PodcastsJen’s Lore Corner – Tathamet and the Burning HellsSeptember 2, 2019Jen's Lore Corner / PodcastsWelcome to Jen’s Lore Corner, a podcast about the lore of the Diablo video game series. This podcast started as a segment on the Shattered Soulstone podcast. I decided to re-release those segments in their own podcast. New content started with Episode 010. In this episode, I talk about the lore that explains how The Burning Hells were formed, and how the Prime Evils and Lesser Evils came to be. Before I started this episode, I wrote a blog post about the Demons in Diablo III. It provides a brief summary of how the demons, and the angels, were created. In this episode, I mention the animated video called Wrath. Jen’s Lore Corner – Tathamet and the Burning Hells is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you! https://media.blubrry.com/bookofjen/p/content.blubrry.com/bookofjen/JLC016.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS... A Festival of Blogging – Episode 051August 1, 2019Podcasts / Words of JenIn this episode, I read a piece of my writing that is about #Blaugust2019. It is a challenge, of sorts, designed to inspire bloggers to start making regular posts on their blogs. It is also good for those who want to start a blog. I read “A Festival of Blogging” on episode 051 of Words of Jen. If you enjoyed this episode please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you! https://media.blubrry.com/bookofjen/p/content.blubrry.com/bookofjen/woj051.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS... A Festival of BloggingAugust 1, 2019Podcasts / Words of JenThe official logo of Blaugust 2019 – created by Belghast Last year, I joined in on the fun and became part of Blaugust Reborn. It was a wonderful opportunity to hang out in Discord with the community of bloggers who had also decided to take on this challenge. This year, I am taking part in Blaugust 2019. This “festival of blogging” is encouraging me to find the time to post content on my own blog on a regular basis. My goal is to post something every day this month. I read “A Festival of Blogging” on Episode 051 of Words of Jen. My one advantage in this challenge is my years of experience in blogging. The work I do as a freelance writer, posting content on other people’s blogs for pay, started in 2010. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I no longer needed to feel inspired before I could begin writing something. My disadvantages, in regards to this challenge, are many. I have chronic illnesses, some of which can make it extremely difficult to do any kind of writing or blogging. When that happens, my drive to get things done remains, but my body refuses to cooperate. At any moment, I could encounter an allergen that forces me to drop everything and take medication. My fibromyalgia could give me “fibro fog”, which clouds my thinking for an indeterminate amount of time. Or, it can cause chronic pain, in the form of muscle cramps that can turn into muscle spasms. Pain is exhausting. Those are my reasons for choosing to join Blaugust 2019 as a participant instead of a mentor. I cannot guarantee that I’ll be well enough to mentor bloggers on a regular basis. What I can do is share my Blaugust 2019 strategy here. I think that bloggers who also have chronic illnesses may find it useful, whether or not they are taking part in this year’s festival of blogging. Start creating blog posts early, and scheduling them to go live later. Doing so makes the deadline less stressful. It gives you the opportunity to create blogs that require a lot of time to put together. Finish the blogs that you started and have left in draft. Starting from something is easier than staring at a blank page on days when you have little motivation, low energy, and no inspiration. Start thinking of your personal blog as something that is worthy of your time and effort (even if you make no money from it). Personally, I have a tendency to put everything else first, which means my blog gets neglected. I’m hoping that blogging every day for a month will get me into the habit of actually putting content on my blog on a regular basis. Do you have a gaming blog? If so, consider using up the screenshots that you’ve taken and intended to put into a blog post someday. You don’t have to use each and every screenshot you took. Pick the ones that visually illustrate the in-game thing that you want to write about. Have fun! The challenge of writing a blog post every day (or even once a week) is intended to spark creativity and encourage you to get into the habit of producing content regularly. If you find yourself getting fatigued, it is perfectly ok to take a break. Festivals are supposed to be fun, after all. #Blaugust2019 A Festival of Blogging is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Jen’s Lore Corner – Anu and the Angels – Episode 015July 31, 2019Jen's Lore Corner / PodcastsWelcome to Jen’s Lore Corner, a podcast about the lore of the Diablo video game series. This podcast started as a segment on the Shattered Soulstone podcast. I decided to re-release those segments in their own podcast. New content started with Episode 010. In this episode, I discuss what happened to Anu’s body (and spirit) after they died, and how the High Heavens and the Angels were created. If you missed episode 014, you may want to give it a listen before jumping into episode 015. Before I started this episode, I wrote a blog post about Anu and the Dragon that explains more about where Anu and Tathamet originated. Years ago, I wrote a blog post called A is for Angel about how the High Heavens were created and what, exactly, angels in the Diablo “universe” are. Upcoming episodes of Jen’s Lore Corner will cover the Burning Hells, the Angiris Council, the Lords of Hell, Pandemonium, and Sanctuary itself. Jen’s Lore Corner – Anu and the Angels – Episode 015 is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you! https://media.blubrry.com/bookofjen/p/content.blubrry.com/bookofjen/JLC015.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS... Little Black Dress – Episode 050July 12, 2019Podcasts / Words of JenIn this episode, I read a piece of my writing that was inspired by something that was going around on Twitter. People were asked to share their worst first dates. Here’s mine! I read “Little Black Dress” on episode 050 of Words of Jen. If you enjoyed this episode please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you! https://media.blubrry.com/bookofjen/p/content.blubrry.com/bookofjen/woj050.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Android | RSS... Diablo IIISeason 18 (Season of the Triune) – Cuddle Bear RiftSeptember 1, 2019Diablo III / Diablo SeasonsIn a previous blog post about Season 18 of Diablo III, I mentioned that I was struggling to stream on Twitch. Part of the problem is that I use a Mac, which requires additional software “workarounds” if I want to stream. I don’t always have the energy to stream, and having to fight with Twitch before I can even start is discouraging. Fortunately, there are other ways to record my game play and to make videos of it. For Season 18 of Diablo III, I decided to once again play a Hardcore Barbarian. This one is named Ares, which fits my personal naming system. Ares is still very low-level, and cannot do Greater Rifts yet. So, I sent him into a Nephalem Rift. To my surprise, I ended up in a Nephalem Rift level that included Cuddle Bears and Unicorns. The tile set was not Whimsydale. It was the dungeon area where players are first introduced to Queen Asylla in story mode. I thought it was interesting enough to try and record it. When I stream, I use the OBS software. The PC version has allowed people to use it to record gameplay on their computer – without having to stream. The Mac version? It didn’t offer that until very recently. I remember being frustrated after hitting the “record” button, watching OBS attempt to connect to Twitch (which I wasn’t even logged into at that moment), and then stopping everything to tell me that it couldn’t find Twitch. This time, OBS actually let me record – just like PC users can! Unfortunately, the video did not pick up any audio. So, I had a video that lacked sound. I wanted to trim off a bit from the end of the video, after Ares left the Nephalem Rift level that had the Cuddle Bears. The solution was to download iMovie (which you can see in the screenshot at the top of this blog post). It is free. After fiddling around with it, I learned how to get my silent video into the software and trim off the end of it. It still needed audio, so I selected a song from the YouTube Audio Library. All of the music in that library is safe for people to use in their YouTube videos. My video was longer than the song, so I put it in twice. Here is the finished video. The song is called “Lemme See About It” by Max McFarren. The overall effect is a somewhat artsy Diablo III video. It wasn’t what I intended to do when I started recording, but I like how it turned out. Season 18 (Season of the Triune) – Cuddle Bear Rift is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Season 17 (Season of Nightmares) Whimsydale RiftAugust 28, 2019Diablo III / Diablo SeasonsDuring Season 17, I unexpectedly found myself in a Nephalem Rift level that looked a lot like Whimsydale. That is, if Whimsydale was reimagined after it went Goth. I like this darker version of it! The video above is cut from a longer video, and is the only part I salvaged. As you will quickly discover, my sound settings were all wrong, so my voice has an unfortunate echo sound to it. I’m in the process of trying to figure out how to get all the settings right on my Mac so I can properly stream and create a usable video. The black square on the side of the screen is there to block the chat box. At the time, I didn’t have a good photo to use, so I just blotted it out. The video is a bit long, around ten minutes. You don’t necessarily need to watch the entire thing to enjoy “Goth Whimsydale”, though. #Blaugust2019 Season 17 (Season of Nightmares) Whimsydale Rift is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Cow Nephalem RiftAugust 27, 2019Diablo Game Play / Diablo IIIOnce in a while, a Nephalem Rift will have a cow level. The first time I experienced this event was in 2016, and the screenshots you see in this blog are from then. The cow level that can appear in a Nephalem Rift is separate from the Not the Cow Level event that was in Diablo III in 2015. I found the Ghost of the Cow King inside a Nephalem Rift called Magistrate’s Realm I. It starts in an area that resembles the Jar of Souls event/bounty. The event is called Udder Chaos. The Ghost of the Cow King wants to tell you terrible, wonderful, puns. Ghost of the Cow King: You’d better milk this for all it’s worth! Haha. The Ghost of the Cow King has an amusing, yet slightly annoying, voice. To me, the odd, yet cow-like, voice enhances the puns. You might want to have the sound on when playing through this type of Nephalem Rift. The Ghost of the Cow King disappears. The player must now fight the Endless Herd. The screenshot above shows the first of the Herd as they move toward the player (and the player’s follower). The event functions similarly to how the Jar of Souls event/bounty does. The main difference is that Jar of Souls requires the player to fight skeletons, while the Endless Herd requires the player to fight cows. The Endless Herd ramps up, with more and more cow minions, until the timer runs out. No more will appear, but the player still has to kill off the remaining cows. After slaying all of the minions of The Ghost of the Cow King, the raised center of the room starts to glow. In the Jar of Souls event, what happens next is the Jar of Souls reappears. The player clicks on it to get loot. The Ghost of the Cow King reappears after the Udder Chaos event ends. Ghost of the Cow King: Fine work, my loyal subject! Yes, yes, Keep calm and dairy on, I aways say. Yes. Kowtow to no one. Haha. Just like with the Jar of Souls, the gates that are on the sides of this area unlock and the player can leave. There are no more cow minions here, but the cows aren’t entirely gone just yet. The rest of the Nephalem has plenty of cows for the player to fight. The Infernal Bovine in the screenshot above is just one example. The Rift Guardian is the Lord of Bells. #Blaugust2019 Cow Nephalem Rift is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Season 18 (Season of the Triune) – Struggling to StreamAugust 24, 2019Diablo III / Diablo SeasonsThe theme for Season 18 of Diablo III is: The Season of the Triune. It began on August 23, 2019. I’m playing a Hardcore Barbarian (again) because the “free set” is The Legacy of Raekor and I haven’t spent much time using it. My intent was to stream my progress through Season 18, every day, if possible. Unfortunately, the stream I did on Twitch this morning lagged terribly and was so unusable that I decided to delete it. I usually wait a bit before starting a new Season, especially if I intend to play Hardcore. My goal is to avoid dying due to lag, which can happen when a huge amount of players are all on at the same time. I took a break from streaming for a while, but decided to give it one my try during Season 18. Originally, my goal with streaming was a hopeful one. I thought it might be possible to make a few extra dollars from it, as a way of supplementing the income I make from freelance writing. My chronic illnesses drain my energy terribly, and that often meant that I had no energy to stream. It was hard to find the “spoons” to stick to a regular schedule (or even an irregular one). It is my understanding that having a regularly scheduled streaming time is best. Twitch doesn’t start paying out until after people reach Affiliate status. To get there, a person needs to consistently hit certain benchmarks, every month. Those that need a break, like I did, will lose ground on their goal to reach Affiliate because of how Twitch counts your average number of viewers (and other metrics). I find this frustrating, and not ideal for people like me who have disabilities. The other thing that is making streaming a struggle is because I’m trying to do it on a Mac. There is an OBS version for Mac, but I’ve learned that it functions differently than than the PC one. When I tried streaming this morning, I discovered that I can now download my stream from Twitch. That’s new, and was not possible the last time I streamed. Trying to get the sound to work while streaming on a Mac is difficult. It requires a second piece of software that, in short, routes the in-game sounds and music through to the stream so viewers can hear it. Doing so means that I cannot actually hear the music and sounds while playing. There is no way for me to know, for certain, if the volume of my audio is too loud, or too quiet – because I can’t hear it. The only way I can tell is when someone comes into my stream and tells me that the volume is too quiet or that the music is too loud. I’ve attempted to solve this issue by fiddling with the in-game sound options. It sort of helps, but doesn’t really fix the problem. The Mac version of this software does not allow me to separate my voice from the in-game sounds. So, all of it is too loud, or too soft, and that’s what I’m stuck with. It is my understanding that the PC version does enable streamers to separate the volume of their voice from the volume of their in-game sounds. My Mac has been “bootcamped”, which means I could try streaming as though I am using a PC. But, its been a long time since my husband set that up for me, so it will require updates. I’d have to take the time to learn how to set up my Twitch stream on PC, and I honestly don’t have the energy to do that right now. So, why did I try to stream Diablo III this morning? I’ve given up trying to make money on Twitch. I just don’t see how that’s going to ever be possible for me. Fall pollen season has started, and I’m physically struggling as a result with all kinds of horrible allergy symptoms. I barely had enough “spoons” to stream with. The thing is, I’ve gotten into the habit of putting something new on my blog every day. This is thanks to Blaugust 2019, which I am participating in. My thought was that I could stream my progress through Season 18 and then use a video of my stream as content for my blog. This plan did not work out. My stream on Twitch lagged so badly that it was unusable. The problem wasn’t my software, which kept up with my stream. The problem was on Twitch’s end, potentially because it was the first night of Season 18 and many big streamers were doing a “Level With A Cause” stream. Those streams consistently get a lot of viewers who want to help raise money for the cause. This is not a complaint against those streamers, who are doing a good thing. It is simply a guess as to why Twitch was so very laggy for me this morning. Now, if I had remembered to hit the record button when I started streaming, there is a chance I would have had a usable video to post here. Instead, I ended up with a handful of screenshots that I took while streaming, and this avalanche of words about struggling to stream. #Blaugust2019 Season 18 (Season of the Triune) – Struggling to Stream is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Season 17 (Season of Nightmares) – ChampionAugust 17, 2019Diablo III / Diablo SeasonsSeason 17 was coming to an end, and I wasn’t done with it yet! My next goal was to complete the Champion part of the Season Journey. I wasn’t able to complete this goal – or the Season Journey. It was really fun while it lasted, and I made a lot of progress with non-seasonal Achievements. I started working on the Champion objectives before finishing Slayer. The reason was I was having trouble with the Barbarian Set Dungeons, and had to collect the set pieces for three of them before I managed to complete one. Many attempts were made, but I struggled to Master it. In addition, I worked on getting more Paragon points, running bounties in the hopes of completing a Conquest, and earning Career (non-seasonal) Achievements. I had already completed: Conversion Incursion: Convert a set item with Kanai’s Cube I started chipping away at the Champion objective, while picking up some Seasonal Achievements and Career (or non-season) Achivements. It felt like progress, despite the majority of it being non-season stuff. Nothing But The Best: Craft a Flawless Royal Gem at the Jewelcrafter. Stoner: Level three Legendary Gems to level 25. Prime Cut: Kill Diablo at level 70 on Torment IV difficulty or higher. Dance With the Devil: Kill Diablo at max level in under 3 minutes on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Terror A New One: Kill Diablo at max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Self Sufficient: Kill Diablo without using any health globes or healing wells on Master difficulty or higher. Diabolical: Complete the Diablo challenge achievements listed below:. Players who complete the Diabolical Achievement get a Banner Sigil reward that looks like a sickle. Tension: Kill Diablo at level 70 without getting hit by the hell Spikes, Fire Nova, and Lightning Breath attacks on Torment IV difficulty or higher. Cinder, My Regards: Kill Urzael at max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Burnin’ For You: Complete the Urzael challenge achievements listed below. Players who complete Burnin’ For You receive a Banner Pattern Reward. Gem Juicing: Level one Legendary Gem to level 30. Ghom Appetit: Kill Gnom at level 70 in under 30 seconds on Torment II difficulty or higher. Silent But Deadly: Kill Ghom at max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Speed Eating: Kill Ghom at max level in under 30 seconds on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Angel On My Shoulder: Kill Izual at level 70 without killing any Oppressors or Servants of Izual on Torment IV difficulty or higher. Angels Can Still Feel Fear: Kill Izual at max level in under 30 seconds on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Maximum Riftness: Finish a level 70 Nephalem Rift on Torment VI difficulty or higher. UnTouchable: Kill the following enemies without taking any damage in a single player game. Besieged: Kill the Siegebreaker Assault Beast at Max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Paragon 200! Antivenom: Kill Cydaea at level 70 without taking damage from her Spiderlings on Torment III difficulty or higher. Death and the Maiden: Kill Cydaea at Max level in under 30 seconds on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Lost Its Luster: Kill Cydaea at max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher on Hardcore mode. Stone Loc: Level three Legendary Gems to level 30. Classic Collection: Complete three of the following Class Sets at level 70. The screenshot above was taken after I had collected all four of the Barbarian sets. No Time For Losers: Kill all of the following types in Hardcore mode. Players who earn the No Time For Losers Achievement earn a Banner Sigil. Never Been So-Lonely: Reach Greater Rift Level 35 Solo. Swagger Like Us: Reach Greater Rift Level 35 Solo without any Set items equipped. I completed Greater Rift Level 35 at 8:25.950. Gem’s The Breaks: Level one Legendary Gem to level 35. A Rift In Time: Finish a level 70 Nephalem Rift on Torment VI difficulty or higher within 7 minutes. Legendary: Reach Greater Rift Level 40 Solo without any Set items equipped. YoSolo: Reach Greater Rift Level 40 Solo. I completed Greater Rift Level 40 at 7:32.599. Stone Cold: Level three Legendary Gems to level 35. Up And At Gem: Level three Legendary Gems to level 35. I completed Level 42 at 8.06.833. Soulless: Kill the Soul of Evil at level 70 on Torment VI difficulty or higher. Together We Are: Kill The Savage Behemoth and The Undying One within 5 seconds of each other on Torment VI difficulty or higher. Butchering The Butcher: Kill the Butcher at level 70 on Torment I difficulty or higher. Chop Shop: Kill the Butcher at max level in under 1 minute on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. Fire Bad: Kill the Butcher at level 70 without being burned by floor fires or being grabbed by Ancient Spear on Torment I difficulty or higher. Because I Spit Hot Fire: Kill Urzael at level 70 after surviving his Burning Cannonball attack 5 times on Torment V difficulty or higher. Paragon 300! Cultivated: Kill Maghda at max level without crowd controlling enemies on Torment difficulty or higher in Hardcore mode. I completed Greater Rift Level 43 at 10:23.900. I was able to complete the Raekor’s Set Dungeon, but could not Master it. My last remaining option was to attempt the Immortal Kings Call Set Dungeon. It is located inside The Ruins of Sescheron. London Calling: Complete 1 Primary Objective and kill the initial amount of enemies in the Immortal Kings Call Set Dungeon. Players who earned this Achievement received a Banner Sigil reward. Call On Me, Call On Me: Master the Immortal Kings Call Set Dungeon by completing all objectives within the time limit. Mastermind: Master any Set Dungeon. I was now halfway through Champion. My plan was to do some more Greater Rifts, continue to level up some Legendary Gems, and aim for completing a Greater Rift 45. Athena the Hardcore Barbarian died in a Greater Rift 43. Fortunately, for Season 17, I planned ahead and leveled up a back-up Hardcore Demon Hunter, just in case my Hardcore Barbarian died an untimely death. With my Demon Hunter, I was able to make some progress on Nephalem Rifts, and earn some more Paragon Points. Dusk the Hardcore Demon Hunter died in a Torment IX Nephalem Rift. This happened just a few days before the end of Season 17, and I didn’t feel like I had enough time or energy to level up another character (even with help). My Season 17 had come to an end. #Blaugust2019 Season 17 (Season of Nightmares) – Champion is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Book ReviewsThe Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets – by Diana WagmanOctober 8, 2019Book Reviews / horrorDespite the title, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, is not a book about how to provide care and comfort to an unorthodox choice of pet. You won’t find this one in your local pet store! Instead, it is an intense, creepy, novel about a woman who is kidnapped by a man who owns a gigantic iguana. Diana Wagman does an excellent job of getting into her characters heads, frightening the reader, and building the intensity of the story as it goes on. I want to take a minute to talk about the cover art. At first glance, the white letters of the title (and the name of the author) pop out. It took a bit longer to see the huge, green, iguana, ominously curling around the title. Winnie is thirty-eight-years old, divorced, and sort of lost. Her husband, Jonathan, left her for a younger woman. Winnie and their daughter Lacy, still live in the home Lacy grew up in. But, things are different now. Jonathan is a somewhat-famous TV game show host. He left Winnie for a twenty-something woman who was a contestant on the show. Jonathan and Winnie are still in touch, in part because they are sharing custody of their daughter. Lacy is a teenager who has become rebellious, and is starting to get in trouble at school. Winnie believes Lacy has started smoking. Winnie wants to still be married. She wanted to grow old with someone. The life she is living now doesn’t feel right to her. As such, she has gone from being a person who kept a tidy home to one who has lost interest in doing laundry. After dropping Lacy at school, Winnie takes her car to the shop for repairs. She is dressed in a tennis outfit (that needs washing). She waits outside for the vehicle that is supposed to take her to where she can obtain a rental car. After getting one, she has plans to go to her tennis lesson. Winnie’s thoughts are a mile away. A car pulls up and stops in front of her. She gets in, without thinking much about it. Slowly, she learns that the man driving the car has no connection to the repair shop or the rental company. This is where the tension starts building. The man who kidnapped Winnie is very troubled. He owns a gigantic, male iguana, which lives in his kitchen. The iguana is ready to mate, and is uncomfortable and irritable. The entire house is kept at a stiflingly hot temperature, for the iguana’s benefit. How can Winnie escape? I spent much of the book wondering if the iguana would eat Winnie. The story gives readers little clues, slowly, that make connections that were not immediately apparent. I’m not going to tell you how it ends. What I will says is this book is intense, and scary, and includes violence. Diana Wagman did an excellent job of making the characters, even the unlikable ones, very real. The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets – by Diana Wagman is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Where’d You Go, Bernadette – by Maria SempleSeptember 13, 2019Book Reviews / fictionBernadette is a quirky, unbalanced, architect who hasn’t worked in a while. Her husband, Elgin, works for Microsoft. They live in Seattle with their wonderful daughter, Bee. Bee comes home from school with a stellar report card and asks her parents for a trip to Antarctica (a promised reward for good grades). Bernadette disappears shortly before the trip. This leaves her family wondering: “Where’d you go, Bernadette?” I am aware that this book has been made into a movie, but I haven’t watched it yet. Everything I put into this book review is from what I read. The thing I liked the most about this book is the format that the story was presented in. Almost everything is a letter, note, email, or other type of information written by one of the characters and sent to another. The rest comes to the reader from the viewpoint of Bee. My best guess is that there may be other books written this way. But, this one felt unique because it included such a wide variety of things that the reader gets to take a look it. The reader learns about the various characters – their personalities, motivations, desires – by “snooping” on things they wrote that were intended to be private. Another advantage of using this technique of storytelling is that the reader never had to guess which character’s head they were in, or who was speaking. Just look at the bottom of the note, where someone signed their name! The reader isn’t the only one reading things they weren’t meant to see. As the book goes on, it is revealed that the little pieces of writing that connect to either Bernadette or Elgin are a collection that Bee is pouring over. She wants to try and solve the mystery of where her mother went, in the hopes of finding her. Without giving away too much of the story, I can say that part of it is about Bernadette’s past as an architect. She was brilliant, and had an eclectic style that often incorporated salvaged pieces. But then, something happened that she never quite got over. Elgin is described as a “guru” at Microsoft. He’s a bit distant, and tends to focus a lot on his work. As such, he comes across as either oblivious or simply uninterested in socializing with coworkers. Put this together with Bernadette’s agoraphobia, and it kind of explains why the two of them have become disconnected from each other. There is a hysterically funny scene involving a mudslide (and I know that sounds terrible). No one is physically harmed, but there is plenty of property damage. It is the culmination of a “fight” between Bernadette and a character that I found to be unlikable. I believe the reader is supposed to have that reaction to that specific character. There are beautiful descriptions of Antarctica, as seen from a cruise ship. Maria Semple paints a vivid picture, and I felt like I could “see” the different colors of the snow, ice, and sky as I read through that part of the book. As I already mentions, I have not watched the movie that was based on this book. I cannot help but wonder what the visuals in the movie are like. In many ways, this book is about characters who are too wrapped up in themselves to properly form relationships with others. They all have their own reasons for being like that. There is an underlying theme of broken trust and an attempt to repair it. By the end of the book, the mystery of where Bernadette went, and why she went there, is revealed. I found it to be a satisfying ending. The book is funny, and strange, and is has the most delightful way of giving the reader little pieces of the mystery of Bernadette’s disappearance to stitch together. Some of the characters grow, and in doing so, are able to see where they have made mistakes. It leaves the reader with the reassurance that, despite what happened, relationships can sometimes be repaired if everyone involved chooses to work on them. Where’s You Go, Bernadette – by Maria Semple is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Before the Fallout – by Diana PrestonSeptember 5, 2019Book Reviews / non fictionBefore the Fallout is filled with footnotes, old photos, a large index, and a glossary at the end. While parts of it do read like a