” he told me. “And if I am, Ill happily cooperate.”
Another possibility is that the government plans to charge Carone himself. (Carone maintains hes done nothing wrong.) “There is something inherently fascinating to people about Frank,” said Max Young, Adamss former communications director. “I dont know if its his hardscrabble upbringing or if the fact that he made a lot of money coming from humble beginnings creates an assumption that there was malfeasance or dastardly deeds along the way. But I tell you this: Some of the city and the nations great enterprise reporters have tried to find something on Frank and have been unable to do it. Frank is scrupulous about following the rules and doesnt care about appearances.”
Others arent so sure, and they wonder if Carones skill at navigating the intersection of power, politics, and money in Brooklyn can continue to protect him now that he is playing the game at its highest level. “I just dont think Frank has the instincts to understand where the lines are,” said a former federal prosecutor. “As you walk toward the cool breeze, you have to be careful that its not a propeller you are walking into.”
With Mayor Eric Adams in September 2022. Photo: ZUMA Press/Alamy
When Carone and I first spoke, last spring, he said he couldnt care less about how his operation looked to his critics. Carone had been traveling the world to solicit new business, and he suggested we meet not in Mill Basin or at Oaktrees Fifth Avenue offices but at a five-star resort overlooking the Florida coast, near where he lives part of the year. Dressed in sandals, shorts, and a black T-shirt, Carone ordered scrambled eggs with Baeri Royal caviar and talked about some of the 16,000 contacts in his phone. He said he had just been named the godfather for the grandson of Eduard Slinin, who owns one of New Yorks largest limousine fleets, which meant holding the baby right after his bris. He seethed about people who had betrayed Eric Adams in the 2021 election, including a local leader who told Carone he was backing Andrew Yang. “Ridiculous,” Carone said. “I wanted to throw him through a plate-glass window.”
Carone grew up in Canarsie a block from where his parents, the children of Sicilian and Puglian immigrants, had been raised. The neighborhood was undergoing rapid demographic change, as Italian and Jewish families moved out and Black and Caribbean families moved in. His mother worked as an assistant principal; his father was an exterminator who switched to reselling estate-sale goods at flea markets in the West Village. Franks father revered Tony Genovesi, a fearsome state assemblyman who ran Canarsie as a fiefdom. (He was a protégé of Meade Esposito, the legendary Brooklyn political boss who kept a baseball bat by his desk and was reported to be a hero to a young Donald Trump.) Young Frank was thrilled when Genovesi presided over the rehabilitation of the local Little League field, and one day his father arranged for him to go by the famed Thomas Jefferson Democratic Club in Canarsie to meet him.
On his 12th birthday, he went, alone. Genovesi and another local ward heeler, Frank Seddio, were there. “And they treated me like gold,” Carone said. “I didnt want to get into politics. I wanted to get out of Canarsie in the worst way. But that was my indoctrination.”
In a sense, Carone never really left the Thomas Jefferson Club. After law school and two years in the Marine Corps, he started working for Seddios firm at $200 a week. At night he handled arraignments for a criminal-defense lawyer, which entailed calling a 24-hour hotline to find out when clients facing charges for DUI, domestic violence, grand theft auto, assault, and similar offenses were due before a judge. His most memorable case was a heroin murder conspiracy. The client, whose brother was the head of a local gang, had sold tainted dope to someone who later died from it. Carone met with him at a mall in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and convinced him to surrender on federal charges.
“I was very easily able to disconnect,” Carone said. “I didnt even think about it. It didnt matter how egregious the charges were. To me, they were just a set of words on paper. Its funny — when you read the charges, it gives you one set of emotions. But when youre talking to a human being, they dont sit there with horns coming out of their head. And I always said to myself, *The government has a lot of resources focused on this person, and the one person they have to keep the system honest is me.*
Meanwhile, he helped Seddio launch a long-shot congressional campaign, licking envelopes at a desk wedged up against a toilet. Like everyone else in politics, Carone didnt like politics at first. “But I couldnt say no to a friend,” he told me. “Finally, I guess, I became what I am without me realizing it.”
In the early aughts, Carone took a brief detour to start a mortgage-banking business, Berkshire Financial, which packaged loans together and sold them to investors. (When I asked Carone how this differed from the subprime lending that precipitated the financial crisis, he said, “It was exactly that.”) He sold the company in 2006 and rededicated himself to the Brooklyn Democrats. “Frank was a guided missile,” recalled Jeff Feldman, who was executive director of the county party at the time. “At heart, the guy is a Marine. He was going to take the hill by whatever means made the most sense. He adapted to the political culture, and he made a conscious mental effort to figure out what goes on in these power circles and find the best approach. And he enjoyed the challenge of getting people to give you money. The more you get people to contribute, the more you develop a coterie of people.”
One of those people was Hakeem Jeffries. Now the likely next Speaker of the House, Jeffries was just an outsider angling for the State Assembly in the mid-aughts. The party power brokers had a reputation for going to war with anyone who crossed their incumbents, and Jeffries recalls that Carone was distinctly different — gracious and helpful. “I never saw him as a political operative,” Jeffries said in his office on Capitol Hill, sitting beside a throw pillow that reads “If you dont know, now you know.” “He never struck me as someone with an ax to grind on behalf of a particular political leader that prohibited his ability to get along with people from other parts of the party.”
The Brooklyn Democratic Party was not a beacon of clean government. One chairman was investigated for extorting money from judicial candidates, then jailed in 2007 for soliciting illegal campaign contributions and falsifying business records. (“A tragedy in my mind,” Carone told me. “A missing receipt, and you get consecutive terms. That blew me away.”) His successor was Vito Lopez, a gigantic man with a protruding belly and menacing affect. “Not a very easy guy to work with,” recalled Feldman. “Vito was tough. He ruled more by fear than by love. Frank was able to steer him.” In 2011, Carone became the county partys chief counsel. “You dont hire a lawyer to tell you what you can do; you hire a lawyer to help you do what you want to do,” said Feldman. “Frank made Vito seem like more of a reformer than he was otherwise. I dont know another political leader who needed that level of babysitting. No one wanted to be around the guy, but Frank had the patience for it.”
Although Lopez was under three investigations (two federal, one city) for the sprawling patronage mill he ran, he was never charged. What finally did him in was that multiple female staffers accused him of sexual harassment. In 2013, it fell on Carone to tell Lopez he had to resign. Carone scheduled a meeting at Pinocchios, a dimly lit Italian restaurant in Mill Basin. Lopez showed up with ten allies, but Carone stood firm. “When we are in the ring together, I can be a real motherfucker,” Carone told me.
Carone had recently begun a law firm with Seddio, which they merged with Abrams Fensterman, then a small outer-borough practice. They grew it from 30 lawyers to 120, representing 21,000 clients; some of the biggest had business before city government, among them yellow-cab companies, major developers, the union representing correctional officers, and two large hospital networks. After Lopezs resignation, Seddio became the new boss of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. That put him and Carone in a position to determine who would be the next Brooklyn borough president, with term limits opening up a vote in 2013.
They liked Eric Adams. Carone had known about Adams since his days as the boisterous head of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. As a state senator, he had proved himself a loyal soldier in the battles the county party was waging against a reform faction. After Adams entered the race for borough president, “We were able to eliminate the competition,” Seddio told me. “Its not a pressure thing. We just convince them that it is not the best option for them at that time.” Adams won with 90 percent of the vote.
Later, Adams came by the Abrams Fensterman office with a whiteboard and an easel and laid out exactly how he was going to become mayor, drawing a chart with himself and various rivals. As the 2021 election neared, Carone called in the chits he had accumulated after a quarter-century in Brooklyn politics, especially among the Hasidic community. He played the heavy when necessary, joking with some local leaders that if they didnt back Adams, they would have to move out of New York. When Adams was sworn in on January 1, 2022, Carone was among a small group that joined him onstage.
Carone at the Oaktree offices on Fifth Avenue. Photo: Dolly Faibyshev for New York Magazine.
Carone at the Oaktree offices on Fifth Avenue. Photo: Dolly Faibyshev for New York Magazine.
Frank Carone has a simple theory of reciprocity. He is a voluminous consumer of business self-help books, and in 2020, he co-wrote one of his own, titled *Everyone Wins! How You Can Enhance Business Relationships Just Like Ultra-Wealthy Entrepreneurs.* “You take certain actions to help those in your business relationships explicitly achieve their self-interests that are distinct from your own self-interests,” reads one passage. “Because youre helping them achieve their goals and agenda they owe you. In order to pay you back, theyll be strongly inclined to fulfill your requests, take your recommendations, and so on. Simply put, when you help others get the results you want, they often become indebted to you. This can then motivate them to be helpful to you in achieving your goals.”
Adamss victory gave Carone an opportunity to put his approach to work in the public sector. “Frank likes people, he likes doing things for people, and he likes being in the mix,” said Young, the former Adams spokesman. “Franks superpower is around relationships and using those relationships — and I dont mean in a bad way — to achieve good ends. People trust him, they want to be around him, and they believe he can facilitate mutually beneficial situations.”
Carone pledged to put his holdings in a blind trust and establish a firewall between his new job and his old one at Abrams Fensterman. “Thats a previous life,” he told Politico New York. Despite these good-government moves, the papers were filled with unsavory stories about Carone: about how he was subpoenaed as a witness for advancing money to a group of doctors who allegedly defrauded Geico; about how he invested in BolaWrap, a somewhat preposterous crime-fighting tool out of *Spider-Man*, then saw his investment skyrocket after Adams touted it at a news conference; about his work for a homeless-services provider that was under federal investigation for corruption; about how he was meeting privately with campaign contributors and real-estate executives at lavish restaurants like Mark Joseph Steakhouse and Wayan.
Carone seemed to be on a mission to meet every billionaire in New York, and the City Hall he ran was a relatively fun one. He was a macho, almost martial, presence, but he also started a book club, leading staffers through motivational titles like *Grit* by Angela Duckworth and *Ego Is the Enemy* by Ryan Holiday. Every Friday, he bought pizza for the staff and for the press corps in Room Nine, and he liked taking low-level staffers out to Cipriani.
While Carone had Brooklyn wired, he was relatively unknown in elite political circles, and several of the lobbyists that have long represented billionaires and old-money interests told me that Carone seemed eager to shed his reputation as a “Court Street lawyer.” He bought an apartment for $2.2 million on Sutton Place and became the mayors designee on the board of MoMA. When City Hall proposed closing parts of Fifth Avenue around Christmas to better accommodate the hordes of tourists that descend on the city, Carone threw himself into it, befriending the retail and real-estate titans who make up the Fifth Avenue Committee. “He loves the power. He loves the influence. And he loves the money, if we are being quite honest,” said one longtime friend. “This is a guy who likes living well, and likes that people have a perception of him as powerful, and likes the access that it gives. He loves being able to walk in the circles of certain people.”
Curiously, for a person so well versed in politics, Carone was unfamiliar with the playbook used by the largest and most powerful operators in the city. Contrary to popular understanding, the real work of lobbyists and consultants isnt about buttonholing officeholders and convincing them to vote or govern a certain way. One longtime lobbyist told me that in 30 years she had never once called any mayor of New York about anything. Instead, the job of achieving a desired outcome involves running what are called “campaigns”: getting stakeholders, activists, and community groups on your side, plus getting stories placed in the press, maybe an editorial if youre lucky. An apex fixer creates conditions that prompt politicians to act a certain way of their own accord, because the politics makes sense for them. (A classic recent example is Uber. In 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a plan that would limit the companys growth. Acting for Uber, Bradley Tusk unleashed a multipronged campaign: advertisements featuring sympathetic drivers; media coverage that said the de Blasio idea was discriminatory; celebrity comments from Kate Upton, Ashton Kutcher, and Neil Patrick Harris. The coup de grace was a new “de Blasio” tab on the Uber app that showed how terrible it would supposedly become.)
All this was outside Carones ken. One lobbyist recalls visiting Carone early in his tenure and being asked what their job entailed. Carone seemed confused. What did they mean they ran campaigns? They put pressure on politicians by using the press? How did that work? “It was, I dont understand. People do things because I am Frank Carone. I raise money for them and I am their friend and we get together in a room and we sort it out,’” the lobbyist recalled. “He didnt understand political interests. He just seemed to understand transactions, like You do this for me and I will do that for you.’” (Carone said this encounter did not happen.)
To cynics, that context explained a lot of Carones priorities. He took a noticeable interest in the rebuilding of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a $5.5 billion undertaking that stands to be a lobbying frenzy. Such a project is usually the purview of the Department of Transportation, not the mayors chief of staff. The way Adams and Carone shaped the plans has outraged locals and activists, who say their proposal will harm Brooklyn Bridge Park and be more expensive and take more time than the available alternatives. “It is as close to public-policy insanity as I have ever seen, and it makes no goddamn sense,” said a person who has worked on the project for years. “The only way it makes sense is if these guys have something weird going on.”
Photo: Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service, via Getty Images
After our breakfast in Boca, Carone climbed into his massive black Escalade, a pair of golf clubs rattling around in the back, and set off to meet with some Oaktree clients. One was a Hasidic businessman who was flying down from La Guardia to meet with Carone for an hour and immediately return to New York. “He is the Waze of City Hall,” a rival said of Carone. He tells you where to go to get what you need done. Its: Here is the key staffer for this issue. Let me call him and tell him you are reaching out.’”
In Florida, Carone spent part of the day on the deck of the *Princess Nauti Natalie*, an 80-foot yacht owned by a childhood friend from Canarsie. “I am an open book,” Carone said, and reminded me that as chief of staff, he once released his schedules and convened a call for reporters to ask him whatever they wanted. During the session, someone from the *Times* asked if he took any NYCHA residents to Casa Cipriani. “Really cute,” Carone responded. “I hope you are proud of yourself.” What the journalists didnt know was that Carone conducted his end of the call from the yacht. “Right here, right on this boat!” he told me.
The ships owner, Frank Grasso, poured some anejo tequila into a couple of inscribed *Nauti Natalie* glasses. Carone recently hired his daughter as an intern. “I like to do that for friends,” he said. “My clients, by the way, are mainly friends, and I have no problem blending the two. I tried this very strategically. In the morning they call, we talk about whats going on, we talk a little socially, we talk personally, and then we get to some of their business problems.”
Carone bills Oaktree as existing “at the intersection of legal, regulatory, and political.” Its website describes services from “issue advocacy and market positioning” to business development to crisis PR. But Carone has never worked in communications, Oaktree is not a law firm, and until his brief stint in City Hall, his strategy sessions were confined to the back rooms of Brooklyn. I put the question to Carone directly: What do you do for clients? “Executive problem solving,” he said. What does that mean, exactly? “Doesnt matter,” he said. “Doesnt matter. Its about looking at their policies. Looking at a market they want to enter. It could be an RFP they want to apply for, and they want to prepare themselves. It could be, you know, a merger, and they want to know how to get past the immovable object. And I may not have all the answers, but I do know how to get the answers.”
“So we do all-in C-suite executive problem solving,” he continued. “Branding. Business development. Clients asking me to introduce them to other clients or people that I may know throughout my 30-year history or have access to one phone call removed. If they are having a difficult time getting their product in front of someone, I can grease the skids.”
Plenty of people are convinced that as long as Adams is in office, Oaktree has a lucrative edge. “I think there is a big difference between selling access — which is I can do this for you — and understanding how government works,” said a second rival consultant. “He is the person that gives you the real personalities of the people who make decisions. He knows their rivalries in a way that other lobbyists only wish they knew. And he knows you can have as many meetings with as many commissioners as you want, but that real decisions take place in rooms that the commissioner doesnt even know about, in bars and restaurants, places like Zero Bond, where there arent any lobbyists in the room but Frank Carone is. Every other lobbyist is at a disadvantage.”
In my conversations about Oaktree with the citys influence peddlers, the comparison that came up most often was Teneo — a notorious consulting firm co-founded by Doug Band that traded on his close connection to Bill Clinton in the years that Hillary Clinton was the front-runner to be the next president of the United States. That business was built on the perception of access: access to the Clintons and, ouroboros style, whatever other companies were paying Teneo for access. After the Clinton political dynasty ended, Band and the family had a spectacular falling-out — but not before he got incredibly rich.
I asked Carone what he saw his business as being modeled on. “Teneo,” he replied.
At Oaktree, Carone offers his expertise to clients in an unusual manner. Complying with city ethics guidelines, he did not register as a lobbyist until a year had passed since his departure from the Adams administration. During that interval, he employed lobbyists, but he could not legally discuss clients business with lawmakers directly. Carone is also generally not his Oaktree clients primary attorney. He told me that “very often,” Oaktree clients retain him through their existing law firms. He cited a federal precedent that allows law firms to hire architects and engineers to advise them on cases and said it allows his customers to enjoy attorney-client privilege with him even though he is not, technically speaking, their lawyer. “I am not appearing before agencies; I am not communicating,” he said. “I am teaching them how to do so through their law firm.” I had heard that Carone had set up this unusual arrangement with the powerful hotel trades union, which he confirmed.
The scheme would seem to run right up against the citys strict laws governing the influence industry, which require all lobbyists to register publicly; their meetings with lawmakers are recorded in a searchable database, along with who is paying them and what they talked about. John Kaehny, the leader of the good-government group Reinvent Albany, told me that Carones arrangement was nothing more than an end-run around reporting requirements. “Carone gambled that he could get away with skirting lobbying rules for an entire year, and he did,” he said. (Oaktree says that Carones practice is “consistent with his ethical obligations and the law,” and that the relationship is “standard practice.”)
Another Oaktree situation that comes awfully close to ethical lines involves the competition to build a casino in New York City — one of the biggest development deals of this century. Carone is forbidden from working on matters that he had a hand in at City Hall, and he met with several casino executives while he was there. SL Green, the real-estate behemoth that is trying to site a casino in Times Square, has Carone on retainer. Its being finessed by the fact that Carone is not lobbying per se, but rather building community support.
At home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. Photo: Dolly Faibyshev for New York Magazine
Does he know what is going on inside the hall of government? No question,” one real-estate executive said about Carone. “Does he play with fire? Also no question. He has got a lot of friends that a lot of us would find unsavory, but Eric doesnt seem to care. He has been vetted up the wazoo and no one has tagged him with crossing the line.”
Who is hiring Frank Carone, how much they are paying him, and, most important, why has been one of the great mysteries among the lobbyists, consultants, operatives, and PR pros who make up the permanent governing class of New York City. Carone wouldnt let me see his full client list, but he did say that he has about 100 clients and that his minimum fee is $20,000 a month for at least a year. Northwell Hospital Systems has been reported as a client, as well as Saquon Barkley, the star running back for the New York Giants. “I mean, Saquon Barkley!” said one lobbyist. “I am envious of that alone. I dont even know what Frank does for him, but it certainly boosts Franks image in all the right places.”
“He tells you straight up what it is and what it aint,” Barkley told me. “He worked with the mayor in one of the hardest cities in the world and dealt with all the scrutiny that comes with that.” Carone advises him on charitable work, branding, and how to handle the media. Barkley found Carone through one of his representatives, Ken Katz, who sat next to Carone in the owners box at a Giants game. “I talk to Frank almost every day,” Katz said.
Carone told me that he also represents Londons Halcyon Gallery, which the *Art Newspaper* once described as a contender for the title of “the worst gallery in the world.” Carone is helping Halycon seek public-art commissions and expand to New York. He said his other clients include an English sustainable-vodka company, theaters, sports arenas, nonprofits, and developers.
Carone watchers like to scour his social media feed for clues. Why was he visiting dignitaries in Georgia and Azerbaijan over the summer? What to make of his photo with former LiveNation CEO Michael Cohl in London or his visit with the fashion designer Philipp Plein at his boutique? What was Carone doing at Representative Jim Clyburns fish fry, that famous stop for presidential contenders? That one may have an obvious answer: Carone believes Adams could one day be the commander-in-chief. “One, he has law-enforcement experience,” he told me. “He is center. African American — so he identifies with the experiences therein. He is articulate. He is a hard worker. He knows how to run a campaign. He is not afraid to attend fundraising events, which people dont want to hear but is part of a campaign. What else is there?”
First, Carone needs Adams to win reelection, something that is beginning to look shaky. One recent poll of registered voters by Quinnipiac University found that just 28 percent of voters approve of the job Adams is doing, while 58 percent disapprove — almost unheard-of numbers. “I dont believe those approval ratings are real,” Carone said. “When the mayor walks around the city and attends events, hes greeted with great adulation and great affection. Theres a disconnect between what you see in everyday people, what you hear in cocktail parties, what you hear in bar mitzvahs and communions, and what this poll said.”
So far, the only potential mayoral candidate who has announced an exploratory committee is Scott Stringer, the former comptroller, who has pledged a return of technocratic governance and a City Hall less focused on the mayors outings and outfits. Carone, who raised money for Stringer before Adams signaled he was going to run, is dismissive of his chances.
That, of course, assumes that Adams will make it to Election Day without being indicted. “I know what you know,” Carone told me in January during an apparent lull in the investigation. “I know the mayor to be an incredibly conscientious person, respectful of the law. He surrounds himself with incredibly gifted law-enforcement alumni. I do believe that the mayor has done nothing inappropriate. You know, you go to events, you dont know what half the people are. Sometimes you count on your team to vet people, but you dont know exactly whats in the back of their brains. You just know your own behavior. Ive watched the man for many, many years, and he treats law enforcement and the law as sacrosanct.”
At Casa Cipriani, Carone told me about his efforts to sign LIV Golf, the Saudi Arabian golf venture, despite that countrys brutal human-rights violations. “There is no such thing as negative attention,” he said, describing how to lean into media coverage and turn it to ones advantage. “We all make mistakes. But it is the collection of mistakes, more than the successes, that make me who I am.”
I asked him what mistakes he was referring to. “Probably allowing people in my life I shouldnt have,” he said. “Putting my guard down for folks and having too much confidence in my own judgment and what I perceived to be my indestructibility. Hubris. I just have to remind myself that I am fallible like everybody else. So my mistakes were in befriending folks — investing in projects without the proper due diligence, without realizing how spending time in the mud with a pig, you are going to get dirty.”
“Those are things I regret,” Carone said. “Strike that. I dont regret any of it. I learned from it.”
The Eric Adams Smash-and-Grab
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# How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
###### THE SURVIVOR SPECIES
## Having lost many of their cattle, traditional herders are trying out a milk-producing animal that is more resilient to climate change
Photos and video by Malin Fezehai
April 17, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
NTEPES, Kenya
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The camels had thump-thumped for seven days across northern Kenya, ushered by police reservists, winding at last toward their destination: less a village than a dusty clearing in the scrub, a place where something big was happening. People had walked for miles to be there. Soon the governor pulled up in his SUV. Women danced, and an emcee raised his hands to the sky. When the crowd gathered around an enclosure holding the camels, one man said he was looking at “the future.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The camels had arrived to replace the cows.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/76A5SP5GJHVVPVFOZL7SQ5KJHE_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/KI7CRFA7JAQK5FHHLH4QHJFAUI_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
Samburu Countys governor says that the climate patterns have become “abnormal.” The reduction in rainfall is so obvious, he said, that anybody can see it. “You dont need science machines here to measure that.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Cows, here and across much of Africa, have been the most important animal for eons — the foundation of economies, diets, traditions.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
But now grazable land is shrinking. Water sources are drying up. A three-year drought in the Horn of Africa that ended last year killed 80 percent of the cows in this part of Kenya and shattered the livelihoods of so many people.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
In this region with the thinnest of margins, millions are being forced to adapt to climate change — including those who were now drawing numbers from a hat, each corresponding to one of the 77 camels that had just arrived in Samburu County.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Your number?” a village chief, James Lelemusi, asked the first person to draw.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The regional government had purchased the camels from traders near the border with Somalia, at $600 per head. So far 4,000 camels, as part of that program, have been distributed across the lowlands of the county, speeding up a shift that had already been happening for decades across several other cattle-dependent parts of Africa. A handful of communities, particularly in Kenya and Ethiopia, are in various stages of the transition, according to academic studies.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The global camel population has doubled over the last 20 years, something the U.N. agency for agriculture and investment attributes partly to the animals suitability amid climate change. In times of hardship, camels produce more milk than cows.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Many cite an adage: The cow is the first animal to die in a drought; the camel is the last.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“If there was no climate change, we would not even bother to buy these camels,” said Jonathan Lati Lelelit, the governor of Samburu, a county about 240 miles north of Nairobi. “We have so many other things to do with the little money we have. But we have no option.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Kenya rainfall map
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Authorities had selected the recipients, those crowding around the camels, on the condition that they use the animal for milk, not meat. They were also those judged by local officials to be the most in need. They had stories of near-total cattle losses, of walking miles to find water, of violent run-ins with a neighboring tribe as they strayed farther from their territory in search of grazing space for their faltering livestock.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Still, many said the plight of one person stood out: Dishon Leleina.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Leleina, 42, had been wealthy by the standards of this region before the drought. He had two wives and 10 kids, and had been surrounded by an abundance of cows for nearly as long as he could remember. He even sacrificed bulls — with a stab to the back of the head — on each of his wedding days.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
But when one rainy season failed, then another, then another, his stock of 150 cows plummeted over several years as never before. A few dozen were raided by the bordering Pokot tribe. And more than a hundred withered away — going skinny in the midsection, swelling in other areas. Some would go to sleep at night and never wake up. Some would arrive at last at a water source, drink lustily and collapse to their death. Several times, including after losing his best milking cow, Leleina roared at the sky in fury. By the time the rains resumed last year, he had seven cows left.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“I had one status” before the drought, he said. “And now I have another.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RZDSMM6O3JEOFLGYJC6VALOLIE_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4MPXXOZA4JLEBZ27VLWE3TNXMU_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
People walked for hours to attend the camel distribution, some putting on their best clothing.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
What hadnt changed was his daily routine; he moved in step with his livestock, often walking miles per day. But now he had cut back to one meal per day — as did many other pastoralists. He lost weight. Several times, he fainted. Even on the day of the camel distribution, as the event stretched into late afternoon, almost nobody was seen eating or drinking.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
As the number drawing began, Leleina pressed into the crowd. An organizer with a sheet of paper recorded who would take which camel home. Some of the camels were big, some small, some muscular, many slender, and as soon as people pulled numbers — 73, 6, 27 — they darted off to find their animal in the crowd.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Then it was Leleinas turn. He reached into the hat.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Number 17,” he said.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/HLFALVUV3RG77L5JLAJOOJREEI_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
Camel recipients, including Leleina (center, in green), crowd around a checklist keeping track of the animals and their new owners.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
He walked toward the camels, scrap of paper in hand, and tried to use his wooden staff to poke a few of the animals, which were bunched together, obscuring the numbers painted at the base of their necks. Leleina squinted into the sun. He went in another direction. He prodded a few more animals. And then he found her: a skinny camel with a medium build, a rich tuft of longer fur on its hump.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
He gave her a pat.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
It would be dark soon, and Leleina still needed to guide his new camel home — several miles through the powdery dirt and shrub land. But even in this harsh place, Camel 17 could manage to find a snack.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
She darted over to an acacia tree, pulling flowers into her mouth, working her tongue around two-inch thorns.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
### An animal built for drought
The camel is sometimes described as an animal designed by committee, what with its hodgepodge of features —
Camel features
But among mammals, the camel is almost singularly equipped to handle extremes.
Camels can go two weeks without water, as opposed to a day or two for a cow. They can lose [30 percent](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-do-camels-survive-in-deserts.html?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template) of their body weight and survive, one of the highest thresholds for any large animal. Their body temperatures [fluctuate](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270234/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template) in sync with daily climate patterns. When they pee, their urine trickles down their legs, keeping them cool. When they lie down, their leathery knees fold into pedestals that work to prop much of their undersides just above the ground, allowing cooling air to pass through.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
One recently published paper, perhaps straying from science to reverence, called them a “miracle species.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OH7PX5LO7OOQF3V4NGWBI2NH6M_size-normalized.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048)
“Theyre unparalleled in terms of domestic animals.”
— Piers Simpkin, the Nairobi-based global livestock adviser for Mercy Corps
Milk is one of the biggest nutrition sources for people in Samburu. With camels, the hope is that people can still have milk during droughts.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
And yet in much of Africa — for much of human history — their attributes havent been needed. For centuries, theyve resided primarily in the driest outer ring of the continent, while cows — outnumbering camels in Africa 10 to 1 — reigned in the lush river plains, in the highlands. Kenya, where the landscape can turn from green to reddish and back in an hours drive, has long been a middle ground: a place where some tribes use camels and more use cows, with identities forming around that choice. Because of that, neighboring tribes see the consequences of using one animal vs. the other. That has seemingly transformed Samburu County — an area the size of New Jersey that is home to the Samburu tribe — into an experiment on how livestock fare, and how humans respond, in a warming climate.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The experiment started about a half-century ago, according to Louise Sperling, a scholar who conducted fieldwork in Samburu in the 1980s. The Samburu were among the most “specialized and successful” cattle-keepers in East Africa, she wrote in one account, but they were increasingly mixing with and marrying members of a nearby tribe, the Rendille — camel-keepers.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Over the subsequent decades, they also noticed changes in traditional weather patterns. Fewer rainy seasons. Less predictability. And most importantly: more frequent droughts.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Uptake was gradual. Cows still overwhelmingly outnumbered camels. And cows still defined the Samburu identity, used in celebrations or as dowries.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
But then came the [longest series of failed rainy seasons](https://fews.net/horn-africa-experiences-five-consecutive-seasons-drought-first-time-history?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template) on record in the Horn of Africa.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The drought started in 2020 and held its grip for three years. An international team of scientists said a drought of this severity had been [100 times more likely](https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/human-induced-climate-change-increased-drought-severity-in-southern-horn-of-africa/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template) because of climate change. In Samburu, the smell of rotting cattle carcasses spread across this county of roughly 310,000 people. Malnutrition spiked, including among children and the elderly. The Kenyan government and the World Food Program had to step in with aid.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
And yet the level of need wasnt equal.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Noompon Lenkamaldanyani, a single mother of four, lost 18 of her 20 cows and fell short on milk, but she noticed her camel-owning neighbors were willing to step in and offer help.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Lekojde Loidongo said he and his family “didnt suffer much,” as all 22 of their camels continued to produce milk.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Even Leleina, the new owner of Camel 17, said he noticed how the animals fared differently. Hed owned three camels before the drought hit. They all survived.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
If he had any regrets, it was that he hadnt moved earlier. His father, who died in 2021, had been an early adopter of camels.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“In the future,” Leleina said, echoing a conclusion shared by others, “I foresee having more camels than cows.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Because of these realizations, there has been very little backlash to the governments camel program, which started eight years ago. Some are also obtaining their own camels by trading cattle at markets. Pastoralists — people who move with their livestock herds — are often described as among the most vulnerable people in the world to climate change, and their fortunes can swing based on the decisions they make about which animals to keep.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
A 2022 research paper published in Nature Food, analyzing a huge belt of land across northern sub-Saharan Africa, noted increased heat stress and reduced water availability in some areas and said milk production would benefit from a higher proportion of camels, as well as goats, which are also more climate-resilient than cows. Camel milk is a comparable substitute for cows milk. It tends to be lower in fat and higher in certain minerals, said Anne Mottet, the lead livestock specialist at the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Many say it has a saltier taste.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Camel vs cattle
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Were just following the trends of the drought,” said Lepason Lenanguram, another camel recipient in Samburu. “People want camels now. The culture is changing.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The Samburu governor said he believes “totally” that shifting to the camel is the right move. He noted that Samburu — with large swaths far removed from the electrical grid and without running water — had contributed relatively little to global greenhouse gas emissions. By far the greatest source of emissions in rural areas like Samburu is methane, a byproduct of the cows complex digestive process. Camels emit far less methane.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
The program gives away only one camel per person. But it can still build up peace of mind, said the director of the governors press service, Jeff Lekupe, who was on-site when the camels were distributed. With even one camel, a family has better chances of having milk during a drought. And then there is a “ripple effect,” he said. The camel gives birth. The population grows.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“So that next time,” he said, “the need for the WFP will be minimal.”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
### Getting acclimated to Camel 17
For Leleina, Camel 17 — a female — symbolized the start of a rebuild, but it didnt begin well. Arriving at her new home — a circular property, ringed by branches and thorns, a mile from the closest unpaved road — the animal quickly started tussling with one of the three other camels. They bit one another. They made noises. They locked necks, and they only stopped when Leleina roped the legs of the other camel as a way to keep her from moving.
That night, Leleina put a mat on the floor outside his hut and felt too nervous to go to sleep. Hed heard stories about other camels darting off — something that almost never happened with a cow — or feeling uneasy in new surroundings; a neighbors camel had escaped and been mauled by a lion. So Leleina trained his eyes on Camel 17 for hour after hour as she brayed.
Eventually the sun rose. Camel 17 was still there.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“The camel might have been thinking about where it came from,” Leleina said.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
In the morning, more at ease, he let the newest addition to his herd go off. She needed to eat. The job of following her fell to Leleinas 9-year-old daughter, and after the camel had been out for a while, Leleina decided to join her. So he set off in the direction of a red-rock table mountain, crunching through the scrub, occasionally coming upon bones, and moving closer to an area that he knew had foliage for camels and was free of predators. He heard nothing for five minutes, then 10, and then shouted his daughters name.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Nashenjo,” he shouted.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Then a minute later:
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Nashenjo!”
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
He heard an animal noise.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“The camels are not far from here,” he said.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
In a circle of trees, he saw not only Camel 17, but a half-dozen other camels — craning their necks from branch to branch. A few of the camels were his. Others belonged to a neighbor. It was a critical mass of camels in a place that had once belonged almost entirely to cattle, and the ranks only figured to grow. A day earlier, at the same time of the distribution, a neighbors camel had gone into labor. Leleinas neighbors had crouched at the camels side, pulling out the healthy baby by the legs.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
Leleina sat down at the base of a tree and watched the animals eat. Camel 17 was still skinny, but that was understandable, he said. She needed time to recover. Her trip to get here had been 100-odd miles, seven days, three stops for water, and even in that journey he saw why she was suited for her new home.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
“Shes a survivor,” he said.
## How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
##### About this story
Design, development and illustrations by Hailey Haymond. Map by Naema Ahmed. Editing by Stuart Leavenworth, Joe Moore, Sandra M. Stevenson and Alice Li. Copy editing by Christopher Rickett.
##### Sources
Precipitation data from [Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data.](https://www.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps) Milk production data from "A shift from cattle to camel and goat farming can sustain milk production with lower inputs and emissions in north sub-Saharan Africas drylands," [Nature Food, 2022.](https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00543-6) Figures reflect average values for cattle and camels.
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^button-IGotMailersPromotingToddlerMilkforMyChildrenNSave
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# I Got Mailers Promoting Toddler Milk for My Children. I Went on to Investigate International Formula Marketing.
When my sons were young, ads promoting formula made especially for toddlers appeared unsolicited in my mailbox. I found them curious. My kids drank cows milk when needed. It cost less and worked just fine.
Little more than a decade later, my questions about the product would fuel [reporting that took me half a world away](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-america-waged-global-campaign-against-baby-formula-regulation-thailand), to Thailand, where public health officials were trying to stop similar formula marketing. I found theyd encountered an adversary that many Americans, including myself, might find surprising: the U.S. government.
I started looking at the baby formula industry in the wake of the 2022 shortage, when supply-chain problems and the shutdown of a Michigan formula plant amid contamination concerns led to scarcity. But my reporting soon took another turn.
After academics and health advocates told me that U.S. officials had for decades opposed regulations abroad related to formula marketing, I woke up before dawn one morning last March to watch the livestreamed meeting of an international food standards body in Dusseldorf, Germany. The topic was a new standard on toddler milk — the very product Id wondered about years before. I saw the U.S. delegation, which included formula industry representatives as well as government officials, raise objections. They were concerned with language mentioning World Health Organization recommendations on banning [formula advertising](https://www.propublica.org/article/what-is-toddler-milk-marketing-to-parents).
After that meeting, I filed dozens of information requests to federal agencies, seeking to understand more about the U.S. position on formula regulation. I reached out to health advocates working for nongovernmental organizations around the world, videoconferencing with them late at night and in the early morning to accommodate different time zones.
I learned countries around the world had sought to outlaw the marketing of toddler formula in recent years, sometimes by extending baby formula advertising bans they already had in place. Health experts say aggressive formula marketing — such as steep discounts and free samples — can make misleading claims and prompt mothers to prematurely give up breastfeeding. The industry has a troubled history. In the 1970s, it was accused of causing thousands of infant deaths in Africa and other developing regions by promoting powdered formula to families without access to clean water.
In statements emailed to me, the formula industry acknowledged that breastfeeding is superior but said families sometimes need a safe alternative.
I knew from experience that the choices parents make in feeding their children are never simple. Breastfeeding has well-documented health benefits, including lowering the risk of infant death and obesity later in life, but it is time-consuming and can be logistically difficult. Still, health officials around the world told me they wanted to make sure that mothers who would otherwise breastfeed werent derailed by misleading corporate ad campaigns.
Toddler milk evoked its own set of concerns, I found. Its packages often carried promises of boosting brain and eye health. [Extensive studies](https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000376.pub4/full) have not backed up those claims.
The Infant Nutrition Council of America, a trade group, said toddler drinks “meet all legal, regulatory and nutritional science requirements.” The product can “potentially fill nutrition gaps,” it said.
Health officials worried, too, that parents would confuse toddler milk, whose ingredients are less regulated and have drawn criticism from nutritionists, with infant formula. The labeling for both products looks nearly identical in many cases.
Infant Formula Looks Nearly Identical to Toddler Milk on a Grocery Stores Shelves in Bangkok
Thailand's Milk Code restricts the advertisement of infant formula, but marketing of toddler milk is generally allowed.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20240315-formulathailand-milksgraphic.png?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=1182&q=80&w=800&s=fa4209f4c327f2f7bfd2af67796a8ddd)
As [documents from my public record requests](https://projects.propublica.org/toddler-formula-documents) rolled in, I began to see the U.S.s impact. In Thailand, a 2016 letter the U.S. sent to Bangkok contained a flurry of criticisms and questions about its newly proposed formula marketing ban, including asking if it was “more trade restrictive than necessary.” A memo said the U.S. had also relayed concerns during a bilateral trade meeting with Thailand, as well as on the floor of the World Trade Organization, where such concerns carry an implicit legal threat.
Eventually, Thailand backed down, weakening its proposed advertising ban and allowing formula marketing for children over the age of 1 to continue. My records and other research revealed a trend, showing that Thailand was just one of more than a dozen countries where the U.S. sought to undercut formula restrictions.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — the agency at the heart of many of the efforts — declined to comment on specific cases from our reporting, but a spokesperson acknowledged the offices “formerly standard view that too often deemed legitimate regulatory initiatives as trade barriers.” With respect to infant formula, the agencys statement said officials “work to uphold and advocate for policy and regulatory decisions that are based on science.”
For me, it was a visit with a middle-class family in rural Thailand that brought this story home.
Like me, Sumet Aunlamai and Jintana Suksiri had two boys a little more than three years apart in age. The parents had read the health claims about brain and eye development on the formula packaging and chose to spend the extra money to buy toddler milk for both. The boys craved the drink, which their parents gave them whenever they asked because they thought it was good for them.