narrative, the book is definitely not a work of fiction. It took me a while to read through this book, not because the information in it was difficult to process, but because there was so much detail to consider. As such, this review is not going to cover absolutely everything that was in the book. Doing so would be tedious, and Diana Preston wrote it better than I could have. She has her sources cited in footnotes as well as in a section at the back of the book. It is an educationally enlightening read, and I learned some things that I did not know. That said, the book may be too academic for some readers. Marie Sklodowska was born in 1867 in what was left of Poland (which was occupied by Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Russia. Her father was a teacher of physics and mathematics, and he encouraged her to leave Warsaw, where women were barred from attending university. Marie moved, began working as a governess, and sent her money to fund her sister’s medical studies in Paris. Later, Marie moved to Paris to attend the Sorbonnes Faculty of Sciences. Marie met Pierre Curie and the two had long conversations about science. They married on July 26, 1895. Both continued working on science, even after their first child, daughter Iréne, was born. Marie Curie did her doctoral thesis on Becquerel rays, which led to new discoveries. Marie Curie started working with uranium, and then a new element called radium. Unfortunately, these radioactive elements caused great harm to both Marie Curie and her husband Pierre. Their bodies were deteriorating. Pierre’s hands became weak and he struggled to button his clothing. Marie’s fingertips became hardened and burned, and she had a miscarriage not long after that. In the meantime, the scientific community was very excited about radium. Among them was Ernest Rutherford, who eventually was able to meet the Curies in person. Rutherford treated Marie as an equal, something most other male scientists failed to do. The two met several times. Pierre Currie died three years later at the age of 46. It wasn’t the radium that killed him. He accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Marie was now a widow, at the age of 38, with two young daughters. Rutherford won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908. In 1910, Marie Curie, who had by then become a full rank professor, was invited to meet with a group of other scientists to discuss radium. It didn’t go well. Some were against naming the measurement for radiation the “curie”, and Marie would not back down. She was quite ill, and frail, due to radiation exposure, and retired to her room after not getting her way. A year later, Marie Curie and another scientist, Paul Langevin, met with Albert Einstein (who later praised Marie’s “passionateness”). Rumor spread, and people began to believe that Marie Curie and Paul Langevin were in love. She was a widow, but he was married. The newspapers hastily posted stories about the two, which caused the scandal to spread. Some people started to believe that their affair started before Marie’s husband died, and that his death was a suicide. It was tabloid journalism. Long story short, Marie Curie was basically expelled from science, at a time when she was becoming increasingly ill. Society believed the “tabloids” and wanted to punish a woman who had an affair with a married man. Paul Langevin, the married man who supposedly had an affair with Marie, faced no such hardship. He was still very welcome to work with scientists and attend conferences. Rumors still persisted about Marie, who was eventually able to return to her lab – with the help of a lab assistant. Her second daughter, Eve, had blue eyes and dark hair. She did not resemble her sister who was fair. A story spread that Eve, born in 1904, was the daughter of scientist André Debierne. These are just a few examples of how women who were scientists were unfairly stunted by the level of misogyny they were forced to deal with. Years later, Marie’s oldest daughter continued her mother’s work. Iréne married Frédréric Joliot, who was also a scientist. Going against the social rules of their time, Iréne did not take her husband’s surname. They used Jolliot-Curie as their last name. There was speculation that perhaps Frédréric was cool with this because he wanted the status of having Curie as part of his surname. Marie Curie died of what was then called “extreme pernicious anemia” at the age of 66 in 1934. Her coffin was buried above Pierre Curie’s. Lise Meitner, another scientist, faced other difficulties. Meitner was Austrian, and was working with Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. They discovered a new element called protactinium. Things were getting bad in Germany. Scientists who were thought to be Jewish were quietly leaving the country before things got worse. There were food shortages. I’m going to assume that you already have a basic idea of what happened in Germany before and during World War II. If not, this book will give you plenty of details. Neils Bohr, whom the book describes as “half-Jewish” worked to find safe places for Germany’s displaced scientists. Bohr sent unsolicited invitations to scientists, asking them to come to an annual conference in Copenhagen. Some of the scientists went from there to the United States. Britain accepted “many more scientists than Britain could possibly use” all of whom where accepted as permanent residents. Bohr helped Otto Frisch, Lise Mitner’s nephew, who had been dismissed from Hamburg University. He was able to go to England to work under Patrick Blackett in Berkbeck College, London. Another group of scientists urged their American colleagues to set aside part of their salary for two years in order to enable their former colleagues to find Academic posts in America. On March 12, 1938, Germany annexed Austria. Austrian citizenship ceased to exist, and Lise Meitner was being targeted. She was labeled as Jewish, but had become a Protestant. It was no longer safe for her to be in Germany, but getting her out proved to be difficult. Meitner wrote to James Franck, who was at Johns Hopkins University in Chicago, for help. He lodged an affidavit on Meitner’s behalf, the first step in the immigration process. Meitner changed her mind, and instead wanted to travel to Neils Bohr in Copenhagen, where she could be with her nephew. The Danish Embassy declared her Austrian passport invalid, and refused to issue her a visa. I’m not sure why Lise Meitner was not among the scientists who received help, from other scientists, so they could leave Germany. She appears to have had some of the same connections as the men who were scientists did. Why didn’t she get offered the opportunity to go to England or America? Neils Bohr kept trying. He contacted countries with immigration policies that were less strict than Denmark. Funds were raised to enable Lise Meitner to have a paid position outside of Austria for a year. At the same time, there was another offer for Meitner to go to Sweden, but that fell apart. Eventually, Mietner was allowed to be admitted to Holland. Getting her out of Germany involved having Otto Hahn to help her pack, for Mietner to stay at his home in Berlin overnight, and for Mietner to then take a train out of Germany with a man named Dirk Coster. (He had been trying get her a position outside of Germany.) Meitner left with two suitcases, and a ring on her finger that belonged to Dirk Coster. It was “insurance” in case she was not able to find paid work immediately after escaping Germany. The train ride was terrifying because guards could ask to check people’s passports – and Meitner no longer had one. Meitner ended up in Sweden, in a post at the Nobel Institute for Experimental Physics in Stockholm. She was paid less than a starting assistant, despite her knowledge and experience, and could barely pay basic expenses. She was, however, grateful to be working, and corresponded with Neils Bohr to share her results. Germany had instituted a rule that prohibited Jewish people who from bringing money out of Germany. Some of her colleagues fought with the German Education Ministry in an effort to get Meitner’s belongings to her. The Ministry insisted everything Meitner owned must stay in Germany. Eventually, the Ministry relented and sent Meitner’s clothes to her. She had to pay a high custom fee to get them. Her other possessions, including furniture, china dishes, and books, were destroyed by Germans and then sent to Meitner. There are other interesting things in the book that I’m going to briefly mention. Originally, the scientists were thrilled to share their work and theories, and to publish their results. This slowly changed as World War II continued. I forgot who it was, but a scientist went around urging other scientists to stop publishing their work about physics – because Germany and Russia might benefit from that knowledge. At least one scientist continued publishing anyway. A portion of the book describes the secret facilities that were set up by the military in the United States. Workers, many of whom were young, single, women, traveled there to work. They were told their work could help end the war. None of them knew, at the time, that their work actually was helping to create part of the bomb that was later dropped on Hiroshima. There is a section that provides details about the pilot who flew the plane that dropped the bomb. It was not a one-man job. Several other pilots were needed in order to help ensure the plane would get to where it was supposed to go. These men worked in secret, and could not talk about this to their loved ones. No one knew, for certain, what would happen after the bomb was dropped. Imagine embarking on that mission, knowing it could be your last. Overall, Before Fallout was a fascinating book that taught me things about World War II that I did not know before reading it. The book took a long time for me to read, and I found myself thinking about parts of it after I had finished the book. I’ve left quite a bit out of this review, which means there is more for you to discover in it than what you found here. Before the Fallout – by Diana Preston is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Star Wars: Canto Bight – by Saladin Ahmed, Rae Carson, Mira Grant, and John Jackson MillerAugust 29, 2019Book Reviews / science fictionStar Wars: Canto Bight includes four short stories about the Star Wars version of Las Vegas. Each is written by a different author. It was released in December of 2017, and connects to the Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie. Readers can enjoy the short stories in this book without having watched The Last Jedi movie. That said, those who have watched the movie will have the advantage of knowing what a Fathier looks like. Canto Bight includes four short stories that connect to each other in subtle ways. I recommend you read the stories in the order that they are presented, so you can enjoy recognizing what carried over from one story to another. To me, it felt like I was finding little “Easter eggs” woven into the narratives. “Rules of the Game” was written by Saladin Ahmed. This story features Kedpin Shoklop, who I found to be absolutely delightful! Kedpin is an overly optimistic squishy being with one big eye and a need for moisture. I imagine him to look something like a large worm, but with appendages. Kedpin Shoklop is extremely excited to be in Canto Bight. He finally won the all-expense paid trip from his employer, and is ready to have a fantastic vacation. Unfortunately, his unabashed enthusiasm and positivity makes him an extremely easy mark. Everyone who seeks to separate a fool from his money hones in on Kedpin Shoklop. Another wonderful thing about “Rules of the Game” is it allows the reader to experience Canto Bight through Kedpin Shoklop’s overly optimistic eyes. He admires the shiny details on the buildings, the aroma of the plants and trees, and goes all “fan boy” over seeing a glimpse of “the most famous card player in the galaxy”, I wish I could view the world as exuberantly as how Kedpin Shoklop sees Canto Bight! His overall joyous mood is not dampened even after being ripped off by various scammers. Anglang Lehet has a job to do. He needs to complete one more job in order to leave the Syndicate. This job involves an intricate plan that will cause the death of a violent and corrupt Cantonian police officer (that no one will mourn the death of). All Anglang Lehet needs is an innocent looking mark that can help him with a specific, and dangerous, task. Kedpin Shoklop won’t have the slightest idea what he’s gotten himself into. I spent part of this story working over what would happen to Kedpin Shoklop. Without giving away any spoilers, I’ll say this. By the end of the story, the reader learns unexpected things about these two characters. “The Wine In Dreams” was written by Mira Grant. Derla Pidys is the best sommelier. She takes the time to ensure that every bottle of wine is safe for her clients to consume. What is safe for one species can be poison for another, after all. She is the sommelier that is called when people need everything to be perfect. Derla Pidys arrives at Canto Bight to deliver an extraordinarily special bottle of wine. Those who have sampled this vintage say that it tasted like the wine they drank in dreams. As a person who enjoys wine, I find this description to be very intriguing! This story includes a lot of deception, artfully done, and in aesthetically pleasing ways. One example of this is Ubialla’s night club, which is ever-changing. The decor, the color palette of the space, the textures of the walls, become completely different in order to create a mood for customers. A dreamy space for people to drink in. I found myself wondering about two very mysterious sisters that are in this story. The Grammus sisters, (Parallela and Rhomby) are identical. They claim to have come from another universe, and people are convinced that they are telling the truth. No one has seen anything like them before. The reader gathers bits and pieces of what the world the Grammus sisters come from is like. Everything is part of a pair, and it is sad when one of the pair is lost. The Grammus sisters refer to themselves in ways that make it seem like they are one entity. The tone of “The Wine in Dreams” changes when Ubialla and the Grammus sisters both want the bottle of wine that Derla Pidys has brought with her. The situation becomes dangerous very quickly, and it seems like there is no way out that does not involve someone getting killed. It isn’t until after the story ends that the reader discovers the little hints of a plan that was before their eyes the whole time. When the pieces fell together for me, I was very impressed with the intricacy of it all. “Hear Nothing, See Nothing” was written by Rae Carson. It is the story of a family. Lexo Sooger works at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse, giving massages to rich clients. They often talk to him while receiving a massage, and Lexo Sooger makes it a practice to forget every word he hears. He is a Dor Namethian, and the story starts with his daughter giving his aching hands a massage with a bright blue herb called corwindyl. Lula is a thirteen-year-old human, with bright brown eyes, dark skin, and “hair like a cloud of charcoal”. Lexo Sooger found this tiny human when she was an abandoned baby, and took her home to raise as his own. Lula knows that she is adopted. The father and daughter have an inside-joke about this between them. Lula, like many other children on Canto Bight, works in the Farthier stables, cleaning stalls and making sure these animals are ready to race. She asks her father to let her take some corwindyl to the stables to help an injured Farthier, and he allows this. Lexo Sooger’s most important client is Counselor Sturg Ganna, a huge, amphibious creature whose body is especially difficult to massage. Ganna is corrupt, and attempts to entice Lexo Sooger to tell him secrets that other clients have shared with him. Instead, Lexo Sooger insists he hears nothing, sees nothing. This results in a not-so-veiled threat agains Lexo Sooger’s daughter, Lula. The girl disappears, and it is up to her terrified father to save her from whatever it is that Counselor Sturg Ganna wants to do with her. Unexpected help come from Countessa Alissyndrex Delga Cantonica, who knows some secrets about Lexo Sooger’s past. She wants a favor, in the form of a job that involves killing someone who has become inconvenient. In return, she makes it easier for Lexo Sooger to learn where Lula is being kept. The potential danger to Lula made me concerned that her father might not be able to save her in time. At any moment, things could go terribly wrong. “Hear Nothing, See Nothing” is a story about secrets, strategic alliances, and the love a father has for his daughter. “The Ride” was written by John Jackson Miller. The story takes the reader into the Canto Bight casino itself, directly to where people are gambling for huge amounts of currency. Kaljack Sonmi is a Zinbiddle player who was hired by the Canto Bight casino to play. Technically, his title is “Proposition Player”. He gets to wear a fancy jacket, and he likes the way it makes him look. Kalijack Sonmi is charismatic, and wins due to his ability to count cards. But, he hasn’t been able to win enough to get himself out of debt. His goal is to get the Ion Barrage, a hand that wins the game, but is exceedingly rare. Then, his luck takes a turn. The casino fires him, and takes back his fancy jacket. This leaves him in a dire situation. He has only a few hours to pay back the money he was loaned. It is literally a life-or-death situation. The story becomes very intense as Kalijack Sonmi attempts to win enough from the casino to save his life. Three amphibious-looking brothers, with rhyming names, provide comic relief. The brothers are well-known gamblers, who seem to have amazing, unexplainable, luck. They befriend Kalijack Sonmi, who doesn’t necessarily want to be their friend. Without giving away the ending, I can say there is a lot of character development happening as the story goes on. This one might be the most intense story of the book due to the high stakes. Canto Bight is a series of short stories that take place in the same location. Readers who pay attention will notice where the pieces from one story are expertly woven into the others. I suspect this book required some well-thought out collaboration in order to achieve that effect. There are four stories in the book. Each one can stand up quite well on its own. That said, I really enjoyed noticing the subtle places where the stories interconnected. #Blaugust2019 Star Wars: Canto Bight – by Saladin Ahmed, Rae Carson, Mira Grant, and John Jackson Miller is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Confessions of an Economic Hit Man – by John PerkinsJune 11, 2019Book Reviews / non fictionConfessions of an Economic Hit Man is a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time. What was holding me back? I had the feeling that this book would make me very angry. What little I knew about it could be summarized as: corporations and corrupt government doing bad things in secret. It is the kind of book that will make you into a pessimist (if you aren’t already one). I read the version that was published in 2004. I hear there is a newer one out now. I’ve no idea how the two compare. The book is written by John Perkins, who was an economic hit man. In short, he was one of the people who went to foreign countries and mucked about with their resources – for the financial benefit of corporations (and, sometimes, the United States government). His job was to convince foreign governments that he was offering something that would not only increase that government’s economy, but also to improve the lives of their people. But, that’s not how things went. One of the goals of the economic hit men is to trick foreign governments to accepting financial and infrastructural help from them. The country would then have things built such as dams or utilities. The foreign governments were convinced this was a good idea because people like John Perkins fed them misinformation. They fudged the numbers and made projects look affordable. What was really happening, though, was the country was being put into debt that they were entirely unaware of. It is a very complex situation, and I’m simplifying it in this book review. What I learned from this book is that there were (and probably still are) a group of rich, selfish, powerful people who have absolutely no conscience and who think it’s perfectly fine to cheat and lie to get what they want. Somewhere in the book, there is an example of greed resulting in great harm to people who are the least able to defend themselves against it. There’s a group of indigenous people who live in a forest/jungle area. Their land is being forcibly taken from them. The people get murdered when they try and defend their land, and the press spins it into a story where the indigenous people are at fault. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Early on in the book, John Perkins shares moments where he questioned himself. Maybe, just maybe… he wasn’t the “good guy” after all. But, then he would go ahead and do his job anyway. There is an example where he spent time with a group of local people, who were nice to him and whom he liked. Perkins knew full well that what he was doing was going to cause economic havoc in their country. He had drinks with these people, who treated him like a friend – and didn’t even warn them about what was to come. Economic hit men are assholes. But, there are worse people. John Perkins mentions that when the economic hit men fail to convince a government to do their bidding, the “jackals” come in. The leader of the stubborn country winds up dead. Eventually, toward the end of the book, John Perkins has an epiphany. By this point, he had what he thought could be a romance with a co-worker abruptly end. He’d gotten divorced and lost contact with his child. He was no longer convinced that what he was doing was right. But he’d gotten rich from his work, so he continued doing it. A woman he met was able to open his eyes to the damage he’d been doing to people. Perkins started to see who he had become. This change inspired him to quit his job, and start writing this book. Of course, by then, the damage he helped to cause had been done. Nothing could fix it. I’ve left a whole lot of detail out of this book review because there’s just too much to adequately cover. It is a non-fiction book that will destroy whatever optimism you had in corporations and governments. It have no idea if this sort of thing is still going on today… but sometimes, I wonder. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... World of WarcraftWoW Classic: Rites and CeremoniesOctober 19, 2019World of Warcraft / World of Warcraft ClassicVaca and Neverlast set out to work on some quests that involved rites, ceremonies, and fighting unbridled capitalism. We didn’t complete all of these quests in the same day, but were able to turn in ones we finished last time around. Lorekeeper Raintotem gave us a quest called A Sacred Burial. I found it interesting that it just so happened to be raining when we met an NPC (non-player character) named Raintotem. Lorekeeper Raintotem: Only the most valiant Tauren are laid to rest at Red Rocks, our sacred burial ground. It is an honor bestowed upon the great warriors who helped found and defend Thunder Bluff and those who have given their lives for the greater good of their tribes and chieftains. But it appears a foul menace has made its way onto our holy land. A band of Bristleback Interlopers is ravaging the grave site and I am too old and past my prime to drive them away. They must be driven off with force, Vaca. To complete this quest, players must kill 8 Bristleback Interlopers at Red Rocks. Completing this quest was not very difficult. There were other players working on it at the same time that we were. As you can see in the screenshot above, a random Hunter targeted this particular Bristleback we were fighting. It is nice when players just naturally work together. We found the Ancestral Spirit at Red Rocks and turned in the quest. Ancestral Spirit: You have shown great diligence in your yearning to pass the Rites of the Earthmother, Vaca. We, the Ancestral Spirits, represent the mighty Tauren who gave their lives bravely to found and protect our great city of Thunder Bluff. I hereby pass the duty of that protection over to you. You have passed the Rite of Wisdom, young warrior. Enter Thunder Bluff with pride. Ancestral Spirit: You will now be revered within our great city. Any tauren worthy of completing the Rites of the Earthmother earns that honor. For your final quest, seek out our noble leader, Cairne Bloodhoof, who dwells atop the highest mesa in Thunder Bluff. We returned to Lorekeeper Raintotem to turn in the A Sacred Burial quest. Lorekeeper Raintotem: Well done. You have sent those foul Bristlebacks a clear message. They will think twice before attempting to meddle in this holy spot again. We were hiding out on a hillside, after doing the “corpse run”, when Vaca hit level 9. Neverlast was right behind her, at Level 8. There were too many wild creatures in this area, and we couldn’t take them all down by ourselves. Veren Tallstrider, in Thunder Bluff, has a quest called Gathering Leather. It is a good one to take if you happened to have picked up Skinning. All you need to do is skin the animals you kill (or the dead animals other players – who don’t skin – left behind). Eventually, you gather up enough leather for Veren Tallstrider. Veren Tallstrider: Greetings, young one. You have a gleam in your eye; I can tell you are eager to venture back to the plains for the hunt. May you bring honor to your clan! I work with the skins of beasts, fashioning them into clothes and armor for the people of Thunder Bluff. If you hunt beasts and bring me their skins, then I will fashion something for you. To complete this quest, a player must bering 12 pieces of Light Leather to Veren Tallstrider. Vaca and Neverlast found High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof. We needed to turn in a quest to him. Cairne Bloodhoof: Hail, young warrior. I see you found your way to my doorstep. I found this amusing because Vaca and Neverlast are, quite literally, standing on Cairne Bloodhoof’s doorstep. He immediately gave us another quest to work on. Cairne Bloodhoof: You have passed the Rites of the Earthmother and earned your place in Thunder Bluff. But in order to maintain the spot that you strived so hard to achieve, you must continue to prove your worth to your people. We are hunters, Vaca. Down below in Mulgore there is a mighty Kodo named Arra’chea. Show me your skills in the ways of tracking and hunting by bringing me the Horn of Arra’chea. At some point, I picked up both Skinning and Leatherworking. I thought that I needed both in order to skin things. But, that’s not how it works. All I needed was Skinning. I decided to unlearn Leatherworking (since I did not actually need it.) Vhan: No part of the animals we hunt is wasted. Vhan is a Journeyman Tailor. He was able to train Vaca in the art of Tailoring. My reason for wanting to pick up Tailoring was because I wanted to learn how to make linen bags. I figured those would probably sell on the Auction House. One of the first things I learned in Classic WoW was how scarce bags are. While in Thunder Bluff, we took a quest from Eyahn Eagletalon called Preparation For Ceremony. Eyahn Eagletalon: Vaca, my brother soon stands before Chief Bloodhoof, and it is my honor to make his headdress for him. I want to ask a favor of you while I finish tanning these leather straps. There is not enough time for me to find enough feathers, and I was wondering, would you gather more for me? You can find the feathers of the correct size from the harpies residing far to the north and northwest of Thunder Bluff. I need only 6 azure and 6 bronze feathers to complete the design. The screenshot above is a good example of the progress that my friend and I had made in WoW Classic (so far). My Warrior, Vaca, is fighting a Swoop and a Cougar by herself – with no trouble at all. This is a vast improvement from earlier, when one Swoop by itself was a challenge. My friend’s Druid, Neverlast, had enough time to go pick some flowers and then return to heal Vaca up a bit. It was nice to reach the point where we were more powerful than the local wildlife. Vaca is using the appropriately named Beatstick to kill this Flatland Cougar. If I remember correctly, she got it from a Goblin. I found it extremely amusing for my Warrior to use a weapon that was so perfectly named! We stopped to let a herd of marching Kodos pass by. They aren’t very aggressive – unless you get too close. We found Morin Cloudstalker on the road, right where we left him. This time, we were able to turn in The Ravaged Caravan quest that he gave us. Doing so allowed us to get more bag space back as we handed over the Venture Co. Documents. Morin Cloudstalker gave us two new quests to work on: The Venture Co. and Supervisor Fizsprocket. Morin Cloudstalker: This explains the buildup of Venture Co. employees and equipment we’ve seen in Mulgore. Those goblins… their company is expanding too quickly for their own good. It’s how they say, show a goblin something, and you can hear the scales in the background. Greedy little things, they are. Unfortunately for their business enterprise, we Tauren cannot allow them to conduct their operations in our lands. Go to their mine northeast of the ravaged caravan and send them a message. To complete this quest, we need to kill 14 Venture Co. Workers and 6 Venture Co. Supervisors. Personally, I find it comforting that Taurens aren’t big fans of unbridled capitalism. Vaca and Neverlast have been given the task of preventing the Venture Co. from “expanding too quickly for their own good.” Morin Cloudstalker: According to the documents you salvaged from the caravan, The Venture Co. created many plans to attempt to drive us from our lands here, so that they could have free reign to plunder our lands. The depths that they would sink to accomplish their goals disgusts and appalls me. I want the mastermind behind their plans killed. His name is Supervisor Fizsprocket, and you will find him at the Venture Co. mine east of the ravaged caravan. Bring me his clipboard, we shall see if we find out anything useful. To complete this quest, we must kill Supervisor Fizsprocket, obtain his clipboard, and bring it back to Morin Cloudstalker. Put the text of these two quests together, along with what we have learned of the Tauren lifestyle so far, and it tells a story. The land here is valued and looked after by the Tauren. They take only what they need, and use as much of a slain animal as possible. They send out people to cleanse water wells. A big company run by Goblins (that is growing too quickly) has decided to take away the Tauren’s land. The