Both boys gained large amounts of weight. Gustun, the youngest, was nearly 70 pounds by the time he was 3 — the average weight for a 9-year-old. He had trouble moving. Medical tests offered no explanation.
When the boys school switched them to cows milk, both lost the weight, and Jintana now wonders if toddler milk was the problem.
Watching them play soccer in their driveway one afternoon last September, she told me both her sons, who are 6 and 9, have healthy weights now. Gustun darted about. “His movement is perfect,” she said.
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^button-RidingthebaddestbullsmadehimalegendThenonebrokehisneckNSave
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# Riding the baddest bulls made him a legend. Then one broke his neck.
STEPHENVILLE, Tex. — The black bull stands in an upper pasture on J.B. Mauneys ranch like a blot on the green ryegrass horizon. His dark hulk presides over a hilly rise looking down on the tin-roofed hay sheds and iron chutes where Mauney is hard at work. Mauney moves to a dissonant music of creaking gates, unceasing wind and snorting animal exhalations, punctuated by the laconic cussing of the cowboy himself as he pours feed into buckets. The bull watches as Mauney makes his way up the hill and steps into the pasture to fill a trough. “A--hole,” he mutters with something like fondness.
Mauney, too, cuts a black outline. From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. Its an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.
“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/RROUUJNUXUKSKWVUDEBKHHXZDY_size-normalized.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
Arctic Assassin does not enter the ring at J.B. Mauney's ranch. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
It had been less than six months since *something like this* happened. On Sept. 6, during an event in Lewiston, Idaho, a bull named Arctic Assassin sling-shotted Mauney (pronounced Mooney) into the dirt squarely on top of his hat, summarily ending the most legendarily gallant career in rodeoing. After emergency surgery to stabilize his head on his shoulders, Mauney retreated to heal with wife Samantha and 5-year-old son Jagger on his ranch, a place called Bucktown XV, where he is still adjusting to his abrupt retirement. “*Forced* retirement,” he corrects. Gesturing at his wife and son, a striking former barrel racer and a child with hair like flying corn silk, he adds, “If it wasnt for her and that little boy, Id never have stopped.”
Samantha follows after the boy, who shucks his shoes and clothing like a bird drops feathers while she retrieves them from the ground. “Hes my boss,” she says. She wears loose jeans, a sweatshirt and Converse sneakers, her only adornment some earrings and a diamond ring. J.B. likes to tell a story about that.
He picked out the stone at a jewelry store in one of those fancy malls where they also sell what he calls “Louis Vooton.” He looked at the jewel and said, “I like that one.” Samantha said, “I do, too.” The saleswoman told them it was a fine choice, then announced how much it cost.
“Do what now?” J.B. said.
He looked at the diamond again and began turning it over with his finger.
“Is something wrong with the stone, sir?” the saleslady asked.
“Naw,” J.B. said. “Im just trying to find the motor on it because I figure anything that expensive, you ought to be able to drive it out of here.”
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/UNGWXNL7PKDZU2HDPFOD5P6OWE_size-normalized.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
Jagger Mauney, 5, gets help changing his shirt from his mom, Samantha, while watching others ride bulls. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/LKDPFROVAZV2PJP2CSFGC57E3Q_size-normalized.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
Jagger pretends to get ready to ride. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/3FPR3H526IGWVVIFYTJBE7CIHA.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
(Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Mauney, 37, was the first man to get legit rich at bull riding. “The Dragonslayer,” they called him, as he set the record for career prize money with more than $7.4 million and tied for most event victories on the Professional Bull Riders circuit with 32. But his real legacy, what made him the most popular draw in fringed chaps, was that he always chose the fiercest bull to ride, costing himself who knows how much more in money and titles.
A bull rider doesnt earn a score unless he can stay on for eight seconds. And if he gets bucked off, he doesnt get paid at all. Most bull riders in championship rounds choose the bull discerningly, with business in mind. Not Mauney. He would tie his hand into the baddest bull as if he was lashing himself to a mast in a hurricane and just refuse to let go. “Id rather get dragged to death than starve to death any day,” he would say. From 2007 to 2018, Mauney rode every ranked world championship-caliber bull there was.
The consensus greatest bull of all time is named Bushwacker. A mahogany-colored beast, he could kick his hind legs so dynamically that his hoofs reached 10 or 12 feet in the air. Newsweek magazine dubbed him “the Michael Jordan of bulls.” For five years, Bushwacker was all but unrideable. He owned the longest streak of consecutive buck-offs in PBR history, with 42, until one summer night in Tulsa in 2013 when Mauney caught a ride on him that friend and PBR publicist Andrew Giangola likened to “bodysurfing a tornado.” Mauney scored 95.25 points out of a possible 100. Bushwacker would not be ridden again, by anyone.
J.B. Mauney ends Bushwacker's streak of 42 consecutive buck-offs during the championship round of the Tulsa Built Ford Tough series PBR. (PBR)
Arctic Assassin was no Bushwacker. But by last September, Mauney was not his younger self, either. He had so much metal in him from being torn up by bulls that if you gave him a full body X-ray, his bones would look like silverware. There were a screw with 13 anchors in his right shoulder, a plate and screws in his left hand and a plate in his pelvis. He had broken his jaw on both sides, fractured an eye socket, taken five staples in his head above his left ear.
Arctic Assassin came out of the chute and wrenched right, then left. Mauney was okay for the first couple of bucks. But then he sat down hard and lurched sharply forward. The bulls rising hips caught him and propelled him into the air. Mauneys boots and spurs went up over his hat. He was halfway into a somersault when he slammed to the ground.
Mauney landed in the sand of the arena floor and flopped over on his belly. He tried to raise his head, and pain ran through his neck as if he had been stabbed with a hot knife. Somehow, he got half upright. He began walking insensibly on his knees across the arena in the dirt. It was an old instinct, drilled into him as a boy by a mentor named Jerome Davis, the 1995 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champion bull rider.
“Unless you got a broke leg or youre knocked out,” Davis told a young Mauney, “you better get up and walk out.”
Davis spoke those things from a wheelchair, having been paralyzed from the chest down by a bull in 1998.
Get up and walk out, Mauney told himself. He rose and staggered. Watching from the fence, three of his best friends and top riders realized he was hurt way beyond the ordinary. One of them, Shane Proctor, leaped down and got an arm around him and guided him to safety behind the chute gate. “You all right?” Proctor asked.
“I just broke my neck,” Mauney said.
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/7K7JMQDJOJCEZC3W32FHZGQYXY.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
Mauney's fateful fall from Arctic Assassin seemed unlikely. (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune)
Mauney limped away, clutching an arm stiffly to his side to keep his head from lolling, and headed straight toward the paramedic station.
Another rider asked Mauneys friend Stetson Wright, “You really think he broke his neck?”
“I dont know, but somethings wrong because I aint never seen him walk straight to any paramedics,” Wright said.
Mauney was infamous for resisting hospitals.
At the paramedic station, a medic said to him, “Whats going on?”
“I just broke my f---ing neck,” Mauney said.
“Well, we should probably get a collar on you,” the medic said.
“Thatd probably be a good idea,” Mauney said.
Mauney sat down at a picnic table. As he waited for the ambulance, he casually lit a cigarette. “I figured where I was headed, I couldnt smoke,” he says.
The break was bad. It required the insertion of a rod, a plate and screws in his neck. He also had lost a disk. The next day, a doctor talked to him about the risk of resuming bull riding.
If he landed on his head again, Mauney was told, he more than likely would break his neck a second time, either above or below the reinforcing rod and plate. Snap the neck below, and he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Snap it above, and he would be dead.
The doctors kept using the word “if.” Mauney knew better. “There was no if about it,” he says.
Mauney looked the doctor in the eye and said, “Its about a 100 percent chance Ill land on my head.”
On Sept. 12, Mauney announced his retirement. He would never ride a bull again.
About two weeks later, he was at home in Stephenville convalescing in a neck brace, with little to do but think. He picked up the phone and called his good friend Matt Scharping. A top stock contractor who breeds champion bucking bulls out of Minnesota, Scharping was the co-owner of Arctic Assassin.
Mauney asked him, “Hey, what are you going to do with the black bull?”
“Im going to retire him,” Scharping said.
“Well, I want him,” Mauney said.
There was an incredulous pause on the line.
“For *what*?” Scharping asked.
Retired professional bull rider Mauney on his ranch Feb. 7 in Stephenville, Tex. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
**FOR WHAT? THERES A QUESTION.** For what reason does anyone mess with, much less provoke, a 1,700-pound *bos taurus*, a creature that is all chest, haunches and horns and that exerts a ground force reaction of 12 times its body weight when it stomps you with its back legs? That in its prime has such a fighting instinct that if you merely float a piece of paper into a pasture, it will try to gore it?
Every other activity at a rodeo has some passing relationship to ranching skills. Breaking wild horses and roping steers are necessary for managing rough stock. But bull riding is just a dare. It has no other reason for being.
To animal rights activists, its a barbaric relic of the Visigoths. PETA claims “countless animals have paid with their lives to satisfy humans desire to play cowboy.” PBR counters that a 2020 study showed there were just two bull injuries in more than 5,000 “outs,” meaning the times its bulls left the chute, and that the animals receive first-rate nutrition and sports medicine. Its a legitimate question whether animals should be used for entertainment. But its also an ugly truth that the career option for a bull is the meatpacking industry. Most cattle have an average life span of just 18 months before slaughter, the same as for chickens.
Champion bucking bulls, however, tend to live for 10 to 15 years and retire to pastures, valuable as sires. Bushwackers sperm goes for $5,000 a vial.
Still, life is cruel for all range animals, given that the American range no longer exists.
Since he retired from professional bull riding, Mauney has turned his ranch into a practice site for bull riders and young bulls. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/IKQUI2UTTAWFIKUDSLKWRCMNN4_size-normalized.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
“He goes to work and gets outside, and he feels so much better,” Sam said of her husband. “He feels better if hes moving around.” (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Mauney herds bulls into pens as young riders pull on their gear. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
If rodeos are part nostalgia, they also reflect a modern anxiety. The enthusiasts of the sport — five PBR events on CBS in 2023 commanded more than 1 million viewers — see a desperately needed antidote to creeping cultural neurasthenia. In Mauney particularly, they saw a last American vestige of stoicism, self-reliance and “cowboying up,” so much so that he still commands more than 1 million followers on Instagram and retains all of his sponsors, from Wrangler to Monster Energy to the American Hat Company. As Mauney sat atop a bull that twisted and stamped, all kinds of things swirled around him. Fear. Character. Power. And make no mistake, ethic.
Mans fascination with the epic form of a bull — and his attempt to bestride it — is older than any American rodeo. In an exquisite Minoan fresco at the Knossos palace in Crete dated to 1450 BC, a man is depicted vaulting off the flank of a bull. The most striking thing about the fresco is the profound mismatch between the slight human figure and the mass of charging, rearing bull. The contest is not about strength — and never could be.
“Youre not going to overpower them,” Mauney says. “Its a dance partner. They make a move, you got to follow.”
Bull riders are not in charge. And that is a part of the draw — that feeling that they have hooked into an intense and massive primal force and are in something like cooperation with it. They put the lie to the notion of human sovereignty over nature.
In every other dangerous form of competition, “Youre still the one with your foot on the accelerator or the brake,” says former champion Ty Murray, now a commentator. “Even if were talking about mountain climbing, youre still the one thats deciding what level things are going to. But in bull riding, the bull is the one with the accelerator.”
There have been attempts to scientifically measure the forces that a rider experiences on an erratically bucking bull. One study using NASA-provided accelerometers showed that a bull weighing 1,700 or more pounds rearing explosively can exert a pull of 26 G-forces on a man. For context, an IndyCar wreck at 200 mph creates about 50 Gs. Thats just acceleration. Now mix in violence. The hind hoofs of a large bull generate a force of 106.3 kilonewtons. An Olympic boxer delivering a straight punch, just 3.4.
Mauney is not a big man. He is 5-foot-10 and a blade-thin 140 pounds. On a 1,700-pound bull, “hes outmatched on a scale that you just cant imagine,” says Tandy Freeman, who has treated bull riders for more than 30 years as part of PBRs sports medicine program. Most of the injuries Freeman sees are head injuries. According to a paper titled “[Rodeo Trauma: Outcome Data from 10 years of Injuries](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9224891/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template),” rodeo athletes suffer serious head injuries at a rate 15 per 1,000 rides, far outstripping any other sport. Theyre 10 times more likely to suffer major injury than football players.
![](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BAUY7PKUVHZYW2AZ46EVALWV64_size-normalized.JPG&high_res=true&w=2048)
Mauney always has felt most comfortable working outside. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
What really makes bulls buck is genetics: They are bred to it. Theyre animals of prey, programmed by evolution and DNA to rear, shake, stamp and horn-hook the things that land on their backs, and breeders enhance their athleticism through bloodlines. Bushwackers owner, Julio Moreno, once observed that the first time he threw a flake of hay into the pen, the bull tried to kick it.
In world-class bull riding, the bull is regarded as every bit as much of an athlete as the rider — to the point that the bulls performance counts for half of a cowboys score. PBR even names bulls as world champions along with riders. Bucking bulls in their prime are worth at least $10,000, and if they come from proven sire lines, their value skyrockets to $500,000 or more.
The people who climb on these creatures are, of course, addicts. They have a dependency that requires regular doses of centrifugal and vertical speed as well as sluices of dopamine and epinephrine and a sense of conquering the well-nigh unconquerable. When a bull reared and stamped, Mauney could feel all those G-forces and kilonewtons in his fingertips.
“I would rope and make a good run, and, yeah, I felt good about it. But it wasnt the same,” Mauney says. “I made a good bull ride, and I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof.”
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Mauney's fearless approach made him a fan favorite. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
The sensation leaves a man wanting more — craving it, even, to a degree that trumps any pain. Jerome Davis craved it. He had been rocked to sleep on horseback as a baby at his parents ranch in Archdale, N.C., but no other motion did for him what a bulls did. When he was taken to rodeos as a boy, he couldnt take his eyes off the bulls. “I was just glued,” he says. “I would just sit in my seat and wouldnt talk, just stared. … After you get into it, you just get eat up with it. It just takes you over to where you become infected with it.”
In 1992, Davis was one of 20 men who met in a hotel room in Scottsdale, Ariz., and founded the Professional Bull Riders circuit with $1,000 stakes each, breaking away from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to start a tour of elite stand-alone bull events.
By 1998, Davis was making $500,000 per year, ranked No. 1 and leading the PBR standings when he got on a bull in Fort Worth named Knock Em Out John. The bull lived up to his name. He whipsawed forward, then rocked back and hit Daviss forehead. Knocked cold, Davis was thrown off like a heavy sack and came down on the side of his neck. The fall crushed two vertebrae.
Later at the hospital, his fiancée, Tiffany, a horsewoman whose family staged rodeos, was at Daviss side when a doctor told him he would never walk again. He was 25.
“The first thing Jerome said was, I cant ride bulls again? ” Tiffany remembers. “He didnt even think about the not walking part. Thats how much they love it.”
Within a year, Davis got back in a horse saddle, with the help of Velcro, a back brace and a gentle animal. He and Tiffany began raising bucking bulls and hosting rodeo events on weekends. Just being around the pens, gates and chutes gave Jerome back some of the “bull mojo,” as he called it.
The Davises threw a lot of junior rodeos, with prizes for the local kids that ranged from belt buckles to Bibles. One day, a guy named Tim Mauney, a longtime acquaintance from the Carolina rodeo world, showed up with his black-haired 6-year-old in tow and entered him in a junior calf-riding event. Thats when the Davises met James Burton Mauney.
“Thats the first time I remember him, sticking in my head,” Tiffany says, “because I thought, Ohhhh, rascals got some grit to him.
Since retiring from professional bull riding, Mauney spends his time running his ranch and caring for the young bulls he's breeding and training. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
**ON THE MAUNEYS FAMILY FARM** in Mooresville, N.C., J.B. was always getting caught climbing the fence boards to try to mount something bigger than him. “My grandpa would raise hell at me because Id be riding his beef cows and stuff,” Mauney says.
The Mauneys came from Alsace-Lorraine settlers who established a large farm in Iredell County in the 1820s. At one time it was pure cow country, with more than 300 cattle ranches and dairies, scores of rich brown cows lolling in the grass. But by the 1930s, large textile mills came in and the farms dwindled. Most of the people Mauney grew up with worked as laborers, ranching just a sidelight. His grandfather did 27 years in the Templon Spinning Mill. His father, Tim, worked night shifts in a lumber mill, while his mother, Lynne, worked for the local school system. But they still found time to keep cows, and every weekend they went off to a rodeo.
Tim Mauney was an amateur steer wrestler and such an enthusiast that he would volunteer at local shows. When a rodeo was short of riders to fill out the program, Tim would make two or three extra runs. “Hed put on a different cowboy hat so the crowd wouldnt know it was the same guy,” remembers Tiffany Davis, whose father staged some of the shows.
Most of the rodeos offered “mutton busting” events for the smallest children; 5- and 6-year-olds were placed on the back of sheep and rode until they fell off. But J.B. Mauney wanted no part of that. “Boy, he felt it was stupid,” recalls Michael Laws, a family friend who was J.B.s first bull instructor. “He wasnt riding no sheep. He was going to ride bulls.”
By age 9, J.B. was riding the family steers and winning youth events in the Junior Southern Rodeo Association. He was just 13 when he got on his first small bull. His father and Laws used white medical tape to mark an X on the bulls shoulders; Laws told him dont take your eyes off it. Dont look down; dont look at your dad. It taught him focus.
Bull riding wasnt about “manhandling” an animal, explained Laws, who made stained glass for a living during the week and rodeoed on weekends. “Thats not how you ride bulls. You have to ride them with grace, finesse — just flow with them.”
To do that, the boy had to develop a gymnasts core strength. Laws took a two-by-four and shaved it edgewise down to about an inch and a half wide. He mounted the plank in the air like a tightrope and told J.B. to get on it and practice walking on that edge, with one hand up in the air, as if he was on a bull.
To improve his core strength and balance for bull riding, Mauney used to stand on a ball while rewatching old rides. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
Mauney got to where he was so strong that he could tiptoe on the plank edge in his cowboy boots. “Imagine a bull rider taking ballet,” Laws said. “I seen him get on a board fence, which wasnt but three-quarters of an inch wide, and walk halfway around the arena. … Thats balance.”
Mauney was long in the legs but featherweight light, weighing just 120 pounds as a freshman in high school, thin and bendable as a willow switch. But it was a serious mistake to take him for weak. On his first day aboard the high school bus, he got teased by a senior, who pinched his ear and called him skinny. Mauney leaped out of his seat and punched the guy in the mouth. “Broke my hand,” he recalled.
Mauney preferred outdoor work to anything. He would cut his agriculture classes to work at a cattle sale barn, herding and loading bulls, only to get caught when the class took a field trip there.
He spent weekends and most of his summers over at the Davis ranch, along with a gang of other aspiring young cowboys. J.B. would help set up the arena for rodeos and pick up trash. He ended up staying there for long stretches, crashed on the living room sofa or in an old bunk room.
Being around Jerome and his wheelchair “made you open your eyes pretty good,” Mauney says. “You realize a lot earlier than most guys that if youre going to do it, you better mean it because one day its here and next its gone.”
Jerome didnt talk much about his accident. He just taught J.B. with the way he went about his rehab and built his life back. He would say: “Dont cry on my shoulder. Youll rust my spurs.”
Most important of all, Jerome taught that when you got hurt, “no reason to complain; you picked it,” J.B. says.
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After a life being thrown from bulls, Mauney feels the toll every day. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
By 15, Mauney was the closest thing to a prodigy in rodeo. He won the Southern Rodeo Association junior all-around title in 2002 and the adult title just two years later. He turned pro on his 18th birthday Jan. 9, 2005, and won the very first event he entered for a $10,000 prize.
Then he got stomped — bad. At a rodeo in Raleigh, N.C., a bull came down on his midsection with two hoofs. Mauney knew his ribs were broken, but he figured all a doctor did was tape you up. He wrapped himself in an elastic bandage and drove home. The next morning, his side was badly distended, as if a football had been shoved under the skin. He took himself to an emergency room. “Thats your liver,” a doctor told him. He was rushed into surgery, and afterward the surgeon said she didnt understand why he hadnt keeled over dead. He was ordered not to ride for eight months — if he got gored by a bull while his organs were healing, it could kill him.
To make money as he recovered, he went to work at a local ball-bearing plant, sweltering through shifts covered in grease. He quit after four months and went back to riding. At his first competition, someone asked who cleared him to ride again.
“Dr. Mauney,” he shot back.
Young bull riders prepare to ride on Mauney's ranch. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
**BY 2006, MAUNEY WAS ON HIS WAY** to becoming the fastest bull rider to collect $1 million. At 20, he was making $400,000 a year and thought he would never be broke again. It wasnt just the winning; it was his devil-may-care attitude that attracted fans. With a cigarette perpetually dangling from his lip, he radiated uncompromisingness. When a chewing tobacco company offered him a $250,000 endorsement deal, he turned it down because it said he couldnt smoke. When the company redid the language to say he couldnt smoke at public appearances, he said, “Okay, for 250, I can hide it.”
He traveled in a 24-foot camper that between seasons he parked back at the family farm in Mooresville. When someone asked him why he didnt get a house, he said, “So if the neighbors piss me off, I can move.”
In 2007, he went to Las Vegas for an annual event, and as he walked into the lobby of a hotel, he noticed a woman with waist-long hair so ash blond it looked almost white, amber eyes and a laugh that radiated across the room. He stalked over and said, “What are you doing tomorrow night?” She answered, “Having dinner with my family.” He said, “Can I come?”
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“Id rather get dragged to death than starve to death any day,” he would say in his riding days. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Her name was Samantha Lyne, and she turned out to be the daughter of one of the greatest all-around rodeo athletes ever, Phil Lyne, who was being inducted to the PBRs Ring of Honor that weekend. Phil Lyne had dominated the early 1970s before he retired to a ranch in Cotulla, Tex. A superbly athletic rider and roper who was the subject of the 1973 Academy Award-winning documentary “The Great American Cowboy,” Lyne had been featured in a famous Chevrolet trucks ad that boasted, “A great way to get to work.”
Samanthas parents tolerated Mauney at dinner, but they were appalled when she went down to North Carolina to stay in his camper. They had sent her off to TCU for a degree and wanted her to go into business, but she kept going back to the horses and cowboys.
This cowboy and cowgirl were a little too wild to hang together for long. Samantha was chasing her own career as a decorated barrel racer — she would qualify for the national finals in 2014 — while Mauney was approaching his height as a competitor — and a carouser. While other cowboys lifted weights and trained in gyms, he bragged that the only time he had been on a treadmill was for a bet — which he won. He drank four cups of black coffee in the morning, his nutrition consisted of Corn Pops and Uncrustables, and he stayed up till closing time drinking beers and Jägermeister.
“The most exercise he got was lifting a can,” Laws laughs.
Mauney rode with no regrets, except for the money he lost or threw away or people filched from him. “I couldve took care of business a little bit, not been at the bar all night,” he says. “But you live and learn.”
It was part of his heedlessness. He rode with a looseness others envied, the fringe on his chaps flying around. In 2012, he broke his left (riding) hand and simply switched to his right — and still managed to place among the top five in the world. His epic conquering of Bushwacker in 2013 propelled him to his first world championship and a $1 million bonus.
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Mauney's ride of Bushwacker remains the stuff of legend among rodeo fans. (Andy Watson/PBR/Bull Stock Media)
It wasnt as jaunty as he made it look, of course. Between the big rides, there were terrible wrecks. A bull named Jawbreaker horned him in the chest and collapsed his lung. There were personal wrecks, too. A brief encounter left him with a baby daughter, Bella, an adored black-haired child who looked just like him. A marriage to a young woman he met through rodeo colleagues collapsed after just two years. He became estranged from his family in a business dispute that left him feeling more used than loved.
The injuries began to mount. Mauneys problem wasnt so much what happened on the bull; it was that he was terrible at getting off. When it came time to dismount, he just couldnt seem to release his hand and land neatly. “Everything Ive got, since the age of 14, I made all of it tying that thing in there to where it wouldnt come out,” he says, showing his gnarled hand. He cracked both shoulder blades and his tailbone. He lost the ACLs in both knees and had a perpetually untreated ulnar collateral ligament tear in his elbow. And the pinkie on left hand was permanently curled from his poor dismounts.
“I was not worth a s--- at it,” he says. “Id land up underneath them, my hand would hang in my rope and jerk me under them, and Id get stomped. Well, my entire life I practiced how to stay on them, not jump off them. … I tied my hand in there to *mean* for it to be there.”
Nevertheless, he still chose the “rankest” bulls whenever he could. Most famously, in 2015 Mauney already had clinched his second title when he called for a bull named Bruiser at the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas. He was a two-toned creature who would be named world champion bull for three consecutive years. Bruiser lashed him around so violently, the bulls tail was flapping against his hat. He stayed on for a score of 92.75.
In 2015, Mauney rode Bruiser at the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas. (PBR)
By then, Mauney was back with Samantha, her family had fully come around to him, and what no one knew about that championship was that each morning in their hotel room, she had to help him out of bed. “I was, like, lifting him,” she says. Both had matured, and along with the original attraction they had something deeper: understanding. She was ranch-reared, capable in brittle situations and had a no-quit attitude as he did. “Were a lot alike,” she says. Thats why she also understood that beneath Mauneys exterior lurked sensitivity.
“I just knew he was not the person that he wants people to think he is: tough guy,” she says. “Which he *is*, right? But hes really kind.”
She knew how to deal with the fact that J.B. wouldnt go to the doctor unless it was an emergency. Once, he developed abscesses in some shattered teeth from a broken jaw after taking a hoof to the face. Instead of going to a dentist, he shot himself up with cattle antibiotics. The only problem was the cow needle was as big as something you would knit with. When he jabbed himself with it, he shuddered in pain for a full two minutes, his bare backside hanging out, before he could squeeze the plunger and pull his pants up.
Samantha would employ vet medicine on him, with salves and therapeutics for his joints such as an equine laser. “She doctored me like a horse,” he says.
The habit of choosing the baddest bull certainly cost him another title. Mauney mounted Bushwacker 13 times, almost twice as much as any other rider, and was bumped off 12 of those. In 2016, he had a clear shot at another championship gold buckle, but he chose Air Time, 1,650 pounds of dappled heavyweight. Ten riders had tried Air Time, and all of them were thrown. So was Mauney, who lasted about three seconds before Air Time threw him into the metal fence, subluxing his bad shoulder and tanking his chances.
There was something “honorable” in the way Mauney always chose the hardest ride, Murray observes, even though he didnt need to.
“Hes always going to be remembered as a guy that slayed every dragon there is at some point,” Murray says. “Even the guys who did it that way at times, they didnt do it that way all the time. J.B. basically did it that way *all* the time.”
J.B. and Samantha were married Jan. 3, 2017, and she moved into a log cabin in North Carolina with him and his collection of junk food. “He eats like a 5-year-old,” she says. All of their friends thought they were a perfect match. According to the Davises, Samantha is the only person J.B. toes the line for. “Theyre tit for tat,” Jerome says. Tiffany says, “Sams woman enough to call him out.”
They eventually found their way to Stephenville, where they bought some acreage a few miles outside of town. It had nothing on it but a single-wide trailer with a tin roof. They decided to live there while they looked for a house and ended up staying in it for two years.
As they put away their things in the single-wide, J.B. told her, “I knew Id white trash you up.”
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His father says he doesn't care, but Jagger certainly appears destined for the cowboy life. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
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Jagger enjoys some comforts, but J.B. won't shield him from the world. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
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Jagger and Samantha pet a calf on the family's ranch. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Only two things disturbed their happiness: J.B.s increasing string of injuries and Sams difficulty getting pregnant. At the July 2017 Calgary Stampede, J.B. got his hand caught in the rope as he tried to dismount after scoring over 90 points on a bull named Cowabunga. The bull stepped on his shoulder at the armpit, just about ripping his arm off. It was the worst injury he had ever suffered: Three rotator cuff tendons were torn off the humerus, and the ball of the shoulder was fractured. A screw and 13 anchors reattached his shoulder, and he turned the mandated six-month recovery period into four months.
Meanwhile, Samantha was told that because of a medical condition in her youth, she had only a 1 percent chance of getting pregnant. The couple considered in vitro fertilization treatment and visited a clinic. They listened to a lecture on the difficult decisions they would have to make, such as whether to choose the sex of a child and what they would do with unused embryos. On the ride home afterward, both were quiet. Then Mauney burst out: “Samantha, Im not real religious, but Ill be damned if I want to choose. I just dont feel right about that.” Samantha said: “I know. I dont feel right, either.”
“Well, look,” he said. “How about we just go along for a while and see what happens?”
A few months later, they were sitting out front of their camper as usual with a circle of their friends, opening beers. Samantha said, “I dont really feel like drinking.” Mauney whipped his head around. Samantha could usually drink his friends under the table. She said, “I just feel funny; Im going to lay down.” He followed her to the back of the camper and said, “Youre pregnant.” And when the test came back, she was.
“Dont ever tell me I cant do something,” he said, grinning.
Jagger Mauney plays with the calves his father recently purchased for his 5-year-old son. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
**JAGGER BRIGGS MAUNEY ARRIVED** early in the morning of Jan. 23, 2019. After that, the collision between Mauney and Arctic Assassin became increasingly inevitable.
Just a few weeks after his sons birth, Mauney rode a bull named Big Black to tie the record for PBR event victories. But when it was over, he had to ask for a hand up from the sand, unable to stand.
That year, he rode through a fractured tibia, a torn medial collateral ligament, a torn rotator cuff, a rib separation and fracture, a sprained wrist, a sprained ankle and a groin strain.
“He doesnt bitch about anything. He never complains,” Samantha says. “But I mean, I could see it all over his face.”
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Mauney talks with other competitors during the American Rodeo in Arlington, Tex., in March. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Samantha managed to watch outwardly impassive from ringside, with the little boy in her lap. She was more nervous than she appeared. “Lots of times,” she admits. “Especially if I got a bad feeling, and then it was like, you cant say you have this weird bad feeling, right? Because if something happens, then you feel like its your fault.”
She had one of those feelings in August 2021 in Kennewick, Wash. He got a hoof in the head and was out for five minutes. When she arrived backstage, he was still unconscious with blood coming out of his mouth and medics were yelling at him, “J.B.! J.B.!” trying to make him come to.
At the end of 2021, he was tied for first place after the opening round of the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. The next bull was named Johnny Thunder. Mauneys head collided with a horn, rendering him unconscious while he was still atop the bull. He sagged off sideways and was dragged like a sack of potatoes as the bull kicked him repeatedly. His hand came free at last. Somehow, the motionless heap started crawling. He left the arena under his own power. “Things got a little western,” he [joked afterward](https://www.thecowboychannel.com/jb-mauney-to-compete-in-round-3-tonight?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template).
At some point in those years, an interviewer who saw where it was all headed asked him how he wanted to be remembered. [Mauney answered](https://www.instagram.com/p/C4YJulYOUTw/?itid=lk_inline_enhanced-template): “Thats pretty easy. Thats *real* easy. … I dont really give a s--- what anybody thinks about me, whether Im the greatest or not. … All I want to be remembered as is that son of a bitch put it all out there every single time he nodded his head.”
Its fair to say Mauney proved his point. And once a bull rider has proved everything to himself, thats where the most danger comes in. Ty Murray explains, “The only thing thats left out there is for you to get hurt.”
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Jagger touches his dads scar after they ate lunch at a local country store. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
On the day Mauney and Arctic Assassin met in Lewiston, Idaho, Samantha wasnt there to see it. They had driven the camper to Ellensburg, Wash., which was their next stop up the road, so Jagger could settle for a few days and Samantha could go to a barrel race. “Just stay,” J.B. told her. He would ride to Lewiston in a truck with a couple of other riders and then double back to join them.
The cell reception in her camper was so bad she couldnt stream his ride. “And it was a good thing it wasnt on, to be honest,” she says. Instead, she got a call later that night from Shane Proctors wife, Haley. “J.Bs okay. He got up and walked out, but he said he broke his neck,” she reported. Samantha spent the night packing up the trailer and then drove it over a mountainous route to the hospital.
It was a three-day trip from Lewiston back to Stephenville, and when they got home, he spent exactly two days in bed. The hospital had given him all sorts of dos and donts, such as, “Dont lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk.” But Mauney got up and started putting his clothes on.
“What are you doing?” Samantha said,
“Im going to the barns,” he said.
Pretty soon, he was working the gears in a tractor in his neck brace, shoving dirt around.
Mauney feeds bulls on his ranch in Stephenville, Tex. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
About two weeks after he got home, Mauney picked up the phone and made the call to Matt Scharping, to tell him he wanted to buy Arctic Assassin.
When Scharping asked, “What do you want him for?” Mauney might have replied that he wanted to make a belt out of him. Instead, what he said was this:
“I want to say I was the last guy who ever rode him.”
One afternoon, Mauney was working around the barns when one of his friends said to him, “I just hate that you didnt get to end on your own terms.”
“It was always going to end this way,” Mauney said. “I wasnt ever going to be able to tell myself I couldnt do it.”
Mauney chats on the phone with longtime friend and Arctic Assassin's previous owner Matt Scharping. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
**THERE WAS** the “for what.” J.B. Mauney chose to live with the bull that ended his career because Arctic Assassin delivered the message that he was never going to tell himself: It was time to quit.
“That was the best thing that couldve happened,” Mauney says. “Im still upright.”
It had been a little more than 16 weeks since the catastrophic injury. Mauney no longer wears a neck brace, and his curling black hair hides any sign of scarring on his neck. When he wakes in the morning he is achingly stiff, but he has found that over the course of a day, working with the animals in open air eases it. “He goes to work and gets outside, and he feels so much better,” Samantha observes. “He feels better if hes moving around.” As a result, he has pivoted to training the next great bull riders, as Jerome Davis once trained him. In February, Mauney announced he will serve as the coach of the Oklahoma Wildcatters, part of the PBRs team competition.
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Mauney now trains young bull riders on his ranch in Stephenville. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Young bull riders practice at Mauney's ranch. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
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Mauney flips over the fence as a bull runs loose in the arena on his ranch. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Mauneys ranch has become a practice site for bull riders — newly minted 23-year-old PRCA champion Ky Hamilton is there almost weekly. On horseback, Mauney herds bulls into the pens while young riders pull on their gear. Jagger arrives with Samantha from preschool to watch. He has miniature versions of his own riding gear: chaps, boots and a glove.
Jagger swirls through the legs of the men, imitating their every move. Someone hands him a bull rope. Jagger stomps in a circle, imitating a stamping, twisting bull. Then he falls to the ground and clutches his throat.
“Daddy, my neck is broke!” he cries.
There is silence.
“Daddy, my neck is broke! My neck is broke!”
Mauney is up on a welded metal fence, bent over the chute, dealing with a bull.
“Well, quit talking then,” he says mildly without looking around.
Jagger seizes a roll of adhesive tape, which the cowboys use for their ankles and wrists, and bandages his neck. After a while, he tries to rip it off his tender skin. An expression of shock crosses his face, and he begins to wail. Samantha picks him up, and J.B. stops what hes doing and climbs down from the fence. She hands him over, and the boy buries his face in his fathers shoulder.
Pain is the price of living rampant. Jagger will figure that out, just as his parents did. They wont spare their child this education. “He can play the piano for all I give a s---, as long as he does it 110 percent,” Mauney says, and you can tell he means it.
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Mauney and Jagger are kindred spirits. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
Late in the day, after the cowboys have left, it is evening feeding time. Mauney heads to the upper pasture to tend to the black bull on the horizon, the inevitability he always knew he one day would have to surrender to, given all the things he jumped off of and ran into, the things hazarded rather than held back. Arctic Assassin was loaded on a trailer and delivered to Stephenville in late January. Mauney gave him his own broad, quiet paddock on the hillside, well away from the bucking ring, which Arctic Assassin will never see. As Mauney likes to say, “He retired me, so now he gets to retire.”
As Mauney steps into his pasture, the black bull wanders over and noses him. The bull bends his head, conciliatory, as Mauney gently strokes his back with a peculiar half-smile on his face. What happened between the two of them, after all, was only life.
“Of all the mean son of guns I got on in my career, and this dog-gentle one is the one that ended it,” he says.
As the cowboy strokes the tough hide, hes at peace with his fortunes, while out across the American savanna, more riders await their bulls.
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Mauney said of Arctic Assassin, “I want to say I was the last guy who ever rode him.” He got his wish. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
##### About this story
Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys. Video by Whitney Leaming. Video producing by Jessica Koscielniak. Design and development by Laura Padilla Castellanos. Design editing by Chloe Meister and Matt Callahan. Audio producing by Bishop Sands. Editing by Matt Rennie. Copy editing by Brad Windsor.
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Date: 2024-04-11
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# Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy
At the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, the last Sunday of October 2023 was Pastor Appreciation Day. The church was festive, the service well attended. There was strawberry cake, Pastor Copelands favorite, and special music in his honor by two of his closest friends, who sang a program of Baptist hymns, accompanying themselves on piano. Bernard Vann, the churchs elder statesman, spoke from the pulpit on behalf of the congregation, testifying as to how blessed they all felt that Bubba Copeland had entered their lives and bestowed his gifts, bound them together as a spiritual community. After reading a very long list of duties that make up a churchmans life, Vann ribbed Bubba that he sure was getting a lot of attention that day for a job thats just “one day a week.” Then he turned to Bubba and said, “We as a church love you, and we appreciate you for everything youve done,” with the true feeling of an old man, as he embraced his pastor.
Once Vann took his seat, Bubba stepped up to the pulpit. “I am so undeserving,” he said. “I dont come from a background of being a pastor. I come from a background of loving people. And I believe theres a giant difference between being a Christian and being Christlike. I try my best to be Christlike. Theres a lot of Christians that hurt people. What we should strive to do is go out of our way to love people unconditionally, despite who they are, what they are—because you know why? Jesus loves *me*.”
Bubba would often talk about how his life had been suffused with a grace that was beyond his comprehension. He believed that was the essence of God, and today he was telling his congregation that if God could love *him*—of all people—it was a sure sign that God loved everyone created in His image.
That last Sunday of October 2023 would be the last Sunday of Bubba Copelands life.
---
![a man standing on train tracks](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-012-660c5f120c86f.jpg?resize=980:* "a man standing on train tracks")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Copeland was forty-nine and the mayor of his hometown. In his corner of the world, he was needed, and he loved being needed.
We all have things that we dont want other people to know about us. Things that might be hard to explain, even to ourselves. The world can be an unforgiving place, quick to judge, and friendships can be fleeting. Would the people whose regard means the most to us look at us differently if they learned of our hidden selves? Would they abandon us? Surely God knows our secrets. What does He think of us?
This is a story about just that—what God thinks. Its also a story of identity and exposure, of revenge and public humiliation. Of deep love and senseless loss, and the unending grief of a small town.
And secrets. It is a story about secrets.