greedy Goblins want to basically mine the land for everything they can take from it, leaving behind nothing at all. The company wants to accomplish this by driving the Tauren from their lands. It sounds awfully similar to what actually happened to the First Nations people across the United States (and, I presume, other locations as well). The corporate colonizers are up to no good. My friend and I aren’t powerful enough in the real world to stop big corporations from being evil. It is going to feel good to get a chance to make things right on Azeroth. But first, we needed to finish the quest that required us to use the Winterhoof Cleansing Totem to cleanse Winterhoof Water Well. Mull Thunderhorn, in Bloodhoof Village, is the Tauren who gave us that quest. Neverlast hit level 9 as we turned in the quest. Mull Thunderhorn: News of your deed reached me moments ago – – already the beasts near the well drink from it eagerly. You have done a great thing for the land, Vaca. And you have done a great thing for the Tauren people. Let’s have a moment of appreciation for whatever Tauren used their skills to create these absolutely pathetic looking human target dummies! They are comically wonderful. These dummies aren’t pretty, but they seem functional. Clearly, some Tauren Hunter came by and shot a few precious arrows into them before Vaca and Neverlast arrived. Ruul Eagletalon gave us the Dangers of the Windfury quest. We were ready to turn it in. I wonder if he is the brother of Eyahn Eagletalon, who gave us a quest to find harpy feathers that he could use to make a headdress for his brother. For whatever reason, I failed to take any screenshots of us actually fighting the Harpies. I think we were too busy trying not to die. That said, we did manage to collect 8 Windfury Talons (each) and complete the quest. Little did we know that there would be more Harpy quests coming up! WoW Classic: Rites and Ceremonies is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... WoW Classic: Bag SpaceOctober 5, 2019World of Warcraft / World of Warcraft ClassicThere are times when the differences between WoW Classic and Retail WoW are glaringly obvious. In Retail WoW, it is fairly easy to obtain bags that are big enough to almost everything you need. Not so in WoW Classic! The quests that Vaca (my Tauren Warrior) and Neverlast (my friend’s Tauren Druid) we working on required more bag space than we had. There is a Fishing Trainer named Uthan Stillwater at Stonebull Lake. It makes sense for a Fishing Trainer to be located near a lake. My friend and I both decided to take up Fishing because it would mean we could sell the fish and make some money. Doing so gave Vaca just enough experience to hit Level 7! I think Neverlast was already Level 7. In retail World of Warcraft, players don’t need to actually equip a fishing pole in order to go fishing. In WoW Classic, that’s not the case! Players cannot fish without equipping a fishing pole. That’s one more item you need to carry around in your (limited) bag space. Where can a player obtain a fishing pole? Not from Uthan Stillwater the Fishing Trainer. As you can see, there is no … fishing supply vendor, for lack of a better term, standing anywhere near the Fishing Trainer. Instead, players have to go back to the nearest town (which is not far away), and go find the NPC (non-player character) who sells fishing poles. If I remember correctly, my friend and I were both laughing about that. We completed a quest called Mazaranache from Maur Raincaller in Bloodhoof village. This screenshot above is from when when we had finally finished it and were able to turn it in. The quest itself wasn’t difficult to do. It took more time than one might imagine. For whatever reason, many of the creatures that live on Azeroth that are missing vital body parts. We joked about the reason this might be happening. Maybe Vaca hit a Flatland Cougar with her weapon, and crushed the Femur that she and Neverlast were supposed to collect. We couldn’t find a reasonable explanation for why a Swoop didn’t have a Gizzard, or a Prairie Wolf was walking around without having a heart inside it. I think we concluded that these creatures couldn’t possibly be long for this world, so maybe killing them was an act of kindness? Getting back to the point I was intending to make before getting sidetracked, this quest requires players to collect and carry four different quest items in their bags. Our bags had a maximum of six slots each. The Mazzaranache quest items, a fishing pole, and a skinning knife fill up an entire bag. Next, we worked on the Sharing the Land quest. To do this, players need to go to a certain area in Mulgore, and kill 10 Palemane Tanners, 8 Palemane Skinners, and 5 Palemane Poachers. This quest didn’t require players to fill their bags with quest items. All you had to do was kill off the right number of the right kind of enemies – and you’re done. They were dropping copper, and occasionally some useful items. So, my bags quickly filled up again. That said, this was fun. The biggest reason why I wanted to play a Warrior was to slaughter everything in my path. These little guys respawned at what felt like a really quick rate. There were plenty for us, and the random group of players who were also working on this quest, to kill. Unfortunately, when those other players moved on, the quick respawn rate remained just as quick. We did the “corpse run” back to our bodies, as you do. All we needed was a couple more of one type of Palemane, and we we would be done. We were able to turn in the Poison Water quest and get some more quest items out of our bags. This one has players collecting 6 Prairie Wolf Paws and 4 Plainstrider Talons. It was nice to get those out of our bags. In return, we received a cleansing totem to take to the well. We got two quest items out of our bag, giving us two empty slots. The cleansing totem immediately takes up one slot. None of this is meant as a complaint. I remember “Vanilla” having the same issues with bag space. There are two potential solutions. Go back to town and sell stuff as soon as your bags are full. Or, drop some junk along the way in favor of holding on to items that are useful (or that you can sell). This is just something to get used to in Classic WoW. I can see where some people, who either never played “Vanilla”, or who strongly prefer how the current “retail” game functions, will find this situation very frustrating. If you take the time to stop and look around, you can find a lot of beauty in WoW Classic. I think this is something people forget about as they push to finish as many quests as possible. I find it peaceful to take my WoW character into beautiful places that I could not travel to “in real life” due to all my allergies and chronic illnesses. There is also something to be said about enjoying a nice view after dealing with the tedium of trying to balance limited bag space. WoW Classic: Bag Space is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... WoW Classic: FriendedSeptember 11, 2019World of Warcraft / World of Warcraft ClassicA friend of mine, whom I have played Dungeons & Dragons with, decided to give WoW Classic a try. He decided to play a Tauren Druid, a class that paired nicely with my Tauren Warrior. I highly recommend playing WoW Classic with a friend. Doing so makes finishing quests easier, leveling up a bit faster, and is a lot of fun! In the screenshot above, my Warrior was level 6, and his Druid was level 3. We have been using Discord so we can talk while playing. It is more efficient than having to stop and type something into the game like: “We need to kill two more of those.” It is strange to think about playing “Vanilla” long before Discord existed. As you can see in the screenshot below, my friend was able to join the Guild that I was in. House Kraken is a good group of people! One of the first things we did was finish up the quest in the Brambleblade Ravine that requires players to collect belts from the Bristleback enemies. We started looking for the way back out, and ended up in this little cave. The enemy in here was slightly higher level than we were (if I remember correctly). It dropped a Dirt-stained Map that was the start of a quest called Attack on Camp Narache. I think this was the first item we found that spawned a quest. After carefully evaluating the map, you realize that what you discovered are the plans made by the Bristleback war chief for an extended siege on Camp Narache. Surely Chief Hawkwind could use this information! Eventually, we remembered where the actual exit to the Brambleblade Ravine was located. We killed stuff on the way out, because every little bit helps little players level up. Camp Narache wasn’t terribly far from the Ravine, but it still took a while to walk back over there. In Classic WoW, players have to reach Level 40 before they could get a mount. The mount costs gold, and the currency system in WoW Classic is way slower than the booming economy in “live WoW” (or “retail WoW”, as some have started calling it). Holding on to the money you earn in Classic WoW is difficult because you need to buy your skills (and buy them again when you are big enough to level them up). This is true for class-related skills and skills that go with professions. We were finding it difficult to accrue enough copper to buy what we needed. There are also way less flight points in WoW Classic than in the regular game. This leaves our Taurens with no option other than to “hoof it” between one town and the next. Off in the distance, behind Bane Bloodhoof, you can see the Kodo dealer and several Kodo Mounts. This is located in Bloodhoof Village. Bane Bloodhoof had a quest for us that we didn’t immediately start working on. We got into the habit of grabbing quests while we were in town, and picking our way through them later. Bane Bloodhoof: There are dwaves preparing a dig site to the northwest. They think secrets lie in the earth, and that is true, but hollowing and defiling the land is no way to earn its teachings. Collect the dwarves tools of digging, smash them, and return to me with the dwarves’ broken tools. You can smash the tools at a forge. You will find one in Thunder Bluff, but any forge — even a forge at the dwarves camp — will suffice. This is another one of those “gather up x amount of specific item and bring it back to me” quests. The thing I found interesting about this one, just based on the quest text, is that it is the first time we are sent to fight and kill a race that is part of the Alliance. The reason why we are sent to kill Alliance Dwarves is because their digging is “defiling the land”. This is an environmental quest, much like the ones where players go and cleanse water wells. My friend and I are playing WoW Classic in 2019, when people have very strong opinions regarding climate change and the negative effects that can happen when people are… well, “defiling the land”. I played Alliance back in “Vanilla”. But, even if I had been playing Horde, I’m not sure this quest would have seemed as significant as it does today. Harken Windtotem gave us the Swoop Hunting quest. I was actually excited to pick up this quest because the first day WoW Classic went live, I noticed players in the chat mentioning that a Swoop killed them… again. It would be a fun challenge, and I thought it would go well with two players working on it together. Warriors hit things; Druids heal the Warriors. Harken Windtotem: The swoop is a cunning bird, and difficult to find and hunt. A collection of Swoop Quills is a badge of cleverness and determination for a hunter. If you are willing to take up this task, then enter the plains and hunt the swoop. Bring me their quills, and bring honor to your clan. The swoops may be found anywhere in Mulgore, but your eyes must be sharp to spot them, and your hooves must be quick to catch them. Maur Raincaller gave us the Mazzranache quest. It is another one of those “go gather up a bunch of animal parts and bring them back” quest. Maur Raincaller: My grandfather told me stories about his battles with a strider named Mazzranache. He told me of its demonic red eyes, razor-sharp talons and venomous bite. As fortune would have it, while traveling across the plains, I encountered it, and it took a nasty bite from my shoulder. He was as terrible as my grandfather described. I will need some hard-to-find animal parts to clean the infection from his bite: a wolf heart, cougar femur, plainstriders scale, and swoop gizzard. Hurry, time is of the essence. I find that I am not reading the quest text while playing WoW Classic with my friend. We are mostly grabbing quests from quest givers and then going out to complete them together. A screenshot will do if I want to read the quest text later (and maybe put it into a blog post). A while back, my husband Shawn and I played World of Warcraft together. We played Dwarves – his was a Hunter, and mine was a Cleric. We were working our way through Azeroth, zone by zone. Shawn is legally blind, and needed me to read the quest text to him. I didn’t mind. As time went by, Shawn unfortunately discovered that playing video games was causing him too much eye strain, and he had to stop. My friend that I am playing WoW Classic with today does not need me to read quest text to him. As such, we have both started taking quests without taking the time to read them until we are ready to work one that one. In our travels, back and forth from town to quest locations, we found a quest giver on the road. Bag space fills up really quickly in Classic WoW, and much of it is filled with quest items that you cannot drop if you want to be able to turn in the quest those items are connected to. We found a quest giver on the road. Morin Cloudstalker gave us the Ravaged Caravan quest. Morin Cloudstalker: A few days ago, we found a Venture Co. caravan traveling under guard on the northern shore of Stonewall Lake. We’d lost two of our number in an earlier battle, so we were quick to attack and lay waste to the caravan. We left their supply crates, thinking that our torches would destroy anything of value, but given that the Venture Co. salvagers have been spotted near the burned wagons, maybe we were wrong. Perhaps you should go to the caravan and examine the contents of the crates. This was another quest that we picked up but did not immediately start working in. In general, it’s a good idea to grab a bunch of quests before heading back out of town, and work on them as you travel. Doing so can reduce the number of times players need to go back to a town – assuming their bags don’t fill up too quickly! By the time we were done, Vaca had reached Level 7. Neverlast wasn’t too far behind her, and we figured that we would eventually be at the same level. WoW Classic: Friended is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... WoW Classic: Guilded!August 30, 2019World of Warcraft / World of Warcraft ClassicI played WoW Classic on launch day, and it was full of lag and nostalgia. While I didn’t have very much time to play, I was able to get Vaca, my Tauren Warrior, to Level 3. The lag was gone the next time I played, and it became much easier to work my way through some low-level quests. A quest sent me to Red Cloud Mesa, where I found another quest giver. Antur Fallow had a new quest for me called A Task Unfinished. Antur Fallow: Vaca, please, I beg of you, can you help me? I have not finished my tasks here in the Mesa – I’m in the middle of my Rite of Strength — and my father asked me to deliver these furs to the inn in Bloodhoof. I’m far from rested enough to complete both my rite and this task for my father. Would you mind going on for me? The inn is pleasant and a perfect place to rest during your long travels. I’m sure you’ll agree once you see it. The quest requires players to bring a bundle of furs to Innkeeper Kauth in Bloodhoof Village. It sounds like a simple task. But, it is made more difficult by requiring the player to travel into an area that has enemies that (potentially) are higher level than they are. Here is my Warrior, at Level 3, fighting a Level 6 Prarie Wolf that ran onto the path to attack her. For a while, I was certain that this would cause my first WoW Classic death. Fortunately, I survived! Bloodhoof Village is pretty when the sun shines on it this way. I found Baine Bloodhoof! He is Level 10. Here’s a better look at Baine Bloodhoof. He has some quests for the player. I left a (poorly edited) chat in this screenshot just to show that people in Classic WoW were having actual conversations. At the time, there was a joke related to the name of the server we are on. Other players were talking about how populated some of the other servers were. Sharing the Land: Vaca, there are many conflicts that would this land. It is my hope that you will not bear witness to as many of them as I have. Yet, there is one that I would ask you to seek out. It will give you some sense of how terrible, if left unchecked, even a small threat can be to the land. Palemane gnolls have settled to the south of Bloodhoof and in a cave to the west. They disrespect our attempts to communicate with them, and they slay the wildlife of Mulgore unbridled. Words are no longer the answer. This quest requires the player to kill 10 Palemane Tanners, 8 Palemane Skinners, and 5 Palemane Poachers, and then return to Baine Bloodhoof. I didn’t immediately start on this quest because Baine had another one for me that looked interesting. Baine Bloodhoof: The Rite of Vision, one of the Rites of the Earthmother, will help guide you toward earning the respect of the elders of Thunder Bluff. Our people have learned that the land is our most holy provider. In order to take part in the ritualistic vision, you must speak with the spiritual leader of the village, Zarlman Two-Moons. On the one hand, I really like that Bane Bloodhoof is so concerned about the Palemane Gnolls, who are slaughtering the wildlife “unbridled” that he wants the player to solve that problem. It shows that Bane, and perhaps all the Tauren, have an interest in protecting the environment. The solution involves killing the Palemane Gnolls, because “words are no longer the answer”. This is more reasoning than some video games give for asking the player to go kill a certain number of a neighboring people. On the other hand, I’m not quite sure if the aesthetic used in the Tauren villages is cultural appropriation. There are teepees and totem poles, and references to rites the player needs to perform. Some of the NPC names sound like they could be names of real people who have First Nation heritage. (Zarlman Two-Moons, for example.) Is this okay? That wasn’t a question I asked myself when I was playing “Vanilla” (probably because I was playing Alliance back then instead of Horde). Perhaps, the best way to find the answer to my question is to go online and search for comments about the Tauren made by people who have First Nations heritage. Before starting the Rite of Vision quest, I decided to turn in the A Task Unfinished quest to Inkeeper Kauth. A Task Unfinished: Ah, the furs I was expecting. Thank you. These came faster than I had expected. They will make good blankets for anyone who wishes to stay here. Please feel free to stay as long as you like. My inn is always open and all of our people are welcome here. And don’t underestimate a good night’s rest, it can make a great difference while you’re out traveling. There are two rewards to choose from. I took the Tough Hunk of Bread, because I know that eating food gives back hit points. Zarlman Two-Moons: I sensed you would be coming to me, warrior. I can always recognize one who is trying to pass the Rites of the Earthmother. Zarlman Two-Moons: In order to pass through the Rite of Vision, you must gather the reagents needed to make the Water of the Seers. I will need well stones, which can be found around the water wells in Mulgore. With those I will combine Ambercorn, which fall beneath the mighty trees in our land. These reagents contain magical elements and when brewed and consumed before the tribal fire, it will cause you to encounter a vision. Follow it, and it will lead you to the next step of this holy quest. This quest requires players to collect 2 Well Stone and 2 Ambercorn and bring them back to Zarlman Two-Moons. But first, I decided to work on The BattleBoars quest that I picked up last time I played. It requires players to kill Battleboars and bring back 8 Battleboar Snouts and 8 Battleboar Flanks. The quest goes nicely with the Break Sharptusk! quest, which is in the same area. Vaca was now at Level 4. She gained 19 hit points. I became a proud member of the House Kraken Guild, which is led by Belghast. To make this work, I had to re-learn how to connect with someone in Classic WoW, and how to send them a whisper. I’m guessing the system for this isn’t much different than in what people are now calling “retail WoW”. I had completely forgotten how it worked because I spend way more time in Diablo III than in any form of Warcraft. The first World of Warcraft Guild I joined was back in The Burning Crusade. It was with a group of complete strangers, one of whom I met when we were both hopelessly lost inside an underground cave. When we finally found the way out, we both hit /dance. This Guild was fun, for a while. We had enough people to do some dungeons with. I can’t remember if our Guild did any raiding, because I wasn’t ready for that yet. Long story short, the Guild fell apart after the Guild leader, who wasn’t the player /danced with, disappeared. Eventually, he contacted someone who passed along what happened to the rest of us. Our Guild Leader was a teenager whose grades were going down, and his mother stopped paying for his WoW subscription. I am confident that House Kraken will not suffer this fate. There are several people in it whom I have communicated with online for a long time. Many of us are adults. Some of the people in the House Kraken are those whom I just met through #Blaugust2019. It’s nice to have a bunch of people to chat with while, say, killing Battleboars. If I need help with a quest, chances are someone in the Guild will be able to help me. I’ll pay that favor forward whenever my character is big enough to do so. Vaca is wearing the newly acquired Nomadic Vest. It is a reward for turning in the Battleboars quest. This mix of gear doesn’t match together very well. The “dressed yourself for the first time” look was something I remember from “Vanilla” WoW. I’ve been spending my money mostly on two things: buying new skills, and getting my armor repaired. WoW Classic, like “Vanilla” does not give players tons of opportunity to make in-game money. It takes a bit to get used to that after playing “Retail WoW”. I like that the limited funding makes players have to make strategic decisions about what they want to buy. I was able to collect Chief Sharptusk Thornmantle’s Head, thanks to an amazingly quick respawn rate. This item is required in order to turn in the Break Sharptusk! quest. It is the first head a Tauren player was asked to collect. I am curious to see if there are more quests of this type. When my husband and I were playing low-level Alliance characters, we had several quests that required bringing back some NPC’s (non-player character’s) head. Vaca hit Level 5 on the way out of the cave that leads to Chief Sharptusk Thornmantle. Vaca gained 19 more hit points, more Strength, Agility, and Stamina, and increased her skill in Arms and Fury. “Retail WoW” dropped the “increase skill” thing a while back. I’m going to enjoy seeing how high I can increase Vaca’s skills. The Painted Chain Leggings are one of the reward choices for turning in the Break Sharptusk! quest. I think these pants go much better with the chest piece Vaca is wearing than the other ones did. Seer Greytongue gives Vaca the Rite of Strength quest. Seer Greytongue: The Rites of the Earthmother are the steps a young Tauren needs to take to gain respect in Thunder Bluff. First you must pass the Rite of Strength. In this test you must prove your bravery by slaying enemies of the tribe. Bristlebacks of Brambleblade Ravine to the east are encroaching on our tribal lands. They ambush our hunting parties and steal from the village by dark. Show your valor by slaying these villains and return to the Chief in Camp Narache with their belts as proof of your deeds. Players must bring back 12 Bristleback Belts. This quest, like some of the previous ones, give a reasonable explanation why the player must go kill a bunch of the neighboring people. In this case, the Bristlebacks are actively causing harm to the Tauren people. The Sharing the Land quest, and Rite of Strength quest, were going to have wait because I figured I should to the Rite of Vision one first. I randomly ran into Belghast, which was nice. We’ve talked to each other through social media, and I’ve watched a few of his Twitch streams and chatted with him there. This is the first time we had the opportunity to meet “face to face”, so to speak. He was kind enough to give me a cloak that he had outgrown, and that I would grow into. Hand-me-downs from Guildies are always nice! It makes the Guild feel like a family, where the “bigger” kids pass along stuff they can’t wear anymore to the “smaller” kids. I suspect I’ll be one of the “smaller” kids for a long time, because my health issues keep me from playing video games as often as healthier people can. This screenshot made me realize just how big Tauren really are! It’s not easy to tell when surrounded by other Tauren, but is super obvious when standing next to a Forsaken. Here is Vaca, fighting a teeny, tiny, goblin, who is trying to stop her from walking away with that Well Stone. Turn in two Well Stones, and Two Ambercorns to Zarlman Two-Moons, and he prepares the Water of the Seers for you. Zarlman Two-Moons: The Water of the Seers is ready for your consumption, Vaca. The Water of The Seers induces a vision. A ghost wolf, called The Plains Vision, appears. The player must follow it across the plains. This is not an escort quest, where the player’s goal is to save the NPC from certain death as he or she meanders into mobs. Instead, this is a peaceful experience that gives the player time to enjoy the lovely view. The Plains Vision howls when you reach your destination. Seer Wiserunner tells the player: “I have been expecting you.” Seer Wiserunner: Be not afraid, Vaca. You have successfully passed the Rite of Vision. Players can either choose the Rainwalker Boots of the Sun-beaten Cloak as a reward. I went with the cloak, because the boots Vaca was wearing were better than the Rainwalker Boots. After making her selection, Vaca very dramatically hit Level 6! Seer Wiserunner gave her the Rite of Wisdom quest. Seer Wiserunner: To gain acceptance amongst the elders of Thunder Bluff you must next complete the Rite of Wisdom. Now that you have passed the Rite of Vision, the ancestral spirits of Red Rocks will give you the blessing of our ancestors. Only those who have drunk from the Water of Seers can gain the blessing. Travel east of Thunder Bluff, to Red Rocks and seek out the Ancestral Spirit, Vaca. Here is a look at the Sun-beaten Cloak, which was a bit fancier than I was expecting. This screenshot also includes a nice view of the landscape. I like to take the time to enjoy the beauty in this game. #Blaugust2019 Classic WoW: Guilded! is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... WoW Classic is Live!August 26, 2019World of Warcraft / World of Warcraft ClassicWoW Classic went live today, and I was able to get in and play for a little while. It went exactly as I remembered “Vanilla” being, right down to the server already being full when I got there. I got lucky and the queue wasn’t too bad. Approximately 10 hours before WoW Classic went live, I connected with Belghast on Twitter to ask what realm he was on. I remembered him mentioning that he, and a group of people, were going to get on the same server, but forgot which one it was. After a brief confusion (which I blame on pollen season and lack of sleep) I was able to find the correct server and roll a Tauren Warrior. My goal for WoW Classic, other than to have fun, is to see if maybe I can learn to tank. Originally, I was going to name my WoW Classic Tauren Bessy, because my WoW Tauren (which has been sadly neglected) is named Bessimoo. But, the name Bessy was already taken. So, my Tauren is named Vaca. It means “cow” in Spanish. This was a creative as I could be under the circumstances. Approximately 10 hours later, I was looking at a loading screen. The first cinematic faded into the town below, and I was happy to see that there were plenty of players in-game. When “Vanilla” was live, I was playing an Alliance Night Elf. For the beta, I decided to roll a Tauren to see what the Horde side of “Vanilla” was like. I decided to stick with Horde for WoW Classic because doing so would give me new places to explore. An extra bonus was that Belghast’s group planned to roll Horde. I will have people to play with, eventually, when we are on at the same time. I forgot what level a character has to be to start a guild, or to join one. If you play a Tauren, your character is dropped in front of Grull Hawkwind, who greets you. I remember there being a lot of players gathered around the first quest giver in “Vanilla” – and the same was true for WoW Classic. The chat, overall, was entertaining. There were the old jokes I remembered about Chuck Norris, and “Where is Mankrik’s wife?” There were players asking for directions to a location they needed to get to in order to complete a quest and several helpful players providing that information. As in the beta, there were comments about the size of Tauren body parts, and mentions of Goldshire and Moonguard (which each have the same, bad, reputation). It was easy enough to ignore. What surprised me was the number of comments from players about wanting to do an all-nighter in WoW Classic. Not because of that desire, which is perfectly reasonable. I was not expecting the responses from players who were much older now than when “Vanilla” was live. Those comments can be summarized as “we have work tomorrow”. Or, “I’m old, and can’t stay up that late anymore.” Someone mentioned coffee. Someone else responded that they can’t drink coffee after 2 p.m. because it makes them unable to sleep at night. The most amusing thing I saw in chat was started with a question. A player asked, “Ok, whose cow pie did I just step in?” Someone responded that she, a Tauren, was making pies “to feed the mini-moos”, and perhaps it was one of her pies that had fallen to the ground. This led to a discussion about what kind of meat was in those pies, and whether or not Taurens are vegan. The Hunt Begins: You have a promising air about you, and will prove yourself to the tribe. Perhaps someday soon you will be welcomed into the great city of Thunder Bluff. But before that can happen you must prove yourself to my father, Chief Hawkwind. Up here on Red Cloud Mesa, we pride ourselves on keen hunting skills. Tauren hunt out of necessity and for sport. Our supply of meats has run low and we require feathers for clothing. Hunt the nearby plainstriders and prove yourself by resupplying the village. Your first quest as a Tauren is a “bring me body pieces” one. You must kill Plainstriders and gather up 7 Plainstrider Feathers and 7 pieces of Plainstrider Meat. Killing Plainstriders is easy, as it should be, considering this is the first beast the player is asked to go out and kill. But, I had some difficulty with it. The first problem was the lag. There was a noticeable gap between when I swung my weapon and when the game caught up to it. I figured I would be fine, because I was playing a Warrior. I didn’t think I could be easily killed by just one Plainstrider. So, I swung, and waited… and eventually the lag lessened and I could make some progress. There was so much lag happening that I could see, across the plains, entire groups of players who appeared to be running in place. Eventually, they would disappear, and reappear somewhere else, moving at the speed they should be. The other problem I was having with killing Plainstriders was due to other players. I’d hit a Plainstrider, and watch as a giant ball of magic floated over and hit the Plainstrider I’d attacked. The bird would immediately turn and run directly over to the Druid who sent the giant ball of magic. I don’t know if some of the Druid players were doing this to intentionally “steal” someone else’s Plainstrider. It is possible that the amount of lag meant that they honestly didn’t see me there, swinging my weapon at that particular Plainstrider. Despite these difficulties, I was able to level my Tauren Warrior to Level 2 just by killing Plainstriders. The rewards for completing The Hunt Begins quest is either a Nomadic Belt or Painted Chain Gloves. I took the gloves, because I didn’t have any and they looked good. One of the things I like about WoW Classic is that the gear you get from quests is very useful! Simple Note: Just a moment ago a messenger was looking for you, Vaca. I believe she was sent by the warrior trainer Harutt. If this note is from Harutt, I wouldn’t take long in readings it’s contents. This is how players find their Class Trainer in Classic WoW. They get a note that was conveniently sent to the first quest giver from a messenger. Simple Note: Many tribes claim that it is a gift to be blessed with the aptitude to use magic or to talk to our ancestors, but you should know this as well, Warrior. You are just as gifted. Some do not have the strength in their arms to wield mighty weapons. Some do not have the skill to parry a blow from an assassin, or to even suffer the physical punishments from an arcane spellcaster. But you do. You are strong. And I will help you become stronger. Find me in Camp Narache. Harutt Thunderhorn, Warrior Trainer Simple Note: Ah, at last you’ve arrived, warrior. I did not lie in my note, Vaca. We are a special breed also, not unlike the druids or shamans of our tribe. You are just as important. We are the ones called upon to defend our borders, to hunt the centaur, and to go to war. In the cinematic intro, the game tells the player that the area the Tauren are living in was once overrun with Centaur, and the two sides warred against each other. Later, the Tauren teamed up with the Orcs (who had newly arrived), and wiped out the Centaur. Harutt Thunderhorn: Each of us plays a role in our tribe. Each of us must also go through all the same rites. Do not ever let your pride tell you otherwise. I remain here to train new warriors that seek the glory of battle and who follow the ways of our oldest ancestors. When you feel ready, come back to me and I will do what I can to train you further. Go with the tribe’s blessing, Vaca. When Harutt Thunderhorn said “When you feel ready, come back to me and I will do what I can to train you further”, he meant when you have enough money to pay him to train you. Players in “Vanilla”, and now in WoW Classic, need to purchase skills. I didn’t have any money at all when I turned in the Simple Note quest. There were some things in my bag that I could sell, but it would be a while before I’d be able to buy my first skill. I did have some luck, however. One of the Plainstriders dropped a small, green, bag. I started using it to separate the items I needed to collect for quests from my other items. My plan is to keep returning to Harutt Thunderhorn every time I get enough money to buy a new skill. I’m guessing it’s probably best for a Warrior to get those skills as soon as possible. The first one I purchased was Battle Shout. Back to Grull Hawkwind, the first quest giver the player encounters. The Hunt Continues: A Tauren skilled in the ways of the hunt knows that his prey is not for mere trophy. The beasts of the plains provide us with a means of survival. You will make quite an impression on the elders if you can bring back some highly valued Mountain Cougar Pelts. You can find the beasts lurking in the hills to the south. Our children need clothing and our tents need mending. Players need bring back 10 Mountain Cougar Pelts. Chief Hawkwind is the Chief of Camp Narache. He has a quest. A Humble Task: All members of the tribe share in the harmony of life. We live together and work together. Our commitment to one another carries with it a high degree of responsibility. I ask of you now a humble task. My mother set out this morning to fetch water from the well to the southeast of Narache. It has been quite some time now. Perhaps you could check on her for me while I attend to tribal matters here? I love the idea of being part of a community that shares in the harmony of life and works together. That it something I feel is missing from the real world right now. Playing a Tauren is comforting. Greatmother Hawkwind: You traveled all this way to help an old woman? My, my, aren’t you a keeper? Vaca is wondering whether Greatmother Hawkwind really needed help, or if she is secretly searching for the right Tauren girl to marry her son. A Humble Task: I have traveled many paths through life and these old legs lack the vigor they once had. I can still perform my duties to the tribe. Sometimes it just takes an old woman a little longer to do the task. But you look like an eager warrior. Let’s put some of that youthful vitality to the test. Take a water pitcher from the well and bring it to my son, the Chief, in Camp Narache. Remember that even the most humble task can gain the recognition of elders. When you return to Chief Hawkwind, he says: You look as though you have returned from the plains. Do you have any word from Greatmother Hawkwind? Chief Hawkwind: You carried this pitcher back at the Greatmother’s bidding, I see. Your willingness to help others and provide for the Tauren of Camp Narache leads me to believe you would make the tribe proud in Thunder Bluff someday. Rites of the Earthmother: Your willingness to perform a humble task for the Tauren of Narache and your eagerness to learn are noble traits, Vaca. I believe one day you will be heralded in Thunder Bluff as a warrior of greatness. Before that you must embark on the Rites of the Earthmother, of which there are three. The first test is the Rite of Strength. Travel to Seer Greytounge and tell him Chief Hawkwind has sent you. You will find the seer’s abode directly to the south of Camp Narache, tucked away in the hills. I didn’t have the time to start on this quest when I was playing, so I’ll work on that one next time. I found a skeleton of a huge animal as I was running around. What is it? I have no idea. There must be a story behind it. Vaca hit Level 3 while killing Mountain Cougars for their pelts. Her skill in Arms increased to 15, and so did her skill in Fury. Classic WoW, like “Vanilla”, has players leveling up skills in a whole bunch of things. This was later taken out of the game. Grull Hawkwind: The tauren of Narache thank you for these provisions, Vaca. With your skill in the ways of the hunt you will surely be revered in Thunder Bluff someday. Players who complete The Hunt Continues quest choose between Nomadic Bracers or Painted Chain Belt as a reward. I chose the Painted Chain Belt, because the one I randomly picked up wasn’t very good. Grull Hawkwind: The Battleboars of Brambleblade Ravine to the east are encroaching on our tribal hunting grounds. They are trained to be malicious by the Bristleback Quillboars with whom we are at war. Go and slay the vile creatures and bring back some snouts and flanks so that we can make stew for our young. My interpretation of this quest is that Grull Hawkwind obviously wants you to kill the Battleboars. He’s asking for snouts and flanks that can be used to feed the young Tauren of Camp Narache. The very first quest states that Tauren hunt out of necessity and for sport. Hunting the Battleboars, which are encroaching on Camp Narache, makes sense, as doing so would limit the ability of the Bristleback Quillboars to attack. It also makes sense for the Tauren to take the useful parts of the slain Battleboars, to use as food. Someone in chat implied that this quest was asking the player to bring back the snouts and flanks of the Bristleback Quillboars – which would then be used as food for young Tauren. I disagree with that player’s interpretation. I didn’t have time to begin this quest, or the next one I picked up this time. They will be among the quests I start working on the next time I play. Brave Windfeather has a quest that goes along with the previous quest. Both require the player to go to the same area. It’s best to pick these both up at once, and work on them simultaneously. Brave Windfeather: Vaca – I have heard of you, new comer. Perhaps it is you that will help us, where others have failed. We Tauren have carved a home out of this land, but not without a cost. The Bristleback quilboars of Brambleblade Ravine, led by Chief Sharptusk Thornmantle, have made our lives very difficult with their continued war against us. I charge you to bring me the chief’s head! He will be found in the ravine to the east in their makeshift village. Here is Vaca the Tauren Warrior when I needed to stop playing. She has reached Level 3, completed some quests, and picked up some gear that almost goes together. WoW Classic is Live! is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Out of Spoons (Chronic Illness)How a Window Air Conditioner Made Me SickOctober 7, 2019Out of Spoons / Spoonie WritingMy husband and I had a window air conditioner in our bedroom. We were lucky to have a relative come over and install it for us. At the time the work was done, everything looked great. The years were not kind to this air conditioner, nor the perch it was sitting on. What we didn’t realize, until we had the air conditioner removed, was that it was very likely making us both sick. My immune system sucks, so this probably hit me harder than it did my husband. If you have a window air conditioner, you probably don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Why would you? When the weather gets too hot, or uncomfortably humid, you turn it on. Then, you ignore it until it is needed again. I don’t entirely remember where this particular air conditioner came from. If I had to guess, it may have come with when we moved across the country to California. It wasn’t a brand new one, but it still worked. We did not think to have it immediately installed until after suffering through several summers with heatwaves. We learned that opening the windows did not allow a breeze to come through, due to the close proximity of the other mobile homes in the park. Eventually, we had enough. The only window in the home that would accommodate the air conditioner was in the bedroom. The rest of the windows, in this old mobile home, were too big and opened in ways that would not make it possible to put in an air conditioner. Having the air conditioner in the bedroom proved to be a good idea. It was a place to escape to when the heat was too high, and it made it easier to get some sleep. Once, when we were having a terrible heat wave, my husband and I picked up our cockatiel’s cage, walked it down the hall, and brought them into the cool air of the bedroom. The birds really seemed to appreciate it! The rest of the rooms continued to be overly warm and miserable. There were times when it was impossible to get any work done. This was problematic, considering that we both worked from home. One year, we had park managers who were really odd. The demanded that we paint the perch that the air conditioner sat on. They also demanded that we paint the front and back porch steps. Everything had to be white. We were not compensated for the cost of the paint, the brushes, or the free labor. That was in 2010, not incredibly long after we had the air conditioner installed. My hope was that the paint would help prevent water damage from weakening the perch that held the air conditioner up. As the years went by, the air conditioner slowly deteriorated. It had accordion-like appendages on either side of it, that were designed to block the remaining portion of the window. Those pieces cracked, or shifted, or otherwise would let the wild world in. Spiders made webs inside the window, catching some of the bugs that entered in through the gaps. One time, we discovered that a spider had caught and killed a wasp. Whenever we noticed a gap, we either tried to slide the accordion-like pieces over, or found another way to close it. Foam, sprayed out of a bottle, filled the holes. Sometimes, duct-tape was the best solution. The foam turned awful colors over the years. Eventually, the air conditioner had aged enough where we weren’t sure if it still had any Freon in it. The fan part still worked, so we tried to use it to cool down the bedroom a little. We stopped turning it on when we started noticing a mold smell. Was that coming from the air conditioner? There were times, especially when we had days of what counts as “heavy rain” in California, when I was certain the air conditioner perch would break. I imagined the air conditioner hurtling itself out the window and onto the hood of my car that was parked below it. Or worse, it would go straight through the windshield! This never happened. I stopped worrying about it after I donated my car to Habitat for Humanity. My fibromyalgia made it too difficult for me to drive anymore. My husband and I, like many couples who live in older homes, have several repairs on our “wish list”. We got as far as having the bathtub removed in one of the bathrooms, in favor of a shower. The wood underneath had rotted, and the worker we hired was able to replace it. He also put up everything that was needed on the walls. But, we had to get someone else to put the tiles in. This got put off, for various reasons. We have another shower in a second bathroom that is usable. Finishing the shower is a priority, but could wait until we had the money for it. In the past few months, I got very sick. This isn’t unusual for me. It was the perfect storm of chronic illness. Fall pollen season had started. I accidentally “got glutened” from food that I thought was safe. My period started, making me go from borderline anemic to definitely anemic. I lost weight from being unable to eat, and my body was struggling to digest the small amounts of food it would accept. Somewhere towards the end of this awful, endless-seeming, illness, we had the window air conditioner removed. My husband hired a worker, who came over, took some measurements, and could do the job. It didn’t occur to me why my husband suddenly prioritized having the window air-conditioner removed (and a new window put in its spot) over the incomplete shower. I was too sick to care. One day, I looked out the window and saw that the wood that held up the air conditioner had broken completely away from the waterlogged and brittle piece of wood that the air conditioner sat on. It was a few days before the worker was going to return to do the job. My husband had been opening the curtains differently than before, so I wouldn’t see that. I’d been too sick to go outside (except to go to the dentist a few times), and I never bothered to look at the air conditioner. I’m glad he didn’t tell me about the broken perch. I would have worried about it – and that would have set off my fibromyalgia. The worker did an excellent job. He started by taking out the air conditioner, and the perch it precariously sat on. He used a loud power tool to cut away some parts around the window, and removed a sheet of plastic that we had above the air conditioner. The power tool was plugged into our kitchen, and the cord extended out the door. We couldn’t shut the door, or the screen door, while the worker needed to use that tool. Around noon, he left to go get parts. I didn’t look, but I assume it was the new window, and possibly some other stuff. He mentioned silicon. I was home, and wearing a dust mask, in the hopes of avoiding whatever particulate matter was in the air. We had an open door and a large, window-shaped hole in the wall of our bedroom. Stuff was coming in, including pollen and whatever else was in the air. There was nothing to be done about it. The worker returned, and picked up where he left off. My husband and I both loved the work he did. This guy has talent! We gave him a little extra money when we paid him. He mentioned that the wall had “rot”. It turned out that the window that held the air conditioner wasn’t sealed at all the first time around, and water got in and caused the wood in the wall to rot. My first thought was he found mold – which I’m very allergic to. Fortunately, the worker took care of that for us. He took out the rot, replaced what needed replacing, and made sure the window had a proper coat of silicon around it. We now have an actual, functional, window – with a screen – that we can open or close as needed. It took two days before I noticed that I was waking up feeling a bit better than typical. I usually wake up with sinus pressure, or itchy eyes, or other allergic reactions. That had stopped, and did not come back. I think the mold in the air conditioner – and in the wall – was making both of us sick. I felt its absence more strongly than my husband did, mostly because I’m a super-allergic person. Before this work got done, my husband bought a portable air-conditioner. You put a hose from it out the window (long story short) and the exhaust goes away. It sits on the floor and can be moved from room to room. We are more than prepared for the next heat wave. This whole experience makes me wonder. What would my health have been like, these past years, if we had figured out that there was mold not only in the window air conditioner, but also in the wall? How a Window Air Conditioner Made Me Sick is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... How to Research a Medication for AllergensAugust 10, 2019Out of Spoons / Spoonie WritingPhoto by Irene Kredenets on Unsplash Let’s say your doctor has prescribed a medication for you, based on your health issues and symptoms. It is a drug that you have never taken before. Your doctor believes it will help you. Many people will simply fill the prescription and take the medicine. I, however, cannot do that because I have a whole lot of allergies. I learned the hard way that some medicines contain things I am allergic to. My decision on whether or not to take a medication starts with research. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I am certainly not your doctor. I am also not a pharmacist, and have absolutely no medical education or background. The method I use to determine whether or not a specific medication is safe for me to take has absolutely no bearing on whether or not you should take that same medication. What I am providing here is the framework I use to do research on medication I am considering taking. You can substitute out the drug I’m focusing on and replace that with whatever you need to do research on. Step One: Find the name of the drug. I had an appointment with my rheumatologist a few days ago. Based on examinations, and the results of blood tests, he has determined that I do not actually have rheumatoid arthritis (as he first thought). I do not have any form of arthritis. That said, he is absolutely certain that I have fibromyalgia. I agree with his assessment, as I’ve been getting symptoms of fibromyalgia since high school, long before anyone knew what it was. The name of the drug he prescribed for me is Cymbalta. The “generic” name is Duloxetine Hcl. My rheumatologist told me he would prescribe a low dose of it for me. We ended the appointment with the understanding that I would do research on this medication and have the results of what I discover determine whether or not I decide to take this drug. Step Two: What does this drug treat? The Mayo Clinic is a very good source of medical information. It says that Cymbalta is also called Irenka. According to the Mayo Clinic: Duloxetine is used to treat depression and anxiety. I don’t have either one of those. My rheumatologist kept asking me if I felt depressed or anxious, over and over again. Nope. It is also used to treat nerve damage associated with diabetes (diabetic peripheral neuropathy). I am not diabetic, and do not have diabetic peripheral neuropathy.Duloxetine is also used to treat fibromyalgia (muscle pain and stiffness) and chronic (long-lasting) pain that is related to muscles and bones. I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and I do experience muscle pain.This medicine is only available with a doctor’s prescription. This could be a problem. What if I lose my health insurance and can no longer afford this medication? I’ll have to check and see what happens if a person has to suddenly stop using this drug. Duloxetine is in a group of medicines known as “selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSNRIs)” My rheumatologist explained this by saying the drug takes away pain by doing something with the nerve impulses when they get to the brain. Question: What happens if I suddenly stop taking Cymbalta? The National Alliance on Mental Illness provides detailed information that answers my question: …Do not stop taking duloxetine, even when you feel better. Only your healthcare provider can determine the length of treatment that is right for you. Missing doses of duloxetine may increase your risk for relapse in your symptoms. Stopping duloxetine abruptly may result in one or more of the following withdrawal symptoms: irritability, nausea, feeling dizzy, vomiting, nightmares, headache, and/or paresthesias (prickling, tingling sensation on the skin)……Medical attention should be sought if serotonin syndrome is suspected. Please refer to serious side effects for signs and symptoms… Question: What is serotonin syndrome and what are its symptoms? The Mayo Clinic has the answer to this question: Serotonin syndrome occurs when you take medication that cause high levels of the chemical serotonin to accumulate in your body. Serotonin syndrome can occur when you increase the dose of such a drug or add a new drug to your regimen. Certain illegal drugs and dietary supplements also are associated with serotonin syndrome.Serotonin is a chemical your body produces that’s needed for your nerve cells and brain to function. But too much serotonin causes symptoms that can range from mild (shivering and diarrhea) to severe (muscle rigidity, fever and seizures). Severe serotonin syndrome can be fatal if not treated… According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms of serotonin syndrome include: Agitation or restlessnessConfusionRapid heart rate and high blood pressureDilated pupilsLoss of muscle coordination or twitching musclesMuscle rigidityHeavy sweatingDiarrheaHeadacheShiveringGoose bumps Severe serotonin syndrome can be life-threatening. Signs and symptoms include: High feverSeizuresIrregular heartbeatUnconsciousness Ok, that sounds really scary! At the time I am writing this blog post, there is a lawsuit going through the courts about the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”). In short, the Republicans voted to remove the individual mandate from Obamacare. (That’s the part that required everyone to purchase health insurance coverage, or pay a fine). A judge has ruled that the removal of the individual mandate means the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and should end. It appears the lawsuit will end up at the Supreme Court, potentially sometime in 2020. If the majority of Justices of the Supreme Court decide to kill “Obamacare” – I would be among the millions of Americans who would no longer have health insurance coverage. Lack of health insurance coverage would mean the cost of Cymbalta would be higher than the price I would pay for it with my health insurance coverage. If I start taking Cymbalta, I could be stuck in a situation where I suddenly cannot afford it. The symptoms that come with sudden withdrawal sound horrific. Step Three: What are the inactive ingredients? I look at the inactive ingredients of a medication because I want to avoid being exposed to an allergen that is hidden in it. My rheumatologist doesn’t know all my allergens. (That’s not his speciality). I have learned that pharmacists have absolutely no idea whether or not a drug has gluten in it. They are not taught about this when going through medical school (or whatever the training pharmacists get is called). Here is what the Mayo Clinic says in it’s “Before Using” section about Duloxetine: Tell your doctor if you have ever had any unusual or allergic reaction to this medicine or any other medicines. Also tell your health care professional if you have any other types of allergies, such as to foods, dyes, preservatives, or animals… Oh, boy. This does not bode well. I have tons of allergies, including ones to foods, dyes, preservatives, and animals. The U.S. National Library of Medicine has information on the ingredients in Cymbalta. I will consult Celiac.com’s Unsafe Gluten-Free Food List (Unsafe Ingredients) to determine whether or not an inactive ingredient is gluten-free. I am very allergic to gluten (and was diagnosed with a severe allergy to wheat, rye, and barley back in the 1990’s, long before anyone had heard of celiac disease). In addition, I will check to see if any other inactive ingredient is something that I am allergic to. Ingredient name: Duloxetine Hydrochloride Inactive ingredients: Gelatin: According to Bon Appétit, gelatin is “derived from tissue and is a form of collagen.” I have eaten JELL-O before, and have not reacted to the gelatin itself, but sometimes have reacted to things that were added to the gelatin for flavor. This ingredient is safe for me. Hypromellose: According to Drugs.com, hypromellose is used in eye drops. Science Direct says it also used as a gel layer on some medications. Hypromellose includes: Glycerin: According to Healthline, glycerin “is typically made from soybean, coconut, or palm oils”. There does not appear to be any way to know, for certain, which one of those things is in the glycerin that is in a medication. I am allergic to coconut, so this ingredient is unsafe for me.Hypromellose: According to WebMD, hypromellose may contain one or more of the following ingredients: carboxymethylcellulose, dextran, glycerin, hypromellose, polyethylene glycol 400, polysorbate, polyvinyl, alcohol, povidone, or propylene glycol, among others. I don’t need to look up all these things because it contains glycerin, which I learned can contain coconut. This ingredient is unsafe for me.Polyethylene Glycol 400: According to Drugs.com, this ingredient is also called PEG. It is used for many things, including: “ointment and suppository base, and tablet and capsule lubricant”. It is also used as “bowel prep for colonoscopy procedures and as a laxative”. I cannot identify any allergens in it from the information I found, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Also, I don’t see a need for me to consume something that is used for colonoscopy procedures – every day – since I’m not about to have a colonoscopy. Hypromellose Acetate Succinate: According to Ashland.com, (which makes something called AquaSolve), this ingredient is used to coat medications. It is a cellulosic polymer with four substituents: methoxyl, hydroxpropoxy, acetyl, and succinoyl. I don’t entirely understand what any of these things are. This ingredient may be unsafe for me. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate: According to LiveStrong, this ingredient is used in personal care products because it allows cleansing products to foam. It is often found in shampoo. LiveStrong says it is derived from coconuts. This is one of the ingredients that prevent me from safely using most shampoos and soaps. I am allergic to coconut, so this ingredient is unsafe for me. Sucrose: According to Dictionary.com, sucrose is: a crystalline disaccharide, C12, H22, O11, the sugar obtained from sugarcane, the sugar beet, and sorghum, forming the greater part of maple sugar; sugar. Personally, I have no issues with table sugar, so this ingredient is safe for me. That said, I do not understand why this medication, which contains sugar, is prescribed to people who are diabetic. That seems like a really bad idea. Talc: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that talc is: a naturally occurring mineral, mined from the earth, composed of magnesium, silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Chemically, talc is a hydrous magnesium silicate with a chemical formula of Mg3, Si4, O10 (OH)2. The FDA has ongoing research into whether or not there is an association of talc powder with the incidence of ovarian cancer. Titanium Dioxide: According to the Titanium Dioxide Manufacturers Association, titanium dioxide (TiO2) is used in a wide variety of things, including food. In food, TiO2 is called E171. It acts as a whitener, but also as a color and texture enhancer. It can give smoothness when used in some chocolates. It can be used in food and pharmaceuticals without affecting other ingredients and is non-toxic. Triethyl Citrate: According to Drugs.com, tritehyl citrate is “a trimester of ethyl alcohol and citric acid. It is used in the pharmaceutical industry for coating and in plastics. According to the FDA Select Committee on Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) food substances, citrate salts, include tritehyl citrate, are generally regarded as safe when used in normal quantities.” I break out in spots that look like hives when exposed to too much citric acid, and my tolerance level varies depending on what other allergens I’ve been exposed to. This ingredient is likely unsafe for me. FD&C Blue No. 2: According to Celiac.com’s Safe Ingredients List, this ingredient is safe. However, there is a disclaimer (of sorts). Celiac.com’s Unsafe Ingredients List points out that “coloring” may or may not contain gluten, depending on where and how they are made, and it is sometimes necessary to check with the manufacturer to find out. This means that this ingredient is likely unsafe for me. Ferric Oxide Yellow: According to Drugs.com, ferric oxide yellow is an inorganic yellow pigment used in the pharmaceutical industry as a coating pigment. It is also known and yellow iron oxide (FeOH3) It exists as an amorphous yellow powder, and is primarily used in the cosmetics industry. According to Drugs.com, one of the drugs that is coated with ferric oxide yellow is Naproxen, which I have taken. I think this ingredient is safe for me. This brings up new questions that I have no answers for. This drug contains sugar, so why is it being prescribed to people who are diabetic? Why does this drug have, let’s see… at least three ingredients that are coatings? Step Four: Conclusion I haven’t even started looking at the potential side effects that Cymbalta may have, but I don’t need to in order to conclude that it is not the drug for me. Three ingredients are coconut, which I am allergic to. Another ingredient may or may not contain gluten, which my body cannot properly process. One ingredient contains citric acid, which can make me break out in hives. I will not be taking Cymbalta. #Blaugust2019 How to Research a Medication for Allergens is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Trump Administration Wants to View Social Media of Disabled PeopleAugust 8, 2019Out of Spoons / Public HealthImage by Pete Linforth from Pixabay The Trump Administration wants to enact a policy that will give them an unprecedented way to cause harm to people who are disabled. Part of the Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Overview includes the intention to view the social media of people who are disabled, and who currently receive Social Security Disability benefits. The administration’s goal is to take away the benefits that people have already been deemed eligible for. This terrible policy would also affect people who are disabled and who are currently trying to go through the arduous process of getting approved for Social Security Disability benefits. This policy is an example of ableism. Merriam-Webster defines “ableism” as: discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities. The policy does not have any direct negative effect on people who do not have disabilities. On March 10, 2019, The New York Times posted an article titled: “On Disability and on Facebook? Uncle Sam Wants to Watch What You Post”. From the article: The Trump administration has been quietly working on a proposal to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to help identify people who claim Social Security disability benefits without actually being disabled. If, for example, a person claimed benefits because of a back injury, but was shown playing golf in a photograph posted on Facebook, that could be used as evidence that the injury was not disabling. On April 11, 2019, Forbes posted an article titled: “How A Trump Proposal Could Reduce ‘Happy’ Disabled People”. From the article: A new policy proposal by the Trump administration calls for the surveillance of disabled people’s social media profiles to determine the necessity of their disability benefits. The proposal, which reportedly aims to cut down on the number of fraudulent disability claims would monitor the profiles of disabled people and flag content that shows them doing physical activities. When it comes down to it, the policy dictates that disabled people shouldn’t be seen living their lives for fear of losing vital financial aid and, possibly, medical care. Page 26 of the Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Overview of the Social Security Administration says: Integrate Social Media in Disability Determination In FY 2018, we studied strategies of our private sector counterparts and government agencies on how social media networks can be used to evaluate disability allegations. Currently, agency adjudicators use social media information to evaluate a beneficiary’s symptoms when there is a CDI unit’s Report of Investigation that contains social media data corroborating the investigative findings. In FY 2019, we are evaluating how social media could be used by disability adjudicators in assessing the consistency and supportability of evidence in a claimant’s case file. CDI refers to the Cooperative Disability Investigations Program, which is part of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Social Security Administration. It is described (on the OIG website) as: The main objective of CDI is to obtain evidence that can resolve questions of fraud in SSA disability programs. It is unclear when this ableist policy will go into affect. Perhaps it already has. The best advice I can give people who, like me, have disabilities and use social media, is to make all of your accounts private. Doing so prevents someone from the Trump administration from easily spying on your social media, in the hopes of finding a reason to deny your disability claim. I made all my social media private the moment I heard about the Trump administration’s latest way to cause harm to people who are disabled. Personally, I find this policy to be absolutely terrifying. My husband receives Social Security Disability assistance because he was born with optic atrophy and has extremely limited vision. He is legally blind. I worry that the Trump administration will conclude that, because he can use a smartphone if its has a large enough screen, that my husband is magically no longer disabled. This is, of course, impossible, because there is no way to “cure” optic atrophy. I’m about to start my second attempt at obtaining Social Security Disability benefits. The first time, it literally took years to get through the process. I got denied, and appealed. Then, I got denied again, and appealed it. Then I got denied a third and final time, and gave up. The process itself is designed to wear people down so that they will give up and stop trying to obtain the financial and medical assistance that they truly are eligible for. And now, disabled people like myself are going to have to worry about what their social media may show. Just the other day, I had to go outside because I had an appointment with my rheumatologist. The pollen count that day was at 7, which is enough to negatively effect my allergies. My rheumatologist confirmed that I still have fibromyalgia – which has no cure. He prescribed a pain medication, which I will do research on just in case it contains an allergen. The Social Security Administration appears to look at people’s claims with the assumption that they are lying about everything. My diagnosis of fibromyalgia came while I was going through the years long process of applying for disability. I only had documentation about my allergies, which apparently don’t count, so they rejected my claim. The determination of whether or not a person receives Social Security Disability benefits should be entirely based on what their disabilities are, and how those disabilities limit their ability to work and lead a full life. The decision should be medically based – and not determined by what is on a person’s social media. #Blaugust2019 Trump Administration Wants to View Social Media of Disabled People is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Telemedicine Worked for MeAugust 5, 2019Out of Spoons / Spoonie WritingPhoto by pina messina on Unsplash I have chronic illnesses and often get sick. Some of my chronic illnesses are autoimmune diseases. This isn’t anything new – I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. In July, the sinus infection that I had been trying to fight off started winning the battle. By the time I realized that I needed to see a doctor – everything was closed. What could I do? The solution to my problem was telemedicine. I had been fighting this sinus infection for a few weeks, hoping it would go away. This is little more than procrastination, because I almost never am able to fight off a sinus infection without help. Typically, I get two sinus infections a year. This is an improvement from when I used to work in daycare, and as a teacher, when I would get four or more sinus infections a year. The result is that I’m acutely aware of the signs and symptoms that my body is trying to fight a sinus infection. There are many reasons why I did not immediately go see a doctor right away. I’ve been in and out of doctor’s offices more this year than in previous years, and didn’t want to sit around in a waiting room, again, for an indeterminate amount of time. My doctor is at what I call “the clinic for the poor people” and is booked so far ahead that I knew it would be impossible to be seen by that doctor right away. Once, I called for an appointment and was able to get an appointment with a different doctor – who has since left the clinic. The thing that made me realize that I was having great difficulty fighting off this sinus infection was the fever that developed. It showed up really fast while I was up late and trying to get some writing done. According to WebMD, a German doctor in the 19th century set the standard for human body temperature at 98.6 F, but more recent studies says the baseline for most people is closer to 98.2 F. Mine is generally around 96-point-something. The thermometer showed a body temperature of around 98.8 F, and kept getting higher after that. It was around three in the morning, so I decided to get some sleep to see if that helped. When I woke up, the fever was still there, and it felt like my sinuses were on fire. It was a Saturday, and the emergency clinic I was considering going to was closed. Sinus infections can get really serious if left untreated. I was so sick that I opted-out of playing Dungeons & Dragons with my friends that day. I was overly warm, in pain, and not thinking very clearly. What to do? The answer was telemedicine, something I had never tried before. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) describes telemedicine as: “telemedicine is the practice of medicine using technology to deliver care at a distance. A physician in one location uses a telecommunications infrastructure to deliver care to a patient at a distant site.” The AAFP supports expanded use of telemedicine as an appropriate and efficient means of improving health, when conducted within the context of appropriate standards of care. My health insurance is an individual plan that I got from the Marketplace. In other words, I have “Obamacare”. I am poor, so I get a subsidy to help me pay for my health insurance premiums. One of the “perks” of the health plan I have is telemedicine. They sent me emails about it, recommending I fill out an online form before I got sick. They sent me flyers about it, which I promptly recycled, because I never imagined I would need telemedicine. The first thing that needed to be done was to fill out an online form about my health and symptoms. My husband filled it out for me because I wasn’t coherent enough to do it myself. There were several options for the doctor to contact me, and I selected a phone call. The doctor was a very nice woman, with an Indian accent, who sounded like she was working in a noisy place. She asked about my symptoms, and offered advice about getting some rest and recommendations about what foods to consume and which to avoid while I was sick. Some of her suggestions were foods I am allergic to, because she didn’t have a full list of my allergens. That’s not her fault. The doctor asked if I was allergic to antibiotics. No, I’m not. Then, she rattled off a list of antibiotics and asked if I knew which one worked best for me. Yes, I did! The doctor sent a prescription to the pharmacy of my choice, and my husband went to get pick it up. Telemedicine worked really well for me. It was fast, efficient, and the doctor was very attentive. I didn’t have to sit in a waiting room and potentially infect everyone else who was there. The antibiotic I received was the generic form of the one I selected. It cost $1.83. The cost of speaking with a telemedicine doctor turned out to be $5.00. If I had been able to see a doctor at a clinic that day, the copay would have been $75.00. I will be using telemedicine again the next time I get a sinus infection. A telemedicine doctor cannot treat everything. There was a list of what it can be used for, and sinus infections are on that list. Telemedicine Worked for Me is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Migrants are Dying From Lack of Health CareJuly 22, 2019Out of Spoons / Public HealthPhoto by Min An from Pexels How many migrants have died while in ICE custody? I wanted to find out, so I started doing research. This blog includes details about the children, women, and men who have died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or in private detention centers. It also includes people who died shortly after being released from the custody of ICE or of other detention centers. There is a pattern. A migrant who is sick is – reportedly – given a brief amount of medical care. It is only after the person becomes desperately and dangerously ill that ICE and Border Patrol take that person to a hospital. After that, many are sent back into custody after a doctor at the hospital takes a quick look at the person. Some are misdiagnosed. The person gets sicker, and is quickly taken to another emergency room or hospital for treatment. There have been at least two cases where a toddler was very sick, and the parent was released from Border Patrol (or ICE) custody right before the child died. It is clear that the migrants who are in custody are not receiving the medical care that they need until after it is too late. There is another disturbing pattern. ICE places adults in solitary confinement, without access to medical care, until the person dies or commits suicide. The people sent to solitary confinement often are people who have mental illnesses or people who are transgender. Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun June 15, 2015: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Detention death ruled a suicide; protestors disagree”. It was written by Megan Jula and Daniel González. From the article: Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun ran into the pedestrian lane at the Douglas port of entry in mid-May trying to enter the U.S.The Mexican national had been deported before – twice within the last four years, including an expedited removal in April 2013.Customs and Border Protection arrested the 31-year-old on May 15 and transferred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.Two days later, he was dead.Last week, immigrant rights advocates called the death suspicious, alleging that he was beaten by guards and thrown into solitary confinement.But as about 25 protestors gathered outside the ICE Phoenix headquarters Monday demanding an independent investigation, the Pima County medical examiner revealed to The Arizona Republic that Deniz-Sahagun committed suicide.Pima County Chief Medical Examiner Gregory Hess said Deniz-Sahagun died on May 20 of asphyxia due to choking after he swallowed a sock. Deniz-Sahagun was held at the Eloy Detention Center while waiting for an immigration hearing… June 17, 2015: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Autopsy raises questions about Eloy detainee’s suicide”. It was written by Megan Jula. From the article: Activists contend that immigrant detainee Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun was beaten before he died, even though an autopsy report by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a suicide.The report, obtained by The Arizona Republic, does raise questions about the circumstances surrounding the death at the Eloy Detention Center.Did detention-center personnel realize Deniz-Sahagun may have already attempted suicide while in custody?Was the suicidal inmate adequately monitored?Deniz-Sahagun, a 31-year-old Mexican national, killed himself May 20 by lodging a sock in his throat, the report said…On May 19, he was evaluated for “delusional thoughts and behaviors for which he had to be restrained,” according to the autopsy. He was placed on constant watch due to concerns of suicidal intentions.A day later, however, Deniz-Sahagun was taken off constant watch. He was placed in a single-person cell with video monitoring and security checks every 15 minutes……Deniz-Sahagun was last seen in video surveillance at his cell door at 4:57 p.m. May 20, according to the autopsy.Pima County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Gregory Hess, who conducted the autopsy, said in the video someone knocked on a window at about 5:15 p.m. and appeared to say something.“That indicates he was either alive at the time or it appeared that he was fine,” Hess said.About 15 minutes later, a guard stopped at Deniz-Sahagun’s cell and apparently noticed something was wrong, Hess said.Emergency medical personnel entered his cell at 5:33 p.m……The autopsy showed no sign of Deniz-Sahagun being beaten, Hess said.Hess reported that Deniz-Sahagun’s head had a subscalp and subperiosteal hemorrhage – in lay terms, “basically, he had a bump on is head.”… August 21, 2015: Phoenix New Times posted an article titled: “Amid Faux Coffins, Protesters Demand Justice for Immigrant’s Death in ICE Detention”. It was written by Elizabeth Stuart. From the article: …Jose De Jesus Deniz-Sahagun, who choked on a sock May 20, is one of more than 150 people who have died in ICE custody over the past 12 years – a fact that demonstrators said they find reprehensible……A Pinal County coroner ruled Deniz-Sahagun’s death a suicide. But demonstrators weren’t ready to let ICE off the hook. Interviews with other detainees at Eloy Detention Center, they said, suggest he may have died after a brutal beating from the guards.Deniz-Sahagun presented himself to border agents May 15, begging for asylum, after the men he hired to smuggle him over the border threatened to kill him, Porchas said. Family members reported he was in good spirits when he was transferred to Eloy Detention Center May 18……Examiners found no evidence of physical abuse aside from a bump on Deniz-Sahagun’s head. However, the autopsy report does raise questions about the quality of mental healthcare Deniz-Sahagun received.On May 19, according to the report, a mental-health provider evaluated Deniz-Sahagun for “delusional thoughts and behaviors for which he had to be restrained by corrections staff” and ordered he be placed on suicide watch.There was a broken off toothbrush handle in Deniz-Sahagun’s stomach, which suggested he may have previously attempted to kill himself.The next day, however, Deniz-Sahagun was transferred to a single-person cell, where officers checked on him only every 15 minutes… Raquel Calderon de Hildago November 28, 2016: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Another death at Eloy migrant-detention center”. It was written by Daniel Gonzalez. From the article: Another detainee from the deadliest immigration detention center in the nation died this week.The detainee, a 36-year-old woman from Guatemala, died Sunday at Banner Casa Grande Medical Center, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. She was being held at the Eloy Detention Center, which an investigation by The Arizona Republic found to have the highest number of deaths in the U.S.Raquel Calderon de Hildago , was sent to the hospital after medical staff at the Eloy Detention Center called paramedics following a series of seizures, ICE officials said in a news release. The woman continued to experience seizures in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, ICE officials said.Calderon is the third person in ICE custody to die since the start of fiscal year 2017 on Oct. 1 and the 15th tied to the Eloy Detention Center since 2003.The 15 deaths represent 9 percent of the 165 immigration detainees who have died in ICE custody since 2003, according to ICE statistics.A 2015 analysis of ICE data by The Republic found that there have been more deaths tied to the Eloy Detention Center than any other detention facility in the nation… January 2, 2017: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Autopsy: Eloy immigration detainee died of blood clots in her lung”. It was written by Daniel Gonzalez. From the article: A Guatemalan detainee, whose death in November was the 15th tied to the Eloy Detention Center, died of blood clots in her lung, an autopsy has concluded.The autopsy found blood clots “throughout all the lobes of the right lung” as a result of a leg injury.The woman, Raquel Calderon de Hildago, had difficulty walking at the time she was apprehended by the Border Patrol, according to the autopsy concluded by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office. She was taken to a hospital for evaluation, the autopsy said. Calderon was later transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She was being held at the Eloy Detention Center awaiting deportation to Guatemala when she was taken to Banner Casa Grande Hospital after experiencing a series of seizures at the detention center. The seizures continued on the way to the hospital, where she died Nov. 27, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said earlier.The blood clots, which traveled from her leg to her lung, would have triggered the seizures, Dr. Gregory Hess, Pima County’s chief medical examiner, said in an interview… June 20, 2018: Tuscon.com posted an article titled: “Human Rights group concerned about immigrant deaths while held in ICE custody”. It was written by Anita Snow. From the article: …For its report, Human Rights Watch had physicians with expertise in correctional health examine the official Ice death reviews of 15 detainees who died between December 2015 and April 2017. The doctors raised questions in eight cases about ICE’s ability to address serious medical-care deficiencies.Dr. Marcus Stern, former health services director for Washington State’s Department of Corrections analyzed ICE’s formal reviews for all 15 of those detainees who died. He has investigated medical care in ICE facilities for the Department of Homeland Security in the past.Other medical experts consulted include Dr. Robert Cohen, past director of health services on Rikers Island, and Dr. Palav Babaria, chief administrative officer of Ambulatory Services at Alameda Health System in Oakland, California……The report also mentioned Raquel Calderon de Hildago, who died 18 months ago after falling ill at the Eloy Detention Center. CoreCivic, which operates the facility, said it “does not provide medical or mental health services or staffing at the Eloy Detention Center” and said the federal government is “solely responsible for providing, contracting, staffing and oversight of any medical and mental health services at Eloy.”Calderon was awaiting deportation to Guatemala in November 2016 when she suffered seizures and was taken to a local hospital, where she died. An autopsy found she died from a blood clot from a leg injury suffered while crossing the desert into the United States.Babaria noted delays in Calderon’s care, saying if she were seen earlier a “different outcome might have happened.” Roger Rayson March 22, 2017: ThinkProgress posted an article titled: “The first immigrant detainee to die under President Trump had a treatable disease”. It was written by Esther Yu His Lee. From the article: Roger Rayson, a 47-year-old Jamaican immigrant, died last week at a Louisiana-area hospital while in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. He was the first detainee to die under the Trump administration, which is seeking to rapidly expand the use of detention centers to detain more immigrants.Rayson died of apparent cardiac arrest at the Lafayette General Hospital in Lafayette on March 13, an ICE press release said. The statement said that Rayson was transferred from the LaSalle Detention Facility, an immigration detention center in Louisiana, to a nearby hospital on February 11 for nausea, vomiting, and increased pain. Doctors diagnosed him with Burkitt Lymphoma (non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), a fast-growing lymphoma that is curable by treatment. He died within nine days of being transferred to Lafayette General Hospital.Prior to being transferred over to immigration detention, Rayson had been serving a 30-month prison sentence for importation of cocaine. Rayson was the fourth detainee to die in ICE custody in the 2017 fiscal year, according to the ICE statement. In total, 166 people have died in ICE custody between 2003 and late November 2016.The circumstances leading up to Rayson’s death are unclear. But Rayson wasn’t the first immigrant detainee to die at the LaSalle Detention Facility, which is owned and operated by the controversial private-prison operator GEO Group… Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba March 28, 2017: LAist posted an article titled: “ICE Detainee Dies 6 Days After Attempting Suicide At Adelanto Facility”. It was written by Julia Wick. From the article: A 32-year-old Nicaraguan man died early Tuesday morning in Victorville, six days after attempting suicide at an immigration detention facility in the high desert.Personnel conducting routine rounds found Omar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba hanging in his cell at the Adelanto Detention Facility on March 22. Medical staff at Adelanto called 911 and began efforts to resuscitate him, according to an ICE statement. Gonzalez-Gadba was transferred to the intensive care unit at Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, where he was placed on life support. He never regained consciousness. The preliminary cause of death is thought to be heart failure caused by the cerebral edema which resulted from asphyxiation, according to ICE.The privately-owned Adelanto Detention Facility is run, like many other immigrant detention facilities, by GEO Group, the nation’s second largest for-profit prison operator. ICE contracts with the city of Adelanto for the space, and the city of Adelanto contracts with GEO Group to run it, according to KPCC. Adelanto is the largest immigrant detention center in California, with a population approaching 2000 people……Gonzalez-Gadba is the second immigrant detainee to die in ICE custody since President Trump took office on January 20…. October 2, 2018: Los Angeles Times posted an article titled: “Nooses in cells, rotting teeth – report details harsh conditions at Adelanto immigration facility”. It was written by Paloma Esquivel and Britnny Mejia. From the article: A Nicaraguan man who was detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center died in March 2017 after he was found hanging in his cell from his bedsheets. Not long after, two other detainees also used sheets in an attempt to hang themselves.When federal officials arrived in May of this year for a surprise inspection of the privately run immigration detention facility, they found nooses made from bedsheets in 15 of 20 cells……The nooses are just one of many problems posing “significant health and safety risks” identified by federal inspectors at Adelanto, which can house nearly 2,000 detainees as they await the outcome of their immigration cases.Detainees reported waiting “weeks and months” to see a doctor, and inspectors met with a dentist who dismissed the necessity of fillings, and suggested that detainees use string from their socks to floss, the report said.Inspectors also said they found that detainees were commonly subjected to disciplinary segregation before being found guilty of violating rules……The Times reported in August 2017 that there had been at least five attempted suicides at the facility in less than one year, according to a review of 911 calls……According to the report, in the months after Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba, 32, of Nicaragua was found hanging from bedsheets in his cell and later died, ICE compliance reports documented at least three suicide attempts by hanging at Adelanto, two of which specifically used bedsheets.Still, when inspectors visited the facility, they found braided sheets that both staff and detainees referred to as nooses hanging from the vents in 15 of the approximately 20 male detainee cells that they visited in four housing units……The report also notes that some detainees reported waiting “weeks and months” to see a doctor and said that appointments were canceled without explanation, with detainees placed back on the waiting list.From November 2017 to April 2018, detainees filed 80 medical grievances with the facility for not receiving urgent care, not being seen for months for persistent health conditions and not receiving prescribed medication, according to the report.Inspectors also highlighted serious problems with dental care at the facility, saying detainees are placed on wait lists for months and, sometimes, years to receive basic care, “resulting in tooth loss and unnecessary extractions in some cases.”No detainees have received fillings in the last four years, according to the report. One detainee reported multiple teeth falling out while waiting more than two years for cavities to be filled… Sergio Alonso Lopez April 14, 2017: ABC News 7 posted an article titled: “Mexican detainee dies while in ICE custody at Victorville medical center”. From the article: A Mexican national died of internal bleeding while in the custody of ICE at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville Thursday.Sergio Alonso Lopez, 55, had been transferred from a hospital at the Adelanto Detention Facility on April 1 after throwing up blood, according to ICE. Department officials said he had a history of medical issues that included cirrhosis, hypertension, alcohol abuse and opioid dependence with withdrawal symptoms.ICE said the preliminary cause of death for Lopez was determined to be internal bleeding.The agency notified state health and local law enforcement agencies of Lopez’s death as well as the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and the ICE Office Professional Responsibility. ICE notified Mexican consular representatives who will contact Lopez’s next of kin.The department said Lopez had been in custody since Feb. 7 after he was arrested in Los Angeles by an ICE operations team. His deportation case had been pending in court at the time of his death… January 6, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “22 immigrants died in ICE detention centers during the past 2 years”. It was written by Lisa Riordan Seville, Hannah Rappeleye and Andrew W. Lehren. From the article: …When Sergio Alonso Lopez, 55, entered Adelanto in February 2017, he had been undergoing methadone treatment for 17 years.A doctor at Adelanto ordered him to taper off methadone over 12 days, and ICE review shows. Staff failed to administer several doses of methadone. A nurse told investigators there was little direction about prioritizing patients and too few staff.On April 1, Lopez was rushed to the hospital. Officers cuffed his swollen leg to a hospital bed. Doctors treated him for cirrhosis, sepsis and serious internal bleeding. On the afternoon of April 13, he began vomiting blood. One officer with the Geo Group, a private prison company, guarding him tipped Lopez’s head so he would not chicken, while another ran into