Bubba Copeland had many secrets. And as a servant to both God and man, the judgments of heaven and earth were the alpha and omega of Bubbas existence. What God thinks of anything, much less any of us, is difficult to discern, if we are honest. But the people of the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, unabashedly adored Bubba.
He was empathetic and industrious and always seemed to be doing something for somebody. By last fall, he had been the senior pastor at First Baptist for four years and the churchs youth minister for fifteen years before that. Bubba was not seminary trained and was not what you might call an intellectual from the pulpit, but what he lacked in academic theology he made up for in his eagerness to answer to the spiritual and material needs of others, no matter the time or expense. According to the people in his church family who knew him best and loved him most, Bubba possessed an enormous capacity to serve, and his sermons were personal, compassionate, and often funny. As a Christian and as a pastor, he thought that in a pinch the Sermon on the Mount was just about all the Bible a man would ever need, and his favorite verse was Matthew 7:1—“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” All he knew about the ministry he had learned by the side of his first father-in-law, Dr. Eugene Langner, who pastored to the souls of the congregation at First Baptist Church for thirty years until his death in 2013. Even after Bubba and Merrigail, Langners daughter, got divorced, the two men maintained a loving friendship. Bubba and Merrigail had given Langner a grandson, after all. Young Carter Copeland would grow up underfoot at the church, singing hymns from the pulpit with a poise that would make his father cry. Grandfather, father, and son remained exceptionally close, their relationships unburdened by the strain that often comes with divorce.
By the last Sunday of October 2023, not only were Bubba and his second wife, Angela, and his two stepdaughters the first family of First Baptist Church, but the Copelands were also the first family of nearby Smiths Station, Bubbas hometown, where he was finishing his second term as mayor. He was renowned for bringing a Loves truck stop to the main highway through town, a feat of economic development that most mayors of towns the size of Smiths Station (population: 5,470) can only dream of—to hear the awe with which the people there talk about that truck stop, youd think Bubba had brought IBM to town. When a tornado struck Smiths Station in 2019, killing twenty-three East Alabamians in the neighboring community of Beauregard, he was a twenty-four-hour one-man rescue crew—removing debris, providing supplies and reliable information to his people, and offering hugs when nothing else would do. That same year, when a high school senior in Smiths Station named Lexi Webb took her own life, Bubba initiated `#SSNotOneMore`, a suicide-prevention campaign. On the night before school started, without telling anyone they were doing it, Bubba and a group of volunteers scattered hundreds of signs all over town: YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE. YOUR MISTAKES DO NOT DEFINE YOU. YOU MATTER. DONT GIVE UP. He had Post-it notes printed with the same affirmations and had volunteers pass them out at all the schools.
In his spare time, Bubba also owned and operated the Country Market over in Salem, where he had a reputation for employing local folks who might have trouble finding work elsewhere. His social-media feed was always full of cheerful posts about the latest specials on pork butts and paper towels. Life was good, if maybe a bit hectic.
In his corner of the world, Bubba Copeland was needed, and he loved being needed.
David White, a retired doctor and chairman of the First Baptist Church board of trustees, was always urging Bubba to take a break, get out of town with Angela and the girls on vacation, disconnect for a while. “My only concern for Bubba was that he was spread too thin,” White says. “But his idea of a vacation was thinking up new outreach programs for the church.”
The Reverend Ralph Wooten, who for several years was pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Phenix City, says he first saw Bubba “emerging from a cloud of barbecue smoke” at the First Baptist annual cookout, and the two men became dear friends. “Bubba was a father of a blended family. He was a husband. He was a pastor. He was a successful small-business owner. And he was the mayor of a town that he loved,” says Wooten. “Any one of those things is enough for one human being, and yet he was all of those things. I knew it was a lot and encouraged him to take care of himself. He seemed to be taking it all in stride.”
![carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-007-660c69ee5b85b.jpg?crop=0.670xw:1.00xh;0.114xw,0&resize=2048:* "carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland")
Andrew Hetherington
Carter Copeland, Bubbas son, is a student at Auburn and was asleep when the story about his father broke. He awoke to a text from his best friend: “Im so sorry. I dont know what to say.”
Daniel Windsor, a dentist in Phenix City and a longtime member of Bubbas church, says that Bubba was a “five-finger friend”—that is, he was one of a small group of cherished people in Windsors life so vital that you can count them on one hand. “He was an indispensable friend—and I loved him dearly,” Windsor says.
Jay Jones, the sheriff of Lee County, Alabama, says that “Bubba was hard not to like. He was that selfless and that reliable, the sort of person who rushes toward need, no questions asked. There arent that many people like Bubba in this world.”
The sign on the lawn in front of Bubbas church read ALL ARE WELCOME. And all were welcome. For Bubba, that was how God worked in people. You might call it the essence of the Copeland theology. “Aint God good?” he would say to friends and strangers alike. And with Bubba, you were never a stranger for long.
Dan Elkins became a member of First Baptist Church in 2018. He was himself a Baptist minister and for ten years had successfully tended his own flock in an “itty-bitty” town in southern Alabama. Married with two kids, Elkins had tried to make his marriage work even though he had known for years that he was gay. After he and his wife divorced in 2003, he resettled in Phenix City, where he would meet his husband, Jason Price. Their first date was at the Home Depot. “In case it didnt work out, you always need something at Home Depot, right?” Price says with a laugh.
Both Elkins and Price have a deep faith and struggled to find a church that would be a true spiritual home for them, where they would be welcomed as full-fledged members, not “as lesser than.” “Theres churches that will cash our checks and let me and my husband sit in the back pew, but we didnt want that. We feel that we have a lot to give and love being involved in a vibrant community,” Elkins says. They had heard good things about First Baptist in Phenix City, but Price had serious reservations about committing to a Baptist church. “I thought, *I aint going to no Southern Baptist church*,” he says. “Been there, done that.”
![text, letter](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq1-660c11de22767.png?resize=2048:* "text, letter")
Elkins first wanted to talk to the pastor, have a frank conversation, and manage everyones expectations from the start. Elkins called the mayors office in Smiths Station, and Bubba said to come on by. “We sat there across from each other, and I told him that Jason and I wanted to be members of a church where we would be treated with dignity and respect and welcomed without reservation.” Instantly, Bubba responded, “Dan, you are my brother. God has blessed our church by sending you to join us.” Bubba added that his son was gay and that he was “not sure how to relate to him. God has brought you into my life to be Carters gay stepdad.”
“So we joined First Baptist and never looked back,” Elkins says. “Its hard for me to express the depth of my gratitude for what Bubba gave us.”
Its not that Bubbas friends idealized him or thought he was perfect—they didnt, and he wasnt. For one, he had to keep a laminate of the Lords Prayer in a right-hand corner of the pulpit at First Baptist, as he sometimes forgot the words. A bigger problem for Bubba was that he worried too much about what people thought of him. And he spent way too much time looking at his phone. These days, of course, there is a direct correlation between those two things. Bubba felt an unending sense of responsibility to the people of his church family and to the people of Smiths Station. An unkind comment on Facebook could keep him up at night. If this is a common modern affliction, Bubba had an acute case.
It would be his undoing.
At the end of the Pastor Appreciation Day service, Bubba joined Dan Elkins and Daniel Windsor at the piano on the altar to sing a favorite song. The Lord did not bless Bubba with much of a singing voice, but what he lacked in talent he made up for in effort. The song was “Sweet Beulah Land,” and the second verse goes like this:
*Im looking now, just across the river*
*To where my faith shall end in sight*
*Theres just a few more days to labor*
*Then I will take my heavenly flight*
Three days later, on the morning of Wednesday, November 1, an online news site called 1819 News, which states as its mission the promotion of “Alabama values,” published a story about Bubba Copeland and all his secrets. Titled “The secret life of Smiths Station Mayor and Baptist pastor F.L. Bubba Copeland as a transgender curvy girl,’ ” the story was about Bubbas hidden online life and featured pictures of him in makeup and a blond wig, wearing womens underwear and clothes. He had posted the pictures to Reddit subgroups, including one called TransLater, where they would collect comments such as “Sister you look beautiful. Cute outfit,” and Bubba would reply, “Thank you doll!”
![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-011-660c6a1719b88.jpg?crop=0.800xw:1.00xh;0.0743xw,0&resize=2048:* "bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip")
Andrew Hetherington
Dan Elkins and David White at Whites dinner table, where a somber group gathered the morning after Bubbas death to plan the future of First Baptist Church.
When the 1819 News correspondent, Craig Monger, had called for comment, Bubba had begged him not to publish the story, fearing that news of his private life exploding into public view would embarrass his family, his town, and his church. Dressing up was something he and his wife had done on a lark, he told Monger. He then went further, saying that cross-­dressing was something he had done on occasion since he was a young man, a hobby to relieve stress. “I have a lot of stress,” he told Monger. “Im not medically transitioning. Its just a bit of a character Im playing.”
“The more I talked to them, the more turned around it got,” Bubba would tell a friend.
When the story hit the next morning, Bubbas son Carter, a junior at Auburn, was still asleep. He woke up to a text from his best friend that read, “Im so sorry. I dont know what to say. I dont know what to do.”
“I had no idea what she was talking about,” Carter says. “I called her, and she told me what had happened. Immediately, I looked up my dads name online and saw it everywhere. It was early in the morning, and every news outlet Id never heard of had already jumped on it, like piranhas. I watched the whole world tear him down almost instantaneously.”
Carter and his father were extremely close. Over the years, each had confided in the other about their innermost struggles—in high school, Carter had come out to his father, and Bubba had shared his secrets with his son. Carter was shocked at the meanness of the story and was overcome with a visceral fear that he had never known before. In a panic, he called his dad.
“He picked up and said, Good morning, buddy. And I said, What are you talking about, *Good morning?!* Trying to calm me down, he again slowly said, *Good morning*, buddy. And I said, Okay, good morning. And then I said, Dad, we have to talk. And he said, No, we dont. I need to get into a meeting. I have people I need to take care of. Well talk later.’ ”
![text, letter](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq4-660c120cca464.png?crop=1.00xw:0.919xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text, letter")
Afraid, and not knowing what else to do, Carter wrote to the storys author, whose email address was posted on the 1819 News website. He received no response. The next day, Thursday, November 2, he wrote to him again:
*Mr. Monger,*
*...I am Bubba Copelands son. What you have done is not by any means journalism. You have hurt the man who has been here for me my entire life. My father is my hero, always has been, and always will be. I have seen some awful things in this world and experienced a great deal of hatred myself as a gay man. You have fueled a fire of hatred and bigotry unlike any other I have ever seen in my life. I have over the last 24 hours watched my father completely break down. I truly wish I could express to you the emotions and the feelings I feel towards you and your colleagues, but I am unable at this time. My only wish now is that you are able to carry on with your life and have the peace which you have so heartlessly taken from countless lives by writing this article.... If you find time in your day to step aside from your \[duties\] I would greatly appreciate a call. More than anything else I would like to tell you the kind of person my father really is. You should truly be ashamed of yourself.*
By that day, Bubbas family, his church family, and several of his closest friends in Smiths Station had become concerned that he might harm himself. The 1819 News story was all anybody was talking about. And another story—more lurid, more humiliating, harder to explain—was on the way and would reveal the last of Bubbas secrets to the entire world. He was in disbelief at the coverage, and the brutal anonymity of the hate pouring onto the First Baptist website and Facebook feed beggared belief.
*Hypocrite!*
*HAHA faggot.*
*You should kill yourself.*
Jason Price and Dan Elkins were the administrators for the church accounts. Along with another volunteer from the church, they would stay up all night taking down the comments so that Bubba wouldnt see them. But Bubba couldnt sleep and was fixated on the velocity and reach of the Internet and its lacerating judgments. As the calendar turned from Thursday to Friday, the community of people who knew him best and loved him most—the people you have just met, and many more besides—desperately tried to form a bulwark between him and the ugliness of the world.
*Bubba, hold your head high. You are so loved and have so much support.*
*Bubba, you are going to get through this—we are going to get through this, together.*
*Bubba, just hold on, brother—get out of town for a few days, this will blow over.*
Bubba responded: *These are dark days.*
Sensing his growing despair, his friends and family began sending more urgent messages:
*Bubba, where are the guns?*
*Bubba, we cant do this without you. How are we going to live our lives without you?*
When the world comes at you, though, it comes *at you.*
The story had gone global, and Bubba couldnt look away from his phone. *Have you seen the* *New York* Daily News*?* he would ask friends, obsessing over the latest headline.
This article appeared in the April/May 2024 issue of Esquire
[subscribe](https://shop.esquire.com/esquire-all-access-membership-price.html)
Elizabeth White, a WRBL News 3 crime reporter based in Auburn, Alabama, who reported on Bubba in his capacity as mayor of Smiths Station, says that “Bubba was down, and they just kept kicking and kicking and kicking. It wasnt enough for them to just expose him. They wanted to hurt him. Its devastating to know that for all the good he did, he spent his last days and moments in unbearable anguish.”
On the afternoon of Friday, November 3, feeling all but destroyed, Bubba Copeland finished the job and killed himself.
The Lee County coroner, Daniel Sexton, would write in his report that the cause of death was a .38 slug to the right side of Bubbas head, just above the ear. But no clinical description of what a handgun can do to flesh and bone will ever capture the true cause of Bubba Copelands death.
The next morning, Bubbas son again wrote to Craig Monger:
*I hope if you ever have children, they never have to face what I am now going through. I hope that they never have to find out that their father caused another mans death by his own hand. You and your colleagues took my father from me....I hope the Lords judgment for you is swift and deliberate.*
Carter Copeland is still waiting for a reply.
---
When a stranger comes to a small town asking painful questions of a grieving community, the third degree is not only understandable, its to be expected.
“You like coffee?” David White asks me. “Well, if youre in Phenix City anyway, then I guess you should come by so we can look each other in the eye and size each other up.”
The doctor and his wife, Lori, live across the street from First Baptist Church. He is quick to point out that on Easter Sunday in 1865, Union general James H. Wilson began one of the last battles of the Civil War from his yard, staging his attack on Confederate fortifications across the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia, before going on to capture Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. White is bemused at his proximity to this history. In fact, he seems to wear a bemused expression as his faces default setting. The staging area used by Wilsons Raiders is now used to stage Whites beehives; his familys annual “canning kitchen,” in which they put up thousands of jars of fruit preserves and jellies and pickles to give away to friends and strangers far and wide at Christmas; his own small vineyard, where he cultivates grapes for a wine thats “best served in Dixie cups”; and the pits for the church barbecue on the last Saturday in April, where theyll smoke two thousand pounds of pork.
![a person with blonde hair](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-001-660c5fd75ef2a.jpg?resize=980:* "a person with blonde hair")
Courtesy of family
Bubba would describe his cross-dressing as “a hobby I do to relieve stress.”
White is from Phenix City, fifth generation, and grew up in this house, which was built in 1906. During the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, as there were no hospitals, the house was made into a flu infirmary, with the sick and dying in the front and concerned family members coming and going from the back, the two halves separated by a heavy curtain that no one was allowed to cross except for the nurse. The doctor would come once a day to leave morphine and aspirin, pronounce the dead, and figure out where to put the new arrivals. “Theres a Black community a quarter mile that way,” White says. “We all grew up together. Thats the way it was. And in those days, nobody had anything, so there was no economic distinction between neighbors. It wasnt perfect, it wasnt good, but it was a lot of people striving together to get by. It wasnt all Ku Klux Klan.”
Per the census, Phenix City has a population of thirty-eight thousand, spread out along the Chattahoochee River, straddling Lee and Russell counties. But it has the feeling of a smaller town, essentially a modest suburb of Columbus, Georgia, directly across the river. Roughly half Black and half white, the diverse population is reflected in First Baptists congregation.
Whites father was born in this house in 1917 and was a newborn when both of his parents became gravely ill with the flu. The nurse was caring for Whites grandparents, who were laid out in the front of the house, and the baby was quarantined on the back porch. The need was so great, and the nurse was doing the best she could, but at one stretch she forgot about the newborn and went forty hours straight without crossing the curtain. When she realized what shed done, she just knew that the baby was dead. She rushed through the curtain to the rear of the house only to find a six-year-old Black boy named Roy Pierson—who had sick family in the front of the house, too, and had himself been lost in the shuffle—caring for the baby, who was quite alive. “Roy was not big enough to pick him up. So he would sleep under the cradle and rock him, and he did his best to keep him clean, but he couldnt figure out how to feed him. So he would get food and he would chew it up, and he would take it from his mouth and put it into my fathers mouth,” White says. “So when I came along in the South in the early sixties, my Uncle Roy was a Black man. He was my fathers brother, as much of a brother as my father would ever have, and they could not have been any closer had they been related by blood. Thats kind of the weave of the history here.”
He is wearing that bemused expression, but just the night before, White had been on the phone for half an hour, sternly interrogating me about why I had come to Phenix City. “We are hurting, our friend is gone, and we dont need more salaciousness and scandal,” he said. “The press—so-called—did this to Bubba. Why would we talk to the press? People are concerned.”
He pours the coffee and says, “The people you are here to meet are still in shock at what happened and feel a profound sense of failure at not being able to save our friend. But if we are talking to you, its because we dont want 1819 News to be the last word on Bubba Copeland.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq2-660c123caaf8a.png?crop=1.00xw:0.653xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
The people who exposed Bubbas secrets said they presumed several things about him, chiefly that he was a hypocrite, preaching hate publicly for the life that he led privately. Bryan Dawson, the founder of 1819 News, would say publicly the week after Bubbas suicide that Copeland was “pretending to be one thing—uber-conservative, Baptist, Trump, Christian, all of that”—while living a life that made a lie of those claims. Maybe Dawson was making broad assumptions about what it means to be a Baptist preacher in Alabama, but if he and his editorial team had known more about Bubba Copeland, they would have known that that assertion was far from accurate. Dawson would also admit that not only had he never heard of Bubba Copeland before receiving “a tip” about his online life, he had also never heard of Smiths Station.
The story of the Internet is of tribes hurling rocks over the horizon at targets they cannot see, doing damage that they do not care to measure. In this case, those assumptions and that ignorance would make Bubba less a human being than an ideological target in a raging culture war, and the damage radiating through these towns is now plain for all with eyes to see. And its not just these towns. Coinciding with the breakdown of our social order and abetted by technology of astonishing power, we find ourselves in a conflict over rapidly changing conceptions of gender and sexual difference. In the backlash to this upheaval, the casualties are mounting.
To learn about Bubba, who he actually was and what he cared about, its important to meet his church family, and the best place to do that is here, at David Whites dinner table. Here is where so many people have broken bread and laughed and carried on. Here is also where the trustees and deacons held an emergency meeting the Saturday morning after Bubba died to figure out if and how the church would continue. Lori White made biscuits and coffee, and a somber group sat around this table to plan the next days service, which is about all they had in them to do. One service at a time. Get through Sunday, then give some thought to the funeral.
It was decided White would lead the service the next day. He is an easy public speaker with a deep familiarity with scripture, and it was not unusual for him to offer a sermon. Bubba was eager to share his pulpit with speakers he saw as more talented than himself, and White had already been scheduled to do the talk that Sunday. But his sermon would need to be very different now. From there, he and Dan Elkins would share pastoral duties, and other area clergy—even including a Methodist pastor named Laura Eason—would be invited in to help keep the church going.
![a building with a flag on the roof](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b14be07d0c.jpg?resize=2048:* "a building with a flag on the roof")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
The evening of November 1, after the 1819 News story had broken, Bubba led his last Bible study at First Baptist. He chose a fateful passage to teach: Psalm 23:1-6, which had him walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
To keep going is the point of a church. Just as White and his family are fed at this table, so too are they fed at the church across the way. The need for spiritual sustenance doesnt explain why we believe what we believe, but the two are intimately related, as with common purpose comes community. Coming together in awe and doubt in the face of eternity might be the last human feeling that AI cant take from us. If a religion splits over a breach in heavenly doctrine or earthly politics or a combination of the two—as the Baptist church did in 1845, cleaved down the middle due to the belief held by what would become Southern Baptists that slavery was an “institution of heaven”—then the community splits, too, profoundly and perhaps irrevocably. The Southern Baptists are no longer confined to the South and now have churches in forty-one states, which makes them the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. In 1995, church leaders apologized for the faiths racist origins and at the same time repented for the churchs opposition to the civil-rights movement and interracial marriage.
There have been other fault lines more recently, involving the enduring Old Testament penchant of more-conservative Christians to take it upon themselves to cast people into hell, as well as contemporary social issues—whether women can preside over services (an emphatic *no* in Southern Baptist churches) and whether God loves gay people (the Southern Baptist position might best be described as “hate the sin, love the sinner”).
What they all seem to agree on is that the Bible is a well-worn daily instruction manual and not some ancient relic. It is important to White that I understand the First Baptist ethos and the mark that Bubba left on the church in Phenix City.
“Our philosophy is this: We open those doors,” he says. “You can read your whole Bible, and nowhere in it does the Bible give you permission to judge your fellow man. But time after time after time, it tells you to love your fellow man. No matter what. That was Bubbas attitude. Its the attitude our church shares.”
It seems an uncontroversial point and a handy distillation of the foremost of the Christian commandments, familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the New Testament. All of the gospels enunciate a version of this basic tenet of Christianity, and the Gospel of Mark makes clear that there is “no commandment greater” than to love God and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Its not that complicated,” says White, “although because we are human, we keep pretending not to understand how this is supposed to work. We keep pretending that God intended for us to rough each other up using his Word. Buddy, there but for the grace of God go I. Maybe we dont cross-dress and that kind of stuff, but we all have our faults, and none of us deserve the harsh judgment of other flawed humans. First and foremost, Bubba Copeland was my friend. I dont fully understand what was going on with him, in his life and in his home, but I also dont know that Im supposed to. I dont think its my business.”
The evening of November 1, after the 1819 News story had broken, Bubba led his last Bible study at First Baptist. He chose a fateful passage to teach: Psalm 23:16, which had him walking through the valley of the shadow of death. After the session, he walked into a very tense meeting of the churchs board of trustees that began in anger and ended two hours later in tears and hugs. The trustees, led by White, had, like everyone else, been blindsided by the story and just wanted to know one thing: Bubba, is it true?
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq3-660c12656d0c6.png?crop=1.00xw:0.938xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
*He maketh me to lie down in green pastures...*
Yes, the pictures were real, he told them. They were private and never meant to be public. It was dumb to post them on the Internet. He was abjectly sorry for the embarrassment he would cause, adding that he would never purposely do anything to hurt the church or his friends.
*He restoreth my soul...*
“We did not suspend him. We did not reprimand him. We did not fire him,” White says. “We talked to him frankly. We expressed our shock and disappointment, and then we replaced that with our concern and our love and our support for our brother, who was suffering. The church would be fine. Now it was Bubba we were worried about.”
*I will fear no evil, for thou art with me...*
The next morning, one of the trustees from First Baptist who had been in the meeting the night before received a call from a man from the Russell County Baptist Association. The caller wanted to know what First Baptist planned to do to punish its pastor and why it hadnt done so already.
*Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies...*
The First Baptist trustee told the caller from the Baptist Association that as First Baptist had not been aligned with the Southern Baptist Convention for decades, the situation with Bubba Copeland was none of the associations business.
*Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over...*
The trustee added that just as the New Testament instructs in the books of Matthew, Luke, and Galatians, when a brother goes astray, as Paul wrote in his letter to the early Christians of Galatia, “you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”
*Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.*
Matthew emphasizes that this counseling should be done privately; Luke, the importance of forgiveness after repentance. And that, the trustee told the caller, was how First Baptist planned to address the situation with its brother Bubba Copeland. *Thank you for calling.*
---
![carter copeland son of deceased mayor and pastor bubba copeland](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240226-ah2-bubbacopeland-4841-dig-660b150175705.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.154xw,0&resize=980:* "Carter Copeland son of deceased Mayor and Pastor Bubba Copeland")
Andrew Hetherington
Phenix City is roughly half Black and half white, and the towns diversity is reflected in the First Baptist congregation. “Our philosophy is this: We open those doors,” says David White. “You can read your whole Bible, and nowhere in it does the Bible give you permission to judge your fellow man.”
“We havent been Southern Baptist for twenty years,” White says. “And youre probably not going to find another Baptist church in a small town anywhere that has gay couples that come to church every Sunday. Of course, you have to be sensitive, because we have members that are old-school, in their eighties and nineties, and they might not be ready for all of that, but theyre accepting. After Gene Langner died, we started looking for a pastor. I was on the search committee that brought the next pastor here, and we had people in church that were gay. It was generally known but not discussed. And the older members, some of them—the staunchest, most Republican, redneck guys, I mean—I grew up around them and I watched God change them, but theyre still very conservative. And more than one of them came up to me and said, Youre looking for a pastor, but, you know, so-and-so sits over there in the third row. Theyre kind of different. Dont you bring anybody here thatll hurt them or turn them away.”
The Southern Baptist Convention still regards sexual difference as an abomination against God, and even homosexual desire not acted on is “always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent and perverted,” according to the denominations “Resolution on Homosexual Marriage.” As a remedy for impure thoughts, the SBC endorses sexual reorientation.
When Dan Elkins had his country church in southern Alabama and was struggling to reconcile his ministry with his sexuality, he came out to his then wife. That was 1996, and it would be seven years before they would divorce. “We did counseling, and I was told, *You can beat this with prayer and fasting,* and I prayed, and I fasted, for *years*—ever the good little Baptist boy—but I was earnestly trying to change something that simply cant be changed,” Elkins says. “I had come out to a confidant at church, and that person betrayed my trust and it got out in the community, but I didnt know it. We showed up for church one Wednesday night and the parking lot was full, and Im like, *Somethings going on*. This was January 2002. Oh my word. If Facebook had been around then, Im not sure Id be here. Im not sure that I would have seen the way out. Like Bubba couldnt see the way out.”
In this pocket of East Alabama, though, the church doors are open, and the Bibles say that God loves everybody. “Thats how this church has evolved,” says White. “We have members who are gay and married and accepted, and thats relatively new. And we have older members who are accepting even if they dont understand. Its been a long trip for them. You cannot fail to recognize how far theyve come.
“And thats Bubbas legacy,” White adds. “I can tell you that his legacy is not defined by that week. His legacy is defined by the friends he leaves, by the people that he led to the Lord, by the life and values he lived. *Thats* his legacy. *Not* 1819 News. 1819 News is to journalism what a quack is to the practice of medicine.”
---
Bryan Dawson believes in redemption narratives. Especially his own. The founder of 1819 News (so named because 1819 is the year Alabama became a state) has a compelling personal story that he has honed into a performance piece on various podcasts and pulpits across Alabama for the past several years, although he is not from the state or even the South.
![a man speaking into a microphone](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/esq040124adeathinalabama-003-660c604d2af65.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.245xw,0&resize=980:* "a man speaking into a microphone")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
When a high school student in Smiths Station took her own life, Bubba started a suicide-prevention campaign, putting up affirmations all over town.
As a young man, Dawson lived in Colorado Springs, and its there that his life of crime gave him the material for his story. He trafficked in weed, cocaine, and meth; was the kingpin of a “motorcycle, automobile theft ring”; and in spring 2007 beat a “snitch” over the head with a chain with a padlock at the end of it, for which he would be charged with attempted murder, among other felonies. (He would eventually plead to reduced charges and receive a sentence of sixteen years in prison.) These experiences have been memorialized numerous times in the press, in stories such as “From Breaking Bad to Redemption: The Story of Bryan Dawson” in *Newsweek* and in an interview on his own website titled “From Tragedy to Triumph, the CEO of 1819 News Shares His Story.”
In his story, he tells of a sad and lonely young man with no self-esteem raised in a broken home, who is always put in the “friend zone” by young women and who only ever feels comfortable as himself when he is high or drunk. And then he becomes a violent criminal, faces hundreds of years in prison, is extended grace and kindness over and over again by strangers and the state, finds God, and is ultimately salvaged by a community that forgives him seventy times seven (Matthew 18:2122). In the details and framing of his story, Dawson is pleading for understanding, and his adoring interviewers give it to him; one even adds at the end, “I think if you had been born way back, you would be in the Bible.”
Yes, you might say that Dawsons Colorado Springs redemption epic is like Saul on the road to Damascus, if Saul had attempted to murder a man with a padlock on a chain, causing “permanent disfigurement,” according to the attending physician in a police report, who added that “the victim was lucky to be alive.”
Saul of course repents, calls himself the “foremost of sinners,” and becomes Paul, the greatest writer of the New Testament. In his redemption narrative, Dawson also becomes a different person, but when he tells his story this new person doesnt mention the man he tried to kill, doesnt indicate how he feels about him or whether he ever thinks about how he might be getting on with his permanent disfigurement. Instead, in his redemption story, Dawson occasionally shines a little light on his supporting cast—his wife, his mother—but mostly he finds satisfaction in the power of his own narrative. His interviewers feel the same way, and they interrupt him to say things like *Its just like in the movies!*
![a man speaking into a microphone](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b167b16c37.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.371xh;0,0.629xh&resize=2048:* "a man speaking into a microphone")
SARA PALCZEWSKI/OPELIKA-AUBURN NEWS/AP (COPELAND). MARK WARREN (SIGN). JULIE BENNETT/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX (MEMORIAL)
Left: The memorial in front of the church in the days after Bubba killed himself. Right: One of the signs with affirmations that Bubba put up around Smiths Station after a local high school student took her own life.
Which brings us to his fresh start in Alabama, where he grew an apostolic beard, started to allow the slightest bit of a twang in now and then, joined a Baptist church in Wetumpka where he sometimes preached from the Old Testament and where just ten days before his life intersected with Bubba Copelands he delivered a sermon that revealed him to be an aspiring theocrat. Preaching from Deuteronomy and Samuel, he refers to “Gods government”; is entranced by the “rod of correction,” the “power of the sword,” and offenses against God that are “punishable by death”; warns of the consequences that will come when a church “neglects to use the sword properly”; and says things like “Weve done a great job of rooting out the rubbish and the refuse of the Philistines in our church. Weve done a phenomenal job” and “Right now in the state the fear of God is not before their eyes, so they just do whatever they want.”
Appearing on a podcast this past January about the “Dangers of Progres­sive Christianity,” Dawson said that “progressive Christianity comes from feminism creeping into the church” and that the one true faith had fallen victim to “soccer moms” and their tendency to be more welcoming and less judgmental. In the same broadcast, he trained particular fire on a prominent evangelical minister who had sparked controversy by advocating that churches be more supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. For this, Dawson called the minister an “apostate” and a “full-blown heretic” and then went on to improvise that the man was gay and was cheating on his wife, and to finish the point he said, “I wish there were Old Testament lightning strikes that happen to people when they blaspheme the Lord the way that he does.”
The Lord did not bless Bryan Dawson with a talent for public speaking, but what he lacks in fire he makes up for in brimstone. His Christianity seems somewhat unfamiliar with its namesake. In that, he is a familiar figure, older than time, and not only among Christians—a religious enforcer who knows just enough of a holy book to be dangerous. You might say that he put down his padlock, picked up his Bible, and didnt skip a beat.
Dawson then merged his brutal version of the Christian faith with the often brutal politics of Alabama on the always brutal platform of the Internet and in late 2021 founded 1819 News to counter the most prominent news site in Alabama, AL.com, which is, he says, “communist propaganda.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq5-660b1700bc04d.png?crop=1.00xw:0.880xh;0,0.120xh&resize=2048:* "text")
These details of Dawsons story are important, because in the moral calculus of 1819 News, Bryan Dawson is allowed a redemption narrative sanitized of victims, but Bubba Copeland is not. Perhaps that is because Dawsons violent felonies were manly crimes, just like in the movies, whereas Bubba Copelands transgressions were of thought and behavior that Dawson could not square with his version of the faith and would not tolerate, and rather than extend Copeland the grace that he himself had been the beneficiary of so many times, he ignored Bubbas plea for mercy and leveled him instead. He and his editor in chief, Jeff Poor—an alum of the Daily Caller and a regular contributor to Breitbart—would make the case that it was Bubba Copeland, who did not preach violence from his pulpit, who was the dangerous one. After his death, they would assert publicly that he was a troubled man, that he had victims, that it was their duty to expose him, and that, as Poor would say, “the people at First Baptist Church, Phenix City, had a right to know what their worship leader was doing.”
On the day that Bubba Copeland took his own life, 1819 News published its second feature on his fantasy life online. This story was even more lurid than the first, detailing pieces of erotic fiction that Bubba had posted as his alter ego. Some of the fiction was gruesome—one story in particular dealt with a trans protagonist who stalked and killed a woman so that she could have a relationship with her victims husband. The story was titled “Dangerous Obsession”: “In my cubicle I scanned her page. She posted a new picture! Excited I screenshot it to add to my ever-growing collection. To say I was a stalker would be a bit of an understatement. Every post she made I studied it, analyzing and taking notes of her daily routine. What she ate, what she drank, from her favorite coffee to her favorite alcoholic drink. Her life had become my obsession.”
In the two days since 1819 News had posted its first story, it had been alerted that Bubba had used pictures of at least two real people from the Phenix City area in at least one of his posts—a meme about transitioning. The two were a brother and sister, and people from the community have confirmed for me that the brother was a minor when the picture that Bubba used was taken. In his second feature, correspondent Craig Monger wrote that the father of the children pictured had called 1819 News, informed the site that the pictures were of his children, and asked them to remove the images. (The photo of the boy was taken from the fathers social-media account.) In his posts, Bubba seemed to use photos from the Internet both purposefully and indiscriminately, once including an image of a teenage girl who was not from the area.
![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240225-ah2-bubbacopeland-0440-dig-660b172b441e2.jpg?crop=0.535xw:1.00xh;0.164xw,0&resize=980:* "bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Lisa Deason worked with Bubba in the Smiths Station mayors office. She engaged in a physical strug­gle with him in a vain effort to keep him from ending his life.
A local woman had contacted the site to say that Bubba had used pictures of her in some of his posts. Monger also discovered that Bubba had used the name of another local woman in “Dangerous Obsession.” I reached out to the father of the brother and sister but did not hear back, and also to both of the women. One did not reply, the other wrote back, “No need to bring all of that back up as those...families heal.”
When Dawson and Poor had published their exposé on Bubba two days earlier, the 1819 News editorial team had apparently not been aware that he had used the names and images of people he knew in posting to his online community. But in the days after his death, his poor judgment would become their justification for having published the stories in the first place. 1819 Newss initial imperative—to expose a cross-dressing pastor that its editorial team had assumed to be a hypocrite—would no longer be enough.
The week after Bubbas suicide, Dawson and Poor released a thirty-­four-minute video podcast on which they outlined all that had gone into their decision to publish their exposé. The timeline, they say, is that they received a tip about Bubbas online life on Monday, October 30. They called him for comment. They published on Wednesday morning after deliberating for three hours the night before on whether to go through with it.
In the video, the two strike a sober pose. “Its a tragic situation where no one wins,” says Dawson. They grant themselves absolution for doing the right thing and say that they feel besieged by criticism on social media that 1819 News had acted irresponsibly. Dawson does not allow himself to understand the reaction in anything other than ideological terms. “This story,” he says, “has shaken things up in the leftist community!”
Poor wears the look of a man surprised to find himself in the middle of a matter of such consequence and bristles at the suggestion that decisions he was party to might have contributed to the death of a man. Dont assume that Bubba Copeland killed himself because of those stories, he says. “We may never know, but dont assume that.”
As they hash out their reasons, Dawson and Poor repeatedly refer to “Dangerous Obsession,” acknowledging that the story is fantasy while nonetheless treating it as if it were evidence of real conduct. Poor becomes exercised and shouts, “What if people dont ever find out about this? What if it just is allowed to continue on into the future?” And then, with no apparent basis in fact for saying so, he adds this: “We dont know what else is out there—dont assume that theres nothing else out there. This behavior does raise a lot of unanswered questions....I think maybe a little caution here is warranted.”
![text](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/pq6-660c12b0e2cba.png?crop=1.00xw:0.969xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "text")
Six days after Bubba Copeland killed himself and his family and community had been devastated, the editor in chief of 1819 News began to urge caution while continuing to assassinate his character.
Near the end of their podcast, Poor says that although he was “not celebrating the death of Bubba Copeland,” he was “at peace” with the decision to publish.
Its easy to see that Bubba was wrong and crossed an ethical line in using the names and images of people he knew in his fiction and other posts. One can only assume that it must have been an awful experience for those two women and the father of that brother and sister to be unexpectedly swept up in this story. But in this Alabama skirmish in a hellish culture war—over gender and speech and objective reality itself—with its dehumanized politics and competing conceptions of heaven, suffused with rage and loss and bereft of much clarity, two things are clear: First, 1819 News wanted the whole world to see Bubbas posts, without fully understanding what they contained. Before posting its stories, the editorial team there also didnt seem to know much beyond the few facts they had discovered, things they saw as sensational and repugnant. And second, Bubba Copeland was desperate for his hidden life to remain hidden and never intended for anyone other than perhaps his wife and the other pseudonymous members of his online community to see his posts. He was shattered at the sudden collision of his private and public identities and killed himself.
The last story 1819 News published about Bubba Copeland came on November 11, eight days after his death. It was a short essay in support of the editorial decision to run the stories, and its conclusion was that Bubba had completed “his rejection of Gods laws” because he had “murdered himself.”
I wrote to 1819 News four times, asking to discuss the stories it published about Bubba Copeland. I did not receive a reply.
---
He gave himself the nickname, as he didnt much care for “Fred Copeland Jr.” and thought that “Bubba” sounded friendly. He was a standout linebacker for the Smiths Station high school football team, but his real passion in school had been acting in drama productions, because, as he would tell his son, “you can become someone else for a moment.”
When he and his first wife, Merrigail, were dating, Bubba sat her down one night and said he had something to tell her. “Have you heard of transgender?” he asked her.
“Bubba, I have no idea what youre talking about,” she answered. He explained it as best he could, and then Merrigail asked, “Why are we talking about this?”
“Well, I dabble in that,” he said. “There have been times that I have dressed up.”
The news threw Merrigail, but the attraction between them was so strong that she thought their relationship could withstand anything. The couple were married in 1997, and she would soon come to believe that Bubba had a compulsion that he couldnt control. When theyd been married for a year or so, they decided to buy a dog. When the day came to pick up the dog, Bubba was working, and so Merrigail and her father, Pastor Langner, walked out to the garage to get some rope to secure a large crate. When she opened up the tool chest on Bubbas truck, she found that it was full of womens clothes. Merrigail turned to her father. “Dad, I dont want to embarrass him,” she said.
“I wont,” her father said.
A few years later, when she was pregnant with their son Carter, she discovered some “transgender stuff” on his computer one afternoon. When Bubba got home from work, he found Merrigail crying. He apologized profusely, saying that the stress at work was too much for him and that dressing up was an escape. “Ill try to do better,” he told Merrigail. She knew how bad her husbands stress was. Bubba worked with his father, who, she felt, “talked to him like he was a dog.” Fred Sr. was a hard man, a combat veteran who had returned from Vietnam and made his fortune in the grocery business in Georgia and Alabama. Bubba would often come home saying that he wanted to do something different with his life.