the hall to yell “Code Blue,” according to the report. Lopez died three hours later of massive internal bleeding, cirrhosis, and substance abuse… Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez-Joseph May 16, 2017: NBC News posted an article titled: “Death of Panamanian Detainee Held in Solitary Confinement Initially Ruled Suicide”. It was written by Annie Rose Ramos. From the article: Federal authorities are investigating the death of a Panamanian immigrant who was being held in solitary confinement at an immigration center in southern Georgia, officials said this week.Jean Jimenez-Joseph, 27, was found unresponsive with a sheet around his neck in his cell at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Monday……On the day Jimenez died, he had served 19 of his 23 days of isolation.However, this was not the first time Jimenez was in isolation. “He was placed in disciplinary segregation once before for fighting with another detainee,” said Brian Cox. That period of isolation spanned April 13-18, he said.Per a recommendation by United Nations special rapporteur, detained immigrants should not be placed in segregation for more than 15 days……According to a year-long investigation released just this month on behalf of Penn State Law and Project South, a Southern-based social justice organization, even though health care staff exists at Stewart, they primarily handle suicide risks, which are reportedly health with by placing the at-risk individual in segregation. The investigation says immigrants do not approach the mental health care staff because they are too afraid of being placed in segregation…Jimenez’s autopsy will take place no later than Thursday, according to GBI, and ICE have advised Panamanian consular representatives who have notified his next of kin. August 26, 2018: KDRV.com posted an article titled: “The Jump That Landed Him In Solitary”. From the article: …The night he died in May 2017, Jimenez was more than two dozen people in solitary at the Stewart Detention Center, a hulking complex just outside Lumpkin, Georgia, that can house nearly 2,000 immigrants.He was the fourth detainee to die in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2017 and the 170th since the agency began in 2003……Special agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation spent months interviewing witnesses, combing over documents, sifting through surveillance footage and listening to audio recordings after Jimenez’s death.The conclusion they reached: Suicide. There was no foul play.But even though their case is closed, the records GBI investigators unearthed could provide crucial information as a federal inquiry continues, Jimenez’s family pushes for answers and authorities investigate another apparent suicide in solitary at Stewart.The photos, files and recordings from the state investigation into Jimenez’s death offer a rare public window into life behind bars in the largest immigrant detention center in the Southeast. They reveal key details about events preceding Jimenez’s death. And they raise larger questions about the quality of medical and mental health care the tens of thousands of people in ICE custody receive, at a time when the administration has vowed to increase the number of undocumented immigrants it detains and deports.Jimenez’s family alleges that the staff at Stewart knew he needed better mental health care but punished him instead of treating him… October 28, 2018: The Intercept posted an article titled: “Immigrant Detainee Called Ice Help Line Before Killing Himself In Isolation Cell”. It was written by Spencer Woodman and José Olivares. From the article: The young Panamanian man used to tell his fellow immigration detainees that he was the reincarnation of Julius Caesar. Sometimes he hallucinated voices instructing him to kill himself. Things got so bad that Jeancarlo Alfonso Jimenez-Joseph, a 27-year-old ICE detainee, called a federal hotline on April 4, 2017, asking for help.Documents reviewed by The Intercept show that Jimenez-Joseph repeatedly brought his suicidal thoughts to the attention of officials at the rural Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by CoreCivic.Just six weeks after his call to ICE’s help line, Jimenez-Joseph killed himself in a tiny solitary confinement cell where he had been held for 19 days……In 2013, ICE adopted a policy that put new restrictions on placing detainees with a history of mental illness in solitary confinement. The policy requires that such detainees be removed from isolation if their mental state appears to be deteriorating……It is unclear exactly what he conveyed in his complaint to the help line a few weeks later, on April 4. But the existence of the call shows that Ice officials far beyond Stewart Detention Center, or even the agency broader region, had been warned of Jimenez-Joseph’s deteriorating psychological condition. Additionally, the log suggests that Jimenez-Joseph felt his situation had become serious enough to elevate his concerns above management at the CoreCivic-run facility….…ICE’s central office took at least some note of the call: It prompted ICE authorities to contact ICE regional headquarters in Atlanta to check on how Jimenez-Joseph was being treated, according to the call log. Within 24 hours, ICE’s central office received a response from Atlanta: The privately run facility said it knew of Jimenez-Joseph’s condition, and officials insisted that he was “being treated with medication and therapy.”… Kamyar Samimi December 4, 2017: The Denver Channel posted an article titled: “Man, 64, dies while in ICE custody in Colorado”. It was written by Blair Miller. From the article: A 64-year-old man in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement died Saturday at an Aurora hospital, the agency said Monday.Kamyar Samimi, 64, originally of Iran, was arrested by Ice agents in Denver on Nov. 17 – more than 12 years after he was convicted of cocaine possession in Arapahoe County.According to ICE, Samimi first entered the U.S. in New York in April 1976 as a student, and became a permanent resident in May of 1979. But in January 1987, ICE says, his application for full citizenship was denied because he didn’t submit the correct documents.Samimi was off the radar of law enforcement after that until the 2005 arrest for possession of cocaine. He received a two-year deferred sentence and 64 hours of community service upon his conviction.But ICE says that since he was convicted of a felony, he was eligible for removal from the U.S. Agents arrested him at his home Nov. 17, and Samimi was served a notice to appear before an immigration judge.Samimi had been in custody at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility since his arrest until he “fell ill,” according to ICE, on Saturday morning.Emergency responders came to the jail, started performing CPR, and transported Samimi to the University of Colorado Medical Center of Saturday. Staffers there pronounced Samimi dead just after noon Saturday.ICE said his preliminary cause of death was cardiac arrest… January 6, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “22 immigrants died in ICE detention centers during the past 2 years”. It was written by Lisa Riordan Seville, Hannah Rappleye and Andrew W. Lehern. From the article: …Seven months later, at a facility 1,000 miles away in Denver, the Geo Group would receive another detainee with a history of methadone use, an Iranian-born father of two named Kamyar Samimi.In November 2017, ICE agents arrested the 64-year old outside his suburban Denver home. He had lived in the U.S. since 1976.Twelve years earlier, Samimi was convicted of a possession of a gram or less of cocaine, a low-level felony that stripped him of his green card. Soon after his arrest, he was taken to the Aurora Detention Facility, which has a history of substandard medical care……Samimi had been taken off methadone upon arriving in detention, according to records review by NBC News. His autopsy stated that Samimi “had been ‘clean’ for two weeks in the ICE facility and was being watched for withdrawal, dehydration, nausea and vomiting.” He was also on suicide watch.On the morning of Dec. 2, he began spitting up blood, according to the autopsy. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. While rare, “methadone withdrawal cannot be ruled out as the cause of his death,” the coroner noted in his report.Soon after his death, the ACLU of Colorado began looking into what happened to Samimi… April 6, 2019: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado posted a press release titled: “ACLU Of Colorado Sues ICE For Information About Death Of Iranian Man At Detention Facility”. From the press release: The ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit this morning seeking previously requested records related to the arrest, detention, and subsequent death of Kamyar Samimi, an Iranian man who died on December 2, 2017 while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, a for-profit detention center operated by GEO Group, Inc.Mr. Samimi came to the United States as a student in 1976 and became a Legal Permanent Resident in 1978. ICE agents arrested him at his home on November 17, 2017, and kept him in ICE detention, where he died 15 days later. ICE still has not provided a thorough explanation as to what caused Mr. Samimi’s death. Meanwhile, multiple recent reports and complaints have highlighted concerns about medical care in ICE detention.“It has now been sixteen months since Mr. Samimi died, and ICE continues to keep the community in the dark about this tragedy,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Arash Jahanan. “All we know is that ICE arrested a man who lived in the U.S. for over four decades, and 15 days later he died in ICE’s care. The public deserves to know more and this lawsuit seeks that information.”The ACLU of Colorado filed its first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on December 20, 2017. In response, ICE produced only five pages, which had nothing to do with Mr. Samimi’s death. The ACLU of Colorado appealed and ICE responded on July 3, 2018, stating that its investigation of Mr. Samimi’s death had been completed and more documents would be forthcoming. But ICE has not produced any additional documents, nor has it indicated when it might be doing so.“Immigration detention facilities, like the one operated by GEO Group in Aurora, are all too often cloaked in secrecy, offering little to no transparency into the way detainees are treated within their walls,” said ACLU of Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein. “We are filing suit to further the public’s right to know what goes on in these secretive taxpayer-funded institutions.” July 17, 2019: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado posted a press release titled: “Nightmares and Tragedies in Immigration Detention”. From the press release: Kamyar Samimi died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on December 2, 2017, 15 days after ICE agents arrested him. Mr. Samimi held a green card and had lived in the U.S. for more than four decades. Within days of his death, ACLU of Colorado sent ICE a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to his arrest, detention, and subsequent death.It took 17 months and a federal lawsuit for ICE to produce its report about Mr. Samimi’s death. The report confirmed our worst fears about why ICE kept the public in the dark about this tragedy for so long. It paints a gruesome picture of the conditions inside the Aurora detention facility operated by GEO Group, Inc., a for-profit prison corporation; and a gruesome picture of how our government treats immigrant detainees.Medical staff at GEO were ignorant about how to treat Mr. Samimi’s opioid addiction and apathetic about his overall care. The physician’s decision to cut Mr. Samimi off methadone was medically unjustifiable. To make matters worse, nurses failed to provide him with the correct doses of medication designed to treat the subsequent brutal withdrawal symptoms and to monitor his condition appropriately. They ignored his desperate pleas for medical attention because they thought he was faking it. Mr. Samimi became suicidal. As his deteriorating condition drew him closer to death, the nurses didn’t follow suicide-watch protocols or contact the physician, who apparently ignored calls when he wasn’t at the facility……Ultimately, Mr. Samimi didn’t take his own life. It was snuffed out by a broken system. After vomiting blood and collapsing, Mr. Samimi stopped breathing. He was finally taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. Later, the corner’s autopsy would cite gastrointestinal bleeding as contributing factors in his death. The forensic pathologist wrote that methadone withdrawal could not be ruled out as the cause of death… Yulio Castro-Garrido February 1, 2018: NBC News posted an article titled: “Cuban detainee, 33, dies in custody of U.S. immigration authorities”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: A Cuban national died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a clinic in Florida, the agency said Wednesday, becoming the second detainee to die in custody in as many months. Yulio Castro-Garrido, 33, died Tuesday night at a Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, ICE said in a statement Wednesday evening.Earlier this month, Castro had been diagnosed with pneumonia by ICE medical personnel at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, according to the statement. He was transported to Southwest Regional Medical Center in Cuthbert, Georgia, on Jan. 7 after the diagnosis, according to the statement.“After diagnosis, Mr. Castro initially resisted medical treatment which caused his condition to worsen,” ICE said. “On Jan. 9, IHSC [ICE Health Service Corps] staff coordinated the transfer of Castro to the Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga. where he was placed on a ventilator to stabilize him.”That hospital transported Castro to the Mayo Clinic for additional treatment on Jan. 17, according to the statement.“Mr. Castro slipped into a coma Jan. 22 and never regained consciousness,” the statement read……Castro was placed in ICE custody on Nov. 24 after being transferred from the D. Ray James Federal Correctional Institute in Folkston, Georgia, the agency said. He had been convicted on Dec. 8, 2016, of “conspiracy to transport and move an undocumented alien within the United States by means of transportation,” according to the statement.Castro was sentenced to a year and a day of confinement and three years of supervised probation… June 10, 2019: WYNC Studios posted an article titled: “ICE Records: III Migrant Continued Working in ICE Custody Until he was Hospitalized. Three Weeks Later, He Died.” It was written by José Olivares. From the article: Thirty-three-year-old Yulio Castro-Garrido, an Immigration and Custom Enforcement detainee from Cuba, had no health problems when he first entered ICE custody at the Stewart Detention Center, a sprawling immigrant jail in rural Georgia run by private prison company CoreCivic. But Castro-Garrido died two months later of pneumonia, a lung infection and viral influenza, according to the ICE Detainee Death Review of his case.On January 30, 2018, Castro-Garrido died in a hospital after spending six weeks at the Stewart Detention Center. The review notes three “areas of concern” regarding the migrant’s care while in ICE custody. These include: staff neglecting to monitor Castro-Garrido’s blood pressure after showing signs of stage-two hypertension, and staff not immediately calling for an ambulance on the day he was taken to a hospital, causing a delay in his access to emergency care.The third concern detailed in the review involves labor practices at the facility. After reporting his illness to staff, Castro-Garrido worked in the detention facility kitchen for food service duties under CoreCivic supervision, potentially transmitting his illness to others. He even worked in the kitchen on the day he was taken from the facility in an ambulance, the ICE review notes. In the past the facility has fallen under criticism for allegedly threatening migrants who refuse to take part in labor at the facility… Here is a summary of what happened to Yulio Castro-Garrido: He was booked into the Stewart Detention Center on November 24, 2017, while waiting his immigration hearing before a judge. Stewart healthcare staff noted he had no health problems aside from a “slightly elevated blood pressure”.Days later, he had a physical exam with a different nurse. It was documented that he had high blood pressure. According to the review, his blood pressure readings “met the American Heart Association criteria for stage two hypertension.” Nurses did not initiate blood pressure monitoring or refer him to a provider.December 7, 2017 – He began working in the detention center kitchen, even though records show he was not medically cleared for labor at the facility.Late December and early January, he began reporting his illness to Stewart Detention. Center staff.January 6, 2018, he reported to the detention center’s medical unit with a fever, an “abnormally rapid heart rate”, and an elevated blood pressure. He was given cold medicine, Benadryl and acetaminophen. The nurse did not remove his medical clearance to work in the kitchen.January 7, 2018, he worked at the facility kitchen for food service.Later that night, he told his cellmate about his worsening health. The cellmate notified a shift supervisor at the facility. The cellmate had to help carry Castro-Garrido to the medical unit.6:40 p.m., January 7, 2018: Castro-Garrido was having difficult speaking due to shortness of breath, a temperature of 100 degrees, an “exceptionally fast heart rate” and very low oxygen saturation.6:56 p.m. January 7, 2018: Staff were told to call for an ambulance for him to be taken to the hospital. A staff member “did not authorize an EMS call until 16 minutes later, causing a delay in Castro’s access to emergency care.”7:43 p.m., January 7, 2018: ambulance arrivesUpon arrival at Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, his temperature was 104.2 degrees. He was diagnosed with multifocal pneumonia and influenza A. January 8, 2018: He was sent to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital where he could get a higher level of care.January 12, 2018: Hospital staff had to ask a Stewart Detention Center supervisor to remove Castro-Garrido’s restraints. A short while later, his right lung collapsed and he went into respiratory failure. Stuart Detention supervisor finally approves his family for visitation later that day.January 16, 2018: His respiratory functions shut down, due to the infection in his lungs. He had abnormally high carbon dioxide levels in his blood. Hospital staff medically paralyzed him, and decided he should be taken to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.January 17, 2018: Staff at Mayo Clinic were unable to pump his blood via ECMO therapy because of brain injury and gas-filled lesions in his lungs.Six days later, Castro-Garrido went into cardiac arrest and was in a coma on critical conditionJanuary 30, 2018, Castro-Garrido died. Luis Ramirez-Marcano February 22, 2018: New York Daily News posted an article titled: “Man awaiting deportation dies in custody, the third ICE detainee death this year”. It was written by Brian Lisi. From the article: A 59-year-old man died Monday after being in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for over a month.Luis Ramirez-Marcano had been awaiting deportation to Cuba since his arrest Jan. 12, but on Feb. 17 he was transferred from the Krone Detention Center fo Miami’s Kendall Regional Medical Center after he complained of abdominal pain, the Hill reports.“On Feb. 18, medical staff at KRMC informed ICE staff that Ramirez-Marcano was transferred to the intense care unit where his condition continued to decline,” the agency said in a statement.“Despite round-the-clock care, Ramirez-Marcano passed away the afternoon of February 19.”His official cause of death remains unknown… Roxsana Hernández May 31, 2018: The Guardian posted an article titled: “Transgender Honduran woman’s death in US ‘ice box’ detention prompts outcry”. It was written by Carla Green. From the article: A transgender Honduran woman died in Ice custody last Friday after coming to the US as part of a caravan of Central American migrants, including several dozen other transgender women fleeing persecution in their respective countries.Roxsana Hernández reportedly died from HIV-related complications following an alleged five-day detention in what’s known by immigrant rights groups as the “ice box” – Ice detention facilities notorious for their freezing temperatures…A statement from Ice said that Hernández arrived in the US on 9 May at the San Ysidro port of entry, was transferred to the transgender unit of Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico, and was hospitalize the next day for dehydration, pneumonia and other HIV-related complications. She died eight days later.According to Ice, Hernández was the sixth immigrant to die in its custody since October of last year… November 26, 2018: Rewire News posted an article titled: “Legal Advocates Seeking #JusticeForRoxsana Announce Lawsuit”. It was written by Tina Vasquez. From the article: …At a press conference Monday in San Diego, the Transgender Law Center (TLC), the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project (BLMP), Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, and the law office of R. Andrew Free announced that they filed a Notice of Wrongful Death Tort Claim in New Mexico on behalf of Roxsana Hernández. The claim essentially puts government entitles on notice that advocates will soon file a wrongful death lawsuit against the state of Mexico, the first step in what will likely be a years-long process “to get justice for Roxsana and her family,” said Anna Castro, a media consultant with the Transgender Law Center……According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which used Hernández’s former name when publishing the details of her death, the Honduran asylum seeker was admitted to Cibola General Hospital on May 17 “with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV.” Later that day, she was transferred via air ambulance to Lovelace Medical Center (LMC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she remained in the intensive care unit until she died on May 25. According to ICE, the 33-year-old’s preliminary cause of death was cardiac arrest.At Monday’s press conference, advocates revealed previously unknown details surrounding Hernández’s death.“According to an independent autopsy report, Ms. Hernández endured physical assault and abuse while in custody,” according to the wrongful death tort claim. “Specifically, forensic evidence indicates she was handcuffed so tightly as to cause deep tissue brushing and struck repeatedly on the back and rib cage by an asp or similar instrument while her hands were restrained behind her back.”Lynly Egyes, TLC’s director of litigation, said in a statement that the autopsy report by an independent board-certified forensic pathologist suggests that Hernández was “shackled for a very long time and very tightly, enough to cause deep bruising on her wrists.”“In the final days of her life, she was transferred from California to Washington to New Mexico, shackled for days on end. If she was lucky, she was given a bottle of water to drink,” Egyes said. “Her cause of death was dehydration and complications related to HIV. Her death was entirely preventable.”… Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco June 9, 2018: Des Moines Register posted an article titled: “Des Moines DREAMER dies within weeks after being sent back to Mexico’s violence”. It was written by Rekha Basu. From the article: Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco should have graduated from high school in Des Moines last month. The oldest of four siblings should have walked across a stage in a cap and gown to become a proud symbol to his sister and brothers of the rewards of hard work and education.Instead, Manuel died a brutal death alone in a foreign land, a symbol of gang supremacy in a country plagued by violent drug cartels. It happened three weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned him to Mexico, a country he had left at age 3 when his parents brought him here without a visa.The fact that America was the only home he has known made Manuel eligible to apply for and be granted DACA status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program initiated by former President Barack Obama. It exempted from deportation certain young people, referred to as DREAMERS, who were brought to the U.S. without papers as children.But that status didn’t protect Manuel when he came to immigration authorities’ attention after being stopped for speeding last fall and charged with driving under the influence. An ICE spokesperson said in a statement that ICE officers arrested him in Polk County Jail, and a federal immigration judge terminated his DACA status because of two misdemeanor convictions.The statement from Shawn Neudauer, ICE public affairs officer, also said Manuel wasn’t technically deported, but he was escorted to Mexico by ICE deportation officers at the Laredo, Texas, border this past April 24. He called it a voluntary departure process that doesn’t carry the penalties of a formal deportation. But the impact was the same: Manuel had no choice but to go back, either as a deportee or in a “voluntary departure.” He chose the “voluntary” route… June 11, 2019: Democrats.org reported: …In May, three weeks after arriving in Mexico, Cano-Pacheco was killed in the north-central state of Zacatecas. His throat was slit while getting food with an acquaintance of his cousin’s, his family and friends told Des Moines Register.” June 12, 2018: ABC News posted an article titled: “19-year-old Iowa man killed weeks after being deported to Mexico”. It was written by Kaelyn Forde. …Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco, 19, was kidnapped and killed on May 18 in Zacatecas, Mexico, his mother said. Just weeks before, on April 24, he had been escorted by officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the border at Laredo, Texas, after living in Iowa for nearly his entire life……Pacheco had been in Mexico only three weeks when his mother said he was kidnapped and killed. He grew up in Des Moines with his mother and siblings, and had been granted permission to stay in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), in May 2015, according to ICE.An Obama-era program, DACA allows some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children — also known as Dreamers — to live and work. The program is in jeopardy as the courts decide whether President Trump’s plans to end it are illegal.In a statement, ICE said Pacheco’s DACA status had been terminated after hew as convicted of three misdemeanors. Court records show he was convicted on marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession charges as well as traffic violations……Pacheco was detained on Sept. 27, 2017, his mother said, and time in the detention center was hard on him, a sentiment echoed by Alfaro-Santiz, the pastor……When Trump announced that he planned to end DACA, his mother said, Pacheco was worried, as was she. Her family had told her how Zacatecas in north-central Mexico had grown to be one of the most violent places in the country… Marco Antonio Muñoz June 10, 2018: The Guardian posted an article titled: “Honduran border crosser separated from family kills himself in Texas jail”. From the article: A Honduran man who entered the US illegally killed himself in a Texas jail despite guards checking on him every half-hour and the presence of a camera in his padded-cell, a sheriff’s report showed.The Star county sheriff’s office said in a report on the incident, which happened in May, that Marco Antonio Muñoz, 39, became combative during the booking process and was restrained and placed in a padded cell overnight.Like a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) news release on the case on Saturday, the sheriff’s report made no mention of why Muñoz might have become enraged and then despondent. It said he did not show any mental health problems of say anything about that might have suggested he was thinking about killing himself.But the Washington Post cited unnamed border agents with detailed knowledge of what occurred when it reported that Muñoz entered the country with his wife and their three-year-old son.He became enraged and had to be restrained when agents said the family would be separated, the paper said.Under a “zero tolerance” Trump administration policy announced by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions in May, families suspected of crossing the border illegally are separated. The policy has promoted widespread criticism and opposition.The Starr County sheriff’s report said officers checked on Muñoz every 30 minutes and at least once more during the morning shift before he was found unresponsive on the morning of 13 May, a day after border patrol agents brought him to jail.It said video footage showed Muñoz used a sweater to strangle himself.The report did not say what time that occurred. Muñoz was declared dead around 10am, the report said… June 10, 2018: NBC News posted an article titled: “Immigrant dies by suicide in Texas jail after being apprehended at border, U.S. authorities say”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: …Marco Antonio Muñoz was found dead of an apparent suicide at a jail in Starr County, Texas, on May 13, according to a statement from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson on Sunday.He was apprehended on May 11, by agents with the Welasco, Texas Border Patrol Station and allegedly became “disruptive and combative” while at a processing center for people in the country illegally, according to CBP. He was transferred to the jail as a result, the statement said.Muñoz’s death was attributed to suicide caused by self-strangulation, according to an incident report filed to the Texas attorney general’s office by the Starr County Sheriff’s Office. He died despite being checked on by officers every half hour and the presence of a cell camera, according to the report, which was obtained by The Associated Press Sunday.The Washington Post, which first reported the death, said that Muñoz, 39, was a Honduran father who suffered a breakdown after he was separated from his wife and 3-year-old son. The Post cited Border Patrol Agents with knowledge of the incident.An agent told the newspaper that Muñoz had “lost it” after Border Patrol told the family they would be separated and that, “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.”Neither the incident report nor the CBP statement mention if Muñoz was separated with his family, but both describe his behavior after his detention as combative… June 11, 2018: USAttorneys.com posted information titled: “Honduran Man Takes his Life in Texas Jail Cell After Being Separated from his Wife and 3-Year-Old Son”. From the information: …The Washington Post, which was the first source to disclose the details of this unexpected death, stated that Muñoz, who is a Honduran father, “crossed the Rio Grande with his wife and 3-year-old son on May 12th near the tiny town of Granjeno, Texas.” The area is known to be a “popular crossing point for Central American families and teenagers who turn themselves in to apply for asylum in the United States.”Shortly after Muñoz and the family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station nearby to McAllen and told officials they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patron agents informed the family that they would be separated. Naturally, like any father, Muñoz “lost it,” according to one agent. He was later booked into the Starr County jail and officials stated that he remained combative. They decided to place him in a padded isolation cell, without any information regarding the whereabouts of his family was or when he would be released.On May 13th, just two days after crossing the border, a guard passed by Muñoz cell at 9:50 a.m. and that is when he noticed Muñoz “lying in the center of the floor unresponsive and without a pulse.” The source stated that the guard “noticed a small pool of blood by his nose” and “a piece of clothing twisted around his neck which was tied to the drainage location in the center of the cell.” This information was taken from an incident report filed by the sheriff’s department that morning.After Muñoz took his own life, his wife and son were released from Border Patrol custody. Apparently, Muñoz had suffered a breakdown after being separated from his wife and child after crossing the border and may not have been able to handle the stress and worry he felt not knowing what was going to happen or how long he would be kept away from his family.The strange thing about this case is that the death of Muñoz was not publicly disclosed by the Department of Homeland Security nor did it appear in any local news reports when it first happened back in May. While news sources were able to get their hands on the incident report nearly a month later, the source highlighted that Starr County authorities have “refused to provide a copy of Muñoz’s autopsy report” and have not yet responded to requests for more information about the cause of death… Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion July 9, 2018: U.S. News and World Report posted an article titled: “Eritrean US Detainee Kills Himself at Egyptian Airport” From the article: An Eritrean national who was denied asylum in the United States and was being sent back to his homeland has died in an apparent suicide in a holding area at Cairo International Airport, airport officials said in Saturday.Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion was a detainee of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was being held by Egyptian authorities at the airport, awaiting his return to Asmara, Eritrea, ICE said.Testfatsion, 34, was found dead on Wednesday in a shower area and his remains were taken to a hospital, ICE said……His remains will be transported to Eritrea, ICE said in a statement, adding that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and the ICE Office Professional Responsibility were notified……Court records show Testfatsion went to the U.S. seeking asylum “for fear of returning to his country.”Testfatsion was ordered deported on October 2017, and after he wasn’t deported within 90 days he petitioned to be released, arguing he should not be forced to stay in detention indefinitely because the Eritrean Consulate hadn’t taken action in his case.His petition, dated Jan. 30, said ICE was working on travel documents but had not been able to remove him because the Eritrean government views those who leave the country as traitors, making it virtually impossible for him to get necessary travel documents……During Testfatsion’s 16-month detention in the United States, he spent time at centers in Pampano Beach, Florida, and Youngstown, Ohio, court records show…. Huy Chi Tran June 16, 2018: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Officials” Vietnamese man in Arizona dies in ICE custody”, It was written by Bayan Wang. From the article: A Vietnamese man awaiting deportation died Tuesday while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Arizona, according to ICE officials.Huy Chi Tran, 47, obtained legal permanent residency into the U.S. in 1984. But a judge ordered his removal in 2004 from the U.S. based on a criminal conviction “stemming from charges related to aggravated assault,” ICE officials said in a statement Saturday.Tran is the seventh detainee to die in ICE custody in fiscal year 2018, which began Oct. 1, 2017, according to ICE.Following his release from an Arizona prison in May, Tran was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center on May 28, where he awaited deportation to Vietnam.On June 5, Tran “was found unresponsive in his residential unit,” officials said.He was transported to the Banner Casa Grande Medical enter where he was pronounced dead on Tuesday.ICE policy requires officials to notify the local Vietnam consulate of Tran’s death.An autopsy is pending to determine the official cause of death, officials said. January 6, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “22 immigrants died in ICE detention centers during the past 2 years”. It was written by Lisa Riordan Seville, Hannah Rappleye and Andrew W. Lehren. From the article: …Huy Chi Tran, 47, arrived from Vietnam in 1984 and became a legal permanent resident. ICE records show Tran also suffered from schizophrenia. After being convicted of assault, he was stripped of his green card and ordered deported in the mid-2000’s.Vietnamese immigrants like Tran who arrived before 1993 have been considered protected from deportation since 2008, when the U.S. and Vietnam signed a repatriation agreement. Over the last year, the Trump administration has moved to reverse those protections, detaining Vietnamese regardless of when they arrived amid a wider effort to deport immigrants whose countries would not previously take them back.ICE picked Tran up in May 2018 from an Arizona prison where he was serving time for disorderly conduct. He was slated to be deported before he died of a heart attack in June… Efraín Romero de la Rosa July 13, 2018: Albany Herald post an article titled: “Third Stewart detention facility detainee passes away”. It was written by Tessa Green. From the article: According to a news release from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Efrain De La Rosa, a Mexican national being held in the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, passed away this week. De la Rosa’s death marked the third death of a detainee at the Stewart detention facility and the second death this year.Authorities said De La Rosa was found unresponsive in his cell at 10:38 p.m., Tuesday, and medical personnel immediately began to perform CPR and contacted Stewart County Emergency Medical Services. He arrived at the facility at 10:48 p.m. and was pronounced dead at Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center in Cuthbert at 11:29 p.m……De La Rosa was 40 at the time of his death, and the preliminary cause of death appears to be self-inflicted strangulation… July 27, 2018: The Intercept posted an article titled: “ICE Detainee Diagnosed with Schizophrenia Spent 21 Days In Solitary Confinement, Then Took His Own Life”. It was written by José Olivares. From the article: Isaí Romero had no idea how to break the news to his parents that their son – his brother – had died. The elderly couple, nearly 2,000 miles away in Puebla, Mexico, had been anxiously waiting for their 40-year-old son, Efraín Romero de la Rosa, to be deported back home. Efraín was also looking forward to it.“His big hope was that – going to Mexico,” Isaí Romero, who lives in North Carolina, told The Intercept by phone. The deportation would be a relief compared to the limbo of immigration detention, where Efraín had landed after being placed in immigration removal proceedings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But Efraín never made it out of the ICE facility……Efraín Romero’s suicide came at the end of 21 days in solitary confinement, according to investigators.Romero had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to documents from the Virginia Department of Corrections. His death parallels a case from May 2017, when 27-year-old Jean Jimenez-Joseph, another Steward detainee with a mental health diagnosis, killed himself at the facility after 19 days of solitary confinement. The United Nations has previously said that such confinements could constitute torture and ICE itself has issued strict directives about isolating detainees, including specifically on segregating people with mental health conditions for extended periods……Efraín Romero entered ICE custody in March, after being arrested for larceny. He had been staying with his brother Isaí in North Carolina……The Stewart Detention Facility is managed by the private detention corporation CoreCivic under a contract from ICE. The facility is located on the remote outskirts of Lumpkin, Georgia, making visits from family, advocates, and lawyers a challenge. It has fallen under continued scrutiny for its internal operations, by both advocacy organizations and the U.S. government itself…According to a December 2017 report released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, Steward violated some of the standards, including when it came to the use of “segregation” – also known as solitary confinement. According to the report, staff did not always tell detainees why they were being placed in solitary confinement. Sometimes, the report notes, detainees were places in solitary “for violations of minor rules” without required written notification for reasons of lockdown. As The Intercept previously reported, detainees at Stewart have been punished with solitary confinement for refusing to perform voluntary labor……Why Efraín Romero was placed in solitary confinement during his time at Stewart remains unclear……ICE did not answer questions regarding Romero’s mental health, including whether the agency received his mental health diagnosis from the Virginia Department of Corrections. The Virginia Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment… Migrant Children Left In Vans for 39 Hours – Port Isabella Detention Center June 3, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “Botched family reunification left migrant children waiting in vans overnight”. It was written by David J. Phillip, and is about an incident that occurred in June of 2018. From the article: Under the blistering Texas sun last July, 37 migrant children boarded and for what was supposed to be a 30-minute ride. At the end of the road from Harlingen to Los Fresnos lay the promise of hugs, kisses, and long overdue reunification with their parents whom they were taken when the Trump administration began systematically separating migrant families who crossed the border illegally.But when the children, all between 5 and 12 years old, arrived at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s adults-only Port Isabel Detention Center, rather than seeing their parents, they saw a parking lot full of vans just like theirs, with children from other facilities who, just like them, were waiting to be processed and reunified with their parents.It was 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 15, 2018.Not until 39 hours later – after two nights in a van – did the last child step out of a van to be reunited. Most spent at least 23 hours in the vehicles……It is one of the little-known stories of the chaotic efforts to reunify children following the end of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. NBC News has obtained emails sent between employees of BCFS Health and Human Services, the government contractor and nonprofit organization responsible for transporting the children, who were frustrated by the lack of preparation by ICE, and senior leadership at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)……Despite two notifications from HHS that the children would be arriving, ICE officers kept to their regular schedule, clocking out for the day while the parking lot filled with children eager to see their parents again. There was no one present to greet the arriving children, and they were not equipped to process them in a parking lot, the BCFS official told NBC News, describing the scene as “hurried disarray.”As day turned to night, BCFS staff quickly realized the vans would not provide adequate shelter for children staying overnight. Additional vans were called in to allow children room to sleep as blankets and food collected from the HHS facility in Harlingen where the children had previously stayed. ICE told BCFS staff that if the children returned to Harlingen, they would be further delayed in seeing their parents. The children began to sleep in the vans.At 1:30 a.m. Sunday, 11 hours after arrival, the first child was reunified. By 6:40 p.m. Monday, just minutes before the sun rose, 17 children had been reunified. By 1:30 p.m. Monday, nearly 24 hours after they first pulled into the parking lot, 32 children were reunified. Not until 5:50 a.m. on Tuesday was the first child reunified.BCFS told NBC News other facilities were also not always prepared to take in children last summer, immediately following a court order to reunify the separated children. As a direct result of this incident, BCFS parked coach busses equipped with a bathroom, TV and air conditioning in the parking lot while reunifying children at Port Isabel, prepared for the worst… Mariee Juárez August 29, 2018: NBC News posted an article titled: “Guatemalan mom says inadequate medical care in ICE custody led to toddler’s death”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: A toddler who came across the border with her mother seeking asylum died after receiving inadequate medical care in ICE custody, according to lawyers for the woman.Yazmin Juárez came to the United States in March with her 18-month-old daughter Mariee. In May, the little girl died. The Guatemalan mother and her lawyers now plan to file several lawsuits alleging that negligence and inadequate medical care when they were held in detention led to the toddler’s death.Juárez, 20, filed a notice of claim Tuesday against the city of Eloy, Arizona, which is the primary contractor of the facility 900 miles away in Dilley, Texas, under an unusual arrangement between Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Eloy and CoreCivic, the private company that runs the facility……Juárez and Mariee were transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dilley on March 5, a few days after they crossed the border and requested asylum, according to a statement from the law firm. Mariee had no health problems at the time, according to the statement……At the detention facility, Mariee became sick with a severe respiratory infection that went “woefully under-treated for nearly a month,” according to the law firm. Juárez continually sought attention from medical staff but she was prescribed medications that did not improve the child’s condition and Mariee continued to get worse, according to a timeline provided by the law firm……Juárez took Mariee to see medical staff on March 11 and the little girl was diagnosed with an acute upper respiratory infection, according to the timeline. Over the next two weeks, Juarez brought Mariee back for treatment multiple times, with the little girl losing weight and suffering from high fevers, coughing, congestion, diarrhea and vomiting, according to the timeline……Juárez and her daughter passed the first step in their asylum claim and were released from ICE detention on March 25 and put in a plane to Juárez’s mother’s house, according to the timeline. Juárez took Mariee to the hospital the next day and the little girl remained hospitalized at different locations for six weeks before dying on May 10……[Benard] Dreyer,[a pediatrician and past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics] said Mariee’s records showed that when she hospitalized she had multilobar pneumonia, meaning the infection had spread to more than one lobe in her lungs.“That did not happen in 24 hours,” he said… November 27, 2018: NBC News posted an article titled: “Feds hit with $60 million claim over migrant infant who died after leaving detention center”. From the article: The mother of a toddler who died weeks after being released from the nation’s largest family detention center filed a legal claim seeking $60 million from the U.S. government for the child’s death.Attorneys for Yazmin Juárez submitted the claim against multiple agencies Tuesday. Juárez’s 1-year-old daughter, Mariee, died in May.Juárez’s lawyers said Mariee developed a respiratory illness while she an her mother were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. They accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of releasing the pair while Mariee was still sick.The girl died six weeks later in Philadelphia.Washington-based law firm Arnold & Porter said it will file a lawsuit if the government doesn’t settle its claim. R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer at the firm, said the government has six months to respond before his firm can file suit… July 31, 2019: PBS posted an article titled: “Private prison company sued in death of 1 year old migrant child”. From the article: A woman whose 1-year-old daughter died weeks after they were released from an immigration detention center in Texas filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the private prison company that operates the facility.Lawyers for Yazmin Juárez are demanding $40 million from CoreCivic in the complaint filed in federal court in San Antonio. It’s the third claim they have filed related to the death of Yazmin’s daughter, Mariee, in May last year.The deaths of children detained by border agents have drawn national attention as have the conditions in border facilities where in some cases dozens of children have been held together at a time. Yazmin Juárez testified on July 10 before a U.S. House panel as photos of Mariee were displayed on television screens. Some lawmakers wiped away tears as she spoke.CoreCivic operates the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement family detention center at Dilley, Texas, the largest facility of its kind. Juárez’s lawyers say CoreCivic allowed poor conditions to fester at the 2,400-bed facility……Mariee died in May 2018 after suffering a hemorrhage that led to irreversible brain and organ damage, six weeks after she and her mother were released from Dilley. Juárez contends that when they left Dilley, Mariee was dangerously sick and admitted to an emergency room one day later.According to Juárez’s lawyers, Mariee started to have symptoms of a respiratory illness several days after they were taken to Dilley. As her condition worsened – with a fever that hit 104.2 degrees Fahrenheit (40.1 degrees Celsius), then coughing and vomiting – her lawyers allege Dilley medical staff didn’t properly treat her, then wrongly cleared her to travel……Juárez’s lawyers have already filed a claim against ICE and other U.S. government agencies demanding $60 million as a precursor to a lawsuit. They have also filed a $40 million lawsuit against Eloy, Arizona, the city that previously had an agreement with ICE to serve as a “pass-through” for funding to Core Civic. Mergensana Amar October 10, 2018: Crosscut posted an article titled: “Asylum seeker at Tacoma jail goes 50 days without food.” It was written by Lilly Fowler. From the article: …One such individual currently sits at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma – without food now for 50 days.He is a man in his 30s from Buryatia, a Russian republic located in Siberia, just north of Mongolia, and known for its mountain ranges and punishing winters.He arrived in the United States to seek asylum last December. He turned himself in at San Isidro, a border crossing that sits between Tijuana and San Diego, only to land in the Tacoma detention center a few weeks later. He is refusing to eat in protest of his detention and possible deportation. If forced to return home, he fears he would lose his life.Sitting behind glass in a gray sweatshirt underneath a dark blue prison shirt on Sunday, the detainee looked gaunt and pale. He asked to remain anonymous for fear of persecution and retaliation from the Russian government though his act of defiance demands attention. He has been participating in a hunger strike for what was then 47 days – one of the longest anger strikes in the recent history of the Tacoma detention center.…”The Court finds that there is sufficient cause to believe the without the requested medical testing and treatment” he is “in danger of irreparable injury, and possible death,” according to the court order.The order specifies that medical staff at the detention center have permission to administer fluids intravenously and to perform certain laboratory tests that check for vital signs……According to inmates and Grace Meng, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, GEO guards have taken liberties with the forced hydration order and even retaliated against the Buryatia native, as well as others who were recently on a hunger strike to protest conditions at the detention center……When he refused laboratory tests, such as urinalysis, “heavily armored people, with helmets and shields, came and surrounded him, and told him if he doesn’t resume eating voluntarily, they will force-feed him through a tube.” Meng said they then pointed to the court order as if it provided them with the authority to do so, despite the fact that the court order does not allow for force-feeding.Attempting to determine whether the detainee had become suicidal, Meng asked, “Do you want to die?”“It won’t be intentional, but that’s the whole point, it’s my protest,” she recalled him saying in response. “My goal is to deteriorate, to lose more weight, to get sick.”“I will never go back,” the detainee told Meng. “What is waiting for me is jail. They already have accused me of treason. It’s punishable by firing squad… I would prefer to die on this soil than go back to Russia.”… December 29, 2018: The Guardian posted an article titled: “The immigrants who have died in US custody in 2018”. It was written by Erin Durkin. From the article: Mergensana Amar, a 40-year-old Russian national, died in November when he was removed from life support 11 days after trying to kill himself in his cell at the Northwest Detention Center. Amar tried to hang himself after being removed from a brief suicide watch that began when guards found a rope under his bed, according to the Washington Post. Amar had participated in a hunger strike; he died win the same month he was scheduled to be deported. “I would prefer to die on this soil rather than go back to Russia,” he told a Human Rights Watch researcher, according to a report on the news site Crosscut. I put the piece of The Guardian article in here to show that the anonymous man in the Crosscut article is Mergensana Amar. November 29, 2018: Seattle Times posted an article titled: “Medical examiner says Russian detainee in Tacoma died after suicide attempt, not from hunger strike”. It was written by Paul Roberts. From the article: Mergensana Amar had been in ICE custody for almost a year, during which his asylum claim was denied by a court. He was scheduled for deportation this month.The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the death of a Russian detainee Saturday was the result of an earlier suicide attempt, and wasn’t related to an extended hunger strike as claimed by an immigrant-rights group.The cause of 40-year-old Mergensana Amar’s death was “anoxic encephalopathy,” or lack of oxygen to the brain, due to hanging, investigator Ryann Sale said Monday.The medical examiner’s investigation results back up an account offered earlier Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)……Amar was taken to the hospital Nov. 15 after being found unconscious in his cell at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, ICE said. The agency’s medical staff had tried to resuscitate him again after calling 911. He was admitted to the intensive-care uint, where he remained on life support until Saturday, six days after his brain activity stopped.Amar was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m., Saturday, according to the medical examiner……Before Nov. 15, Amar was in “good physical health” and had been monitored daily by ICE medical staff, the agency said… Jakelin Caal Maquin December 14, 2018: The Guardian posted an article titled: “Guatemalan migrant girl, seven, dies in US border patrol custody”. It was written by Amanda Holpuch. From the article: A seven-year-old girl who crossed a remote part of the US-Mexico border with her father last week died less than two days after being apprehended by the US border patrol in New Mexico, immigration officials have said.The girl vomited and stopped breathing in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before being transferred to a hospital, where she suffered brain swelling and cardiac arrest, according to CBP.The CBP commissioner, Kevin McAleen, identified the girl as Jakelin Caal Maquin……The girl and her father, both from Guatemala, were traveling in a group of 163 people, including 50 children who were traveling without a parent, when they were apprehended around 9:15pm on 6 December……They were held in a small facility near the border before being transferred by bus to a border patrol station 95 miles away. At that facility, officials said, people had access to food, water and restrooms.On the bus, just before 5am, the father told agents his child was sick and vomiting, then personnel at their destination were notified about the medical situation, officials said. Once they arrived, about an hour later, the father told agents that his child was not breathing. Emergency medical technicians revived her twice before she was taken by air ambulance to a children’s hospital in Texas.Officials said later that morning Jakelin went into cardiac arrest, showed signs of brain swelling in a scan, was breathing by machine and had liver failure.She died at 12:35am on Saturday with her father on the scene, officials said… March 30, 2019: NPR posted an article titled: Autopsy for 7-Year-Old Migrant Who Died in U.S. Custody Shows She Died of Sepsis”. It was written by Shannon Van Sant. From the article: An autopsy report has revealed that a 7-year-old girl who migrated to the United States from Guatemala died from a bacterial infection known as streptococcal sepsis while in custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.Jakelin Caal Maquin had traveled to the U.S. with her father 2,000 miles from northern Guatemala. She died in December, two days after they were detained by border officials. By the time Jakelin was transported to a children’s hospital in El Paso, Texas, she was vomiting, having seizures and had difficulty breathing.The medical examiner’s office in El Paso released its autopsy report on Friday showing that streptococcus bacteria was found in the girl’s lungs, adrenal gland, liver and spleen. The report says the infection led to the failure of multiple organs……According to The New York Times, several physicians who reviewed the autopsy report said Jakelin “would have been visibly sick for many hours.” Felipe Alonzo Gomez December 26, 2018: CBS News posted an article titled: “Timeline shows final days of Felipe Alonzo Gomez, the migrant boy who died in U.S. custody”. It was written by Camilo Montoya-Galvez. From the article: For a second time in a month, a migrant child died in U.S. custody after being detained near the southern border by immigration authorities. Felipe Alonzo Gomez, an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala, died in a New Mexico hospital late on Christmas Eve……CBP released a timeline of the events it says ensued after Felipe and his father, Augstin Gomez, were detained near El Paso on Dec. 18. Before dying on Monday night, Felipe spent a week in America… I’m going to summarize the timeline posted by CBS News. Between December 18, 2018, and December 23, 2018, Felipe and his father were transferred from El Paso to the Paso del Norte point of entry, then (two days later) to a Border Patrol station in El Paso. On December 22, late at night, they were transferred to the Border Patrol station at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Felipe and his father arrived at that station early on December 23, 2018. On December 24, 2018, early in the morning, CPB filed a placement request for Felipe and his father to ICE’s family planning inbox. Here’s what happened next: Later in the morning at 9:00 a.m., a CBP agent noticed Felipe was coughing and appeared to have “glossy eyes.” Thirty minutes later, the Guatemalan boy was transferred to Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo, alongside his father. Hospital staff conducted several strep throat tests on Felipe, but diagnosed him with a common cold and gave him Tylenol to treat pain and fever, CBP said.Felipe remained in the hospital for further observation after he was found to have a 103 degree fever. he was released, however, late in the afternoon and prescribed antibiotics. CBP transported the 8-year-old and his father to a Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 70, where agents gave them a hot meal and provided Felipe a dose of the prescribed medication.During the evening, Felipe experienced nausea and vomiting. CBP said Felipe’s father declined further medical attention because his son was feeling better. Late at night, around 10:00 p.m., CBP said Felipe again appeared nauseous and “lethargic.” Because there was no EMT present, agents decided to transport Felipe and his father to the same hospital in Alamogordo.On the ride to the hospital, Felipe vomited and lost consciousness. Felipe, his father, and a CBP agent arrived at the hospital a little after 11 p.m. CBP said hospital staff were unable to revive Felipe, who was pronounced dead at 11:48. p.m. December 27, 2018: NBC News posted an article titled: “Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody had the flu, medical investigator says”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator said Thursday that an 8-year-old boy who died in U.S. custody on Christmas Eve tested positive for influenza B.The medical investigator’s office cautioned in a statement that the cause of death for Felipe Gómez Alonzo, who died minutes before midnight on Dec. 24, was still under investigation, but it was determined that he had been suffering from the flu.