Merrigails father told her, “Sweetheart, he cant help it. This is who he is.” Langner would counsel his son-in-law with compassion, saying, “Bubba, Christ didnt come into this world for us to be two people. You can only live one life. You need to decide which life youre going to lead.”
![a wooden bench in a park](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/1-660b17c8baa46.jpg?crop=1.00xw:0.958xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "a wooden bench in a park")
BY ANDREW HETHERINGTON
Mechanics­ville Cemetery, where Bubba would often go to meditate when he was troubled and needed to “calm down.”
In East Alabama, though, Bubba couldnt imagine a world where he could be himself in a way that people would accept. The marriage broke down, and when the couple divorced in 2009, Bubba was so despondent that he seriously contemplated suicide. One morning, when Carter was eight years old, he found his father sitting on the floor in the shower, sobbing. “I said, Dad, are you okay? I love you,’ ” Carter remembers. “And he said, Im okay, buddy. I just need a second.’ ” Theres a nineteenth-century cemetery—Mechanicsville Cemetery, its called—near the grocery store Bubba owned, and he would sometimes go there to think when he was troubled. After dropping Carter off with the babysitter, Bubba went to the cemetery, intending to kill himself. He had the barrel of a handgun in his mouth when his phone rang. It was an old friend from town, who told Bubba, “Hey, buddy. The Lord put you on my heart, and I just wanted to tell you I love you.”
The call stopped Bubba. But his torment would continue.
After the divorce, Carter lived mostly with his father and attended the Glenwood School in Smiths Station, a private Christian academy. Bubba was a devoted father, and in the years before he met Angela, his life revolved around Carter. Two things happened in the years before Bubba remarried that would define the relationship between father and son. When he was twelve, Carter came across a digital camera in his fathers closet full of pictures of Bubba dressed in womens clothes. “This is not something that I ever wanted you to find out,” Bubba told his son.
“I just need to know if youre doing something really wrong, Dad,” Carter replied.
“Absolutely not,” Bubba answered. “This has been a hobby of mine for a while. Its my escape.”
When Merrigail found out that her son had discovered his fathers secret, she said, “Your dad is an incredible man. Dont let this change the way that you feel about him.” It didnt. In fact, it gave Carter the feeling that he could talk to his father about anything.
Two years later, when Carter was a freshman in high school, he told his father that he was gay and that he was struggling with how to live honestly at school and in the world. He wanted to be free to be himself. God had made him this way. Why would he hide who he was? His father was afraid for Carter and angry that he couldnt talk him out of coming out publicly. He knew what would happen to him, doing so at such a young age in such a small town, and the two fought bitterly. Bubba wanted him to wait until college to come out, wanted him to go far away, be happy, live his life. Carter decided instead to come out to a cherished teacher who betrayed him to a school administrator, who called Carter into his office and told him that he was going to hell. Once the news spread, Carter experienced what felt like torture. Students would spit on him in the bathroom, throw food at him in the lunchroom, and threaten to physically attack him. The teachers were of no help, as they now hated him, too. There was no safe harbor for the gay kid at the Christian school.
There is nothing like being the singular locus of a compounding hatred, in a closed system that justifies the hatred and calls it good. After school one day, Carter went home, his head full of monsters, and he swallowed a bottle of pills. And then he walked into his favorite room, the family library with its cathedral ceilings, and lay on the floor and looked up and watched the ceiling fan turn. His father found him there, saw the empty pill bottle, and dragged him to the bathroom, where he put his fingers down Carters throat.
It would be the first of several suicide attempts for Carter. Time after time, his father would save him. And the last time, Bubba just held Carter and told him, “God loves you, Carter. And I love you, too. Dont listen to those people at school. Theres nothing wrong with you. The only thing wrong with you is the judgment of the world.”
“And then he said this: Carter, if I can survive this, you can survive this, too. And we made a pact with each other that day that we would live. We would make ourselves happy, we would make others happy, we would live fulfilled lives. And as long as one of us had to do it, the other had to do it, too. No suicides. Promise?’ ”
Carter says now that he realizes that by coming out when he did, he was trying to show his father that its okay, that you can be who you are. *Its all right*.
“I had reached a point in my life where I had begun to accept myself,” he says. “I had finally gotten to that point, and now my own father had to go through it. And the people that hated me and wanted me to be morally punished were the same people that took my dad from me.”
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![bubba copeland former mayor and pastor rip](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/240225-ah1-bubbacopeland-3222-660b1834a7556.jpg?crop=0.900xw:0.899xh;0.0190xw,0.101xh&resize=2048:* "Bubba Copeland former mayor and pastor RIP")
Andrew Hetherington
A memorial to Bubba, which was unveiled on March 26, 2024. Part of the Smiths Station memorial sidewalk, the marker is located in front of the Historic Jones Store Museum, a local heritage project that he had championed and that opened in 2019.
It was the afternoon of Friday, November 3, 2023. The last hour of Bubba Copelands life. For days, those who knew him best and loved him most had encircled him, lifting him up, trying to hold tight to keep him from slipping away. Their efforts had seemed to be working. Earlier that day, Bubba had gotten a couple new tires for one of his cars, hed stopped by the government center in Smiths Station to pick up his new city credit card, hed checked in at the country market. Hed also sent a long and heartfelt letter to the congregation of First Baptist, thanking them for Pastor Appreciation Day, in which he seemed to see a future. “I look forward to continuing our journey of faith, growth, and service together,” hed written. Now hed gone missing. In Auburn, Carter Copeland received a call from his stepmother, Angela. “Your dad just called me. And he said that he loves me and that hes always loved me and to go to my parents house. And then the call dropped off, and now every time I call him, it goes straight to voicemail. I dont know what to do, Carter. You know him better than anybody. Where is he?”
By then, the Lee County sheriffs department had fanned out all over the county to find Bubba and make sure he was okay. It wasnt just law enforcement, either—Bubbas friends and family had also begun searching for him, and as Carter ran to his car to make the drive from Auburn, Lisa Deason, who had worked as Bubbas communications director in Smiths Station, had gone looking for him, too, and was pulling up at Bubbas house. Deason had helped him draft letters of resignation as mayor and pastor just the day before. The letter resigning from his position as pastor read, in part, “Admittedly, there have been instances where my wife and I have taken private pictures within the confines of our home, which should have never been shared online. I realize this was a significant lapse in judgment and a personal failure, for which I bear complete and absolute responsibility....I apologize for any distress or humiliation my actions may have caused. Love to all, Bubba.” The letter would never be sent.
Like many of his other friends, Deason had been urging Bubba to get out of town for a few days, let the Internet find somebody else to destroy, let things blow over. That morning, though, 1819 News had dropped its second feature on Bubba and, mesmerized by the coverage on his phone, he had started telling people that he didnt know if he could go on. The night before, Dan Elkins and Jason Price had had a long talk with Bubba about his growing despair, and Elkins had asked him, “Bubba, where are your guns?” Bubba said that he had surrendered his handgun to a safety officer in Smiths Station. As several of his friends would say, though, he lives in the South and his name is Bubba—hes got more than one gun.
The latest 1819 News piece seemed to break something in Bubba, unleashing a lethal shame, and by that afternoon his phone was as dangerous a weapon as his gun.
Not finding Bubba at home, Deason stood in the driveway of his house and called 911, saying that her friend was suicidal, and at that moment, his Tahoe pulled up in front of the house on Oakhurst Drive. He got out and left the motor running. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I came to check on you.”
“Whos with you?”
“Im by myself.”
“Do not tell Angela where I am. *I mean it*. Dont you tell a soul where I am.”
Bubba went into the house for no more than thirty seconds, and when he came out he was walking fast and moved to get back in his truck. “I love you,” he told Deason, “but I got to go.”
She said, “No, Im not going to let you do this, Bubba! *Please* dont do this. You have way more people that love you than you can even imagine. Dont do this. Dont do this to your family. *Please. Dont.”* Deason was sobbing now and trying to hold on to Bubba, with her arms wrapped around him. *No, Im not letting you leave*. Realizing she couldnt restrain him, she let go, ran around him, jumped into the drivers seat, turned off the ignition, and grabbed the steering wheel. *Im not going to let you leave.*
“Im going to do it in front of you if you dont move,” he said. Bubba pulled her out of the truck, and in desperation, she was thinking, *What the hell can I do?* In that instant, 911 called back, and instead of the operator, it was Jeff Pitts with the sheriffs department on the line.
“Whats going on?” Pitts asked.
“Hes trying to leave and he wont listen to me! Hes adamant. He says hes got to end it.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Bubba, its Major Pitts, Jeff Pitts.”
“Jeff, man, I love you,” Bubba said. “But Im done. I cant do this no more.”
Bubba handed the phone to Deason, got in his truck, and peeled away.
As he drove, a cousin who had joined the search pulled up behind him. Bubba told him, *If these deputies make me stop, youre going to see something that I do not want you to see.*
Carter was driving 100 miles per hour toward Mechanicsville Cemetery, because he knew his father might be there. He called his fathers number over and over. Nothing. And then his father called him.
“I love you, buddy,” Bubba said. “Ive lived my whole life to make sure that you are successful and that you have what you need. And I just want you to know that I love you more than anything in this world.”
“I knew immediately what that meant,” Carter says. “And I just said, Please, Dad, please tell me youre not doing what I think youre doing. Please, we can get through this.’ ”
“Its too late, son. I love you. Im so sorry.”
“I told him, You have nothing to be sorry about. Theres nothing to be sorry for. I love you. Youre my hero. Always will be. This is going to be horrible. Well get through it.’ ”
“Im sorry. This is what I have to do. This is the only way out.”
Carter remembers feeling desperate to hold on, desperate to find the words that would make his father stay, desperate. He screamed at the top of his lungs and felt a rush of emotion such that he thought his vocal cords might explode. *I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!* “I screamed it as loud as I could for as long as he was on the line, because I knew he was listening. I knew. I could see he was still on the call. I kept screaming. Thats all I knew to say was, *I love you! Its okay. I love you. Its okay!”*
And then silence.
---
In the immediate aftermath of Bubbas death, along a country road in the town of Beulah, Lee County sheriff Jay Jones took possession of his electronic devices, and his office searched them for evidence of criminal conduct. They found none. “In my view, Bubba Copeland would never intentionally do anything to harm anyone,” Jones told me. “I just dont think that he was that type of person.”
David White would write a new sermon for the Sunday after Bubbas death, staying up well past midnight the night before, sitting at his dinner table, writing in longhand. He would preach Psalm 23:16, just as Bubba had in his last service. And he wanted to make sure the world knew that the church had remained true to its pastor and always would. “Despite what may have been implied in the media,” he wrote, “members of this church have been steadfast in their love and concern for our pastor.”
We all have things that we dont want other people to know about us. Things that might be hard to explain, even to ourselves. The First Baptist Church of Phenix City did not abandon Bubba Copeland, even after learning the secrets that he might not have been able to explain even to himself.
Bubbas body would be turned away by the two Baptist cemeteries in Smiths Station, his hometown, the town that he loved. He is buried in a private family plot many miles away.
As I finished my reporting for this story, I took to asking the people in Bubbas life what they might say to the people at 1819 News if they had the chance. Several told me that they are required to love them and will be praying for them. As Bubba Copeland always said, “God loves you, and so do we.”
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# Russia, Ukraine, and the Coming Schism in Orthodox Christianity
## Clash of the Patriarchs
A hard-line Russian bishop backed by the political might of the Kremlin could split the Orthodox Church in two.
![Two patriarchs sitting opposite each other at base of Orthodox-cross-shaped photo of Vladimir Putin, all on red background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/phTZN8253ohj6us2-C8OXHzRN3Q=/0x115:2055x2684/648x810/media/img/2024/04/02/Worth_1_VERT/original.png)
Photo-illustration by Cristiana Couceiro. Sources: Sefa Karacan / Anadolu Agency / Getty; Getty; Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty.
![Two patriarchs sitting opposite each other at base of Orthodox-cross-shaped photo of Vladimir Putin, all on red background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/MkxvFHtuLFocHJXw0bTdyREcL6U=/438x0:1563x1125/80x80/media/img/2024/04/Worth_1_HP/original.png)
Listen to this article
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In late August of 2018, Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, flew from Moscow to Istanbul on an urgent mission. He brought with him an entourage—a dozen clerics, diplomats, and bodyguards—that made its way in a convoy to the Phanar, the Orthodox worlds equivalent of the Vatican, housed in a complex of buildings just off the Golden Horn waterway, on Istanbuls European side.
## Explore the May 2024 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
[View More](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/)
Kirill was on his way to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the archbishop of Constantinople and the most senior figure in the Orthodox Christian world. Kirill had heard that Bartholomew was preparing to cut Moscows ancient religious ties to Ukraine by recognizing a new and independent Orthodox Church in Kyiv. For Kirill and his de facto boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin, this posed an almost existential threat. Ukraine and its monasteries are the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church; both nations trace their spiritual and national origins to the Kyiv-based kingdom that was converted from paganism to Christianity about 1,000 years ago. If the Church in Ukraine succeeded in breaking away from the Russian Church, it would seriously weaken efforts to maintain what Putin has called a “Russian world” of influence in the old Soviet sphere. And the decision was in the hands of Bartholomew, the sole figure with the canonical authority to issue a “tomos of autocephaly” and thereby bless Ukraines declaration of religious independence.
When Kirill arrived outside the Phanar, a crowd of Ukrainian protesters had already gathered around the compounds beige stone walls. Kirills support for Russias brutal behavior—the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the bloody proxy war in eastern Ukraine—had made him a hated figure, and had helped boost support in Kyiv for an independent Church.
Kirill and his men cleared a path and ascended the marble steps. Black-clad priests led them to Bartholomew, who was waiting in a wood-paneled throne room. The two white-bearded patriarchs both wore formal robes and headdresses, but they cut strikingly different figures. Bartholomew, then 78, was all in black, a round-shouldered man with a ruddy face and a humble demeanor; Kirill, 71, looked austere and reserved, his head draped regally in an embroidered white *koukoulion* with a small golden cross at the top.
The tone of the meeting was set just after the two sides sat down at a table laden with sweets and beverages. Kirill reached for a glass of mineral water, but before he could take a drink, one of his bodyguards snatched the glass from his hand, put it aside, and brought out a plastic bottle of water from his bag. “As if we would try to poison the patriarch of Moscow,” I was told by Archbishop Elpidophoros, one of the Phanars senior clerics. The two sides [disagreed on a wide range of issues](https://orthodoxia.info/news/exclusive-the-dialogue-between-the-patriarchs-of-constantinople-and-moscow-during-their-meeting-at-the-phanar/), but when they reached the meetings real subject—Ukraine—the mood shifted from chilly politeness to open hostility. Bartholomew recited a list of grievances, all but accusing Kirill of trying to displace him and become the new arbiter of the Orthodox faith.
Kirill deflected the accusations and drove home his central demand: Ukraine must not be allowed to separate its Church from Moscows. The issue was “a ticking time bomb,” he said, according to a leaked transcript of the meeting. “We have never abandoned the notion that we are one country and one people. It is impossible for us to separate Kyiv from our country, because this is where our history began.”
Bartholomew explained that “the Ukrainians dont feel comfortable under the control of Russia and desire full ecclesiastical independence just as they have political independence.” He added that he had been receiving petitions and pleas for years from Ukrainians at all levels, including members of Parliament and the countrys thenpresident and prime minister. Kirill replied that those pleas were meaningless because Ukraines political class was illegitimate. The people, he said with a disquieting certainty, “will overthrow them and expel them.” Bartholomew, shocked by the implied violence in Kirills words, called on the Russians “not to issue such threats, neither for schism nor for bloodshed in Ukraine.” When the meeting concluded, Kirill and his men were so angry that they skipped lunch and headed straight back to their private plane, I was told by an adviser to Bartholomew.
In the end, the threats proved unavailing: Bartholomew approved the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and Kirill [issued an order](https://apnews.com/article/68834e730fb448afa4b2cfe909c71a7d) to cut the Russian Churchs ties with the Phanar. (Confusingly, the Moscow-linked Church is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.) The clash of the patriarchs—they have not spoken since—now looks a lot like a prelude to the Russian war in Ukraine. Just after Bartholomew announced his decision, Putin [convened a meeting of his security council to discuss it](http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58813). Putin later cited the Church schism as part of his justification for the 2022 invasion, and he and Kirill continue to speak of the breakaway Church as an assault on Russias national identity.
But the struggle between Bartholomew and Kirill is bigger than Ukraine. It is a battle for the soul of Orthodox Christianity, a faith with 300 million believers around the world. The divide has drawn comparisons to the Great Schism, which a millennium ago separated the Orthodox East and the Catholic West.
On one side, Bartholomew has spent three decades trying to make Orthodoxy more compatible with the modern liberal world. He openly urges the faithful to accept evolution and other scientific tenets. He has been a passionate advocate for environmental protection. And, like Pope Francis, he has quietly promoted a more accepting attitude toward homosexuality. But Bartholomews power is more limited than the popes. There are eight other Orthodox patriarchs, each of whom presides over a national or regional Church, and Bartholomews role is that of “first among equals.”
Kirill, who heads by far the largest national Church, has made it into a bastion of militancy. He has given the war against Ukraine his full-throated support, and [some of his priests go further](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-church-war-orthodox-ukraine-/32354081.html), preaching about the glory of firing Grad rockets and dying in battle for Russia. Kirills tediously Manichaean tirades—about saintly Russia defending “traditional values” against the gay-pride parades of the decadent West—are much more than a justification for Putins autocracy. His anti-modern ideology has become an instrument of soft power that is eagerly consumed by conservatives across the Orthodox world as well as by right-wing figures in Europe (such as Hungarys Viktor Orbán). It has even [won adherents in the United States](https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1096741988/orthodox-christian-churches-are-drawing-in-far-right-american-converts), where some evangelicals and right-wing Catholics seek a stronger hand in the culture wars.
[Peacefield: Putins unholy war](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/russia-ukraine-invasion-religion-holy-war/676408/)
Kirill has also [launched an aggressive effort to capture Orthodox parishes allied with Bartholomew](https://ecfr.eu/article/propaganda-in-holy-orders-africa-ukraine-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/), allegedly with the help of the FSB, Russias intelligence apparatus, and of the Wagner Group, Russias mercenary arm. The Russian Orthodox Church has used bribery and blackmail, threatening to undermine churches that do not adopt its policies and requiring newly converted (and well-paid) clerics to sign documents renouncing all ties with Bartholomews Church. The goal of this campaign is a very old one. Five centuries ago, after Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans, a Russian monk famously wrote that Moscow was now the worlds great Christian capital: “Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there shall not be a fourth.” Kirill and Putin seem determined to make this declaration of a “third Rome”—Moscow—come true.
The spiritual heart of Orthodox Christianity is on Mount Athos, a densely forested peninsula in northern Greece. It is a community of 20 ancient monasteries, and pilgrims must receive written permission to visit. No women are allowed, and the peninsula—sealed from the mainland by fences—can be reached only by boat, as if it were an island. I got my entry paper stamped just after dawn at a waterside kiosk in Ouranoupoli, a Greek beach town full of restaurants and bars that is the main gateway to Athos. The waitress who had brought my coffee would be the last woman I saw for three days. At the pier, I climbed onto a battered old ferry that gradually filled with bearded monks, construction workers, and a smattering of pilgrims. A heavy funk of unwashed male bodies mingled with the sea breeze. As I looked out at the gorgeous blue-green water, I pitied the monks, who must also renounce swimming here.
Not much has changed on Athos since the monks first arrived, more than 1,000 years ago. They have followed the same candle-lit rituals of prayer and chanting even as the Christian world around them—once contained in a single empire—split and transformed over the centuries like a slow detonation. The Great Schism occurred in 1054. Around that same time, Mount Athos saw the arrival of Slavic monks, recently converted from paganism, who became an important presence on the peninsula and remain so today.
The ferry trawled alongside the western coast of Athos. After half an hour, we saw a cluster of buildings topped by the distinctive onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Church: the St. Panteleimon Monastery. It is the most Russia-friendly monastery on Athos, and its monks have [posted a video of one of their priests chanting a prayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arbrYjFV8l4) for “President Vladimir Vladimirovich, the government, and army of our God-protected fatherland.” After the Ukraine invasion in 2022, the monasterys abbot sent Putin a birthday letter expressing the belief that “Russia under your wise guidance will overcome all difficulties and become a world power.” The monastery had not responded to my request for a visit. Still, my translator—a Macedonian named Goran who speaks fluent Russian as well as Greek—and I were hoping to persuade the monks to chat.
As we walked uphill from the pier, it became apparent that some of the monasterys buildings were brand-new. Others were still under construction or being renovated, tall cranes hovering above them. Starting in the late 1990s, wealthy Russians, including a coterie of oligarchs close to Putin, [began investing huge amounts of money in St. Panteleimon](https://www.ft.com/content/a41ed014-c38b-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9). It is now the largest and most opulent compound in all of Athos. The finances of the monasteries are opaque, and little supervision was introduced even after an abbot with ties to Russian oligarchs was jailed in Greece for embezzlement and fraud in 2011 over a lucrative land deal. (He was acquitted six years later.)
For all the new buildings, I found St. Panteleimon almost empty. Near the main sanctuary, we tried to have a word with a monk who was hurrying past. The man grimaced and brushed us off. We spotted a second monk, and he, too, refused to speak. Goran, who has been to Athos many times, seemed amazed by this rudeness. There is an ancient tradition on Athos of hospitality for pilgrims, and Goran told me he had been warmly received at St. Panteleimon before the war in Ukraine. Not anymore.
Our next stop was the Monastery of Simonopetra, a little farther down the coast. The reception could not have been more different. In the main building, a young monk from Syria named Seraphim escorted us into an anteroom with a magnificent view over the sea. He vanished, reappearing a minute later with a silver tray bearing coffee, water, and tiny glasses of cherry liqueur made by the monks. When we described our experience at St. Panteleimon, Seraphim nodded sadly. He then began telling us about a Russian plot to capture and annex Athos. It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about something that had occurred in the 19th century.
The past is very close on Athos. Clocks there still run on Byzantine time, with the day starting at sunset rather than midnight. The monks live surrounded by frescoes depicting events that happened centuries or even a millennium ago. Most of the clerics have little contact with the outside world, and must seek approval from their superiors to use the internet. Some current events do penetrate. The Ukraine war has had a profound impact, and not just for the Russian monks who gave me the silent treatment; it has begun to erode what the monks call a shared “Athonite consciousness.”
“Its like a huge scar, this war between two Orthodox nations,” I was told by Elder Elissaios, the abbot of Simonopetra, who met with me the morning after our arrival. “Even if the war ends, the scars will still be painful … We cannot protect against this kind of thing.” I asked him what he meant. He paused for a moment, sipping his coffee and looking out at the blue expanse of the Aegean. “We dont know how to separate the Church from the nation,” he said. “This is a problem of the Orthodox tradition.”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/Ud2rHBoysjDSoaJ34mc9nT26ZEw=/0x0:2360x1549/655x430/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_2/original.png)
The Monastery of Simonopetra, on Mount Athos (Yves Gellie / Gamma-Rapho / Getty)
That problem has its origins in the fourth century C.E., when Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and then imposed it on his subjects. For more than 1,000 years afterward, Church and state in Constantinople “were seen as parts of a single organism,” according to the historian Timothy Ware, under a doctrine called *sinfonia*, or “harmony.” The echoes of this fusion can be seen today in many of the symbols of Orthodox authority, including the crown worn by Bartholomew on formal occasions and the throne on which he sits.
One of the paradoxes of modern Orthodoxy is that its rigidity has become a selling point in the West. Many conservatives complain that mainstream churches—Catholic and Protestant alike—have grown soft and spineless. Some in Europe and the United States openly yearn for a more explicitly Christian political sphere. Conversions to Orthodoxy are on the rise, and most of the converts are not looking for a tolerant message like Patriarch Bartholomews. According to Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a scholar of Orthodoxy who teaches at Northeastern University, in Boston, the new converts tend to be right-wing and Russophile, and some speak freely of their admiration for Putins “kingly” role. In the U.S., converts are concentrated in the South and Midwest, and some have become ardent online evangelists for the idea that “Dixie,” with its beleaguered patriarchal traditions, is a natural home for Russian Orthodoxy. Some of them [adorn their websites with a mash-up of Confederate nostalgia and icons of Russian saints](https://www.dissidentmama.net/).
Patriarch Kirill is keenly aware of his [rising status among American religious conservatives](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/steve-bannon-american-evangelicals-russian-orthodox/519900/), and he and his deputies have been welcomed warmly during visits to the U.S. (These visits took place before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.) During a visit to Moscow in 2015, Franklin Graham—the son of the late Southern Baptist leader Billy Graham—[told Kirill that many Americans wished that someone like Putin could be their president](https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/unexpected-relationship-between-us-evangelicals-and-russian-orthodox).
[Read: Steve Bannons would-be coalition of Christian traditionalists](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/steve-bannon-american-evangelicals-russian-orthodox/519900/)
Russian Orthodoxy looks very different to many who grew up inside it. On my last day on Mount Athos, I had a conversation with a young man named Mykola Kosytskyy, a Ukrainian linguistics student and a frequent visitor to Athos. He had brought with him this time a group of 40 Ukrainian pilgrims. Kosytskyy talked about the war—the friends hed lost, the shattered lives, the role of Russian propaganda. I asked him about the Moscow-linked Church that hed known all his life, and he said something that surprised me: “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church”—meaning the Church of Kirill and Putin—“is *the* weapon in this war.”
All through his childhood, he explained, he had heard priests speaking of Russia in language that mixed the sacred and the secular—“this concept of saint Russia, the saviors of this world.” He went on: “You hear this every Sunday from your priest—that this nation fights against evil, that its the third Rome, yes, the new Rome. They truly believe this.” That is why, Kosytskyy said, many Ukrainians have such difficulty detaching themselves from the message, even when they see Kirill speaking of their own national leaders as the anti-Christ. Kosytskyy told me it had taken years for him to separate the truth from the lies. His entire family joined the new Ukrainian Church right after Bartholomew recognized it, in 2018. So have millions of other Ukrainians.
But religious ideas die hard, Kosytskyy said. The Russian message lives on in the minds of many Ukrainians, especially older ones. Among the hardest messages to unlearn is that the West represents a threat to Christian values, and that the vehicle for this threat is the humble-looking patriarch in Istanbul.
I first glimpsed Bartholomew on a rainy evening in late November. From where I stood, in the dim and damp recesses of St. Georges cathedral, in Istanbul, the patriarch appeared as a distant figure in a red-and-gold cape, framed by a high wall inset with a dense golden filigree of angels and dragons and foliage. Bartholomew walked forward, clutching a staff, and ascended his patriarchal throne. To anyone who was raised, as I was, on threadbare Protestant rituals, Orthodox services are a bit like dropping acid at the opera. The cathedral was as deep and shadowed as a canyon, full of drifting incense and the thrilling sound of low choral chanting. Sparkling eyes gazed down from icons on the sanctuary walls.
That evening, the church was packed with people who had come from all corners of the Orthodox world for the annual Feast of Saint Andrew, the Phanars patron saint. I heard shreds of multiple languages in the crowd—Greek, Serbian, French—and saw three East African priests in brown robes that were cinched with a rope at the waist. As the service came to an end, Bartholomew delivered the traditional blessing for a new archon, a layperson being honored for service to the Church. “*Axios!* ” he called out three times (“He is worthy”), and each time the faithful repeated after him in unison: “*Axios!* ”
When the service ended, we filed out into a small flagstone courtyard that underscores the peculiar status of the Phanar. It is revered as the ecclesiastical capital of the Orthodox world, but it is crammed into a space no bigger than a midsize hotel, and surrounded by a Muslim society that has treated it with undisguised hostility. The compound is overshadowed by the minaret of a neighboring mosque, whose PA system loudly proclaims the Islamic call to prayer five times a day. The clergy must change out of their clerical garb every time they leave the compound, lest they offend Muslim sensibilities.
I had a chance to speak with Bartholomew at an evening reception after an electric-violin concert in his honor at a Greek school in Istanbul. It was surprisingly easy to thread my way through a thicket of fawning diplomats, visiting Catholic bishops, and waiters balancing trays of wine and hors doeuvres—and there he was, seated in an armchair. He beckoned to me, and as I sat down he gave my forearm a paternal squeeze. Up close, Bartholomew has a rosy, patchy complexion, and his white beard looks almost like a rectangle of smoke spreading south from his chin. He spoke excellent English; when we were interrupted a few times by well-wishers, he conversed with them in French, Greek, and Turkish. He seemed very much at ease, answering my questions about the Church and its traditions as well as about his two highest priorities as patriarch—fostering greater openness to other sects and religions, and protecting the environment. As for the Ukraine war, he said bluntly that “Kirill is allowing himself to be a tool, to be an instrument of Putin.”
I asked him about the political inconvenience of being based in Istanbul. Bartholomew conceded that the Turks were difficult hosts, but added: “Its better for us to be in a non-Orthodox country. If we were in Greece, we would be a Greek Church. If we were in Bulgaria, we would be a Bulgarian Church. Being here, we can be a supranational Church.” This larger role is the reason the Istanbul Church is known as the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Broadening the Churchs mission has been a hallmark of Bartholomews career. He was born Demetrios Archondonis on the Aegean island of Imvros in 1940, just two decades after Turkeys Greek Christian population had been decimated by violence and forced exile in the aftermath of the First World War. A local bishop saw his potential and paid for him to go to secondary school. He continued on to seminary and then to study in Rome, where he arrived in 1963 amid the theological ferment of the Second Vatican Council. Bartholomew had a front-row seat, meeting with council delegates, theologians, and other prominent Catholic figures. The Orthodox Church was, if anything, more rigidly traditional than the Roman Church, and Bartholomew seems to have been inspired by the Vatican reformers efforts to clear away the cobwebs.
He was no firebrand. But he spoke consistently in favor of modernizing the Church and fostering greater openness. Despite the Churchs overall conservatism, he had a few role models in this, including his godfather, Archbishop Iakovos, who was the Phanars representative in North and South America from 1959 to 1996—and one of the only non-Black clerics to accompany Martin Luther King Jr. on his march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery in 1965.
Bartholomews most distinctive effort to “update” the Church is [his commitment to environmentalism](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/bartholomew-i-of-constantinoples-bold-green-stance.html?login=email&auth=login-email). In the press, he is sometimes called the Green Patriarch. When, in 1997, he declared that abusing the natural environment was a sin against God, he became the first major religious leader to articulate such a position. Perhaps more controversial—at least to some Orthodox Christians—is Bartholomews emphatic call for believers to accept unreservedly the findings of modern science and medicine. He believes in evolution, and regularly reminds his followers that the first life forms emerged on the planet some 4 billion years ago.
Bartholomew and Kirill have at least one thing in common: Both grew up as Christians in the shadow of rigidly secular rulers. But the Turkish republic was mild compared with the Bolshevik regime, whose Marxist faith decreed that religion was illusory and backward—the “opium of the people.” The Bolsheviks were especially keen on destroying the Orthodox Church, because of its deep ties to czarist tradition. In the decade following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the new rulers imprisoned and executed thousands of Orthodox priests and bishops.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/YBfGuoIMIZ9MPH-IwCBUu0Kgen8=/0x0:1532x2298/655x983/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_3/original.png)
In early 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew signed a “tomos of autocephaly” blessing the religious independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. (Onur Coban / Anadolu Agency / Getty)
By the time Kirill was born, in 1946, Joseph Stalin had changed tack, feeling that he needed religion to shore up popular support. He revived the Church in zombified form, an instrument of the state that was massively surveilled and controlled by the security services. When [some of the KGBs archives were exposed in 2014](https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/7/5877797/mitrokhin-archive-kgb-documents-open-to-public)—thanks in part to the brave efforts of the late Gleb Yakunin, a dissident Russian priest who spent years in prison—the collusion of the Churchs leaders was revealed. One of the collaborating clerics, whose code name in the files is Drozdov (“The Thrush”), [is alleged to be Patriarch Alexy II](https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1), Kirills immediate predecessor. Kirills name did not come up in the files, but he was the product of a system in which advancement was impossible without the approval of the regime.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Church faced a crisis of identity. Kirill was one of its most visible and charismatic leaders, and for a brief moment, he seemed to urge a new and more democratic direction for the Church. But as Russian society descended into chaos and gangsterism, Kirill staked out much more conservative and autocratic views.
By the time Putin came to power, in 1999, some of his old KGB friends had already started getting religion. It made a certain kind of sense that the most devout and pitiless Communists were those who most needed a new faith, and many of them had already spent years collaborating with Church figures. Putin [made his first visit to Mount Athos](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/archive/putin-makes-pilgrimage-to-greece) in 2005, attending services at St. Panteleimon and climbing the monasterys bell tower. A year later, one of his old confidants from the KGB helped found the Russian Athos Society to organize donations to the monasteries there. Putins own religious feelings are hard to discern, though he is [rumored to have been brought into the Orthodox faith in the 90s by a priest named Tikhon Shevkunov](https://www.ft.com/content/f2fcba3e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a), who ran a monastery not far from the FSBs Moscow headquarters.
In 2008, a documentary called *The* *Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium* was broadcast on Russian state television, not once but three times. The director and star was the same Tikhon Shevkunov. The movies thesis was that Byzantium had been irrevocably undermined even before Ottoman armies conquered it in 1453, its religious culture and resolve eroded by the individualism of the encroaching West. Russia was held up as Byzantiums heir, the natural vehicle of its holy mission. Historians pilloried the show as historically illiterate, but they were missing the point. It wasnt really about the past. It was a blueprint for the future.
Kirill became patriarch in 2009. Soon afterward, Putin began invoking Orthodoxy when talking about Russia and its role in the world. Thousands of churches have since been built throughout the country, and Putin has made very public visits to Church elders. Kirill “inspired Putin to a great extent, to make him think in civilizational terms,” I was told by Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian-born theologian who spent 10 years as a personal assistant and speechwriter to Kirill before resigning in 2012, unhappy with the Churchs direction. Putins loyalists quickly began aping their presidents talk of “Holy Russia” and [her “satanic” enemies](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/russian-media-warns-of-satanist-conspiracy-at-the-top-in-ukraine/378836/).
[Read: Are Ukraines leaders in league with Satanists? On Russian TV, yes](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/russian-media-warns-of-satanist-conspiracy-at-the-top-in-ukraine/378836/)
Putins decision to restore Orthodoxy to its old public role was a shrewd one, whatever his personal religious feelings. The Russian empire had collapsed, but its outlines could still be seen in the Russian Orthodox religious sphere, which extended beyond Russias borders and as far afield as Mount Athos and even Jerusalem. For a ruler seeking to revive his countrys lost status, the Church was a superb way to spread propaganda and influence.
If Kirill had any illusions about who stood higher in the new *sinfonia* between Church and state, they were quickly snuffed out. In 2011, he [endorsed criticism of corrupt parliamentary elections in Russia](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/21/world/europe/kirill-putin-russian-orthodox-church.html). Reports soon appeared in the state-controlled media about luxury apartments belonging to Kirill and his relatives. Other stories began to circulate about billions of dollars in secret bank accounts. One website published a photograph from 2009 in which Kirill could be seen wearing a Breguet watch worth about $30,000. Kirill denied ever wearing it, but after a bungled effort to airbrush it out of the photo, the Church had to admit that the watch was his and make a humiliating apology. Kirill has shown abject loyalty ever since. At a celebration in honor of his first decade as head of the Russian Church, in 2019, he [appeared alongside Putin and thanked God and “especially you, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”](http://www.patriarchia.ru/en/db/text/5369391.html) (My request for comment from Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate went unanswered.)
For Kirill and Putin, it was not enough to restore the Churchs status in Russia. To reclaim the “Russian world,” they had to wage a much wider battle for influence and prestige, one that would include tarring Bartholomew.
The Russian campaign started in Greece, where there is a natural well of sympathy formed by ancient religious ties and shared enemies. In the mid-2000s, Russian oligarchs began building churches and doling out cash for favors. Bishops who lent holy relics for tours in Russia could make a tidy profit for themselves or their parishes. The Russian investments were followed by a systematic effort to denigrate Patriarch Bartholomew on hundreds of new Greek-language websites, blogs, and Facebook groups, an online offensive documented by Alexandros Massavetas, a Greek journalist, in his 2019 book, *The* *Third Rome*. “The message was that Bartholomew is being manipulated by the Turks or the U.S. or the Vatican,” Massavetas told me, “and that only Russia represents the true Orthodox spirit, with Putin as its protector.”
The Phanar overlooked these attacks for years. Bartholomew was working hard to maintain unity at all costs, because he was planning to convene a historic pan-Orthodox gathering that he saw as the crowning achievement of his tenure. The Church had not held a Holy and Great Council for more than 1,000 years, and the planning for this one had begun in 1961. Bartholomew was so keen on making the synod succeed that he accommodated the Russians at every turn. During a preparatory meeting, the Russians objected to proposed language about the Churchs opposition to discrimination and insisted that all references to racial and sexual minorities be deleted. (Kirill seems to see the language of human rights as a tacit endorsement of homosexuality and other supposed sins.) They also demanded that Ukraines calls for religious independence be kept off the agenda. Bartholomew caved on it all, even the seating plan.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/FBgsUUs4PSCmg48pdBzkwgUIcwc=/0x0:1609x1189/928x686/media/img/posts/2024/04/Worth_4/original.png)
St. Panteleimon Monastery; monks of Mount Athos (Photo-illustration by Cristiana Couceiro. Sources: Vlas2000 / Shutterstock; Agencja Fotograficzna Caro / Alamy; Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto / Getty; Royal Geographical Society / Getty; Library of Congress selected manuscripts in the Monasteries of Mount Athos)
Then, just a week before the synods start date, in 2016—with all the villas booked and ready at a Cretan resort town—[the Russians pulled out](https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/63954). They defended their decision by pointing to three much smaller Orthodox bodies (Bulgaria, Georgia, and Antioch) that had withdrawn just beforehand. Although there appear to have been some genuine disagreements about the documents prepared for the meeting, the three smaller Churches have close ties with Moscow, and the Russian move came off as yet another effort to humiliate Bartholomew.
Kirill, though, appears to have miscalculated. His public snub laid bare the divisions in the Church and removed Bartholomews incentive to compromise. Archbishop Elpidophoros, who is now the Phanars senior bishop in the United States, spoke with me about this episode during a conversation in his Manhattan office, on the Upper East Side. Perhaps the most important consequence of Kirills move, he explained, was that it opened the door to giving the Ukrainians what they wanted. “That was the green light,” he said.
The movement for religious independence in Ukraine had been stirring for decades, and it had grown in tandem with the countrys political confrontations with Moscow. As early as 2008, the head of Ukraines Moscow-linked Church at the time, Metropolitan Volodymyr, was declaring that the Church and state should be separate—a position that would be unthinkable in Russia. When Viktor Yanukovych, an instrument of the Kremlin, became president of Ukraine in 2010, he made clear that he wanted the Orthodox Church—the faith of 72 percent of Ukraines people—back in its cage. A Ukrainian bishop, Oleksandr Drabynko, told me he was called into the ministry of internal affairs one morning in 2013 for a meeting. One of Yanukovychs officials delivered a blunt message, Drabynko said: “We must push out Volodymyr because we need someone loyal to us.” The official added that with the next Ukrainian election approaching in 2015, “the Church must support our candidate.”
The landmark events of 2014, known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity, were more than just a civilian movement to overthrow a corrupt autocrat. The uprising bred a new sense of independence among Ukrainians, thanks in part to the role played by the Orthodox Church. Though some priests supported Yanukovych and his government, many others openly backed the revolt. When police attacked protesters in Kyivs central square, one bishop [allowed them to shelter from the police in his nearby cathedral](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-church/once-an-outcast-ukrainian-patriarch-ready-to-lead-church-split-from-russia-idUSKCN1M82CR/).
Russias brazenly neocolonial response to the 2014 revolution—the seizure of Crimea—infuriated Ukrainians and supercharged the movement for a religious divorce from Moscow. In October 2018, just weeks after his tense meeting with Kirill in Istanbul, Bartholomew [dissolved the 1686 edict that had given Moscow religious control over Ukraine](https://www.vox.com/2018/10/17/17983566/russia-constantinople-ukraine-eastern-orthodox-schism-autocephaly). He also set in motion the process that would lead to recognition of a new Ukrainian Church, one that would be under Bartholomews—not Moscows—jurisdiction.
The Russians were furious, and Kirill [severed ties with the Phanar](https://apnews.com/article/68834e730fb448afa4b2cfe909c71a7d). Worldwide, Moscow began behaving as if it had already become the third Rome. A vivid illustration was provided by events in Africa, where one of the most ancient Orthodox patriarchates is based (in Alexandria, Egypt). Kirill founded a new branch of the Russian Orthodox Church and began targeting the existing Orthodox parishes there, whose leader had aligned himself with Bartholomew. “Through Facebook and Instagram they approach our followers,” Metropolitan Gregorios, a Greek bishop who has been based in Cameroon since 2004, told me. “They begin by sending money. They attach everyone to them, show that Russia is rich, show that they can get more money.”
Gregorios, who is 62, spent two hours with me in the lobby of an Athens hotel as he described Russias religious efforts across Africa, which he said are funded by the Wagner mercenary force. Orthodox priests are more vulnerable to bribery than their Roman Catholic peers, Gregorios explained, because they are allowed to marry, and many have large families to provide for. “So the Russians say, Well give education for your kids. They bring a motorcycle, a car. They say, The Greeks just give bicycles. And they double the salaries we pay.” Last year, he said, he lost six priests in his jurisdiction: “They got approached by the Russians and offered 300 euros a month.” Gregorios later shared with me some of the documents that priests under Russias thumb must sign, swearing loyalty to the patriarch of Moscow “to my dying day.”
The Russian Church has made similarly aggressive moves in Turkey, the Balkans, and elsewhere. Russias secret services appear to be involved in some of these operations. In September, the North Macedonian government [expelled a high-ranking Russian priest and three Russian diplomats](https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/high-ranking-russian-priest-expelled-from-bulgaria/), accusing them of spying. A week later, the same priest, Vassian Zmeev, was expelled from Bulgaria. According to Nikolay Krastev, a journalist in Sofia, Zmeev appears to have been organizing efforts to divide the Balkan Orthodox Churches and shore up opposition to the new Ukrainian Church. All of this bullying has had its effect: Only four Orthodox branches (out of about 17, depending on how you count) have recognized the new Ukrainian Church approved by Bartholomew.
In late 2021, weary of the conflict and worried that it was damaging all of Orthodoxy, Bartholomew reached out to the Russians—and was rebuffed. The Moscow Patriarchate “sent us a message saying that there is no way we will engage in any dialogue,” Archbishop Elpidophoros recalled. The Russians, he went on, declared that “the wound is so deep that we will need at least two generations to overcome.” The message may not have been entirely sincere. Russia was already planning what it believed would be a much quicker resolution to its Ukraine problems, one that did not include dialogue.
The Monastery of the Caves, in Kyiv, may be the most important Christian site in the Slavic world. Founded around 1050 C.E. by a monk from Mount Athos, it is a large complex of golden-domed churches, bell towers, and underground tunnels, ringed by stone walls and set on a hill overlooking the Dnieper River, in the center of the city. In the early days of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, there were rumors of a plan to parachute Russian special forces into the monastery grounds. Welcomed by friendly Orthodox priests, the invaders would quickly move on to the government buildings nearby and gain control of the capital.
The rumors were false, but they sounded plausible to many Ukrainian ears. The Russian military and its proxies had begun using Orthodox monasteries and churches as bases as soon as they arrived in eastern Ukraine in 2014, and have continued to do so over the past two years in occupied areas. They have even publicized the fact, in an apparent effort to show that the Church is on their side. Many priests, including prominent figures, did support Russia. The senior cleric at the Monastery of the Caves, Metropolitan Pavel, [was well known for his pro-Moscow sympathies](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65148386).
But the violence of the 2022 invasion united Ukrainians, and Kirills efforts to sprinkle it with holy water—describing those who opposed the Russians as “evil forces” and praising the “metaphysical significance” of the Russian advance—made him a widely hated figure. Many Ukrainians now view the Moscow-linked branch, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with deep suspicion. The Ukrainian security services have carried out regular raids on its churches and monasteries over the past two years, including the Monastery of the Caves. Dozens of priests have been arrested and charged with espionage and other crimes. This past October, Ukraines Parliament [approved a measure that could ban the Russia-backed Church altogether](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/ukrainian-parliament-votes-to-ban-orthodox-church-over-alleged-links-with-russia#:~:text=Ukrainian%20parliament%20votes%20to%20ban%20Orthodox%20Church%20over%20alleged%20links%20with%20Russia,-This%20article%20is&text=The%20Ukrainian%20parliament%20gave%20initial,Russia%20following%20last%20year's%20invasion). That Church still has more parishes in Ukraine than its newer, independent rival, but its long-term prospects appear grim.
The loss of all of Ukrainian Orthodoxy would be a serious blow for Kirill. At its peak, Ukraine accounted for about a third of the parishes claimed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukraine also has a much higher rate of churchgoing than Russia, where actual piety seems to be rare—a fact that sits awkwardly with Kirills broadsides against the moral depravity of the West. Barely two months after the invasion, a well-known Russian priest and blogger named Pavel Ostrovsky—who was not ordinarily a regime critic—unleashed a tirade on Telegram: “Some argue that Russia is a stronghold of everything noble and good, which is fighting against world evil, satanism, and paganism,” he wrote. “What is all this nonsense? How can one be a noble stronghold with a 73 percent rate of divorce in families, where drunkenness and drug addiction are rampant, while theft and outright godlessness flourish?”
It is tempting to conclude that Russias efforts to capture world Orthodoxy will prove to be a losing bet. Religious leaders of all kinds have denounced Kirills embrace of the war, including [Pope Francis, who famously told him not to be “Putins altar boy.”](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/04/patriarch-kirill-pope-francis-russian-orthodox-church-ukraine/) It may even be, as Archbishop Elpidophoros told me, that “the Patriarchate of Moscow is not a Church” so much as a convenient vehicle for nationalist ideology. The Russian people, he assured me, are the foremost victims of this religious tyranny.
The archbishop may be right about the Moscow Patriarchate: that its not a Church, not in the sense that we have long accepted in the West. That said, its not just an arm of the Kremlin. It is something more dangerous, a two-headed beast that can summon ancient religious loyalty even as it draws on all the resources of a 21st-century police state: internet trolls, abundant cash, the tacit threat of violence. Perhaps the most troubling possibility is that Kirills Church, with its canny blend of politics and faith, turns out to be better adapted to survival in our century than mainstream Churches are.
There are certainly dissenters from Kirills jingoistic line among the 40,000 Orthodox priests in Russia. But most clerics are pliant, and a vocal minority are even more extreme than their patriarch. Andrei Tkachev, an archpriest who was born in Ukraine and now lives in Moscow, has [become notorious for sermons in which he asserts that “a warriors death is best of all.”](https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-church-war-orthodox-ukraine-/32354081.html) He has millions of followers on social media. Other priests have reinterpreted Christian doctrine in ways that recall the Crusades. Online, you can easily find videos of Igor Cheremnykh, another well-known priest, asserting that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is meant to apply to the behavior only of civilians, not of soldiers. Cyril Hovorun, Kirills former assistant, knows many of these priests personally. He calls them “turboZ Orthodox.” (*Z* is used as a symbol of Russias war.) Some of them were aligned with or even personally close to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late oligarch and leader of the Wagner Group. “This monster has outgrown its creators,” Hovorun told me. “Its a Frankenstein.”
The day after I met Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul, I went for a walk near the Phanar. The Feast of Saint Andrew was over, and the ancient streets were no longer full of pilgrims. A cold drizzle fell. As I walked past the relics of dead civilizations—Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman—I found myself wondering if Orthodoxy would ultimately split into two religions, or just weaken itself through bickering, like the Christians who once ruled Constantinople.
It may be that Kirill and his angry zealots represent the last sparks of a dying flame. This is what Bartholomew has been assuring his flock: that he is bringing the Church into the future, while Kirill is holding on to the past. But as a patriarch in Istanbul, he must also know that the arc of history doesnt always bend the way we want it to.
---
*This article appears in the* [*May 2024*](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/) *print edition with the headline “Clash of the Patriarchs.”*
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# Sextortion Scams Are Driving Teen Boys to Suicide
I have ur nudes and everything needed to ruin your life
Send me $2000 and Ill delete
Im going to make it go viral 😡
You want your parents to see this? 😂
u know u will be expelled from school…
I got all I need rn to make your life miserable dude
u will be exempt from universities if u dont cooperate…
I bet your GF will leave you for some other dude
If u block me, I will ruin your life 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬😡😡
Cooperate with me and all this will end
IF YOU TRYNA ACT SMART ILL RUIN YOU
am going to make sure to humiliate you 😡
Just comply and I delete all rn
I AM NEVER GONNA UNSEND THEM UNTIL YOU PAY ME BRO 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
Answer me
Your time is limited
10… 9… 8… 7…
Pay me rn and Ill end this
should I send your nudes to everyone?
Im gonna expose you 😡😡😡
Your family are going to regret they ever had you when I am done with you
I will make you regret your life
I promise you. I swear
I am begging for my own life
Businessweek | The Big Take
## Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media—and driving some to suicide.
April 15, 2024, 5:00 PM UTC
One word from a stranger on social media was all it took. “Hey,” she said.
Jordan DeMay read the Instagram message at 10:19 p.m. on a Thursday night in March 2022. He had just kissed his girlfriend goodnight and was on his way home to pack: The next day he was escaping Michigans frozen Upper Peninsula for spring break in Florida.
“Who is you?” he responded.
Tall, athletic and blond, Jordan was a football and basketball star at Marquette Senior High School, as well as its homecoming king. The 17-year-old often received friend requests from random girls on social media. He liked the attention.
This one came from Dani Robertts. Her profile photo showed a teenager with a cute smile, sunglasses perched atop shiny brown hair, hugging a German shepherd. Dani told Jordan she was from Texas but was going to high school in Georgia. They had one mutual friend and started texting about school life while he did his laundry.
Around midnight, Dani got flirtatious. She told Jordan she liked “playing sexy games.” Then she sent him a naked photo and asked for one in return, a “sexy pic” with his face in it. Jordan walked down the hallway to the bathroom, pulled down his pants and took a selfie in the mirror. He hit send.
In an instant, the flirty teenage girl disappeared.
“I have screenshot all your followers and tags and can send this nudes to everyone and also send your nudes to your family and friends until it goes viral,” Dani wrote. “All you have to do is cooperate with me and I wont expose you.”
Minutes later: “I got all I need rn to make your life miserable dude.”
Jordans tormentor knew his high school, his football team, his parents names, his address. Dani had created photo collages of his family and friends and plastered his nude picture in the middle. One screenshot had his nude selfie in a direct message addressed to his girlfriend. Dani said Jordan had 10 seconds to pay, or the message would be sent.
“How much?” Jordan responded.
The price was $300. He transferred the money via Apple Cash and pleaded to be left alone. But it wasnt enough. Now Dani wanted $800. Jordan sent a screenshot of his bank account showing a balance of $55, offering to send everything he had.
“No deal,” Dani replied.
By 3 a.m., Jordan was starting to unravel.
Jordan:Why are you doing this to me?
I am begging for my own life.
Dani:10… 9… 8
I bet your GF will leave you for some other dude.
Jordan:I will be dead.
Like I want to KMS \[kill myself\]
Dani:Sure. I will watch you die a miserable death.
Jordan:Its over. You win bro….
I am kms rn. Bc of you.
Dani:Good. Do that fast.
Or Ill make you do it.
I swear to God.
It was early 2022 when analysts at the [National Center for Missing & Exploited Children](https://www.missingkids.org/home) (NCMEC) noticed a frightening pattern. The US nonprofit has fielded online-exploitation cybertips since 1998, but it had never seen anything like this.
Hundreds of tips began flooding in from across the country, bucking the trend of typical exploitation cases. Usually, older male predators spend months grooming young girls into sending nude photos for their own sexual gratification. But in these new reports, teen boys were being catfished by individuals pretending to be teen girls—and they were sending the nude photos first. The extortion was rapid-fire, sometimes occurring within hours. And it wasnt sexually motivated; the predators wanted money. The tips were coming from dozens of states, yet the blackmailers were all saying the same thing:
“Im going to ruin your life.”
“Im going to make it go viral.”
“Answer me quickly. Time is ticking.”
“I have what I need to destroy your life.”
In January 2022 the center received 100 reports of financially motivated sexual extortion. In February it was 173. By March, 259. The numbers were trending up so quickly and the script was so similar that the analysts reported it directly to Lauren Coffren, the executive director of the centers exploited children division. “The bad actors were so fast and so ruthless,” Coffren says. Last year, after the center asked social media platforms to start tracking the crime, NCMEC received more than 20,000 such reports.
The scam, which the FBI calls sextortion, has become one of the fastest-growing crimes targeting children in the US, according to the agency. In an 18-month period ending in March 2023, the FBI says, at least 20 minors, primarily boys, [killed themselves after falling victim to the scam](https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/memphis/news/sextortion-a-growing-threat-targeting-minors). (Seven more sextortion-related suicides have been reported since then, the latest in January.) The crime is “just out of control,” says Mark Civiletto, a supervisory special agent in the FBIs Lansing, Michigan, office. “This is something thats touching every neighborhood across the country.”
The FBI, Civiletto says, is used to handling online fraud cases, such as romance scams or elder abuse, which require a long runway so the perpetrator can build rapport with their victims. Sextortion can be done in minutes. Scammers have zeroed in on a faster method, Civiletto says, one that returns a higher payout by exploiting the shame and embarrassment of teenage boys. And social media has given scammers a direct line to American teens. With the swipe of a thumb, criminals can see a scrapbook of these kids lives, including the names of their friends and family members.
Last year a Snap Inc. survey of more than 6,000 young social media users in six countries including the US found that almost half said they had been [targeted in an online sextortion scheme](https://www.weprotect.org/blog/two-thirds-of-gen-z-targeted-for-online-sextortion-new-snap-research/). One-third of those said they had shared an intimate photo.
The scammers have been bold enough to publish playbooks for how to commit this type of blackmail via TikTok and YouTube, in clear violation of social media platforms community guidelines. Both companies said in written statements that they had removed posts related to this scam that have been brought to their attention and vowed to continue to take down such content. But a search on both platforms found similar content is still available.
In late January the chief executive officers of the worlds biggest platforms, including Meta, Snap and TikTok, were [grilled during a congressional hearing](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/big-tech-and-the-online-child-sexual-exploitation-crisis) about how their companies have endangered a generation of children. There were questions about addictive algorithms and youth suicide rates—and the sudden rise of sextortion.
At one point in the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram, was asked to say something to the dozens of bereaved parents sitting in the gallery, holding photos of their dead children. “[Im sorry for everything you have all been through](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-31/zuckerberg-offers-impromptu-apology-at-child-safety-hearing "Zuckerberg Apologizes to Families of Online Child Sex Abuse"),” he said.
![Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, addresses parents of children harmed by social media at a Senate hearing in January.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iSFkOObWp5pE/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, addresses parents of children harmed by social media at a Senate hearing in January. Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg
The 911 call blared over the sheriffs office radio in the picturesque lakeside city of Marquette at 7:40 a.m. on a Friday morning: “17-year-old suicide, gunshot.” Detectives Lowell Larson and Jason Hart caught each others eye. Suicides in the area were rare; the sheriffs office had responded to only three the previous year. Teen suicides were even rarer. They ran to an unmarked Chevy Tahoe, leaving two steaming coffee cups behind. The sun was just beginning to rise over Lake Superior.
The detectives arrived at the scene within minutes. John DeMay, a former police officer who went to school with Larson, was standing in the doorway of his beige split-level house, wide-eyed and wearing a T-shirt despite the below-freezing temperature. “My son” he started. “Its OK, John,” Larson said, placing a hand on his shoulder. Hart guided DeMay upstairs, and Larson walked toward Jordans bedroom.
He took a deep breath and stepped inside. Jordan was sitting upright in his bed, leaning against a blood-spattered wall. His left arm hung from the mattress, and his right hand held a pistol. His cellphone was in his lap, the screen lighting up with messages.
![John DeMay](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iBQ2iIkv57zI/v0/640x-1.jpg)
John DeMay is still grieving his sons death. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
Larson photographed the scene. He pulled on a pair of black nitrile gloves before picking up Jordans phone, switching it to airplane mode and sliding it into a paper bag. He also bagged the gun, which belonged to Jordans father, and the cartridges, entering it all into the case file.
The “what” of the case was already clear, Larson recalls two years later from behind his desk at the sheriffs office, raccoon and beaver hides splayed on a wall behind him. It was the “why” that was disturbing him.
Looking around Jordans messy bedroom that morning, Larson didnt see a suicide note. Jordan had no history of unhappiness or mental illness. His bag was packed with swimsuits and sunscreen, ready for Florida. The alarm on his phone kept going off. Everything Larson could see indicated that when Jordan got into bed, he intended to wake up.
![Jordan DeMays bedroom at his mothers house in Marquette, Michigan.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/inpf_UNO_oCo/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Jordans bedroom at his mothers house in Marquette, Michigan. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
![Jennifer Buta holds Jordan DeMays Marquette Senior High School jersey.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i5hN7vIOaYOE/v0/640x-1.jpg)
A jersey worn by Jordan. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
![Jennifer Buta sits at the edge of her son Jordan DeMays bed inside her home.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iKlvoVqP__Lg/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Jennifer Buta, Jordans mother, in his bedroom. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
Kyla Palomaki was in class but couldnt concentrate. Text messages to her boyfriend werent going through. She kept rereading Jordans last cryptic message, sent at 3:30 a.m.: “Kyla, I love you so much. I made a mistake and wish I could continue but I cant do this anymore. This was a choice I made and I must pay myself.”
Jordan had left her house at about 10 the night before. What mistake could he possibly have made in the early morning hours? He hadnt replied to three phone calls and eight text messages, including her last one that just said “JORDAN!” The only message shed received about Jordan that morning was from his mom, Jennifer Buta, asking whether he was in school—which seemed odd.
She was sitting in her second-period class, watching a movie she couldnt care less about. Kyla, an A student who goes to church every Sunday, was instead staring at her phone, willing Jordan to reply. She recalls that at this point her unease was giving way to fear.
When the school administrator knocked on the classroom door, Kyla prayed that her name wouldnt be called. It was. The administrator wouldnt answer any of her questions on the one-minute walk to the principals office or even look her in the eye. When she saw her mom and dad inside the office crying, she melted to the floor. “No, no, no, no!” she screamed.
The next student pulled from class was Justin Jurmu. His dad was sitting stone-faced in the assistant principals office, waiting for him, they both recall. “Jordans gone, buddy,” Justins father said softly. “He shot himself last night.”
Jordan had been Justins best friend since they were 8. “Theres no way, Dad,” he said. “There is zero chance Jordan is gone.” For 10 minutes, he shook his head, growing increasingly agitated.
Then he saw Kyla leaving the school, propped up by her parents. He watched her collapse, shoulders heaving. Her dad scooped her up and folded her into the back seat of his car. Justin howled.
Everyone in the school knew Jordan. He was the guy everybody was jealous of, the one who picked up a hockey stick and just knew how to play. He danced in the hallways between classes, headphones plugged in, blasting rap music. He had a big ego and wasnt afraid to admit it. “Jeez, how can one young man be so happy all the time?” his football coach, Eric Mason, asked Jordan a week earlier. “Thats just the way I am, Coach,” Jordan chimed back.
![Marquette Senior High Schools football field on a very snowy Sunday in Marquette, Michigan.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iSZjDi6o9GaA/v0/640x-1.jpg)
The Marquette Senior High School football field where Jordan played. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
Marquette is a city of 20,000 where front doors are rarely locked and stolen mountain bikes make the news. Nothing stays secret for long. The school administrator who escorted Kyla to the principals office is also her next-door neighbor. Kylas dad attended high school with Detective Larsons sister and now works at the local bank where John DeMay is a client.
Kylas parents had been high school sweethearts. They had married and had children young. Kyla and Jordan talked about doing the same. Jordan started attending church with her family and scrapped plans to seek a basketball scholarship at an out-of-state school. He applied to Northern Michigan University in Marquette, where Kyla was planning to go.
For their one-year anniversary, he asked his mom for Kohls cash to buy Kyla a promise ring. On her 18th birthday card, he wrote: “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You would be such an amazing wife, mother, grandma, everything, and I cannot wait for those days to come.” He wore hair ties around his wrist in case she needed to pull her wavy blond hair into a ponytail. He was wearing one when he died.
Kylas phone wouldnt stop vibrating. People were messaging her, asking if it was true that Jordan was dead. Rumors were spreading that Kyla had dumped him and thats why he killed himself. She decided to get out of the house. That afternoon, she and a friend drove to Presque Isle Park, where Kyla and Jordan would go to watch the sun set. They parked at the end of the road, facing the lake, and tried to reckon with what had happened.
![Kyla looking at Jordan DeMays Instagram page on her phone](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/isNyIel8DwZ4/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Kyla Palomaki, Jordans girlfriend, looks at his Instagram profile. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
![Kyla under a photo of the couple in her bedroom.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idMBqm13F8eE/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Kyla under a photo of the couple in her bedroom. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
As Kyla fixated on the last text Jordan had sent her, new Instagram messages kept popping up. Strangers were finding her account because Jordans public Instagram profile looked like a tribute to her. Half of his photos were of the two of them together, kissing, cuddling, dancing at prom.
One message was from someone named Dani Robertts. The message contained no words, just a photo of Jordan exposing himself in his bathroom mirror.
Kyla stopped breathing. This was the first nude photo of Jordan shed ever seen. He was wearing the red, white and pink plaid pajama bottoms that matched her own and the T-shirt hed had on when he left her house. She looked at the time stamp: 3:30 a.m.
This must be the mistake he was talking about. “I need you to drop me home now,” she told her friend. Then she replied to Dani Robertts.
Kyla:What is this about?
Dani:Do you know him?
Kyla:Do you?
Dani:Answer me
Kyla:Who are you?
Dani:I bet you know him.
Kyla:Thats my boyfriend why
Dani:I swear I will ruin his life with this
Kyla:He killed himself last night. Please dont
Dani:Do you want me to ruin his life?
Kyla:Hes gone. No
Dani:Do you want me to ruin his life? Yes or no
Kyla:Hes already ruined. Wdym
Dani:He his **\[*sic*\]** going to be in jail
Kyla:HES DEAD
Dani:And this will go viral
Kyla:HE SHOT HIMSELF
Dani:Haha.
Do you want me to end this. And delete the pics?
Yes or no....
Cooperate with me and this will end...
Just do as I say and all this will end.
Dani started video-calling Kyla on repeat. Kyla ran to her parents. “Something happened last night,” she sobbed. “Someone has a nude picture of Jordan.”
By the time word of the nude selfie got to Larson, it was late that Friday night. He immediately called Kyla. She told him about her message exchange with Dani Robertts, and Larson asked her for screenshots so he could investigate. He hung up at 10 p.m., ending a 15-hour shift, but at least now he was one step closer to the “why.”
First thing Saturday, he drove to the sheriffs office. It was his day off, but he had to file a preservation request with Meta for all records associated with the Jordan DeMay and Dani Robertts accounts.
Meta has a [portal for police](https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelines) to file requests to preserve records of accounts connected to criminal investigations. Like other social media companies, it has to hold the records—including emails, IP addresses, message transcripts and general usage history—for 90 days. It only hands over user data if its ordered to do so by a court.
Theres one way to expedite the request: file it as an emergency, meaning a child could be harmed or theres risk of death. Larson believed this case qualified. He told Meta that a 17-year-old was already dead, and there was a high probability other kids were in danger, too.
Meta declined his request within an hour, he says. “The request you submitted does not rise to the level of an emergency,” the company responded.
![Jordan DeMays tombstone in Marquette, Michigan.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iG59yq.2kg7w/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Jordans tombstone in Marquette. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
“Screw you,” Larson thought. He drafted an affidavit and looked up the county magistrate who was on call that weekend. He asked her to sign a search warrant and a nondisclosure order so Larson could gain access to Dani Robertts records without alerting whoever was using the account that an investigation was underway. Larson got the signed documents back later that day and forwarded them to Meta. Then he waited.
“I was helpless,” Larson says. “I was at their mercy.” (A Meta spokesperson declined to answer *Bloomberg Businessweek*s questions about the matter.)
The following night, as Larson was getting into bed, he received a notification that the judge-ordered report from Meta was ready. The five-hour message exchange between Dani Robertts and Jordan DeMay was worse than he could have imagined. He read it twice, adrenaline pumping at the brazenness of the blackmailer.
“I will watch you die a miserable death.”
Larson had found his why. His next question was who. It was clear to him that the messages had not been written by a teenage girl.
The Dani Robertts Instagram account records contained a clue: time-stamped IP addresses—a unique set of numbers that identifies a specific device on the internet. Larson plugged them into a geolocation tool, and it kicked back latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. Whoever was running the Dani Robertts account was based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Larson called a friend, an agent in the FBIs Marquette field office. “You got a minute?” Larson said. “I might need some help.”
![Lowell A. Larson Jr. inside the Marquette County Sheriffs Office in Marquette, Michigan.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iRdnupwWwWRU/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Lowell Larson, an avid hunter-trapper, says he applies the same skills to his detective work by thinking about behavior patterns of his prey. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
That day, Jordans red iPhone XR was dropped off at the Michigan State Police Computer Crimes Unit in Marquette. Ryan Frazier, a digital forensics analyst whod been on the force 10 months, opened the sealed evidence bag. Hed already heard about Jordans death and recognized his name. Hed played for the same high school football team a few years earlier.
Frazier needed a four-digit passcode to unlock the device. He tried Jordans birthday and those of his four younger sisters and his girlfriend. Then he called Jordans basketball and football coaches to ask about his jersey numbers. He wore 05 on the court and 02 on the field. Bingo. The device unlocked.
Frazier was able to extract a full file system from the phone until the moment of Jordans death. It was a digital footprint of Jordans usage history, including what applications were active, what time they were opened, what messages he sent and when. Frazier returned the iPhone to the sheriffs office the next day along with his report.
Larson noticed there was no message history with Dani Robertts. Jordan had deleted the conversation before he killed himself. The last activity on the phone was his 3:30 a.m. message to Kyla and one he sent to his mom: “Mother, I love you.”
Recounting the specifics, Larsons bottom lip starts to quiver. An imposing figure with a buzz cut, he asks to pause the interview, gets up from his desk, adjusts his holster and walks to the back of his office, looking for a tissue. “This case,” he mumbles under his breath, “its haunting.”
![A memorial page dedicated to Jordan in the Marquette Senior High School yearbook.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6wdhONyA8.U/v0/640x-1.jpg)
A memorial page dedicated to Jordan in the Marquette Senior High School yearbook. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
By mid-2022 sextortion was dominating NCMECs [cybertip report line](https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/cybertipline). In June the center summoned social media companies to an urgent meeting to warn them about the scam. More than 50 people joined the call, including representatives from Meta, Snap and TikTok.
NCMECs Coffren says she described the targets, the motives and the mechanics of the crime, warning that some teenage boys had already killed themselves. “We need you to take action. Fast.”
The month after the call, the 17-year-old son of [Brandon Guffey](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/member.php?code=0730681731), a Republican South Carolina state representative, received an Instagram message late on a Tuesday night. “Your cute,” it said. The message was from a biracial girl wearing a crop top in her profile photo. Her bio said she was a freshman at a nearby college.
Gavin Guffey was in his bedroom playing video games with friends online. He told them he was going to drop off to chat with a girl. It didnt take long for the conversation to turn risqué. She sent a sexy photo and asked for one in return. When he complied, she threatened to forward it to everyone he was friends with on Instagram unless he sent her money. He paid $25 via Venmo. It wasnt enough. Around 1 a.m. she sent a mock-up of a news story with his photo and the headline “Gavin Guffey Caught Sending Nudes on the Internet.”
![Brandon Guffey, a South Carolina state representative, at a Senate hearing in January holding a portrait of his son Gavin.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i0Z17F8X37lM/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Brandon Guffey, a South Carolina state representative, at a Senate hearing in January holding a portrait of his son Gavin. Photographer: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images
According to his father, whos seen a transcript of the conversation, Gavin wrote back that he was going to end his life if the photos came out. Less than an hour later, he did.
His father, who had just returned from a political event, heard a shot from inside the bathroom and kicked down the door. His son was already gone.
A few days later, while planning Gavins funeral, Guffey got a call from an aunt who shares the same last name. She said her 14-year-old son had been contacted online by someone claiming to be Gavins girlfriend, saying dangerous people were blackmailing her over nude photos of Gavin. She said they were going to ruin her life if she didnt pay them $2,000.
When Guffey opened his own Instagram account, he found a similar message. “She said she needed to talk to me right away and that she was going to ruin my political career,” Guffey says.
A month later, in August 2022, Guffey was in Myrtle Beach with his wife to mark what would have been Gavins 18th birthday. He was sitting on the back deck of a family members condo with a glass of bourbon, smoking a cigarette, when a WhatsApp message from a random number flashed on his screen. It said: “Did you know your son begged for his life 😂”.
Guffey snapped. “I will f---ing end you,” he replied. A back-and-forth between Guffey and the scammer ensued, lasting for hours. They sent him photos of his house from Google Street View, threatening to break in. He invited them to do so: “I will kill you with my bare hands.” In the end, the scammer told Guffey he was sorry about what had happened to his son and said hed been hired by a political opponent. No arrests have been made, but Guffey says an FBI investigation is ongoing. The FBI didnt respond to requests for comment.
Since sharing the story of his sons death, Guffey says he no longer silences his phone at night. That isnt for the blackmailers; its for their victims. He says hes received about 200 calls from teens, usually between midnight and 3 a.m.: “Ill answer, and theyll say, Mr. Guffey, what happened to Gavin is happening to me. Please help!’ ”
By early 2023, FBI agents in Michigan were homing in on an apartment complex in Lagos. Social media records and email addresses obtained from Apple, Google and Meta linked two brothers who lived there to the crime. Buried inside their Gmail and iCloud accounts, FBI agents found evidence that Samuel and Samson Ogoshi, 22 and 20, respectively, had bought hacked Instagram accounts, including the one being used by the fictitious Dani Robertts. They had 12 photos including the profile picture of the accounts original owner, a teenage girl who hasnt been identified, as well as the nude photo of Jordan DeMay and the Photoshopped collage sent to torment him. Their emails contained a word-for-word script of what was in the messages sent to Jordan the night he died.
The FBI found evidence that the brothers had used the Dani Robertts account to message Jordan and target more than 100 other victims in the US, according to court records. On the same day Jordan died, they were messaging another victim in Warrens, Wisconsin, threatening to “make u commit suicide.”
The agents also found an incriminating Google search history that included “Instagram blackmail death,” “Michigan suicide,” “how to hide my IP address without VPN?” and “how can FBI track my IP from another country.”
The Ogoshi brothers were arrested by Nigerian authorities in January 2023. Court records show they come from a middle-class family. Their father is a retired member of the military, and their mother runs a small business selling soft drinks in their apartment complex. The boys grew up attending church, singing in the choir and playing soccer with neighborhood friends. The older brother, Samuel, was studying sociology at Nasarawa State University, while Samson was training to be a cobbler.
In August the brothers left Nigeria for the first time, escorted by the FBI. They were [extradited to Grand Rapids](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/pr/2023_0813_Two_Nigerian_Men_Extradited_To_The_United_States), Michigan, to face federal charges in connection with the death of Jordan DeMay. A third defendant, Ezekiel Robert, has been arrested and is appealing a Nigerian extradition order.
The FBI says the Ogoshi brothers and Robert worked with three unnamed co-conspirators, according to court documents. They bought the hacked Instagram account from one and got the victims to pay a US-based money mule, someone who converted the payment into cryptocurrency before sending it to another co-conspirator in Nigeria. The Ogoshi brothers told the FBI they received only a portion of the money they extorted.
During the brothers extradition proceedings, the US government promised it wouldnt seek the death penalty. On April 10 they [pleaded guilty](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/pr/2024_0410_Ogoshi_Plea) to conspiring to sexually exploit teenage boys and face mandatory sentences of 15 years in prison. The maximum possible penalty is 30 years. Their attorneys didnt respond to requests for comment.
In the meantime, they are being held in a county jail in White Cloud, Michigan, about an hour north of Grand Rapids and 6,000 miles from Lagos. They havent been allowed to speak to each other. For entertainment, they have playing cards, books and a communal TV. They get one hour of recreation a day in a small outdoor courtyard.
One morning in February, as icicles hung from the barbed wire, Samson Ogoshi opted to stay inside. Wearing open-toe sandals and white socks, his orange jumpsuit pants rolled up above his ankles, he did squats with other inmates in a communal day room as a *Businessweek* reporter watched on a security camera. With snow piling up knee-deep in the courtyard, Ogoshi must have felt out of place, says the county sheriff, whos in charge of the jail; hed probably never seen snow before.
In November another Nigerian, Olamide Oladosu Shanu, was indicted for running a similar sextortion ring that received more than $2.5 million in Bitcoin from victims. The US Secret Service spent months investigating Shanu, who allegedly worked with four co-conspirators to hack social media accounts of teenage girls in the US and persuade teenage boys to send nude photos and videos of themselves, according to a 21-page indictment filed in federal court in Idaho.
The Ogoshi and Shanu alleged crime rings are the modus operandi of [Nigerias Yahoo Boys](https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/Yahoo-Boys_1.2.24.pdf), according to a January report written by Paul Raffile, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. Nicknamed after the Yahoo.com emails they used to swindle thousands of unsuspecting Westerners into sending money, often posing as Nigerian princes, the Yahoo Boys are a group of digitally savvy con men who design new scams and encourage others to copy them.
Raffile found hundreds of instructional videos on TikTok and YouTube about how to blackmail teens. They were posted by young men in Nigeria who used the hashtags `#YahooBoysFormat` and `#BlackmailFormat`. The how-to guides advised targeting, or “bombing,” American high schools and sports teams to make friends with as many kids as possible from the same community. One of Jordans football teammates was a mutual friend of Dani Robertts, which made her account appear legitimate.
Raffile says he started studying sextortion last year after a friend was blackmailed and asked for help. He read victims stories in news reports, Reddit forums and social media posts and was struck by the similarities of their experiences, especially when it came to the blackmail script. “There was some mystery to this,” Raffile says, “like invisible organized crime.”
The Yahoo Boys videos provided guidance on how to sound like an American girl (“Im from Massachusetts. I just saw you on my friends suggestion and decided to follow you. I love reading, chilling with my friends and tennis”). They offered suggestions for how to keep the conversation flowing, how to turn it flirtatious and how to coerce the victim into sending a nude photo (“Pic exchange but with conditions”). Those conditions often included instructions that boys hold their genitals while “making a cute face” or take a photo in a mirror, face included.
Once that first nude image is sent, the script says, the game begins. “NOW BLACKMAIL 😀!!” it tells the scammer, advising they start with “hey, I have ur nudes and everything needed to ruin your life” or “hey this is the end of your life I am sending nudes to the world now.” Some of the blackmail scripts Raffile found had been viewed more than half a million times. One, called “Blackmailing format,” was uploaded to YouTube in September 2022 and got thousands of views. It included the same script that was sent to Jordan DeMay—down to the typos.
While YouTube and TikTok are the preferred platforms for how-to videos, the extortion typically happens on Instagram or Snapchat, according to Raffiles report. Instagram contains extensive personal information blackmailers can use to torment victims, including their location, school and friends. Snaps disappearing messages give users a false sense of security that their images arent being saved. Both companies say they have zero tolerance for this crime and have vowed to do more to protect their users.
Snap has been “ramping up our tools to combat” sextortion, a company spokesperson says. “We have extra safeguards for teens to protect against unwanted contact and dont offer public friend lists, which we know can be used to extort people.”
Antigone Davis, Metas global head of safety, said in an emailed statement that sextortion “is a horrific crime, and weve spent years building technology to combat it and to support law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting the criminals behind it.” She said scammers keep changing their tactics, but the company tracks new trends “so we can regularly improve our tools and systems.”
Meta says its using artificial intelligence to detect suspicious activity on the platform and to blur nudity and is now showing teens a sextortion-focused safety notice if they message with a suspicious account. And it has helped run a training session in Abuja, Nigeria, to educate law enforcement and prosecutors there. Meta is also a founding member of [Take It Down](https://takeitdown.ncmec.org/), an initiative launched by NCMEC last year for teens to flag intimate images and block them from being shared across social media.
Raffile says none of the companies contacted him after his report was published and before *Businessweek* made inquiries. Social media companies “could have curbed this crime from the beginning,” he says. “Its a disastrous intelligence failure that over the past 18 months all these deaths and all this trauma was preventable with sufficient moderation.”
![John DeMay, Jordan DeMays father](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ijsNxM8wIS9w/v0/640x-1.jpg)
John DeMay at his home in Marquette. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
In January, Jordans parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in a California state court accusing Meta of enabling and facilitating the crime. That month, John DeMay flew to Washington to attend the [congressional hearing with social media executives](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-31/meta-x-tiktok-ceos-face-us-senate-on-protecting-kids-online?srnd=premium&sref=2o0rZsF1 "Meta, X, TikTok CEOs Ripped by Senators Over Child Safety"). He sat in the gallery holding a picture of Jordan smiling in his red football jersey.
The DeMay case has been combined with more than 100 others in a group lawsuit in Los Angeles that alleges social media companies have [harmed children by designing addictive products](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-26/suing-social-media-lawsuits-aim-to-make-platforms-safer-for-kids "Suing Social Media: Lawsuits Aim to Make Platforms Safer for Kids"). The cases involve content sent to vulnerable teens about eating disorders, suicide and dangerous challenges leading to accidental deaths, as well as sextortion.
“The way these products are designed is what gives rise to these opportunistic murderers,” says Matthew Bergman, founder of the Seattle-based [Social Media Victims Law Center](https://socialmediavictims.org/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=17676029706&utm_content=137273494926&utm_term=social%20media%20victims%20law%20center&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwt-OwBhBnEiwAgwzrUsET_TvD0Mwf5c6KbGBNRqzJ8OKsTks-SCnImsCn1yIN2hupBcJjhxoC5XYQAvD_BwE), whos representing Jordans parents. “They are able to exploit adolescent psychology, and they leverage Metas technology to do so.”
Bergman also represents a family from Arizona whose 14-year-old son was blackmailed after sending nudes. And Guffey, the South Carolina lawmaker, filed his own wrongful death case against Meta. A spokeswoman for Meta says the company cant respond to questions about these cases because litigation is pending.
The lawsuits face a significant hurdle: overcoming [Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/what-is-section-230-how-online-speech-is-moderated-in-us "What Is Section 230? How Online Speech Is Moderated in US"). This liability shield has long protected social media platforms from being held accountable for content posted on their sites by third parties. If Bergmans product liability argument fails, Instagram wont be held responsible for what the Ogoshi brothers said to Jordan DeMay.
Regardless of the legal outcome, Jordans parents want Meta to face the court of public opinion. “This isnt my story, its his,” John DeMay says. “But unfortunately, we are the chosen ones to tell it. And I am going to keep telling it. When Mark Zuckerberg lays on his pillow at night, I guarantee he knows Jordan DeMays name. And if he doesnt yet, hes gonna.”
![Presque Isle Park, overlooking Lake Superior, where Kyla and Jordan would go to watch the sun set.](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iOHWRPw7ChyU/v0/640x-1.jpg)
Presque Isle Park, overlooking Lake Superior, where Kyla and Jordan would go to watch the sun set. Photographer: Kevin Serna for Bloomberg Businessweek
## More On Bloomberg
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^button-TheButterflyinthePrisonYardNSave
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# The Butterfly in the Prison Yard
*Editors note: On April 8, 2024, as part of* [*a mass amnesty ahead of the holiday of Eid*](https://en.irna.ir/news/85436585/Supreme-Leader-pardons-commutes-sentences-of-over-2-000-prisoners)*, conservationist Niloufar Bayani was released, along with three of her colleagues, after spending six years in a notorious Iranian prison. In the preceding months, journalist Lucy Sherriff and The Sunday Long Read team had been working on an account of how she got there and once there, how she survived.*
*This is her story.*
---
Imagine your job is to deliver water to some of the last remaining wild individuals of a critically endangered species. The Asiatic [cheetah](https://felidaefund.org/news/general/the-asiatic-cheetah-a-subspecies-on-the-brink-of-extinction), which lives only in the arid deserts of eastern Iran, hiding among rocky, rugged mountains that stretch 10,000 feet skyward, competes with local livestock for limited water resources. You might be its best hope of survival. 
Youre dressed head to toe in khaki, binoculars swinging from your neck, laden with the kind of gear wildlife conservationists need not just to do their jobs, but to survive in the wilderness. Youve hauled water from Tehran, hours away, to this gnarled terrain near the Afghanistan border, placing the buckets in areas where game cameras indicate the animals might be present. You crouch behind coarse bracken and hold your breath. Time slows as you hold your position, hoping to blend in seamlessly with the sandy landscape. At last, you spot her: long-legged, agile, fearsome. An *acinonyx jubatus venaticus,* one of only a handful of Asiatic [cheetahs](https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-says-only-12-asiatic-cheetahs-left-in-the-country/) left on the planet, has come to drink.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/I__02359.jpg?resize=1024%2C789&ssl=1)
Photo courtesy of Iranian Cheetah Society/DoE/SPOTS
This is the kind of moment, the kind of magic, that Niloufar Bayani, a Tehran-born, Canadian-educated conservationist, moved home for. She worked for the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a Tehran-based conservation organization, whose goal was to bring the cheetahs back from the brink of extinction. 
Bayani had joined the foundation, run by fellow Iranians Morad Tahbaz and Kavous Seyed-Emami, after five years working for the United Nations in Geneva. At 31, she had a promising career ahead of her, but had decided to return home to Iran to save her countrys threatened wildlife.
The future of one of the rarest cats in the world, which once stalked plains stretching from Russia to Pakistan to Yemen, had been left entirely to Iran. The population had drastically declined thanks to shrinking habitats, restricted resources, and poaching. The only likely remaining wild population [lives in the eastern-central arid region of Iran](https://web.archive.org/web/20191221205021/http://www.wildlife.ir/Files/library/IranianCheetah_Farhadinia2004.pdf), where there are very few humans. It was near impossible to conduct research on the cheetahs.
But the groups painstaking efforts to save the cheetahs would soon come to a halt. Even though they operated in the open, with the full permission of the Iranian government, their freedom would be stripped away by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a paramilitary group that operates independently from Irans regular military and answers only to the countrys supreme leader. Established by Irans religious leaders as an extrajudicial tool after the 1979 revolution whose name it bears, the IRGC frequently advances the supreme leaders agenda [inside the country](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards#chapter-title-0-2) and [abroad](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/world/middleeast/iran-us-war.html). 
In November 2017, the IRGC placed Tahbaz, the foundations co-founder, under a travel ban, [unable to leave the country](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/morad-tahbaz-five-year-arrest/index.html#:~:text=Morad%20Tahbaz%2C%20who%20is%20a%20US%2C%20UK%20and%20Iranian%20citizen%2C%20was%20arrested%20in%20January%202018%20on%20charges%20of%20espionage%20while%20on%20a%20trip%20to%20Iran.%20Prior%20to%20his%20arrest%2C%20both%20he%20and%20his%20wife%20had%20been%20blocked%20by%20an%20exit%20ban%20from%20leaving%20the%20country.%20In%20November%202019%2C%20he%20was%20sentenced%20to%2010%20years%20in%20prison.). And by January 2018, he and eight of his colleagues, including Bayani, would be arrested, and according to family members, thrown in solitary confinement and subjected to torture, with several charged with “[sowing corruption on earth](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/actions/niloufar-bayani-iran/#Case%20Information),” a charge that can carry the death penalty. After two weeks in prison, Kavous Seyed-Emami [would be found dead](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/world/middleeast/kavous-seyed-emami-iranian-environmentalist-evin-prison.html)  with prison authorities claiming he had hung himself inside his cell.
Following years in prison, forced confessions, and a closed-door trial, Tahbaz, an American, British, and Iranian citizen, was released from prison in September 2023 and allowed to fly home to the United States as part of a political prisoner swap and a [$6 billion deal](https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/09/19/us-iran-prisoner-swap-connecticut-morad-tahbaz#) with the US government. 
Their arrests were “completely out of the blue,” says a family member of one of those arrested, who did not want to be identified because of safety concerns. “They were doing everything by the book. …We still dont really know the reason why they were taken.”
For this story, the Sunday Long Read spoke with family, friends, and associates of the imprisoned individuals. Many of them did not want to be identified for security reasons. These interviews, along with international media coverage and the efforts of academic advocacy groups, paint a picture of Niloufar Bayanis longtime dedication to science, her not-always-quiet defiance, and her efforts to preserve her humanity and that of others in dark circumstances.
Six years passed after Bayani was arrested by the IRGC. Apart from a five-day period [when she was released on furlough](https://council.science/current/blog/un-international-day-of-solidarity-bayani/), she spent the entire time behind bars.
##### **Act I: “If only we had known what was to come”**
Bayani grew up in Irans capital Tehran with her parents Marmar and Yousef and sister Narges. She developed an adoration of animals from an early age and had a particular affinity for insects. She realized, however, that if she wanted to become a conservationist she would have to pursue her education abroad  there were far more opportunities outside her home country. When Bayani was 18, she left home to study biology at McGill University in Montreal.
At university, Bayani was enthralled by all the new, interesting people from all over the world, coming together in one place. Daniel Hoops, a shy student in the same biology course as Bayani, was one of those people. “We never would have been friends if it werent for her personality,” Hoops recalled. “She is just such a warm and wonderful person.” Hoops remembers Bayani as tall, elegant, and graceful, thanks to the years she spent studying ballet. Her tight, dark curls framed her face, and her warm brown eyes sparkled with life.
“She loved Iran. She would go on and on about how its not what we hear about in the media,” Hoops recalled. Bayani was willing to argue for hours about how everyone misunderstood her beautiful Iran, with its classical poetry and colorful cuisine. She encouraged Hoops to visit her after graduation.
Bayani and Hoops grew closer during a semester-long program called Canadian Field Studies in Africa. A group of 37 biology students were dispatched to East Africa in January 2008, moving across the region from Kampala to Tanzania, Hoops remembered. There was a fraught moment when the group, none of whom had a visa for the country, arrived at Arusha Airport in Tanzania. Thirty-three Canadians, one Singaporean, and two Europeans were waved through immigration. Bayani was stopped and taken aside for questioning. The group waited at the airport for news of Bayani, who was eventually let through after hours of questioning about what, Hoops doesnt know. But Bayani smiled her way through it all, despite her friends worry for her.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/DSCN2822.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
Photo courtesy of Daniel Hoops
On the way back from one field excursion, the groups van was traveling on the winding road that wrapped around the base of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano, sticky with mud after a particularly heavy bout of rain. The wheels churned in the thick mud and the van ground to a halt, tires spinning.
In the near distance, the volcano spewed ash. Just hours prior, it had begun erupting. The group emptied out of the van, terrified, watching the lava ooze out of the vent. Suddenly, Bayani dropped to the ground, hands and feet squelching in the mud as she moved her body back and forth, hips arched high to the sky. “Oh my god,” Hoops thought, “Nilous doing yoga.” Other students joined in, Bayani leading the impromptu yoga class. Yoga progressed to acrobatics, and Bayani was soon turning aerial cartwheels. 
Bayani threw her head back and laughed. Her laugh was infectious, and soon, the whole group was laughing too.
After she graduated from McGill, Bayani spent the next two years studying conservation biology at Columbia University. In 2012, she applied for an internship at the United Nations Environment Program, based out of Geneva, working on ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere.
Bayani was inducted to the job with the usual security training the UN required all of its employees to take  something that would come back to haunt her.
Colleague Karen Sudmeier was instantly impressed with the intern, who always dressed well, and whose laughter could be heard echoing down the office corridors. Bayani landed a full-time job after her internship finished, and threw herself into Genevan life. Every year, Bayani would get a team together for the lEscalade race, a lengthy run through Geneva in freezing December. “Thats Nilou,” Sudmeier says. “Always making the most of life.”
Bayani traveled to the DRC regularly, accompanied by videographer Armando Guerra, whom Bayani met for the first time boarding a flight bound for DRCs chaotic airport of Kinshasa. The pair, who had been assigned to film a video for the UNEP, had instant chemistry, cracking jokes just minutes into the packed flight.
The poverty in the DRC shocked Bayani and sparked a conversation about how ones place of birth defines ones life. “I have never met anyone who has a worse passport than me!” the Cuban-born Guerra told Bayani. Guerra took a photo of their passports, both as a symbol of how far they had come, and a reminder that, despite all of their progress, they were still restricted by their nationalities.
Guerra looks back on those conversations as bittersweet. “If only we had known what was to come,” he says.  
In the spring of 2017, Sudmeier remembers, the UNEP projects funding was drying up, and Bayani was tired of the red tape and lack of career opportunities at the UN. “She wanted to move on,” says Sudmeier. “What she really got excited about was the prospect of going home. She wanted to contribute to her country and rediscover her culture.”
Through friends in Iran, Bayani heard about the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, co-founded by Morad Tahbaz, a London-born iranian businessman who lived in Connecticut and was passionate about conservation, and Kavous Seyed-Emami, an Iranian-Canadian sociology professor who taught at a Tehran university. The pair founded the organization in 2008 after Tahbaz fell in love with the Asiatic cheetahs during trips back to his home country. At the time, there were less than 30 left in the world, and they were all in Iran. Tahbaz partnered with his friend Seyed-Emami to launch the foundation and they began hiring staff to save the countrys cheetahs. The foundation worked closely with the environmental department of the Iranian government, which even assigned the nonprofit projects.
Bayani was offered a job with the foundation in 2017 as a conservation biologist. She was excited about the prospect of returning home, though some of her friends questioned her decision.
“Ill be safe,” she told Guerra over beers in Geneva. But Guerra was concerned she was being naive about the dangers of working in Iran. Perhaps, Guerra wondered, she had been shielded from the injustices of her country because she had been away for so long.
“Wouldnt you go back to Cuba, Armando?” she asked him. “No!” he replied. But Bayani was adamant: she wanted to go home to work to save the Asiatic cheetah from extinction. There were few opportunities to fundraise, and organizations from abroad cannot easily transfer money due to sanctions imposed on Iran. “We have been living for so long abroad,” Guerra mused, “that the chance to go back to ones home country…it is just so tantalizing.”  
Returning home to make a difference in the very place where she first fell in love with animals made perfect sense. Bayani left Geneva for Tehran in May 2017. Weeks later, she was driving the remote mountains of Irans central plains, stalking cheetahs, laying camera traps, and hauling water.
“Come visit!” Bayani eagerly WhatsApped Guerra, who began reading travel blogs about Iran. “I could use my Cuban passport,” he joked. “Itll be less suspicious, considering theyre both axis of evil countries.”
“Is it safe?” Guerra asked. “Yes, its safe,” Bayani replied, with a smile emoji.
Bayani and Guerra stayed in touch, but sometimes weeks would go by before she would reply. “Hey, Im worried about you, where are you?” Guerra wrote to his friend after a particularly long period of time had passed. “Ahhh thank you,” Bayani replied, “Please always worry about me.”
Guerra felt foolish for his concern. “Im sorry, Ill shut up now.”
“Bye bye byeeee,” came Bayanis response.
##### **Act II: “Intolerable anxiety never ceased”**
On the morning of January 10, 2018, the IRGC arrested Tahbaz at his home. Although Bayanis colleague had been under a travel ban since November of the previous year, nobody had thought it too unusual. Iran places individuals under bans for a variety of reasons. But six weeks later, the IRGC came to Tahbazs house and took him away, refusing to tell even Tahbazs wife, Vida, why. Bayani was concerned, but there was nothing she, or her colleagues, could do.
The foundation staff was still in the dark when, [on January 24](https://iranhumanrights.org/2019/01/iran-is-using-false-confessions-to-manufacture-cases-against-detained-conservationists/), an unknown number of soldiers from the IRGC, clad in fir-green uniforms with gold embroidered insignia displaying the black *pasdaran* logo of the corps—a raised fist clutching an assault rifle—stormed their homes, arresting eight more of the foundations staff, including Bayani, over two days.
As Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who once shared a cell with Bayani, [wrote in her memoir about her imprisonment](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/opinions/iran-evin-prison-fire-inmate-kylie-moore-gilbert/index.html), “The Uncaged Sky,” Bayani would have found herself blindfolded and bundled into a car, headed into Evin Prison, [a notorious detention center in northern Tehran](https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iran0604/5.htm). Bayani would finally have her blindfold removed once alone and locked in a dark cell. The exact details of the raid remain largely shrouded by an aura of secrecy and fear no one connected to the group will publicly discuss it, and those behind bars are not accessible but it resembles the regular extrajudicial detention of foreigners that [has led to international criticism and sanctions for the IRGC](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1444).
Shortly after the groups arrest, then-President Hassan Rouhani appointed a special investigation to look into the charges, and even publicly declared the group not guilty. But the IRGC [insisted the group were spies](https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-mps-call-on-rouhani-to-intervene-detention-environmentalists/29223937.html), and claimed the presidents intelligence ministry was “not qualified to identify acts of espionage.”
The IRGC is a separate entity from Irans regular armed forces, operating as [one of the most powerful](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/irans-revolutionary-guards) paramilitary organizations in the Middle East and a [locus of power](https://www.csis.org/analysis/iranian-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps-irgc-iraqi-view-lost-role-or-bright-future) that has control over much of Irans politics. 
Irans regime has a history of arresting scientists, academics, and artists, “to the extent that the Evin prison is jokingly called the Evin University,’” says Ali Arab, a statistics professor at Washington DCs Georgetown University and Amnesty International board member who campaigns to raise awareness of human rights violations against academics. Crackdowns on academics are becoming more frequent around the globe. “Since the early 2000s, there has been an increasing and systematic trend in arresting scholars that travel to Iran for different reasons but almost always with the same charge of spying and collaboration with a hostile state,” he says. “Most of these cases are tangled with Irans hostage diplomacy.” 
There are many ways the arrests of Bayani and her colleagues could be interpreted, including the regimes paranoia over NGOs with international links. 
Just a couple of months before Bayani and her colleagues arrests, the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation wrote a [letter](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/iran-wildlife-conservationists-jailed) to Panthera, an international big cat charity whose co-founder Thomas Kaplan had made a [surprise public appearance](https://theintercept.com/2019/11/27/iran-environmentalists-panthera-thomas-kaplan/) in September 2017 at the annual conference of United Against Nuclear Iran, held in New York. Kaplan described Iran as a “reticulated python” devouring the other countries in the Middle East. He also publicly discussed his role as one of United Against Nuclear Irans major funders, which came as concerning news to the foundations staff. In their letter, the foundations staff told Panthera that Kaplans public comments had caused them “alarm and consternation.” “We are very sorry to see personal politics have a negative impact on conservation, but these are unusual times,” the letter continued.
Panthera had donated camerascash donations arent possible, due to sanctionsto Tahbazs foundation, and the cameras were a major piece of evidence for the prosecution, a source who did not wish to be named told The Sunday Long Read. The IRGC argued that the cameras had visibility of the countrys nuclear weapons that were being developed, although [one expert told The World](https://theworld.org/stories/2019-08-29/they-wanted-save-endangered-cheetahs-iran-their-work-landed-them-jail) in 2019 that low-resolution camera traps, like the ones used to track the cheetahs, likely couldnt see much beyond the targeted animals.
Arab believes the main factor may have been the element of detaining the conservationists for diplomatic leverage. One former Evin prisoner told The Sunday Long Read that the regimes agents believed Bayani was a dual citizen of Iran and Canada, only to find out later that was not the case Bayani only held permanent residency in Canada.
Bayani, recalling her treatment in letters to then-Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that were later [translated and published](https://iranhumanrights.org/2020/02/conservationist-niloufar-bayani-iran-torture-and-sexual-threats-detailed-in-letters-by-jailed-former-un-environment-consultant/) by the Center for Human Rights Iran, was subjected to months of solitary confinement and psychological and physical torture. She was questioned for “9-12 hours day and night” during that period, she wrote, estimating she faced a total of 1,200 hours of interrogation.
“I was interrogated blindfolded while standing, spinning, or sit-and-standing,” Bayani wrote in the letters, also published by [BBC Persia](https://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-features-51549394). “Threatened with the arrest and torture of my 70-year-old mother and father… threatened with physical torture by being shown images and descriptions of torture devices…\[and\] heard hours of detailed descriptions about the suffering and pain caused by torture.”
Bayani became increasingly terrified that if she didnt write whatever her interrogator wanted, he would violently sexually assault her. “Because of his inexplicable sudden appearances and disgusting behavior in various places like dark passages and in the detention yard, I didnt feel safe anywhere,” she wrote. “Intolerable anxiety never ceased.”
She was forced to mimic the sounds of wild animals by agents who threatened to inject her with hallucinogenic drugs. Sepideh Kashanis husband Houman Jokar [was beaten](https://www.iranintl.com/202206098290) and paraded in front of Kashani covered in blood. Interrogators reportedly [traveled to New York to film Morad Tahbazs daughter](https://www.iranintl.com/en/202206214952) Tara at a cafe, so they could show her father they had the ability to kill his daughter if he did not agree to sign scripted “confessions.”
> “I was interrogated blindfolded while standing, spinning, or sit-and-standing…threatened with the arrest and torture of my 70-year-old mother and father… threatened with physical torture by being shown images and descriptions of torture devices…\[and\] heard hours of detailed descriptions about the suffering and pain caused by torture.”
>
> Niloufar bayani in letters to then-Judiciary Chief Sadegh Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
The paramilitarys goal was to force each individual to sign a confession saying they were guilty of espionage, a crime punishable by the death penalty. All nine staff members, including Bayani, resisted until one freezing February 2018 morning, a few weeks after their arrest.
The guard assigned to Bayani for the day showed his prisoner a photograph. It was Seyed-Emami, lying on a steel table.
He committed suicide, Bayani remembered interrogators barking at her, as she described her experience in her letter to Khamenei. “Thats going to be your fate and the fate of all of your colleagues and family members unless you write whatever we want.”
The 63-year-old academic had been found dead in his Evin Prison cell sometime around February 9, two weeks after he had been taken in for interrogation. Officials claimed the academic and father of two had committed suicide, but a [preliminary autopsy report that omitted his cause of death](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/04/revealing-preliminary-autopsy-report-omits-cause-of-death-of-iranian-canadian-who-died-in-iranian-prison/) showed “bruises on different parts of the body and evidence of an injection on his skin,” according to his familys lawyer. Four days after the conservationists death, a short film was aired on state-funded television [accusing him of espionage](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/02/kavous-seyed-emamis-family-lawyers-issue-statement-countering-smear-campaign-aired-on-state-tv/). The guards stuck with their story of suicide, and the news trickled through to the outside world, causing a media storm. 
His family and friends were adamant: Seyed-Emami would [never have committed suicide.](https://www.instagram.com/p/BfBV7dYBwzH/) 
Their lawyer demanded to know whether Seyed-Emami had died by suffocation, stroke, or drug poisoning, but the authorities [refused to release further information](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/iran-authorities-refuse-to-release-canadian-iranian-academics-body-for-independent-autopsy-in-callous-coverup/) and [pushed the family to bury him without a full autopsy](https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/04/revealing-preliminary-autopsy-report-omits-cause-of-death-of-iranian-canadian-who-died-in-iranian-prison/). Had he not died, the arrest of the conservationists “wouldnt have snowballed into such a thing,” a source close to the prisoners, who did not wish to be named due to safety concerns, observed. There was almost no media coverage of the groups arrest at the beginning; Iran imprisoning academics was becoming commonplace. “If Kavous hadnt died in custody, their arrests wouldnt have become such huge global news. And I think once that happened, the \[guards\] had to double down on their cases against these environmentalists.”
Shortly after Seyed-Emamis death, Bayani signed the false confession. The guards were triumphanttheir prisoners trial could begin. However as Bayani outlined in her letter to the judiciary chief, the inhumane treatment would continue for months. 
On October 24, the groups eight members were told of their alleged crimes. Four, including Bayani and Tahbaz, would be tried for *fasad fil-arz*  or “sowing corruption on earth.” The others faced lesser charges: espionage and cooperating with a foreign enemy state. The IRGCs evidence was [based on a claim](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/22/iran-environmentalists-sentenced) the conservationists were “seeking proximity to military sites with the cover of the environmental projects and obtaining military information from them.” The charge of sowing corruption could carry the maximum sentence—the death penalty.
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4536177373_c43f80d1ec_o.jpg?resize=1024%2C681&ssl=1)
The exterior of Evin Prison. Photo from سبزفوتو Iran via [Flickr/Creative Commons](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sabzphoto/4536177373/in/photolist-7UR6uH-9hnYVw-ndtrnM-nKonsE-7UR6qr-7UR6z8-7UUm9m-7UR6oP-7UUmg7-9CXv74-7UR6x6-o2KMzw-nsVvVh-4og8bn-7UBsac-o2M51h-2MSkgC-9D1oXQ-9hjT7r-aiu6Fc-9CXt9a-9CXv8D-o2KMBW-7UR6Cv-7UEH1C-7x8RUG-deNKhy-59d4vC-8zfHkL-dqJoCE-8nAfT8-cdMAc3-3c6ffP-59d4y7-598SzX-2Usx9L-bgADzK-pHYeM-dvuNnV-6zoAip-2nbHiFM-6zozKX-2UnQXe-6zsEKm-o2SMja-o4E8bB-9hnXJh-9CXtVa-nKpbGB-eHcr96/) 
Hard-line judge Abolqasem Salavati, then-chief judge of Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court, was assigned the trial. [Those opposing the regime in Iran](https://mek-iran.com/2023/09/30/judge-abolqasem-salavati-irans-controversial-judge-of-death/) nicknamed Salavati the “Judge of Death,” which reflected his reputation for using trumped-up charges to sentence defendants to disproportionately long sentences or even the gallows.
Bayani was devastated, though she rarely broke down in tears, Moore-Gilbert wrote in her memoir, recalling Bayanis instinctive rage at injustice. Sometimes, when Bayani really lost control, she would pull the telephone receiver, used for occasional, brief calls to the guards, out of the wall and smash it, sending shards of plastic flying across the room. She would shriek and wail and scream. When the guards intervened, they became the target of her anger.
After hearing the news that Salvati would be overseeing her trial, Bayani wept in her cell. The forced confession would be used as evidence against her, even though she had retracted it immediately after signing. 
Following Bayanis confession, she and Kashani, who were being held in the same block, were granted a little more freedom. Less time in the tiny box, a shared cell with other inmates, brief trips, known as *hava khori,* to the small, caged courtyard. 
That is when Bayani would meet Moore-Gilbert, who had been arrested after attending a conference in Tehran. Moore-Gilbert recalled Bayani hatching a plan to communicate with her, during a time when her frantic screams and desperate weeping echoed through the dingy cells.
During her next *hava khori,* Bayani, using a sharp twig, carved “*LOVE”* in English onto the stubbly surface of a cactus, one of the only living things that grew in the dismal courtyard space. She hoped Moore-Gilbert would see it during her next outing and know she wasnt alone.
Bayani and Moore-Gilbert swapped messages of hope and encouragement by hiding notes in the cactus pot and scrawling messages on the walls of the courtyard. Bayani hid walnuts, dates, raisins and almonds for Moore-Gilbert, until at last, the two had an opportunity to converse.
“Hallelujah!! Hallelujaaaaah!” the Australian-accented voice rang out early one morning, waking Bayani, who immediately recognized it as Moore-Gilberts. “Hallelujah, hallelujah,” she sang back.
“Kylie!” Bayani called out, speaking quickly before any guards arrived. “Come back here tonight after they dim the lights!”
“No problem,” Moore-Gilbert replied, knocking on the prison wall. 
Later that night, in a scene Moore-Gilbert recounted in her memoir, Bayani whispered to Moore-Gilbert through the small vent in their cell wall that connected to her fellow inmates. It was the only blind spot in her cell; cameras surveilled every part of the room, apart from the area where the filthy cistern sat. Here there was a small, dusty opening, and Bayani crouched by the toilet to speak with Moore-Gilbert.
“Kylie, this is Niloufar,” Bayani said. “Listen, you are in a detention center called Du Alef, 2A, inside a prison called Evin. 2A is run by the Revolutionary Guards, whom we call Sepah. Sepah will try to get you to confess to whatever bullshit they are accusing you of. Dont do it. Its a trap. Believe me, I know.”
“I dont know how youre still here, Niloufar,” said Moore-Gilbert, who remembered she was beginning to cry in panic. “I couldnt hold on for nine months!”
“Kylie, you wont be here long,” Bayani replied. “My case is…complicated. But youre a foreigner, you dont even speak Farsi. Once they get the information they want out of you, theyll send you home.”
As usual, Moore-Gilbert recalled in her book, Bayani was looking out for others. Moore-Gilbert refused to sign a false confession. “In the end, interrogators gave up trying to extract one,” Moore-Gilbert later wrote. “For this, I was indebted to Niloufar.”
Moore-Gilbert was eventually released in 2020 after spending 804 days in Iranian detention and returned to Australia. 
Bayani, alongside her other colleagues, meanwhile, was headed to court, to be represented by lawyers appointed by Abolqasem Salavati. There would be no fair trial.
There are no specific figures relating to scientists, but a [recent study](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/resources/free-to-think-2023/) by Scholars at Risk documented 409 attacks on scholars, students, and their institutions in 66 countries. Tahbaz and Seyed-Emami served as “valuable bargaining chips for the regime,” says Arab, the Amnesty International board member, thanks to their dual nationalities. Moore-Gilbert, though not Iranian, was released as part of a prisoner exchange, for [a trio of Iranians](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-26/kylie-moore-gilbert-iran-prisoner-swap-what-we-know/12922198) imprisoned in a terror plot in Thailand.
In January 2019, a year after their arrest, Bayani and her colleagues [finally stood trial](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/05/iran-environmentalists-flawed-trial). They were read part of the 300-page indictment, which based most of the charges around Bayanis false confession. At one point, a judiciary official of Evin offered to downgrade Bayanis charges in exchange for a guilty plea. She refused. 
Each time she spoke out during [the closed-door trial](https://iranhumanrights.org/2019/01/eight-conservationists-tried-in-iran-on-basis-of-retracted-false-confessions/) in court, she risked a harsher sentence. But she continued to interrupt the reading of the indictment, objecting that her forced confessions had become the base of the IRGCs case against the group. “If you were being threatened with a needle of hallucinogenic drugs (hovering) above your arm, you would also confess to whatever they wanted you to confess!” [she reportedly told the court.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/05/iran-environmentalists-flawed-trial)
Her protests didnt matter. On November 23, 2019, authorities sentenced Bayani to 10 years imprisonment on charges of “contacts with the US enemy state” and “gaining illegitimate income” from her previous employer, the United Nations, according to Scholars at Risk. The IRGC had found Bayanis security training from her UNEP induction on her computer, Sudmeier said,  and used it as evidence that she was an Israeli spy, claiming the software was developed by Israeli secret intelligence. Bayani was also asked to pay the Iranian government all of the funds she received from the UN during her five-year career there. “We think she was given especially harsh treatment because she was working for the UN,” Sudmeier said. By this point, Bayani had been in prison for 20 months, none of which would count towards her sentence.
Tahbaz also received a 10-year sentence, Taher Ghadirian and Houman Jokar got eight years, and Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Sam Rajabi, and Sepideh Kashani received six. Abdolreza Kouhpayeh received four. Bayani and Sepideh Kashani appealed the ruling, but [the appeals court confirmed the verdict](https://women.ncr-iran.org/2020/02/20/environmental-activists-interrogated-for-1200-hours-with-severe-torture/) on February 18, 2020.
Speaking last year, Arab predicted that pressure from international science communities, as well as Iranians living abroad could increase the chances of Bayani being freed early. “There is a trend in Iran that they release prisoners before completing their full prison sentence based on \[a\] pardon from the Supreme Leader as a fatherly gesture,” he explains.
Arab believes that holding on to Bayani and her colleagues no longer serves a purpose for the regime. “In my opinion, theres a strong chance that Bayani and other conservationists may be freed in the next pardoning occasion.”
The UN [repeatedly called](https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/statements/unep-renews-plea-release-environmental-conservationist-niloufar-bayani) for Bayanis release. “We have only one earth and those that seek to protect the planet should not be prosecuted for doing so,” UNEP head Inger Anderson [tweeted](https://twitter.com/andersen_inger/status/1533125789885124610?lang=en) in 2022.
The families of Bayani and her colleagues have been limited in their ability to publicly campaign for their release. Many were too concerned about their safety to speak openly to The Sunday Long Read or worried that doing so could backfire for their loved ones who are still in prison. Organizations like [Scholars at Risk](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/actions/niloufar-bayani-iran/) had continued to raise public awareness about the prisoners plights and urged the public to put pressure on Iranian authorities to release Bayani  or at least grant her access to legal counsel and medical care.
Any terms or conditions on Bayanis pardon were not immediately available. And if she sought to leave the country, seeking asylum is also complex for Iranians; there are [thousands in Turkey](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/20/iranian-activists-at-increasing-risk-in-former-haven-turkey) and other countries waiting for their cases to be processed. In Bayanis case, academic organizations may be able to help, especially those within the Iranian diaspora such as the [International Community of Iranian Academics](https://icoia.org/) in collaboration with organizations like [Scholars At Risk](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/), who have raised awareness of Bayanis plight.
Years later, Guerra still texted his friend. “Hey, I know you cannot read this,” he wrote to Bayani in a recent message. “But I miss our silly conversations. Back then I was very angry. Very very angry that you are in jail. I should have told you not to go back home. But you made everything sound so possible and safe. Im very angry, but I will not stop talking about you. Not until you are released.”
##### **Act III: “Freedom is a state of mind!”**
Despite her captivity, or in defiance of it perhaps, Bayanis spirit seemingly remained unbroken, Moore-Gilbert said. She staged numerous hunger strikes, resulting in multiple visits to the hospital, to demand better conditions for her fellow inmates. “Freedom is an attitude, freedom is a state of mind!” she reminded Moore-Gilbert during one dark moment. Her ability to find joy in the bleakest of times persisted. During *hava khori,* she occasionally broke into dance-a-thons with all comers, Moore-Gilbert recalled, energetically leaping into African dance, which she studied during her student days abroad, gracefully executing pirouettes thanks to the ballet classes she took as a child, or gleefully whirling around her narrow cell singing at the top of her lungs.
As her prison sentence wore on, she contemplated her calling as an environmentalist. Here she was, stuck behind bars with some of Irans brightest minds; yet, Bayani had the sense they understood little about the impact and causes of climate change in Iran, even though some of them were in prison for protesting about water shortages and pollution.
She decided to conduct a survey of her fellow inmates about their awareness of climate change. In March 2022, she asked the women a series of questions and studiously gathered the results. The project took almost a year, turning into an essay touching on her life in Evin, climate change in Iran, potential reforms, and a warning to the countrys leaders. Simultaneously, Bayani developed a nine-week climate change syllabus for her fellow inmates, featuring other prisoners as guest speakers.
The group became so engaged in the courses content they wrote an open letter calling on the Iranian government to take climate action. “We, the female political prisoners and prisoners of belief in Evin, social, environmental, and political activists in diverse fields, mothers and grandmothers of future generations, express our deep concern about the future of our children and our country,” the letter, signed by 20 inmates, read. 
After weeks of painstaking work on the manuscript, Bayani passed it on to her former colleagues at UNEP, to edit and publish in 2023. That year, Bayani was temporarily released for Nowrouz, the two-week Persian New Year festival, and was able to work on the project until she was summoned back to prison.
[![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1712950432212-3c7a2b91-8e50-4ee1-a6b3-d068a52e3357_1.jpg?resize=724%2C1024&ssl=1)](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Climate-Literacy-in-the-Land-of-Oil.pdf)
The full 23-page manuscript, [“Climate Literacy in the Land of Oil,”](https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/2023/06/niloufar-bayani-manuscript/) was published on the Scholars at Risk website on June 2, World Environment Day.
“It is May 2022, more than 1,580 days since my arrest,” Bayani begins. “The future is dystopian from my barbed-wire view.”
“The sudden visit of a small blue butterfly in the prison yard distracts me from my dystopian thoughts. It has been a long time since Ive last seen such colors, radiant blue with purple shades. Its beauty is doubled by the bland background of asphalt and bricks. It must be a rare species. Its presence has calmed down my anxiety. It reminds me that rare does not mean impossible.
“As I follow the swift movements of my visitor, my mind is pulled towards a possibility: a colorful surge of people from all corners of the world coming together and demanding a future in which the climate of our planet does not imperil our existence, or that of other species. I come to think that it is possible. As possible as the first encounter with a rare blue butterfly in a notorious prison.”
*By April 2024, Niloufar Bayani, Morad Tahbaz, Houman Jokar, Sam Rajabi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Taher Ghadirian and Sepideh Kashani had all been released from prison.*
---
*This story was made possible by the support of **Sunday Long Read subscribers** and publishing partner **Ruth Ann Harnisch**. Header illustration by **Tara Anand for The Sunday Long Read.** Edited by **Kiley Bense** and* ***Peter Bailey-Wells****. Designed by **Anagha Srikanth**.*
![](https://i0.wp.com/sundaylongread.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/IMG_20240412_210326-3347944858-e1712981497857-1024x1024.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1)
## Lucy Sherriff (she/her)
Lucy Sherriff is a British journalist based in Los Angeles. When she is not working for the BBC as a climate reporter, she is hosting and producing a true crime podcast called “Wheres Dia?” for Pushkin/iHeartRadio, and writing narrative nonfiction stories.
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# The Fake Fake-News Problem and the Truth About Misinformation
Millions of people have watched Mike Hughes die. It happened on February 22, 2020, not far from Highway 247 near the Mojave Desert city of Barstow, California. A homemade rocket ship with Hughes strapped in it took off from a launching pad mounted on a truck. A trail of steam billowed behind the rocket as it swerved and then shot upward, a detached parachute unfurling ominously in its wake. In a video recorded by the journalist Justin Chapman, Hughes disappears into the sky, a dark pinpoint in a vast, uncaring blueness. But then the rocket reappears and hurtles toward the ground, crashing, after ten long seconds, in a dusty cloud half a mile away.
Hughes was among the best-known proponents of [Flat Earth theory](https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth), which insists that our planet is not spherical but a Frisbee-like disk. He had built and flown in two rockets before, one in 2014 and another in 2018, and he planned to construct a “rockoon,” a combination rocket and balloon, that would carry him above the upper atmosphere, where he could see the Earths flatness for himself. The 2020 takeoff, staged for the Science Channel series “Homemade Astronauts,” was supposed to take him a mile up—not high enough to see the Earths curvature but hypeworthy enough to garner more funding and attention.
Flat Earth theory may sound like one of those deliberately far-fetched satires, akin to Birds Arent Real, but it has become a cultic subject for anti-scientific conspiratorialists, growing entangled with movements such as [QAnon](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/qanon) and *COVID*\-19 skepticism. In “[Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything](https://www.amazon.com/Off-Edge-Earthers-Conspiracy-Anything/dp/1643750682/)” (Algonquin), the former Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill writes that the tragedy awakened her to the sincerity of Flat Earthers convictions. After investigating the Flat Earth scene and following Hughes, she had figured that, “on some subconscious level,” Hughes knew the Earth wasnt flat. His death set her straight: “I was wrong. Flat Earthers are as serious as your life.”
Weill isnt the only one to fear the effects of false information. In January, the World Economic Forum released a report showing that fourteen hundred and ninety international experts rated “misinformation and disinformation” the leading global risk of the next two years, surpassing war, migration, and climatic catastrophe. A stack of new books echoes their concerns. In “[Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It](https://www.amazon.com/Falsehoods-Fly-Misinformation-Spreads-Stop/dp/0231213956/)” (Columbia), Paul Thagard, a philosopher at the University of Waterloo, writes that “misinformation is threatening medicine, science, politics, social justice, and international relations, affecting problems such as vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial, conspiracy theories, claims of racial inferiority, and the Russian invasion of [Ukraine](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/ukraine).” In “[Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity](https://www.amazon.com/Foolproof-Misinformation-Infects-Minds-Immunity/dp/039388144X/)” (Norton), Sander van der Linden, a social-psychology professor at Cambridge, warns that “viruses of the mind” disseminated by false tweets and misleading headlines pose “serious threats to the integrity of elections and democracies worldwide.” Or, as the M.I.T. political scientist Adam J. Berinsky puts it in “[Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It](https://www.amazon.com/Political-Rumors-Misinformation-Princeton-Behavior/dp/069115838X/)” (Princeton), “a democracy where falsehoods run rampant can only result in dysfunction.”
Most Americans seem to agree with these theorists of human credulity. Following the 2020 Presidential race, sixty per cent thought that misinformation had a major impact on the outcome, and, to judge from a recent survey, even more believe that artificial intelligence will exacerbate the problem in this years contest. The Trump and the DeSantis campaigns both used [deepfakes](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-history-of-fake-things-on-the-internet-walter-j-scheirer-book-review) to sully their rivals. Although they justified the fabrications as transparent parodies, some experts anticipate a “tsunami of misinformation,” in the words of Oren Etzioni, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and the first C.E.O. of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “The ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified,” he told the Associated Press.
The fear of misinformation hinges on assumptions about human suggestibility. “Misinformation, conspiracy theories, and other dangerous ideas, latch on to the brain and insert themselves deep into our consciousness,” van der Linden writes in “Foolproof.” “They infiltrate our thoughts, feelings, and even our memories.” Thagard puts it more plainly: “People have a natural tendency to believe what they hear or read, which amounts to gullibility.”
But do the credulity theorists have the right account of whats going on? Folks like Mike Hughes arent gullible in the sense that theyll believe anything. They seem to reject scientific consensus, after all. Partisans of other well-known conspiracies (the government is run by lizard people; a cabal of high-level pedophilic Democrats operates out of a neighborhood pizza parlor) are insusceptible to the assurances of the mainstream media. Have we been misinformed about the power of misinformation?
In 2006, more than five hundred skeptics met at an Embassy Suites hotel near OHare Airport, in Chicago, to discuss conspiracy. They listened to presentations on mass hypnosis, the melting point of steel, and how to survive the collapse of the existing world order. They called themselves many things, including “truth activists” and “9/11 skeptics,” although the name that would stick, and which observers would use for years afterward, was Truthers.
The Truthers held that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were masterminded by the White House to expand government power and enable military and security industries to profit from the war on terror. According to an explanation posted by 911truth.org, a group that helped sponsor the conference, [George W. Bush](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/george-w-bush) and his allies gagged and intimidated whistle-blowers, mailed anthrax to opponents in the Senate, and knowingly poisoned the inhabitants of lower Manhattan. On that basis, Truthers concluded, “the administration does consider the lives of American citizens to be expendable on behalf of certain interests.”
[](https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a23905)
“Out of this dispute, a clear leader will emerge.”
Cartoon by Frank Cotham
The Truthers, in short, maintained that the government had gone to extreme measures, including killing thousands of its own citizens, in order to carry out and cover up a conspiracy. And yet the same Truthers advertised the conference online and met in a place where they could easily be surveilled. Speakers names were posted on the Internet along with videos, photographs, and short bios. The organizers created a publicly accessible forum to discuss next steps, and a couple of attendees spoke to a reporter from the *Times*, despite the mainstream medias ostensible complicity in the coverup. By the logic of their own theories, the Truthers were setting themselves up for assassination.
Their behavior demonstrates a paradox of belief. Action is supposed to follow belief, and yet beliefs, even fervently espoused ones, sometimes exist in their own cognitive cage, with little influence over behavior. Take the “Pizzagate” story, in which Hillary Clinton and her allies ran a child sex ring from the basement of a D.C. pizzeria. In the months surrounding the 2016 Presidential election, a staggering number of Americans—millions, by some estimates—endorsed the account, and, in December of that year, a North Carolina man charged into the restaurant, carrying an assault rifle. Van der Linden and Berinsky both use the incident as evidence of misinformations violent implications. But theyre missing the point: whats really striking is how anomalous that act was. The pizzeria received menacing phone calls, even death threats, but the most common response from believers, aside from liking posts, seems to have been leaving negative Yelp reviews.
That certain deeply held beliefs seem insulated from other inferences isnt peculiar to conspiracy theorists; its the experience of regular churchgoers. Catholics maintain that the Sacrament is the body of Christ, yet no one expects the bread to taste like raw flesh or accuses fellow-parishioners of cannibalism. In “[How God Becomes Real](https://www.amazon.com/How-God-Becomes-Real-Invisible/dp/0691164460/)” (2020), the Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann recounts evangelical Christians frustrations with their own beliefs. They thought less about God when they were not in church. They confessed to not praying. “I remember a man weeping in front of a church over not having sufficient faith that God would replace the job he had lost,” Luhrmann writes. The paradox of belief is one of Christianitys “clearest” messages, she observes: “You may think you believe in God, but really you dont. You dont take God seriously enough. You dont act as if hes there.” Its right out of Mark 9:24: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
The paradox of belief has been the subject of scholarly investigation; puzzling it out promises new insights about the human psyche. Some of the most influential work has been by the French philosopher and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber. Born into a Jewish family in France in 1942, during the Nazi Occupation, Sperber was smuggled to Switzerland when he was three months old. His parents returned to France three years later, and raised him as an atheist while imparting a respect for all religious-minded people, including his Hasidic Jewish ancestors.
The exercise of finding rationality in the seemingly irrational became an academic focus for Sperber in the nineteen-seventies. Staying with the Dorze people in southern Ethiopia, he noticed that they made assertions that they seemed both to believe and not to believe. People told him, for example, that “the leopard is a Christian animal who observes the fasts of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.” Nevertheless, the average Dorze man guarded his livestock on fast days just as much as on other days. “Not because he suspects some leopards of being bad Christians,” Sperber wrote, “but because he takes it as true both that leopards fast and that they are always dangerous.”
Sperber concluded that there are two kinds of beliefs. The first he has called “factual” beliefs. Factual beliefs—such as the belief that chairs exist and that leopards are dangerous—guide behavior and tolerate little inconsistency; you cant believe that leopards do and do not eat livestock. The second category he has called “symbolic” beliefs. These beliefs might feel genuine, but theyre cordoned off from action and expectation. We are, in turn, much more accepting of inconsistency when it comes to symbolic beliefs; we can believe, say, that God is all-powerful and good while allowing for the existence of evil and suffering.
In a masterly new book, “[Religion as Make-Believe](https://www.amazon.com/Religion-Make-Believe-Theory-Imagination-Identity/dp/067429033X/)” (Harvard), Neil Van Leeuwen, a philosopher at Georgia State University, returns to Sperbers ideas with notable rigor. He analyzes beliefs with a taxonomists care, classifying different types and identifying the properties that distinguish them. He proposes that humans represent and use factual beliefs differently from symbolic beliefs, which he terms “credences.” Factual beliefs are for modelling reality and behaving optimally within it. Because of their function in guiding action, they exhibit features like “involuntariness” (you cant decide to adopt them) and “evidential vulnerability” (they respond to evidence). Symbolic beliefs, meanwhile, largely serve social ends, not epistemic ones, so we can hold them even in the face of contradictory evidence.
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# The Family Photographs That Helped Us Investigate How a University Displaced a Black Community
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. [Sign up for Dispatches](https://www.propublica.org/newsletters/dispatches?source=www.propublica.org&placement=top-note&region=national), a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
James and Barbara Johnson flip through a book of their memories. They arrive at a photograph Mr. Johnson snapped as a surprise: a photograph of the long-married couples first kiss.
Even after all this time, Barbara Johnson quietly says to herself, “I dont know how he did that.”
“Me neither,” James Johnson says with a laugh.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20230830-Eminent-Domain-Kiss.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=533&q=75&w=800&s=40d2e5a567f8bc8087f35748f7525916)
James Johnson kept this selfie of his and Barbaras first kiss. Credit: Christopher Tyree/VCIJ at WHRO. Original photograph by James Johnson.
The Johnsons are the center of a short documentary ProPublica released last year. The documentary, “Uprooted,” is part of an investigative project reported by Brandi Kellam and Louis Hansen, [both of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO](https://vcij.org/), in partnership with ProPublicas Local Reporting Network and co-published by the Chronicle for Higher Education and Essence. The investigation examines [a Black communitys decadeslong battle to hold on to its land](https://www.propublica.org/series/uprooted) as city officials wielded eminent domain to establish and expand Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
Now in his 80s, James Johnson has spent decades chronicling through photographs the life of a neighborhood that for the past several decades hes watched disappear. The Johnsons live in one of five remaining homes of what was once a flourishing middle-class Black community, with roots that extend to the late 1800s. James Johnsons grandfather, in 1907, purchased slightly more than 30 acres of land in whats called the Shoe Lane area.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/img20231026_20241872_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=476&q=75&w=800&s=72677e409d902f2f839bb88121a0c87d)
Mother and daughter Ellen Williams Francis and Mannie Francis Johnson Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
Eventually, the Shoe Lane community expanded from mostly a community of farmers and laborers to a growing middle-class community including dentists, teachers and a NASA engineer in 1960. This was during a time when racial segregation was a legal pillar of American society, and all-white communities, including the then-all-white Christopher Newport University, enjoyed systematized benefits not afforded to Black people.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/img20231026_0384_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=620&q=75&w=800&s=d741ff4c2bfa8259affbd906e1502404)
The Johnsons home as they were building it in 1964 Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/img20231026_0385-SEPT-5-1964_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=517&q=75&w=800&s=e660f7ae7b1b8ca0eb30b34b2ecae906)
Johnson and his son during the homes construction in September 1964 Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
As Brandi reported, the 110-acre Shoe Lane area was adjacent to one of the city of Newport News most affluent white neighborhoods. So, when the Johnsons made it known they intended to subdivide more of their 30 acres to help provide Black families with opportunities for homeownership, the all-white City Council perceived it as a threat. Like many localities in midcentury America, the Newport News City Council had [weaponized urban renewal against Black people](https://www.propublica.org/article/these-virginia-universities-expanded-by-displacing-black-residents) to maintain racial segregation and the illusion of white superiority.
Brandi found that in 1961, the city used eminent domain to “seize the core of the Shoe Lane area, including the Johnsons farmland, for a new public two-year college — a branch of the Colleges of William and Mary system.” That college eventually became Christopher Newport University.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/img20231026_19530394-1986-LORA-RECITAL_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=549&q=75&w=800&s=07f15ae3e018df74c5a7a505376fc65c)
The Johnsons raised three children in their Shoe Lane home. Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
At the time, the university and City Council all but ignored the communitys protests. Instead, the narrative conveyed by the white newspaper was that the Black people of Shoe Lane were against the university because they were anti-education.
For a story that for so long had been told wrong, Brandi saw an opportunity for her reporting to get the story right.
Watch “Uprooted: What a Black Community Lost When a Virginia University Grew”
As bulldozers and trucks filed into Shoe Lane over various waves of university expansion, James Johnson turned to his camera to preserve what he could. His photographs became evidence Brandi relied on in her reporting. While investigative reporters often use Freedom of Information Act requests and government data to document the past, Johnsons personal archive told the story of what happened to Shoe Lane better than the official records.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/16_268-Prince-Drew-01_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=779&q=75&w=800&s=be28ba27e08669785857922153e28a78)
268 Prince Drew Road, built in 1972 and demolished in September 2010 Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/63-nml3-2_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=386&q=75&w=800&s=95e0b0130e0a2672a6443edae4309bd8)
63 N. Moores Lane demolition in late January 2005 Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/Demolition-Trucks_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=1305&q=75&w=800&s=11e0fba0b5cf58fcea85799f00d3b031)
After homes are demolished, trucks haul away the debris. Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
“I just started knocking on doors,” Brandi told me of how her reporting began two years ago. “The person who opened the door for me was Mrs. Johnson.”
When Brandi eventually met James Johnson, she sat with him for hours. She said she let him teach her what happened; she absorbed the history like a sponge.
“He just started opening up these notebooks,” recalled Brandi. “I almost fainted.”
He had kept the original deeds to the land his grandfather bought. He printed out parcel data that was no longer publicly available. He had photographed the front of dozens of homes that no longer existed, writing on sticky notes captions that could only hint at the emotional weight they carried to a community as it was systematically dismantled.
“He collected this not because he was looking for someone to tell the story,” said Brandi. “He did it because he was deeply hurt by what happened to his community.”
What Johnsons archive documented was, in one light, a story of loss. But, said Brandi, his documenting was also an act of love.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/Resized_20210626_175320_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=600&q=75&w=800&s=69c5028b6d89eb4422160816c9702cf5)
A wedding in the Johnsons backyard Credit: Courtesy of James Johnson
His photographs of his own family and of the community depict lifetimes of what the people of Shoe Lane had earned and experienced for themselves. Today, the Johnsons home — the one they built with their own hands — is only one of five remaining. The universitys updated site plan calls for acquiring the last houses in the neighborhood by 2030, Brandi reported.
![](https://img.assets-d.propublica.org/v5/images/20230828-Tyree-Eminent-Domain-004-1_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_quality_95_embedColorProfile_true.jpg?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=webp&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=533&q=75&w=800&s=aa526033880a57ecd0a345676f391d42)
Barbara and James Johnson sit in their living room in July. They helped build the home on family property almost 60 years ago. Credit: Christopher Tyree/VCIJ at WHRO
But, for the first time, the university is publicly reckoning with the damage its caused to the Shoe Lane area. In January, the university [announced its launch of a joint task force with the city of Newport News](https://www.propublica.org/article/christopher-newport-university-black-community-uprooted-task-force) to reexamine decades of records regarding the neighborhoods destruction. It may also recommend possible redress for those uprooted families. That reckoning is because of Brandis reporting and the accountability lens shes brought to the story of Shoe Lane. But, Brandi said, her work is building on James Johnsons project of making sure people dont forget about Shoe Lane.
The investigation has also prompted attention from Virginia lawmakers, whove [approved a commission to examine universities displacement of Black communities](https://www.propublica.org/article/virginia-commission-investigate-black-community-displacement-universities). That commission would consider compensation for dislodged property owners and their descendants.
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Date: 2024-04-15
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Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/maasai-tribe-tanzania-forced-land-evictions-serengeti/677835
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# The Great Serengeti Land Grab
![photo of boy in red shawl with goats and sheep on grass with large mountain in background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/y6GpbXD2ezG4My_httBYZraPMJ0=/0x347:3672x2413/1440x810/media/img/2024/04/02/NZTZA_240307_Maasai216_/original.jpg)
A Maasai boy herds goats and sheep in the shadow of Ol Doinyo Lengai—known to the Maasai as the Mountain of God—in northern Tanzania. Government plans call for the removal of the Maasai from this region, the latest in a long series of evictions.
## This Will Finish Us
How Gulf princes, the safari industry, and conservation groups are displacing the Maasai from the last of their Serengeti homeland
![photo of boy in red shawl with goats and sheep on grass with large mountain in background](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/EVCpyu8KC0Y0LgFSUQmzpke5a2Y=/325x0:3078x2753/80x80/media/img/2024/04/NZTZA_240307_Maasai216_/original.jpg)
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It was high safari season in Tanzania, the long rains over, the grasses yellowing and dry. Land Cruisers were speeding toward the Serengeti Plain. Billionaires were flying into private hunting concessions. And at a crowded and dusty livestock market far away from all that, a man named Songoyo had decided not to hang himself, not today, and was instead pinching the skin of a sheep.
“Please!” he was saying to a potential buyer with thousands of animals to choose from on this morning. “You can see, he is so fat!”
## Explore the May 2024 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
[View More](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/)
The buyer moved on. Songoyo rubbed his eyes. He was tired. Hed spent the whole night walking, herding another mans sheep across miles of grass and scrub and pitted roads to reach this market by opening time. He hadnt slept. He hadnt eaten. Hed somehow fended off an elephant with a stick. What he needed to do was sell the sheep so their owner would pay him, so he could try to start a new life now that the old one was finished.
The old life: Hed had all the things that made a person such as him rich and respected. Three wives, 14 children, a large compound with 75 cows and enough land to graze them—“such sweet land,” he would say when he could bear to think of it—and that was how things had been going until recently.
The new life: no cows, because the Tanzanian government had [seized every single one of them](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/urgent-tanzania-government-cattle-seizures-maasai). No compound, because the government had bulldozed it, along with hundreds of others. No land, because more and more of the finest, lushest land in northern Tanzania was being set aside for conservation, which turned out to mean for trophy hunters, and tourists on “bespoke expeditions,” and cappuccino trucks in proximity to buffalo viewing—anything and anyone except the people who had lived there since the 17th century, the pastoralists known as the Maasai.
They were the ones tourists saw through their windshields selling beaded key chains at the gates of Serengeti National Park, or performing dances after dinner at safari lodges. They were famous for their red shawls and recycled-tire sandals. They grazed their cattle with zebras and giraffes, and built mud-and-dung houses encircled by stick fences barely distinguishable from the wild landscape. They were among the lightest-living people on the planet, and yet it was the Maasai who were being told that the biggest threat to conservation and national progress was them. Their whole way of life had to go.
[From the April 2020 issue: Ed Yong on the last giraffes on Earth](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-tackle-a-giraffe/606787/)
And so Songoyo, after considering his alternatives, had devised a last-ditch plan for his own survival, one that had brought him to a town in Kenya called Aitong, where a cool wind was slapping sand and dung into his face as he scanned the market for buyers. He was far from home, roughly 65 miles north of the village in Tanzania where he had been tear-gassed and shot at for the first time in his life. He had seen elderly men beaten and guns fired at old women, and now it was down to this: He was a herder for hire, working for a distant relative, trying to make enough money to buy one single cow.
“Come!” he called to the buyers who kept passing his herd and weaving through the bleating mass. “You will not find any better!”
This was his plan: one cow, because that was the starting point of what it meant to be a Maasai man, which was what he still wanted to be.
The forces arrayed against Songoyo, whom I met in the course of two long trips to Tanzania late last year, include some of the worlds most powerful people and interests. (I have not used Songoyos last name out of concern for his safety.) What these people and interests want is what the Maasai are trying to keep: the land they live on.
Global leaders are seeking what they consider to be undeveloped land to meet a stated goal of [conserving 30 percent of the planets surface by 2030](https://www.whitehouse.gov/ceq/news-updates/2022/12/19/countries-follow-u-s-lead-and-set-global-goal-to-protect-at-least-30-of-lands-and-waters-by-2030/). Corporations want undisturbed forests in order to offset pollution. Western conservation groups, which refer to the Maasai as “stakeholders” on their own land, exert great influence, as does a booming safari industry that sells an old and destructive myth—casting the Serengeti as some primordial wilderness, with the Maasai as cultural relics obstructing a perfect view.
The reality is that the Maasai have been stewards, integral to creating that very ecosystem. The same can be said of Indigenous groups around the world, to whom conservation often feels like a land grab. In the past two decades, [more than a quarter million Indigenous people have been evicted](https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Cornered-by-PAs-Brief_RRI_June-2018.pdf) to make way for ecotourism, carbon-offset schemes, and other activities that fall under the banner of conservation. That figure is expected to soar.
For all its accomplishments, the cause of saving the planet has become a trillion-dollar business, a global scramble in which wealthy nations are looking to the developing world not just for natural resources, but for nature itself. The wealthy players include not only Europeans and Americans but Arabs and Chinese and others. On the African continent, political leaders are enthusiastic about what so-called green foreign investment might mean for their own economies (and, maybe, their bank accounts).
Such are the pressures being brought to bear on northern Tanzania, where the Maasai migrated with their cattle 400 years ago, settling in an area encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles of grassy plains, acacia woodlands, rivers, lakes, snowcapped mountains, salt flats, forests, and some of the most spectacular wildlife on the planet. They called it Siringet, which in the Maa language means “the place where the land runs on forever.” The Maasai see their recent history as a struggle to save that land from those who claimed it needed saving.
First came the British colonial authorities, who established the 5,700-square-mile Serengeti National Park, pushing the Maasai to an adjacent zone called the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, with its famous crater, where they were promised they could live. Then came UNESCO. It declared both Serengeti and Ngorongoro to be World Heritage Sites, which came with new restrictions. Western tourists began arriving, seeking an experience of Africa that a thousand movies promised—one of pristine beauty and big game, not people grazing cattle. Tanzanian authorities began leasing blocks of land to foreign hunting and safari companies, many of which promoted themselves as conservationists—a word the Maasai have come to associate with their own doom. Spread among the villages that dot the northern tourist zone, the Maasai have meanwhile been growing in number—their population has doubled in recent decades, to about 200,000. Inevitably, the clash of interests has led to bitter and occasionally violent conflict.
Still, the threat unfolding now is of greater magnitude. It emerged soon after President Samia Suluhu Hassan took office, in 2021. “Tourism in Ngorongoro is disappearing,” she declared during one of her first major speeches. “We agreed that people and wildlife could cohabitate, but now people are overtaking the wildlife.” The Maasai listened with alarm, realizing that the people she was referring to were them.
Not long after Hassans speech, officials announced [plans to resettle the roughly 100,000 Maasai](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/22/tanzania-should-halt-plan-relocate-maasai-pastoralists) who were living in and around Ngorongoro to “modern houses” in another part of the country. Meanwhile, in a region north of Ngorongoro, bordering Serengeti National Park, government security forces began rolling into Maasai villages. They were carrying out another part of the plan: [annexing 580 square miles of prime grazing land](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/tanzanian-government-violent-repression-maasai-loliondo-worldwide-condemnation) to create an exclusive game reserve for the Dubai royal family, which had long hunted in the area. The government characterized the move as necessary for conservation. Traditional Maasai compounds, known as *bomas*, were burned. Park rangers began seizing cattle by the tens of thousands.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/kgR5dV6wedtsywlKu6-HltjvKFo=/0x0:2038x1529/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240303_Maasai219_/original.jpg)
Songoyo at an abandoned boma in the village of Ololosokwan. It lies within a tract now placed off-limits except for the use of the Dubai royal family. (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
And more was coming: [a $7.5 billion package with the United Arab Emirates](https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/business/samia-efforts-pay-off-as-uae-firms-troop-in-4122942), of which Dubai is a part, that included new plans for tourism and conservation. A $9.5 million deal with the Chinese for a geological park that overlapped with additional Maasai villages. An offer from Tanzania to make Donald Trump Jr.—an avid trophy hunter—an official “tourism ambassador.” [New maps and proposals from the government](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/pdfpreview/mlum-final-oct-2019.pdf) indicated that further tracts could soon be placed off-limits, including a sacred site that the Maasai call the Mountain of God.
[Read: What trophy hunting does to the elephants it leaves behind](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/elephant-trophy-hunting-psychology-emotions/546293/)
“This is 80 percent of our land,” a Maasai elder told me one evening during a meeting with other leaders in northern Tanzania. “This will finish us.” They had tried protesting. They had filed lawsuits. They had appealed to [the United Nations](https://ictnews.org/news/global-indigenous-will-the-un-step-up-to-help-in-tanzania), [the European Union](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/apr/22/tanzania-maasai-appeal-to-west-stop-evictions-due-to-conservation-plans), the East African Court of Justice, and [Vice President Kamala Harris](https://pingosforum.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-March-PF-Open-letter-to-VP-Harris.pdf) when she visited Tanzania in 2023. Theyd unearthed old maps and village titles to prove that the land was theirs by law, not just by custom. Theyd written a letter to John and Patrick McEnroe after hearing that the tennis stars were hosting a $25,000-a-person safari-and-tennis expedition in the Serengeti. People made supportive statements, but no one was coming to help.
This is what Songoyo understood as he paced the market in Aitong. It was closing soon. Buyers were filtering out through the wire fence, and he still had 12 sheep left to sell, one of which was lame. A man tapped it with a stick.
“A cow stepped on his leg; thats why he walks like that,” Songoyo said, bracing the animal with his knees.
The man walked away. Another came and tapped his stick on the lame sheep, and then on the rest of them. They agreed on a price, and the buyer pulled out a roll of bills.
“Please, can you add 500?” Songoyo said, asking for the equivalent of an extra $3.60 in Kenyan shillings. “I need 500. Please.”
The man added 200, and Songoyo brought the days earnings to the relative who had hired him. They sat under a tree, and he counted out Songoyos share for a week of work, roughly $10. One cow would cost about $200.
“See you next week,” the man said.
“May God give you favor,” Songoyo replied, putting the money in the pocket of his blue track pants. His cellphone rang, a battered plastic burner.
“I am coming,” he told one of his wives, who was waiting for him at their home in Tanzania.
Hed had options other than this. There had always been Maasai whod given up traditional ways to reinvent themselves, shedding their red shawls for all kinds of lives. Now many more of them, having lost their cattle, were moving to cities, where the Maasai reputation for bravery and rectitude meant there was always work as a security guard—I saw them everywhere in Arusha and Dar es Salaam, in front of shops and banks. Others had taken a government offer to resettle in a town called Msomera, far to the south, only to return home with stories of loneliness and conflict with locals. Still others were falling apart. Songoyo had seen them, drunk men hobbling along the road or passed out on their red shawls under trees in the daytime. That would not be him.
“Never,” he said, and began the long walk back to his village in Tanzania, a tall man wrapped in a pink-and-purple plaid shawl passing cinder-block taverns where he would not drink, and motorbikes he would not hire, because the point was to save money for the cow. *No cows, no life*, he told himself, picking up the pace along an orange dirt road stretching into the late afternoon.
His earliest memories were of cows; he had never been without them. They were the huge, warm, brown beasts kept in the center of the boma. Their dung formed the walls of his home. Their milk and blood were what he drank as a child, when his father told him what Maasai children were traditionally told: that when the earth split from the sky and God left the world, he entrusted the Maasai with all the cattle, and by extension the land and the other animals that shared it. Songoyo learned how to herd with rocks, pushing them around in the dirt. He got his first calf when he was a small boy, herding it with a stick near the boma. When he was big enough, he followed his older brothers out into the wider grazing areas, including one the Maasai called *Osero*, a word that refers to lush grasslands—in this case, the 580 square miles of land adjacent to Serengeti National Park where Maasai had lived and kept cattle for generations.
It was in Osero that he learned about different kinds of grasses and trees: which ones had good branches for bows or good bark for tea that could ease a backache. He learned where to find natural salt and the coolest streams, and he learned certain rules: Never cut down a tree. Keep cattle away from wildebeests during calving season, because they carry a disease deadly to cows.
He listened to older boys tell stories, including one whose lesson he still lived by, about a group of Maasai heading out on a cattle raid when one of the warriors broke his sandal. The warrior turned to the man behind him and asked if he would stay and help, but the man refused. He asked another, who also refused, and so on until the very last one agreed to stay, while the rest continued on to cattle-raiding glory. The stern moral was: Be prepared. Dont fall behind. Stay with the group. Struggle.
Songoyo had struggled. He held himself together after his father died, when he was still a boy, a moment when he might have turned delinquent but didnt. He endured his adolescent coming-of-age ceremonies with dignity, by all accounts managing not to cry or shake during his circumcision, when people scrutinize and taunt boys for any sign of weakness, and he was rewarded with cows. He learned how to shoot arrows and use a machete, and became a *moran*—entering a stage of life when young Maasai men bear responsibility for protecting their village—and was given more cows, each with a name, each with a certain character he came to know. In this way, the life he wanted became possible.
He married his first wife, then a second and a third, and eventually built a boma in the village where his children went to school, and a larger compound on the edge of Osero, where the cattle were kept, and where hed had one of the happiest moments of his life. This was just before everything began to unravel, an otherwise ordinary day when the rains were full and the cows were fat and hed walked out into the middle of them, their bells jangling, realizing how far hed come and thinking, “Yes, I am a real Maasai.”
Not that life was an idyll. In village after village that I visited, people described years of tensions with safari companies and conservation authorities. People who lived within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area—a vast zone that was almost like its own country—had complained about schools falling apart and poisoned salt licks and the indignity of their identity being checked as they came and went through the tourist gate. In other areas, people had accused certain safari companies of illegally acquiring leases and paying local police to beat herders off concessions. One company was notorious for using a helicopter to spray scalding water on cows.
In Osero, the problems went back to 1992, when an Emirati company called Otterlo Business Corporation (OBC) was first granted a hunting license for the Dubai royal family. They had their own private camp and a private airstrip and, for the emir himself, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a compound on a hill, guarded by a special unit of the Tanzanian military police. When the rains ended each year, cargo planes full of four-wheelers and tents and pallets of food would buzz low over villages before landing, followed by private jets delivering the royal family and their guests. A few weeks later, theyd buzz out with carcasses of zebras and antelope and other trophies. For a while, OBC had its own cellphone tower, and Maasai villagers noticed that when they were near it, a message would pop up on their phone screens: “Welcome to the U.A.E.” The arrangement had been that the Maasai were supposed to keep away when the royals were in residence, but just about everyone had caught a glimpse. Songoyo had seen them speeding around, shooting animals from trucks with semiautomatic rifles. “Once, they pulled up in the middle of my cows and I saw them shooting so many antelope,” he told me. “They just kill, kill, kill!”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/DkfputXM7KI3k8jvzwb5e8E6lCU=/0x0:2040x1530/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240304_Maasai144_/original.jpg)
Bumper-to-bumper in Serengeti National Park, the first enclave in northern Tanzania to be set aside for conservation and tourism (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
There had been attempts at diplomacy. Sometimes the Arabs, as the Maasai called them, would give out bags of rice. They had hired Maasai men to work as guides and drivers and had flown some of their favorite employees to Dubai, buying them clothing and cars. One driver recalled being at the camp on a day when the emir arrived. The driver lined up with other staff, and the emir greeted each one of them while an assistant followed behind with a large bag of cash, inviting each worker to reach in. The driver said he pulled out $1,060.
But a bitterness was always there. Maasai leaders had long claimed that Osero belonged to 14 adjacent villages, and that they had never consented to the OBC deal. Tanzanian officials asserted authority over not only Osero but a far larger expanse—Loliondo—citing its colonial-era designation as a game-controlled area; they often resorted to violence to enforce this view. Maasai villagers described to me how government security forces had collaborated with OBC at least twice in recent years to conduct [a large-scale torching of bomas](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AFR5668412023ENGLISH.pdf) in the vicinity of the camp. Young men grazing cows had been beaten and shot at. One man described to me being shot in the face, then handcuffed to a hospital bed as he was bleeding through his ears and nose and eyes, slipping in and out of consciousness. He remembered a police officer shouting at a doctor to let him die, and the doctor refusing the order and saving his life. He lost his left eye, the socket now scarred over with skin, and had kept a thin blue hospital receipt all these years in the hope of receiving restitution that never came. Most villages have people who can tell such stories.
[Read: The war on rhino poaching has human casualties](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/war-rhino-poaching/604801/)
In 2017, amid rising complaints and lawsuits filed by Maasai leaders, Tanzanian authorities suspended OBCs license and [accused the companys director of offering some $2 million in bribes](https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/losing-the-serengeti.pdf) to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, which led to a court case that ended in a plea deal. Requests to interview OBC executives, representatives of the Dubai royal family, and officials of the U.A.E. government about their involvement in Tanzania went unanswered.
By the time Hassan became president, in 2021, the director was back on the job and the OBC flights had resumed.
Samia Suluhu Hassan was widely embraced by West and East. Her predecessor, John Magufuli, who died in office, had been a populist with an authoritarian streak and became infamous for downplaying the dangers of COVID. He suspended media outlets, banned opposition rallies, and alienated foreign investors, even as many Maasai saw him as a hero for brushing back OBC.
Hassan eased his more repressive policies and embarked on an ambitious plan to bring foreign investment into the country, especially through tourism. She branded herself a forward-looking environmentalist.
And she found willing collaborators. [The World Bank had been encouraging more tourism](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/tanzania/publication/tanzania-economic-update-increasing-tourism-for-economic-growth), arguing that it could help Tanzania achieve what official metrics define as middle-income status. One of the countrys main conservation partners, UNESCO, had been pressing Tanzanian authorities for years to implement what it called “stringent policies to control population growth” in Ngorongoro, although UNESCO also says it has never supported the displacement of people. A German conservation group called the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a major partner in managing Serengeti National Park, has expressed concern that traditional Maasai practices are becoming less tenable because of population growth. “There is a risk of overuse and overgrazing that should be addressed,” Dennis Rentsch, the deputy director of the societys Africa department, told me. “I dont want to vilify the Maasai. They are not enemies of conservation. But the challenge is when you reach a tipping point.”
In response to these pressures, [the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism produced a report](https://pingosforum.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Ngorongoro-Community-Report.pdf) that blamed rising Maasai and livestock populations for “extensive habitat destruction” in conservation zones. It recommended resettling all of Ngorongoros Maasai. It also recommended designating the 580-square-mile Osero tract, farther away, as a more restrictive game reserve, describing the land as an important wildlife corridor and water-catchment area for the Serengeti ecosystem. The designation left the Dubai royal family with an exclusive hunting playground. But none of the Maasai who lived in the area would be allowed to graze their cattle or continue living there.
Maasai leaders countered with two reports of their own—more than 300 pages covering colonial history, constitutional law, land-use law, and international conventions, and providing copies of village titles, registration certificates, and old maps—to prove their legal right to the land as citizens. They blamed habitat destruction on sprawling lodges, roads bisecting rangeland, trucks off-roading across savannas, and “huge tourist traffic.” Overgrazing was a result of being squeezed into ever smaller domains, which kept the Maasai from rotating grazing zones as they normally would. Citing their own surveys, they said the government had inflated livestock numbers, a claim supported by Pablo Manzano, a Spanish ecologist with the Basque Centre for Climate Change, who had conducted research in the region and found that the government was perpetuating a tragic misunderstanding.
Manzano and others pointed to a growing body of scholarly research demonstrating what the Maasai had long known: that their management of the land did not degrade the Serengeti ecosystem but had actually helped sustain and even create it—the grasslands the Maasai had cultivated for hundreds of years were the same grasslands that many wild animals needed to thrive. In that sense, the land had already been conserved before the Germans, the British, and various international groups decided that they needed to save it.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/0AUAuNc7OsH1qsszt98asG3JpOI=/0x0:3251x2686/928x767/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240301_Maasai004_/original.jpg)
A Maasai moran with his familys livestock in one of the areas targeted by the Tanzanian governments latest plans (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
In their reports, Maasai leaders concluded that the government was engaged in “a calculated process to wipe out animals” and to “devastate their livelihood and culture.” They took a bus to the capital and delivered the two reports in person to government officials.
But there would be no debate, no discussion of complexities. Hassan moved forward with her agenda. She was finalizing the $7.5 billion package with the United Arab Emirates, the fourth-largest (after China, the EU, and the U.S.) investor in Africa. One deal [turned over management of roughly two-thirds of Dar es Salaams port](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67199490) to DP World, a company owned by the U.A.E. government. Another deal [turned over management of some 20 million acres of forest](https://e360.yale.edu/features/al-maktoum-uae-dubai-africa-carbon-credits)—roughly 8 percent of the nations entire territory—to a company called Blue Carbon, which is run by a member of the royal family, Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, and uses conserved land to generate carbon credits that it sells to other companies. The package also included money for tourism.
Hassan invited travel agents to the country for a “tourism reboot.” She spoke of wanting more five-star hotels. She filmed a promotional documentary called [*The Royal Tour*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHKO9DB4dQ), which at one point involved helicoptering with a travel reporter over some Maasai villages near the Serengeti.
“All those round things down there are the Maasai bomas,” Hassan says in the film, as several villagers look up into the sky. The reporter then comments in a way that Maasai leaders found ominous: “Over the years, the Tanzanian government has tried to persuade the Maasai to become traditional farmers or ranchers, but theyve persisted in clinging to their ancient ways. And yet, they may not have a choice now.”
Some 400 miles to the south, in the hotter, flatter farming area of Msomera, bulldozers broke ground on a new development. [The military was building 5,000 cinder-block houses](https://twitter.com/TanzaniaTribune/status/1729055705879974249) intended for Maasai families. Officials had been dispatched to villages in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to present the governments offer: a free house on 2.5 acres. Electricity. Piped water. New schools. A cash bonus of roughly $4,000 for early takers. At one such presentation, a crowd pelted the officials with rocks.
I requested an interview with Hassan to better understand her decisions. In response, a government spokesperson arranged interviews with several other officials, one of whom was Albert Msando, a district commissioner, who told me, “Whatever I am answering is whatever the president would have answered.” We met in the town of Handeni, near Msomera. Msandos office was inside a former British-colonial building, where a portrait of Julius Nyerere, Tanzanias founding father, hung on one wall and a portrait of Hassan hung on another.
“For the public interest,” Msando said of the Maasai, “we have to relocate them.” A lawyer by training and demeanor, Msando emphasized that any relocation is voluntary, at least for now. He also made it clear that if persuasion fails, the government maintains the legal right to remove the Maasai from conservation areas, by force if necessary. “Thats why there are guys here with their shoulders decorated,” Msando said, pointing around the room to police and military officers.
He told me that anyone in Tanzania would be lucky to get what the Maasai were getting. “We are giving them nice houses, I believe, according to modern standards.” He said that the Maasai currently live in “filthy conditions” and should be helped to “live a better life.”
He and other officials I spoke with said that they disliked even using the term *Maasai*. They invoked the spirit of Nyerere, saying that Tanzania was supposed to have a national identity, not tribal ones. Msando said he could understand the Maasais concern about losing their culture, even if he had little sympathy for it. “Culture is a fluid thing,” he said. “I am Chaga—the Chaga were on the verge of having their own nation. Today look at me. People do not even know Im Chaga. My kids dont even speak Chaga.” He was unapologetic: “The Maasai are not exempted from acculturation or cultural acclimatization, or cultural extinction.”
The governments plans moved forward. In June 2022, a convoy of trucks carrying hundreds of security personnel rolled into the 14 villages bordering Osero, a show of force that the Maasai had never seen before. Soldiers, police, and park rangers set up camps on the outskirts of each village, announcing their intention to demarcate the boundary of the new game reserve. What happened next unfolded sporadically over several days. It has been documented in reports by human-rights groups and was described to me by dozens of witnesses and victims.
First, village leaders summoned to what was billed as a routine ruling-party meeting were arrested after they refused to go along with the demarcation—27 of them in all. The security forces then began planting a long line of three-foot-high rectangular cement markers called beacons along the perimeter of Osero. Villagers came behind them, kicking the markers down before the concrete foundations had set; women hacked at them with machetes. “I felt like I was fighting for myself,” one woman told me later. “I knew if this land goes away, there is nowhere for my children to be, and that forced me to lose my fear.” But the security forces kept beating the villagers back. Elders called more than 1,000 moran to take up positions with bows and arrows in forested areas along a main road where government trucks were patrolling.
“How many are ready to die?” a leader said to the group, and at some point, one of them shot an arrow at a police officer, killing him.
After that, the security forces opened fire. They shot at the legs of elderly women waving grass as a sign of peace. They shot an elderly man, who fell and then was heaped onto a truck “like a sack of maize,” his son told me. He has not been found. The security forces shot at men and women trying to destroy the beacons, wounding them in their arms and legs and backs. They shot tear gas into bomas and burst into one where a traditional ceremony was being held, firing into the crowd. The moran waited for orders to retaliate, but the elders, seeing what the government was willing to do, called them off. “Its only because we didnt have guns,” a Maasai elder told me. “If someone helped us with guns, they cannot even fight with us, because they are very cowardly.” Another elder said, “You cannot fight a gun with arrows.”
Dozens of people with bullet and machete wounds, blocked by police from local clinics, limped their way across the border into Kenya for treatment. Several thousand more fled there for safety. Others hid in the forest. Then the burning and bulldozing began. For several days, security forces plowed through circles of stick fences. They crushed houses and corrals and lit the debris on fire, burning more than 300 bomas, including Songoyos, and finishing the work before the start of high safari season. In [a statement issued a few days after the violence](https://www.de.tzembassy.go.tz/resources/view/press-release), the Tanzanian government said the new game reserve had “no settlements as it is alleged and therefore there is no eviction” taking place. It described what had happened as “normal practice for all wildlife and forest protected areas in Tanzania”—a necessary step to keep the Serengeti ecosystem from being “disrupted and eventually erased from the face of the Earth.”
Songoyos boma had been by a hot spring. His fathers and grandfathers graves were nearby. In the aftermath of the violence, he moved his family and cattle from Osero to a smaller boma nearer to his village, where he and others returned from hiding to find homes ransacked and skeletons of cows that had been eaten by wild animals.
Security forces roamed up and down the roads. Officials called people into immigration offices and accused them of being Kenyans, requiring them to show up in court for weeks on end, until judges threw out their cases for lack of evidence. Rangers patrolled Osero more heavily than ever, shooting at and beating herders who went anywhere near the new reserve, punishments that now came with a kind of psychological torture—forcing people to consent to the legitimacy of their own dispossession. One young man told me that rangers dragged him to their truck and beat him on his back with a stick for hours, calling him “rubbish” and yelling, “You dont agree this land was taken? We will punish you until you agree!” They would feed him cornmeal, he said, and beat him some more. But he never did agree. Now he can barely walk.
The Maasai had other problems. One was grass: There was not enough. Everywhere I went, I saw bony cows picking at short clumps of weeds in dry patches of dirt. Out of desperation, some people were taking their cows to graze in Kenya, while others were sneaking into Osero at night. To avoid alerting rangers, cows went in without bells, making them harder to keep track of in the dark. Herders used cheap flashlights for safety, shining them fleetingly in the bush to detect the eyes of lions and other predators. They struggled to keep themselves awake, wearing small radios around their necks, playing tinny music at a low volume only they could hear.
Another problem was worse: Rangers were seizing cattle. Not just a few here and there, but huge herds of them, by the hundreds and then by the thousands. One day, Songoyo got a call from his brother, who had been grazing Songoyos 75 cows near Osero with other herders.
He said rangers had chased them down and seized more than 700 cattle, including all of Songoyos. He said the rangers had then crossed with the cattle into Serengeti National Park, and were holding them in a pen. Songoyo imagined them staying like that, not eating, not drinking. He imagined his favorite, Kiripa, a brown heifer he could always count on to lead the other cattle to distant grasses and home again, slowly dying, and rushed with the other owners to the park gate.
“I tried to reason with the rangers, but I totally failed—it was like they were ready to shoot us,” he recalled, and so the group contacted a Maasai lawyer, Melau Alais, whose practice had been overwhelmed by such emergency calls in the past year.
After several days, Songoyo learned that the rangers were alleging that the cattle had been illegally grazing inside Serengeti National Park, and that they would all be auctioned off unless the owners prevailed in court. The court was in a town called Mugumu, clear on the other side of the park, a two-hour drive away. The hearing was in a few days. So Songoyo and the other owners scrambled together the park fees and set off in the lawyers car past lush green grass and fat, grazing zebras and Land Cruisers full of tourists enjoying the scenery. When they reached the courthouse, the owner whom they had elected to represent all of the owners in the case, a man named Soloi Toroge, was formally charged with illegal grazing and jailed until the hearing.
The next day, Songoyo and the others sat in the gallery as Toroge took the stand. Both Songoyo and Alais recalled for me the day in the courtroom.
“So what happened?” Alais asked Toroge, and as the defendant began telling the story of how the rangers had beaten the herders and taken the cattle, Songoyo said he felt his anger rising.
Alais asked Toroge how he knew the cows were his, and as he described their particular colors and markings, Songoyo thought about his own cows, and became more desperate.
At another point, Alais asked Toroge how many children he had, and as Songoyo thought about his own, he began to feel physically ill.
“So what other business do you do?” Alais continued.
Toroge said he depended only on livestock.
“This livestock, or others?” Alais asked him.
This livestock, he answered. There was no other.
“So if the court decides to auction the cattle, what will happen?” Alais asked.
“All of us will die of hunger,” Toroge answered.
As he continued, Songoyo remembered thinking that this was it. That he really was about to lose everything hed worked his whole life to achieve—not because of drought or his own foolishness, but because of his government, and the Arabs, and something called conservation. He said he began making noises, and felt himself becoming so disoriented, so altered, that he thought he could kill someone, or that someone might kill him, and soon people were surrounding him, court officers threatening to arrest him. Songoyo was saying, “Then let us die. There is no special death.”
He did not return for the other days of testimony. He was back in his village when Alais called to tell him that the judge had ruled that the cows would be auctioned off unless the owners paid a fine, and that his share—calculated per head of cattle, per day, for more than 30 days and counting—would be roughly $5,000.
He briefly considered what others had done, which was borrow money from a Somali loan shark who was doing a brisk business, but decided that was no solution.
“Let them sell them all,” he told Alais.
He did not leave his boma for days.
Normally, relatives and neighbors would give someone in his position one of their cows to help him rebuild, but nothing was normal any longer. More than 50,000 head of cattle had been taken by rangers, according to a local tally. Between the seized cattle and the fines, a huge transfer of wealth was under way from the Maasai community to the government.
People came by Songoyos boma to say they were sorry. They tried to encourage him. He considered what to do. He could be a security guard. He imagined standing still for hours in front of some building in Arusha. Then he began thinking that death would be preferable. Traditional Maasai cosmology includes no afterlife, no reward or punishment in the hereafter, so that would be that. Hanging or poison were the usual methods; hanging was more certain. Then he thought about his children. “And I said no,” he recalled. He told himself what others had told him since his father had died. He was a hard worker. He knew how to struggle. He thought, “Maybe something good is ahead of me.” He thought that if he just kept going, “God will bless me for that.”
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/nJroy5F-jV6URO94vBUrCqsIkI4=/0x0:2043x1533/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240307_Maasai197_/original.jpg)
A boma at dawn, its days likely numbered, in a region bordering the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
He tore down a large corral where he had kept his cattle and built a smaller one for the seven goats he still had, and for the one cow he hoped to buy. He remembered a distant relative, a businessman in Kenya; they got in touch, and the plan was set: Pick up the livestock at a market near his village. Herd them across the border to a market in Kenya, and if he didnt sell them there, go on to Aitong, a roughly 130-mile circuit every week. He had been doing this for months.
When he got home from Aitong, he would give half the money hed earned to his wives for food. He would rest, and then start out again. He noticed himself becoming skinnier.
Songoyo headed north with his next herd of sheep, through a clearing with a seasonal stream and smooth rocks. He skirted Serengeti National Park, where he was not allowed to be, then crossed over a low mountain range that marked the Tanzania-Kenya border, his sandals splitting at the soles. At the gates of the park, some of the half a million people who visit every year were lining up in Land Cruisers, the bumpers displaying flag decals representing the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the United States. And as the sun rose one morning, in they went, tourists with bucket lists, anniversaries, dreams, and romanticized images in mind.
They roamed the dirt roads through grassy plains that really did seem to stretch on forever—a rolling sea of greens and yellows and flat-topped trees. They slowed for herds of gazelles and elephants. They sped to a leopard sighting in trucks bearing the wishful names of various outfitters—Sense of Africa, Lion King Adventures, Peacemakers Expeditions—and soon they began gathering along one side of the Mara River.
On the other side, great black herds of wildebeests were massing, waiting for the right moment to dive off a small cliff and swim across. What the animals saw waiting for them was a long line of trucks, a metal fortification.
“I want a picture!” said a woman hoisting her camera.
“My God, I want them to come down!” said her companion.
An hour passed. Another hour. The wildebeests were not migrating. A Maasai driver grumbled that obviously there were too many trucks. A man pressed binoculars to his face.
“See, it looks fine to us, but to them, somethings not right,” he said.
He wondered if it was crocodiles. They waited. A woman took a nap. Then some wildebeests began moving downriver, opposite some gaps in the otherwise solid wall of trucks. And then one hurled itself over the cliff in heroic fashion, and soon they were all diving.
“Theyre flying!” someone said.
The animals were flailing, tumbling, and splashing down into the river, swimming for their lives, and now engines were cranking as trucks roared toward the crossing point, wedging into every open gap.
“We got em!” yelled a woman holding up a camera, and as far as anyone could see, the view was wildebeests, river, trees, and the grassy savanna beyond—no cows, no goats, no Maasai herders, no people at all, except the ones beholding the spectacle theyd been promised.
What they could not see was a tall man in blue track pants and a pink-and-purple plaid shawl herding sheep across a rocky path, trying not to think about how his knees hurt, his ankles hurt; trying to forget about all that had come before now.
Songoyo reached the first market, where he did not sell the sheep but picked up some more animals for another client and kept going, heading for Aitong.
It was late afternoon when he began crossing the Maasai Mara—the Kenyan national park—with only a stick for protection because bows and arrows are not allowed in the park. He hustled the sheep through the bush, past thorns, under branches, over sharp rocks and soft grass. He saw zebras. He [saw giraffes](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/how-to-tackle-a-giraffe/606787/). At one point, he saw a lion, which began following him, then another, coming closer and closer, and as he began to think that this would be how his life ended, a tourist truck came speeding along the road and scared the lion away, and he took off running with the sheep until he came upon elephants—“So, so many elephants,” he said—and managed to dodge those, too.
He kept walking, trying to stay alert. The night was moonless and very dark. After some hours, he reached the edge of the park and saw a boma—a cultural boma, as it turned out, the kind set up for tourists, where Maasai act out versions of the life now being extinguished—and asked if he could sleep there, but the people at the park said that was against the rules, even though welcoming him would have been the true Maasai way. So he waited outside a while and then entered anyway, lying down in a corner. It was cold, and he felt himself becoming sick.
He reached Aitong the next morning but still didnt sell the sheep, and this meant he would have to press on another 50 miles to a town called Kilgoris. By now he was so exhausted that he decided to sleep, and this was when, as he put it, “evil came during the night,” in the form of a hyena that killed five of his sheep, two of which belonged to the new client. When Songoyo called to tell him, the man told Songoyo that he would have to repay him for the animals. Songoyo told him he didnt have any money. The man said in that case, he would have to work without pay. Songoyo set off for Kilgoris, now in debt.
![TK](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/fGUwfVtQjCoDGRiQr4ENaEuw3jI=/0x0:2043x1533/928x696/media/img/posts/2024/04/NZTZA_240303_Maasai094_/original.jpg)
Maasai gather at a livestock market, one stop on Songoyos 130-mile circuit from Tanzania to Kenya and back. (Nichole Sobecki for *The Atlantic*)
He walked along a dirt road as trucks blasted him with fumes. He walked across one farm after another. He felt so hungry. At times he knelt on the ground and said, “God, can you see this?,” then got up and kept going. Another farm. A man who gave him water. A man who yelled at him to get off his land. A tree where he took a nap. His dreams lately were of cows grazing in lush grass, and of dying. More hours crossing an area that belonged to a rival pastoralist tribe, sneaking along the edges and behind stands of trees, feeling like a thief, he said, feeling like he had no place to be in this world. He kept going like that, across more land that was not his.
The land Songoyo considered his was now part of [the new Pololeti Game Reserve](https://www.thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/news/national/government-defends-loliondo-demarcation-ngorongoro-relocations-3857372). That was what Osero had become. The government had constructed a gate bearing the name along the main road into the area, not far from where Songoyos boma had been, and when the Dubai royal family was not around, tourists could pay a fee and go inside.
“As far as you can see, all this is now Pololeti,” said a Maasai driver who had grown up on the land and been away from it for a year, ever since the violence. “I feel like crying.” The only reason he was able to go inside now was that I had hired him as a guide.
What he saw was miles and miles of a particular grass that was good for cattle, at the moment so tall and golden. “If your cows are weak and they eat this, in two days they will stand,” he said, driving ahead.
He saw the yellowing tops of grasses that zebras favored, and thick, wetter grasses that wildebeests favored. He saw some impalas in the distance and said, “I wish to see my goats there,” because they would usually graze together.
He saw wiry red oat grasses, and thick swirls of cattail grasses, and here was the kind of acacia with bark that helped with nausea and there was the tree with large, rough leaves useful for sanding down a staff. He saw lavender morning glories used for tissues, and a sacred stream whose water was used for ceremonies. He smelled the familiar scent of bush mint in the cool afternoon, and heard such a strange quiet without the bells of cows.
“In this area, in the evening, youd see so many cows,” the driver said, and soon he reached a clearing where it was possible to see grass pressed into faint circles.
“Over here used to be houses,” he said.
“Over here, there used to be more than 20 bomas,” he said, continuing on.
“Here used to be a boma, because you can tell the difference between this grass and the other grass,” he said. “We always have soft-soft.”
He navigated by trees he remembered and small hills he knew by heart.
“Here was a very large boma—you can see the fence,” he said, pointing to some scattered branches with thorns. He continued on.
“Over here was the Pyando family,” he said, passing a certain spot in the grass.
“The Kairungs were here,” he said, but it was hard to tell.
“Here were the Saingeus,” he said, pointing to black weeds that grew where cow dung had been.
Here lived the Purengeis and the Ngiyos. The Kutishos, the Oltinayos, the Kikanais, the Mungas. A whole world that would soon be gone with no trace.
The driver turned and headed back toward the gate, noting a road that led up to a compound on the mountain, where the emir could look down and enjoy one of the most magnificent landscapes on Earth, with no cows or bomas or red shawls obstructing the view.
“Just imagine,” the driver said, and soon he was passing a line of white beacons.
“Oh, our land,” he said, exiting through the gate, wondering what would become of all the life that had been here.
One answer was taking shape 5,000 miles to the north, in the United Arab Emirates, at a place called Sharjah Safari park. It had been open a year, a project sponsored by an Emirati royal who wished to re-create the experience of a real African safari. It was an hours drive from the Dubai airport, out along a smooth, straight highway lined with green palms and bright-yellow marigolds, past mirrored skyscrapers, many mosques, discount strip malls, a crematorium, camels, and miles of desert.
At the entrance was a concrete elephant. The $75 gold package entitled visitors to tour 12 distinct African landscapes with animals procured from Africa itself, and on a 70-degree December day, tourists climbed into a modified Land Cruiser that whisked them through a series of metal gates.
“Savanna,” the tour guide said as the first gate slid open to reveal some fake termite mounds, some half-dead acacia trees, and a living waterbuck. “Ngorongoro,” she said as another gate slid open, revealing a few gazelles and four white rhinos. “Serengeti,” she said, and on it went.
Soon the tour arrived at the last exhibit: “Boma.” At the end of a curved path lined with grass was a collection of round structures made of cement, not mud and dung, with wooden doors and thatched roofs. There was a corral with goats and donkeys. And here and there were signs with cartoons explaining life in this place. One of them included a drawing of a man. He was wearing a blue-plaid shawl. His features were simply drawn, and he stared blank-faced from the confines of a rectangular wood frame.
When he saw the low mountain range, Songoyo felt a burst of energy, knowing he was near home, such as it was, the place where he was trying to start over. He crossed the clearing with the smooth rocks, and soon he arrived at a grassy slope, and there were the remnants of the larger corral hed torn down, and there was the smaller one hed built for the goats and the cow he still could not buy, a circle of sticks with jackets and plaid shawls drying on top. There was a mud-walled house, and a child running out of it.
His wife made him some tea. He gave her money for the market. Hed made roughly $20 on this trip, but of course he was now in debt for the sheep the hyena had killed. They discussed which neighbors were still around. So many had left. Then Songoyo went outside to check on his seven goats.
He looked inside the corral. Four, he counted. Another two were running around outside, so that made six. He kept looking. He walked to where the old corral used to be, then back to the new corral. No goat. He began walking faster, looking around the house. Still no goat. He walked farther out into the grass, seeing nothing, becoming more alarmed.
“Wheres the other one?” he said. “There is one missing!”
His wife came outside and began looking too. He ran out beyond a thorn fence and into the taller grass, now frantic, scanning the landscape for all that he had left of a vanishing life he loved and still wanted.
He kept looking, and finally he spotted the goat. It was sitting in the grass. As he came nearer, he saw that it was injured. A back leg was bloody, and seemed to have gotten stuck in some thorns. Songoyo knelt down to examine the wound more closely. He was a Maasai man without a cow, in debt, getting skinnier, and now he was shaking his head.
“Who did this?” he shouted, expecting no answer.
---
*This article appears in the [May 2024](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/05/) print edition with the headline “The Great Serengeti Land Grab.” Stephanie McCrummen can be reached at [smccrummen@theatlantic.com](mailto:smccrummen@theatlantic.com).*
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If 1948 was the beginning of an era, it was also the end of one — the period following World War I, when the West carved up the Middle East and a series of decisions planted the seeds of conflict. To understand the continuing clashes, we went back to explore the twists and turns that led to 1948. This path could begin at any number of moments; we chose as the starting point 1920, when the [British mandate for Palestine](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp) was established. If 1948 was the beginning of an era, it was also the end of one — the period following World War I, when the West carved up the Middle East and a series of decisions planted the seeds of conflict. To understand the continuing clashes, we went back to explore the twists and turns that led to 1948. This path could begin at any number of moments; we chose as the starting point 1920, when the [British mandate for Palestine](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp) was established.
The Old City in Jerusalem in the early 1900s.
Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress
In the time of the British mandate, Jews and Palestinians, and Western and Arab powers, made fundamental choices that set the groundwork for the suffering and irresolution of today. Along the way, there were many opportunities for events to play out differently. We asked a panel of historians — three Palestinians, two Israelis and a Canadian American — to talk about the decisive moments leading up to the founding of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians and whether a different outcome could have been possible. In the time of the British mandate, Jews and Palestinians, and Western and Arab powers, made fundamental choices that set the groundwork for the suffering and irresolution of today. Along the way, there were many opportunities for events to play out differently. We asked a panel of historians — three Palestinians, two Israelis and a Canadian American — to talk about the decisive moments leading up to the founding of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians and whether a different outcome could have been possible.

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# The last days of Boston Market
NEWARK, Del. — From the window of the last Boston Market still open in the state of Delaware, a slightly askew sign casts a weak light into the sunshine outside. “Open,” it reads in red LED letters.
The location anchors the northwest corner of a shopping center with an Acme supermarket on one end and a row of faded restaurants and a nail salon on another. And it might catch your eye if youre driving past on Route 273 in Newark, maybe on your way to the nearby Christiana Mall or the University of Delaware campus across town. Nearly everyone, though, drives past it.
This is what the end of an era looks like.
Boston Market was a booming brand back in the mid-1990s, a pioneer of what we now know as the fast-casual landscape. It existed in a space diners were just realizing they wanted to be in, somewhere between the greasy burgers of fast-food drive-throughs and the sit-down production of an evening out at the Olive Garden or Bennigans.
People flocked to its homey meals; its signature rotisserie chickens seemed fresh, even healthful, in that era of SnackWells cookies and Healthy Choice frozen dinners. After being founded in 1985 as Boston Chicken, it eventually expanded to more than 1,200 locations well beyond its namesake city. Now, only a few dozen remain; a report this month by the trade publication Restaurant Business put the number at 27, with more closures expected at every moment.
Inside the Newark location, the black metal chairs around faux wood-grain tables sit empty. Two high chairs stand like bored sentinels guarding the vacant space.
That “Open” sign is plugged into an extension cord that snakes its way behind the soda fountain, which is out of order: Customers who want a soda have to fetch a can out of a mini refrigerator. (They are also out of pot pies and all the desserts.) Only a handful of people pass through the sliding glass door on a recent Thursday. Theres only one manager working, and shes gone back into the kitchen.
Its perfectly quiet except for a soft mechanical whir of kitchen equipment. And while the sides — pans of mac and cheese, creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes — sit on a heated rack behind the counter, the only things that move are eight plump chickens, rotating on a spit.
Most of the folks who shuffle in and out, holding bags stuffed with quarter chickens and plastic foam containers bulging with side dishes, dont know about the corporate drama behind the chains demise. Some customers here saw signs that things were amiss.
Fred Grinnage, who sports a woolly beard and heavy work boots, is getting ready to head to his job driving a forklift. His shift ends at midnight, and hes stopped by to pick up dinner, which he plans to eat during his break at 5:30. He used to go to Newarks other Boston Market, about five miles east, but its closed now. This ones a little out of his way, but its worth it. Its going to be a cold night in the cab of the forklift, and hes looking for comfort food. “Its like a home-cooked meal,” he says. “Its good, its fresh.”
He surveys the scene and shrugs. “I hope they can make it,” he says, but he doesnt sound optimistic.
A while later, Sharon Adamson comes in. Shes in town from North Carolina for a business meeting — shes in construction, she says. She grew up going to Boston Markets, but back home, “now theyre all boarded up.”
When she spotted an open Boston Market near her Airbnb, she knew where she was eating. “We dont have any there anymore, so I wanted to get it while I could,” she said. She planned to take her meal — a half chicken with creamed spinach and mac and cheese — back to her rental. “Just going to eat and relax.”
The manager, a woman named Gloria who doesnt want to share her last name, says she made the food fresh this morning. In some locations, [according to reports](https://www.nrn.com/operations/closer-look-boston-market-s-slow-death), workers are resorting to shopping at local grocery stores themselves for ingredients to make the dishes — and even the signature rotisserie chicken — since supplies stopped coming in. Glorias usually a one-woman show on her daytime shift, cooking and scrubbing floors and ringing up orders. That morning, she says, she was lucky enough to have had a dishwasher come in for a few hours to help clean.
Its difficult to say whether the quality of the food has slipped unless youre a regular visitor. But on a recent visit, the creamed spinach — a dish that many people recall fondly from the chains heyday — mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese were all underseasoned. The spuds were thick and starchy. Even the chicken, which looked nicely bronzed, tasted as if it hadnt even once been within range of a salt shaker.
How things came to this sad end is a story with as many turns as a rotisserie spit. The proximate COD seems to be its current management, a company called the Rohan Group that bought the chain cheaply from a private equity firm in 2020. [Jay Pandya](https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/inside-chaotic-world-owner-boston-market), the Rohan Groups owner, was a franchisee at chains including Pizza Hut and Checkers who had a history of being sued.
Pandya promised to turn the brands fortunes around and open new stores. Instead, locations around the country began shuttering by the dozens, with [landlords](https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/cts-boston-market-locations-face-evictions-and-lawsuits-for-unpaid-rent/3153818/) claiming [unpaid rent](https://www.wptv.com/lifestyle/food/boston-market-no-more-south-florida-locations-shutter-amid-evictions-unpaid-salary-complaints) and a fresh barrage of lawsuits and investigations over overdue bills and wages.
Earlier this year, Massachusetts labor officials [fined the chain](https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-campbell-announces-over-100000-in-citations-against-boston-market-for-failure-to-pay-workers-on-time-provide-accurate-records) for late payments to employees; last year, New Jersey issued a stop-work order for 27 locations over failure to pay workers. After [the company paid](https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/new-jersey-dol-lifts-stop-work-order-against-boston-market-630K-wage-complaint/694023/) $630,000 in back wages, they were allowed to reopen in the state, though it isnt clear how many actually did. Boston Markets Colorado headquarters was seized. The biggest blow came in the form of a lawsuit from supplier U.S. Foods over unpaid bills in which a judge in January ordered Boston Market to pay $15 million.
Attempts to reach Pandya and the Rohan Group were unsuccessful; several phone numbers associated with the company seemed to be disconnected. Emails sent to several publicly available addresses bounced back.
Even with a handful of locations hanging on, industry experts are sounding the death knell for Boston Market.
Restaurant analyst Aaron Allen says many of the brands problems predated its change of ownership. “Its not the death of a thousand cuts, but many things contributed,” he said.
For one, he said, after distinguishing itself in the 1990s as a cut above fast food, it attempted to compete with those brands by holding its costs down — a move that ultimately led to a reduction in quality, which only undercut it further. “If you chase a lower price-point consumer you can price yourself out of business,” Allen says.
Grocery stores, too, ate Boston Markets lunch as they began adding [rotisserie chickens](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/09/05/best-rotisserie-chicken-taste-test/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40) to their expanding prepared-meal aisles. Essentially, Boston Market became a victim of its own success. After helping to popularize the roasted, whole chickens — in some cases, introducing the concept to consumers — the chain eventually saw the likes of [Costco serve up the same things](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/23/costco-chicken-lawsuit/?itid=lk_inline_manual_40), for far cheaper.
Its hard to imagine a time when rotisserie chickens werent ubiquitous, but looking back at news stories from the early to mid-1990s reminds us that, for a brief moment, they seemed, if not exactly chic, at least new — and exactly what diners were clamoring for. Headlines called them “the answer to dinner dilemma” and “a new spin on fast food.” “Everyones flocking to join the rotisserie chicken revolution,” the Chicago Tribune declared in 1994. Chains such as [Kenny Rogers Roasters](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1996/02/12/it-wasnt-country-chicken-country/cb7bb630-adac-42dc-b18f-915a5da97da2/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43), Cluckers and [Muhammad Ali Rotisserie Chicken](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1994/11/07/float-like-a-butterball/1130e9cd-a226-4ee2-a80e-51426102ab89/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43) spread around the country, while KFC debuted its own spinoff called [Rotisserie Gold](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1994/08/03/its-a-game-of-chicken/ba811b11-145c-4661-8ad9-167833314fd7/?itid=lk_inline_manual_43). Boston Chicken, which changed its name in 1995, led the way.
Eventually, though, the chains all-American, homestyle fare, often served in family-size portions, fell out of step with tastes. Diners were drawn to [ultra-customizable bowls at Chipotle](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/02/the-chipotle-effect-why-america-is-obsessed-with-fast-casual-food/?itid=lk_inline_manual_44) and the varied menu at Panera Bread, two leaders in the market now infiltrated by chains offering healthier options and global flavors, such as [Sweetgreen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/as-the-sweetgreen-revolution-rolls-on-fresh-and-local-remain-the-focus/2017/09/21/0851020e-9b08-11e7-b569-3360011663b4_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_44) and [Cava](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/cava-to-nearly-double-by-next-summer/2014/08/01/d28a9122-1666-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_44). In Newark, within a mile or two of the Boston Market, customers can find avocado-topped burgers and craft beer at Red Robin, or adobo chicken bowls at Qdoba.
Modern customers are more fickle than theyve ever been, too, Allen notes. That creates a challenge for all brands, but legacy ones in particular. Diners today have a restless mind-set influenced by our experiences with consumer technology. After all, our iPhones get an upgrade every 20 months, so we come to expect that other things we spend money on should constantly evolve and modernize, too. “These days, the consumer gets tired a lot faster,” Allen says.
The few customers still coming to the Newark Boston Market, though, dont seem to be chasing something novel.
Take Rashard Gibson, a DoorDasher who waits by the counter in a black hoodie and stocking hat. He usually delivers about five lunches a day, but dinner is when things really pick up. He doesnt often get orders from Boston Market. Usually, people want [Taco Bell](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/02/02/taco-bell-value-menu-review/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50) or [McDonalds](https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2024/01/25/double-big-mac-mcdonalds-review/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50), maybe a [pizza](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/interactive/2023/best-pizza-map-style-near-you/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50). [Chick-fil-A is huge](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/19/chick-fil-a-becomes-third-largest-restaurant-chain-us/?itid=lk_inline_manual_50). “Everybody wants Chick-fil-A,” he says. He had almost forgotten about this neglected outpost, but his visit has him feeling nostalgic.
Growing up in New York, Friday nights meant home movies and Boston Market takeout with his mother. She would order different things, but his order was always the same: a quarter chicken with mashed potatoes and corn, which he would cut up and mash together. “It was always just the two of us,” he says, smiling at the memory. There used to be long lines, he recalls as he looks around the empty dining room. “Not like now.”
Tonight, he says, after he finishes his deliveries, hes coming back for dinner for himself. And he knows exactly what hell be ordering.
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# The soft life: why millennials are quitting the rat race
Rose Gardner did everything right. Straight As at school and college, a first-class degree from a top university, a masters. She got a job in publishing and rose through the ranks of some of the industrys most prestigious companies before getting a job with a media organisation. Eventually, she bought her own flat in London.
But each time she reached a new milestone, she didnt feel any real joy.
“I remember walking into my flat, and this might make me sound so ungrateful, but I felt scared,” she says. “I knew I was going to have to keep working at this job that I hated to pay the mortgage.”
It wasnt that there was anything particularly bad about the job, it was more that as time went on, she says she didnt feel driven by the consumerism that the companies she worked for depended on. Shed lost her sense of materialism and didnt get much from going to bars, clubs or parties. On top of that, she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which made working in an open-plan office with a strict 9-5 policy incredibly hard. Gardner, 42, works best in isolation, early in the morning and in the evening, and she didnt feel her workplace was prepared to accommodate that. Pushing through her afternoon “crashes” for years had become exhausting. So, five years ago, she had what she called her “Jerry Maguire moment”. She quit. She sold her flat and moved back to her parents house in Wiltshire, where she now works part-time in hospitality and handcrafts jewellery and ceramics from a shed in the garden. She has little income, but also very few outgoings.
“My parents are getting older and I pay them rent and my own bills. I have my own little area. We get to live a separate but together life and I see that as a privilege. I meditate and take long walks with my dog in nature … I lost my relationship with myself when I listened so much to what I should be doing. Now, I get a lot more pleasure out of the small things.”
Gardner is living what is increasingly becoming known online as the “soft life”. As a millennial, she is part of a generation brought up to take pride in hard work, who now find themselves in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the third recession of their lifetimes. As Gabrielle Judge, better known online as the Anti Work Girlboss, says: “You think your managers will take care of you? Your job will take care of you? That really crumbled for millennials, especially during the 2008 recession.”
For millennials and the younger generation Z and Alphas, who may never be able to afford to buy a home or retire at a reasonable age, there is a growing feeling online that hard work is fortifying a system that, at best, is giving them nothing back and, at worst, is actively screwing them over. And so the “soft life” revolution was born where the priority is no longer about working yourself to the bone to be a #girlboss or “leaning in” to the corporate male world, as former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote, and pushing until you “have it all”. The goal of a softer life is more time and energy for what makes you happy and as little time as possible focusing on what doesnt.
![I equated being successful with doing something I didnt like … Rose Gardner in her studio.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f77f7e5490eba54b77a0dc4043265b2badba7b2f/0_709_6496_4361/master/6496.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
I equated being successful with doing something I didnt like … Rose Gardner in her studio. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Guardian
Judge, 26, coined the term “lazy girl job” back in 2023 on TikTok. She had graduated with a computer science degree in 2019 and got a job at a tech company. Two exhausting years later, she received a $10k a year pay increase. On the surface, it seemed great. But then she looked deeper. “Even before taxes, thats only $5K a year for doing 60 hours of work a week,” she says. And with inflation factored in, it was technically a pay cut. “I didnt see the payoff,” she says.
Judge was forced to take two months off after a serious concussion and she never went back. She got an entry-level job in customer services for a website-building platform. “I was technically underemployed and wasnt really using my degree, but I was still paying my bills and was comfortable,” says Judge, who lives in Denver, Colorado. “It was the biggest breakthrough on a spiritual level with my friendships and relationships.” And that is where her notion of a “lazy girl job” started to form a job that is typically low in stress, fully remote and with enough salary to pay for the bare essentials.
Judge has since built a huge audience online with more than 400,000 followers across her various social media platforms. She has created a community of people sharing their stories of working all hours and getting little in return as mass redundancies and AI come for their jobs. She now advocates for a four-day week, living wage and prioritising health and wellbeing. “Im not telling people exactly how much they need to be working,” she says. “Im just trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy.”
Abadesi Osunsade, 37, speaks to me as she power walks between her meetings. As the CEO of her company Hustle Crew, which delivers diversity and inclusion training, and co-host of the podcast Techish, she is not the most obvious proponent of the “soft life”. Yet she advocates for the same “laziness” and boundaries that Judge champions. In her 20s, she worked in tech startups, doing 12-hour days while building Hustle Crew in every spare moment. She lived in a “six-week cycle of burnout”. Now her own business is established, she has been able to introduce “softness” into her life, making time for relationships, exercise and visiting family in the Philippines. This “softer” life is a work in progress “and thats OK,” she says. What is most important for Osunsade, is to no longer define herself by her output. “Productivity and fulfilment become conflated,” she says. “What value do you actually get from being busy? Are you cultivating enough self-love and self-awareness to enjoy downtime?” She says many of us feel guilt when not filling every hour serving some greater purpose or goal. “Why is there shame in not being busy?” she asks. “Have we been so brainwashed by capitalism that you have to be busy to be worth something?”
Osunsade views the late-capitalist approach to work as being mired in historical and cultural prejudices. “For black people, our value was as forced labourers. If you can socialise people into thinking that they are only good for what they make and what they do, the other side of that coin is that theyll feel guilty when theyre not doing anything.”
![Im not telling people how much they need to work. Im trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy … Gabrielle Judge.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ccde9f37ddb16453c0d35e1fd16660d8a205b403/0_92_1284_1706/master/1284.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
Im not telling people how much they need to work. Im trying to create more permission for whatever makes you happy … Gabrielle Judge. Photograph: Isiah Yibibo
She puts the rise in “soft living” down to the current economic and political climate especially the Trump administration. “A lot of that naive optimism that helped movements like lean in happen was confronted by the crushing reality of patriarchy,” she says. And telling women to just work harder to become equal with men has proved a fallacy when, 10 years on from Sandbergs book, the gender pay gap remains at [16% in the US](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/gender-pay-gap-statistics/#sources_section). As Michelle Obama put it: “its not always enough to lean in, because that shit doesnt work all the time”. Especially if you have the intersectional pressures that immigrants, queer women and women of colour have, too. The soft life is a logical reaction to a macro-level business model that suppresses the wages of societys most vulnerable.
In the US, [Black women earned 30% less](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/#:~:text=not%20entirely%20clear.-,Gender%20pay%20gap%20differs%20widely%20by%20race%20and%20ethnicity,the%20earnings%20of%20White%20men.&text=In%202022%2C%20Black%20women%20earned,earned%20only%2065%25%20as%20much.) than white men in 2022. In [the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/gender-pay-gap-widest-for-ethnic-minority-women-labour-finds), that figure is 26% and it rises to 31% for Pakistani women. This discrimination takes a toll on the body and spirit. Even high-profile figures such as MP Diane Abbott face levels of abuse that far surpass their white professional counterparts. A leaked internal Labour party report from 2020 documented how Abbotts colleagues would mock her for crying and called her “repulsive” and “angry”. It is this additional burden that makes the soft life even more appealing to young Black women. “Its listening to your mind and bodys needs and putting them first in a system where women are encouraged to put others needs before our own,” says Osunsade. The poet and feminist Audre Lorde in her book A Burst of Light set out the radical implications of self-care and womanhood, writing, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
[skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/02/soft-life-why-millennials-are-quitting-the-rat-race#EmailSignup-skip-link-17)
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The soft life approach is not without its critics. In 2022, Kim Kardashian infamously claimed that women need to “get your fucking ass up and work” as “it seems like nobody wants to work these days”. She was forced to apologise after it was pointed out that coming from a rich, already-famous family in LA would have its advantages in the job market. Not to mention that while Kardashian has become a billionaire off the back of her fashion and beauty brands, some [former employees alleged](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnky4/i-worked-my-ass-off-for-kim-kardashian-jenner-apps-i-couldnt-afford-gas-jessica-defino) that they were scraping by on unlivable wages, with barely enough money to get to work. Other figures have made “soft living” about a generational divide. [Whoopi Goldberg](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/msnbc/whoopi-goldberg-the-view-millennials-argument-rcna124424) has said that millennials and gen Z who feel that life milestones such as having children and owning houses are out of reach just arent working hard enough. “Im sorry if you only want to work four hours, its going to be harder for you to get a house,” she said. [Jodie Foster](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/06/jodie-foster-generation-z-annoying-interview) told the Guardian that gen Z are “really annoying” to work with. “Theyre like: Nah, Im not feeling it today, Im gonna come in at 10.30am.’”
“Were being lectured on not being hardworking enough by people who have no idea what it is like to never switch off,” says Osunsade. With Zoom and Slack keeping us connected to our workplaces at every moment, it is no longer plausible to say that you havent seen the emails that ping into your smartphone at the weekend. For Judge, she feels there is a “tendency online to blame all societal ills on our parents generations … but baby boomers arent stupid for doing what they did for their careers … Im just saying it doesnt work in todays age.” The “return on investment” on working all hours for some kind of meritocratic ideal “just isnt the same any more”.
No longer can you do everything society asks of you and be guaranteed to attain even the lowest totem on Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, when in the US 53% of people living in homeless shelters [were employed](https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/learning-about-homelessness-using-linked-survey-and-administrative-data/) in 2021, and one in four of the households made homeless in 2022 in England had at least [one person in work](https://www.itv.com/news/2023-05-10/were-trapped-homelessness-rises-among-working-people-in-england).
But to choose not to work, or to work less, can still be judged as a feminist betrayal. Osunsade recalls a conversation she had with an older colleague who described a bright young woman stopping working after having children as “an absolute crime. What a waste of a mind!”. “There is a sense,” she says, “that we have to have it all because people fought for us to be able to have it.” It was that idea that a brilliant brain must be offered up on the sacrificial altar of capitalism that made Gardner so miserable at work. As a child, “I was very much told art was a hobby and that I needed to go down the academic route, otherwise it would be a travesty … It felt as if choosing to do what I love was being lazy. I equated being successful with doing something I didnt like.”
All around me I see overwork. Top editors who freelance at the weekends, small business owners who dont have time to unpack the boxes in the homes they moved into three years ago, self-proclaimed cogs in corporate machines who drink Huel at their desks because they have no time to eat. Social conversations with peers vacillate between how unaffordable London, where I live, has become and symptoms of our almost perpetual burnout.
Is it possible to achieve a softer life without entirely uprooting yourself, which may not be realistic for many? For Osunsade, its about accepting that “people can only prioritise a small number of things. [Women](https://www.theguardian.com/society/women) in particular, get into this trap of wanting to be the best mother, writer, friend, runner and yoga person in the class. We need to be happy with being the best in one or two roles and content with being mediocre in others.”
Embracing a little mediocrity is at the core of other online workplace trends, from “[quiet quitting](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/06/quiet-quitting-why-doing-the-bare-minimum-at-work-has-gone-global)” (doing the minimum your job requires of you) to “[bare minimum Mondays](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/feb/08/bare-minimum-mondays-a-perfect-start-to-the-week-or-a-recipe-for-disaster)”. Osunsade suggests doing an “audit of priorities. Decide what your non-negotiables are. If its important for you to do bath time with your kids every night, then that is just a permanent block in your calendar that no one ever touches because its sacred. Every time you schedule a class, a walk, a beauty appointment, or buy a book, see it as a meeting that you cant cancel.”
Gardner is now thriving in her softer life, which is filled with creativity and family. She finally feels that her life is a success. “Theres something about softness that is not valued in the corporate world or isnt understood. Its seen as a weakness.” But now, she says, “I see it as a strength.”
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