“Results of nasals and lung swabs have tested positive for influenza B,” the office said. “While this result indicates that the child had influenza, determining an accurate cause of death requires further evaluation of other laboratory specimens and interpreting the findings in the context of the symptoms and autopsy findings.”The announcement came as pediatricians were raising questions about the medical care given to Felipe, who was apprehended at the border Dec. 18 with his father… April 4, 2019: ABC News posted an article titled: “Autopsies show deaths of children at border were caused by bacterial infections”. It was written by Anne Flaherty. From the article: Bacterial infections were to blame for the deaths of two migrant children in U.S. custody last December, according to newly released autopsy reports……The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator said Felipe died of complications from the influenza B infection which damaged his lungs, “allowing a generalized infection.”…[Julie] Linton [of the American Academy of Pediatrics], who has not reviewed the his autopsy report, said the signed of sepsis in a child can be easily missed by someone not trained to treat children. The dangers of bacterial infections and the flu in young children also underscores why AAP recommended two years ago that migrant children are kept in a child-friendly setting with an attentive caregiver and rapid access to medical treatment.Linton said a concrete floor in a border facility wouldn’t count..“Every hour of delayed treatment dramatically increases the chances of death of sepsis,” she said… Mexican Man – Name Unreleased February 18, 2019: CNN posted an article titled: Man dies in Border Patrol custody”. It was written by Geneva Sands. From the article: A 45-year-old Mexican man who was taken into custody by border patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas earlier this month died Monday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.CBP says the man was detained on February 2, after crossing the border illegally. He initially asked for medical attention from the Roma Police Department. He was transported to the regional medical center and then cleared to travel to the Rio Grande City Border Patrol Station.The next day, he again sought medical attention and was transferred to McAllen Medical Center in McAllen, Texas, where he died earlier today.The man was initially diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and congestive heart failure, though the official cause of death is not known, according to CBP. He remained at McAllen Medical Center until his death.CBP did not provide additional details such as the man’s name… February 19, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “Detained Mexican migrant dies in Texas hospital”. From the article: A Mexican man detained by Border Patrol for illegal re-entry died Monday at a hospital in Texas.The 45-year-old man, who was not immediately identified, was initially apprehended Feb. 2 by police in the Texas border community of Roma and requested medical attention, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Andrew Meehan said in a statement. He was taken to a medical center in McAllen and later cleared to return to the Rio Grande City Border Patrol Station.The next day, he requested medical attention again and was taken to the hospital where he stayed until he died Monday.Meehan said the official cause of death is not yet known, but the medical center diagnosed him with cirrhosis of the liver and congestive heart failure when he was admitted. The death is under investigation… Honduran Woman in custody has stillborn baby February 25, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “Honduran woman in immigration custody gives birth to premature, stillborn baby”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: A Honduran woman delivered a stillborn baby boy at an immigration detention center in Texas after going into premature labor last week, authorities said.The woman, 24, was about six months pregnant when she was apprehended by Border Patrol early Feb. 18 near Hidalgo, Texas, according to a joint statement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Both agencies are a part of the Department of Homeland Security……On Tuesday, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called for an investigation into the incident……While the woman was in Border Patrol Custody, she was taken to a hospital and cleared for release on Thursday after receiving two medical screenings, according to the statement. She was then transferred to ICE custody at the Port Isabel Detention Center on Friday afternoon to be processed for release, the statement said.That night, the woman “began complaining of abdominal discomfort” and was examined by ICE’s Health Service Corps, according to the statement. A clinical director was called and ordered that the woman be sent to a hospital and Emergency Medical Services wee called, according to the statement.“At that time, she conveyed that the baby was coming,” the statement said. “She went into premature labor, at 27 weeks pregnant, and delivered an unresponsive male infant.”They were taken to a local hospital where the baby was pronounced dead, the statement said. The woman remains in ICE custody pending medical clearance, according to the statement. Rene Pablo Perez Gordillo March 30, 2019: HuffPost posted an article titled: Migrant Dies In Border Patrol Custody, The Fourth Death In 4 Months”. It was written by Nina Golgowski. From the article: Authorities said a 40-year-old Mexican man died in U.S. Border Patrol custody at a Texas hospital on Monday, making it the fourth death in as many months. The man was treated at the Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso after medical staff diagnosed him with flu-like symptoms, liver failure, and renal failure. He died later that day, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.Telemundo has identified the man as Rene Pablo Perez Gordillo of Maltrata, Veracruz, citing the Consulate General of Mexico.According to the CBP, the migrant had twice crossed the border illegally just 24 hours earlier. During his second detainment, medical professional at the Border Patrol’s processing facility evaluated him near El Paso’s Paso Del Norte Point of Entry and then transported him to the medical center… NOTE: This man is not the 45-year-old Mexican migrant in Border Patrol custody who died at another Texas hospital after staff diagnosed him with cirrhosis of the liver and congestive health failure. Abel Reyes-Clemente April 5, 2019: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Fourth person in six months dies in ICE immigration detention center.” It was written by Rebekah L. Sanders. From the article: A 54-year-old Mexican man held in a detention center by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement died Wednesday after showing signs of the flu, the federal agency said.Abel Reyes-Clemente is the fourth person to die in ICE custody since Oct. 1, officials said. Two children held by the Border Patrol began vomiting and died in December. Lawsuits have alleged poor hygiene and medical care at detention centers……Reyes-Clemente was detained at a Florence immigration center on Feb. 26 after serving time at a Maricopa County jail for a misdemeanor conviction of driving under the influence, officials said. He had been deported five times before, most recently in 2008, the agency said. Reyes-Clemente became sick and was “placed into medical observation” on April 1, ICE said. Two days later, facility personnel found him around 6 a.m., unresponsive and not breathing.Medical staffers at the detention center and local paramedics who responded failed to revive Reyes-Clemente, the agency said. Doctors at Mountain Vista Medical Center declared him dead at 6:33 a.m……An autopsy to determine the cause of death is pending. June 9, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration”. It was written by Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan Seville. From the article: …When 54-year-old Abel Reyes-Clemente died in a cell in Arizona in early April, an ICE press release pointed to complications from the flu. But the Pinal County Medical Examiner found he died from complications from cirrhosis, diabetes, and heart disease, also noting he had tested positive for bacterial pneumonia… Juan de Léon Gutiérrez May 1, 2019: BuzzFeed News posted an article titled: “A 16-Year-Old Unaccompanied Immigrant Boy Has Died In US Government Custody”. It was written by Hamed Aleaziz and Adolfo Flores. The article was updated on May 3, 2019. From the article: A 16-year-old unaccompanied Guatemalan boy died in government custody in Texas on Tuesday, officials said.Juan de Léon Gutiérrez is the third child to die in government custody since December, when a 7-year-old girl died hours after being taken into Border Patrol custody……The government contracts with private and nonprofit shelters to hold unaccompanied migrant children until a family member can pick them up. In this case, on April 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials brought Gutiérrez to the ORR shelter in Brownsville, Texas, Southwest Key Casa Padre. The migrant youth shelter, run out of a former Walmart, houses about 1,200 boys and girls.US Customs and Border Protection clinicians did not notice any health concerns and Gutiérrez did not mention any when brought to the shelter, said Evelyn Stauffer, a Health and Human Services spokesperson. The next morning, however, Guitérrez became “noticeably ill,” including having a fever, chills and a headache, she added.Workers at Southwest Key Casa Padre brought Gutiérrez to a hospital that morning on April 21, where he was treated and released that day and brought back to the shelter, Stauffer said.“The minor’s health did not improve after being transferred back to the shelter so on the morning of April 22, 2019, the minor was taken to another hospital emergency department via ambulance,” she said. “Later that day, the minor was transferred to a children’s hospital in Texas and was treated for several days in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Following several days of intensive care, the minor passed away at the hospital on April 30, 2019.”The cause of death has yet to be determined as the ORR investigates the case. A person with knowledge of the 16-year-old’s case said Guitérrez made the journey, at least in part, because he wanted to seek medical treatment related to headaches. The unaccompanied minor was sent to the hospital after going through an initial screening at Casa Padre.The Guatemalan consulate said Guitérrez was admitted with a severe infection in his frontal lobe at a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. After a surgery to stabilize the pressure in his head, the minor was put in intensive care before he died April 30… May 9, 2019: Yahoo! News posted an article titled: “US won’t answer new questions about migrant teen’s death”. It was written by Nomaan Merchant and Sonia Pérez D. From the article: Juan De Léon Gutiérrez told his mother he was calling from warehouse in Mexico, hidden by a human smuggler who had been paid to take the teenager to the United States.“He told me he had something of a headache, perhaps because he was hungry and had not been able to sleep,” said his mother, Tránsito Guitérrez de Léon.The 16-year-old died on April 30 after officials at a Texas rough detention facility noticed he was sick, becoming the third Guatemalan child to die in U.S. custody since December……Almost a week after the teenagers’s death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has not said why he was first taken to the hospital and released, only to return one day later. Evelyn Stauffer, an HHS spokeswoman, declined to provide more information Wednesday.Juan had a rare condition known as Pott’s puffy tumor, according to the Nueces County medical examiner in Corpus Christi, citing information from a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi, where he was in intensive care for several days before his death.Despite the name, the condition is not the same as a cancerous tumor. The name refers to the swelling that occurs on a patient’s forehead caused by an infection in the frontal bone. The condition is rare, and while usually treatable with antibiotics, it can require surgery……Dr. Mobeen Rathore, a pediatrician based in Jacksonville, Florida, and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Juan’s death was further evidence that detaining immigrant children was a health risk under any circumstances.“If a child was in a home and not in a detention center with 1,400 kids… there would be more attention paid to this, whether by a parent of a guardian or whoever,” Rathore said… July 24, 2019: Texas Monthly posted an article titled: “Autopsy Offers Jarring New Details About the Death of a 16-Year-Old Guatemalan Boy”. It was written by Robert Moore. From the article: …Juan DeLeon Gutierrez, 16, died April 30 in Corpus Christi. He crossed the border in the El Paso area April 19 without parents or guardian. He fell ill at an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Brownsville and was treated for several days at a Corpus Christi hospital before he died. The Nieces County medical examiner said no autopsy was preformed because Guiterrez was not in custody at the time of his death and died of natural causes… Simratpal Singh May 6, 2019: Tucson Sentinel posted an article titled: “Indian national dies in ICE custody after posting bond with La Paz County Sheriff”. It was written by Paul Ingram. From the article: An Indian man being held in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a county jail, died at a hospital in Parker, Ariz., on Friday morning.Simratpal Singh, 21, was found “unresponsive and not breathing,” by personnel with the La Paz County Sherriff’s Office in Parker, Ariz., about 230 miles northwest of Tuscon.Singh had been charged with assault and sexual assault, and he had posted bond, however, rather than being released, he was transferred to ICE custody, officials said. While waiting for a transfer to an immigration facility on Thursday, Singh was found by jail staff, who called local paramedics……An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of death, officials said……The Indian consulate has been advised of Singh’s death, ICE said. May 7, 2019: Voice Of America posted an article titled: “Indian Man Dies in US Immigration Custody”. It was written by Victoria Macchi. From the article: An Indian man in U.S. immigration custody died in an Arizona jail last week, federal officials announced late Monday.Simratpal Singh, 21, was found unresponsive on May 2, at La Paz (Arizona) County Jail, where he was awaiting transfer to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, the agency said in a statement.Medics transported him by ambulance to a local hospital, then by helicopter to a second facility, where personnel declared him dead shortly before 2 a.m. on May 3……An autopsy is pending to determine the official cause of death, according to ICE.Singh is the fifth detainee to die in ICE custody in fiscal year 2019. The agency sees about 10 deaths in its custody every year……The medical treatment of people held by ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection is under heightened scrutiny as the Trump administration continues a series of policy decisions designed to limit immigration while responding to an increased number of families arriving at the southwest border.Immigrant advocates question the speed and quality of care that those in custody are receiving… May 10, 2019: Arizona Central posted an article titled: “Medical examiner: Indian national died by suicide in Arizona jail while in ICE custody”. It was written by Daniel Gonzalez. From the article: The Indian national who died in an Arizona jail while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement died by suicide by hanging himself, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner……The Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner listed suicide as the manner of death and hanging as the primary cause of death on its website. Autopsy results have not yet been released… Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez May 16, 2019: HuffPost posted an article titled: “Guatemalan Toddler Apprehended At U.S. Border Dies in Hospital”. It was written by Nina Golgowski. From the article: A Guatemalan toddler apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border has died after several weeks in a Texas hospital – the fourth death of a migrant child since December.The 2 1/2-year-old boy died on Tuesday night in El Paso, Texas, The Washington Post first reported.The Guatemalan Consulate in Houston later confirmed the boy’s death in a release, stating that he is believed to have died from complications from pneumonia.The boy, whose identity wasn’t revealed by authorities, was apprehended with his mother on April 3, near the Paso Del Norte Bridge, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told HuffPost in an email. That bridge spans the Rio Grande, connecting El Paso with the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.The day after their capture, the boy’s mother reported him as sick, authorities said. He was transported to a hospital in Horizon City, and later to a children’s hospital in El Paso. His mother was released from custody on April 8, CBP said.“At that point, the family was no longer in [Border Patrol] custody,” CBP said……The boy is at least the sixth migrant to die after crossing the border since December. Four of those deaths were children, all from Guatemala, which is gripped by a hunger crisis… May 21, 2019: BuzzFeed News posted an article titled: “A 2-Year-Old Boy Detained At The Border Had Died After Weeks In The Hospital”. It was written by Adolfo Flores. From the article: A 2-year-old boy from Guatemala who was detained by US agents at the border died Tuesday night after being hospitalized for weeks in Texas, Guatemalan Consulate officials said.Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez is the fourth Guatemalan child to die after being apprehended at the US-Mexico border since December. The death, first reported by the Washington Post, comes amid a growing number of migrants, many of them Central American parents with children, who are presenting themselves at the border to request asylum……Guatemalan General Consul Tekandi Paniagua told BuzzFeed News that Ramírez was hospitalized for about a month and appeared to have pneumonia. US Customs and Border Protection officials did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official familiar with the case told BuzzFeed News that the mother and child were apprehended by Border Patrol agents April 3 near the Paso del Norte International Bridge that links Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso Texas.On April 6, the mother told agents that Ramírez was sick and was taken to the Providence at Horizon hospital, in Horizon City, Texas. The next day, he was transferred via ambulance to Providence Children’s Hospital in El Paso, Texas.The family was given a notice to appear in immigration court on April 8 and released on their own reconnaissance at the El Paso hospital. At that point, the family was no longer in Border Patrol custody, the official said…… The bridge was the site of a temporary detention facility in March where Border Patrol detained migrants outdoors behind a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Families held there said they experienced cold and windy nights sleeping on gravel. Other makeshift sites operated by Border Patrol have continued to spring up to contend with the surge of migrants at the border… July 24, 2019: Texas Monthly posted an article titled: “Autopsy Offers Jarring New Details About the Death of a 16-Year-Old Guatemalan Boy”. It was written by Robert Moore. From the article: …Wilmer Josue Ramierz Vasquez, 2 1/2, died May 14 after several weeks in an El Paso hospital. He crossed with his mother in El Paso on April 3. Wilmer died of “multiple intestinal and respiratory infectious diseases,” including influenza A, according to an autopsy report. Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez May 20, 2019: The Texas Tribune posted an article titled: “Guatemalan migrant dies after being apprehended at the Texas-Mexico border”. It was written by Julián Aguliar. From the article: A Central American migrant has died while in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley, the agency said in an news release Monday.The Guatemalan teenager, who hasn’t been identified, was processed by agents May 13 and was set to be transferred to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the treatment of immigrant minors in federal custody. He was found unresponsive Monday morning at the Border Patrol station in Weslaco……A cause of death is unknown, CBP added. The agency said its inspector general, members of Congress and the Guatemalan government have been notified of the teenager’s death… May 20, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “16-year-old migrant boy dies in U.S. custody, 5th child to die since December”. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: A 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who died Monday in immigration custody in south Texas was diagnosed with the flu a day before, a Customs and Border Protection official said. The teenager is the fifth migrant child to die in U.S. custody since December.Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez was found unresponsive Monday morning during a welfare check at Weslaco Border Patrol Station, a CBP official familiar with the case said in a Monday afternoon teleconference.He had been transferred to the station Sunday from the Rio Grande Valley Sector’s Central Processing Center, the official said. Early Sunday, Carlos told staff at the processing center that he was not feeling well and a nurse practitioner assessed him and determined he had influenza A, the official said. Carlos was prescribed the medicine Tamiflu for treatment, which Border Patrol agents picked up from a local pharmacy, the official said.The official said Carlos continued to receive care at the processing through the day and was transferred midday to the Weslaco station, where he was to be segregated from much of the other migrant population due to his illness. At the station, he was again medically assessed and his medications was turned over to the medical professionals there, the official said.The next morning, Carlos was found unresponsive in one of the station’s short-term holding rooms about an hour after his previous welfare check, the official said. Medical staff were unable to treat him or save his life, the official said. He had been in the border patrol station for about 17-18 hours at the time.When asked why the boy was not taken to a hospital for treatment, the official said such a decision was up to the medical care providers at their facilities. The official added that he while they did not have the individual specifics on the symptoms, Carlos was exhibiting at the time, the official suspected it was one of the matters that would be reviewed in the investigation… May 22, 2019: Houston Chronicle posted an article titled: “Texas migrant detention center quarantined amid flu outbreak after 16-year-old dies.” It was written by Meagan Flynn. From the article: U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stopped taking detainees at its main processing center in McAllen, Texas, after identifying “a large number” of migrants suffering from flu like symptoms, the agency announced late Tuesday. The move comes one day after a teenage migrant who had been held at the facility died after being diagnosed with the flu……Medical staff as the center identified migrants in custody with high fevers and exhibiting “signs of a flu-related illness,” and they are now receiving medical treatment, CBP said.A spokesman in the Rio Grande Valley Sector did not say how many migrants were affected by the illness. The McAllen processing center, a crowded warehouselike building where detainees are being held behind fencing and sleep on mats, is among the busiest facilities along the southern border… July 24, 2019: Texas Monthly posted an article titled: “Autopsy Offers Jarring New Details About the Death of a 16-Year-Old Guatemalan Boy”. It was written by Robert Moore. From the article: After a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy died in Border Patrol custody in May, officials gave a basic account of what happened. Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez crossed the border alone near Weslaco on May 13, and was then held at a processing center for unaccompanied minors in nearby McAllen for six days until falling ill on May 19. That day, a nurse practitioner found that he had a 103-degree fever, and he tested positive for the flu. He was prescribed Tamiflu and transferred to the Border Patrol station at Weslaco. Hernandez died the next morning.Now an autopsy report obtained by Texas Monthly provides new details about the death of Hernandez, the fifth Guatemalan child to die since December after being taken into Border Patrol custody. Conducted by Dr. Norma Jean Farley, a contract forensic pathologist for Hidalgo County, the autopsy concludes that Hernandez succumbed to the flu, complicated by pneumonia and sepsis, on or near the toilet of his South Texas Border Patrol cell.He was fed a 2 a.m., May 20, and agents reportedly checked on him every hour, according to the autopsy. But some time later, in a video that Farley apparently reviewed, Hernandez “is seen lying on the floor, vomiting on the floor, and walks over to the commode, where he sits and later lies back and expires.”The exact time of Hernandez’s collapse isn’t known because, as the report notes without explanation, “the time on the video is incorrect.” Regardless, the boy was found at 6 a.m. that same morning, and declared dead twelve minutes later.The circumstances of Hernandez’s death strengthen the criticism of Border Patrol’s handling of sick children. The agency is required to transfer unaccompanied children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours, but officials have acknowledged repeatedly failing to meet that requirement this year, including in Hernandez’s case. Hernandez was also never taken to a hospital despite the apparent seriousness of his illness and the fact that the flu has claimed the lives of two other Guatemalan children in Border Patrol custody in the last six months… Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle May 24, 2019: Refinery 29 posted an article titled: “The 10-Year-Old Migrant Girl Who Died in U.S. Custody Has Been Identified”. It was written by Andrea González-Ramriez. From the article: The 10-year-old migrant girl from El Salvador who died in federal custody last September has been identified as Daryln Valle. According to CBS News, Darlyn planned to make the journey from El Salvador to Omaha, NE, to reunite with her mother. But she was apprehended by Border Patrol halfway through, in Texas, in March 2018.Darlyn, who had a history of congenital heart defects, was placed in an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facility in Texas. She underwent a surgical procedure and complications left her in a coma, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Mark Weber. (HHS oversees ORR). Daryln was only brought to Omaha three days before her death, so she could spend her final moments with her mother. She passed due to fever and respiratory distress.Her death was only disclosed to the public this week. Darlyn is one of six migrant children, all from Central America, who have died after being detained by the U.S. government over the past eight months. Before this period, no migrant child had died while in federal custody since 2010… May 25, 2019: CNN posted an article titled: “Mother of 10-year-old who died in US custody says daughter was born with a heart murmur”. It was written by Rosa Flores and Madeline Holcombe. From the article: …The girl’s mother, who asked CNN not to reveal her identity, said her daughter was born with a heart murmur. Doctors told her the girl would need surgery later……Darlyn died in September of last year, but her death was not announced until Thursday. Hers is one of six recent deaths of migrant children while in custody of federal authorities after journeying to the US……The girl traveled with acquaintances by car for four days from El Salvador to the border, her mother said.According to a CBP official, Daryln was encountered by Border Patrol on March 1, 2018, about nine miles west of Hidalgo, Texas. The next morning, Darlyn received a welfare check and a meal. When she complained about chest pains she was sent to the hospital. She was transferred to HHS custody on March 4. According to HHS spokesperson Mark Weber, Darlyn was in a medically fragile state and was transported to various facilities for treatment, including in San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. He said the child had surgery complications that had left her in a comatose state. She was transported to a nursing facility in Phoenix and later transported to Children’s Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, where she died due to fever and respiratory distress on September 29, according to Weber… Yimi Alexis Balderramos-Torres June 1, 2019: BuzzFeed News posted an article titled: “A 30-Year-Old Father Died After Being Detained For Weeks By ICE”. It was written by Hamed Aleaziz. From the article: A 30-year-old Honduran man who had previously been forced wait in Mexico while his asylum case was processed in the US died Sunday, weeks after being taken into federal immigration custody, officials said.The death of Yimi Alexis Balderramos-Torres, first reported by BuzzFeed News on Monday morning, is the sixth in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since October. Hours after the report, congressional staffers were informed by ICE officials of the man’s death. Six hours after the initial BuzzFeed News report, ICE officials confirmed the death in a press release.Baldeáramos-Torres had previously been apprehended by immigration officials in El Paso, Texas, on May 17, according to a statement released by ICE. The man was accompanied by his son when he was encountered by Border Patrol on May 17, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.Baldeáramos-Torres had been sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration program that requires Central American immigrants to wait outside the US as their asylum cases make their way through the immigration courts. More than 15,000 individuals have been sent back to Mexico through the program, according to statistics released by the Mexican government……On May 27, Balderramos-Torres again crossed the border without authorization and was picked up by local police in the US during a traffic stop. He was placed in ICE custody on June 6, according to the authorities. Because he had previously been arrested by Border Patrol and deported in 2013, ICE officials “reinstated” his previous deportation order and kept him in custody pending his future removal to Honduras, they said.Nearly two weeks later, on June 18, he was transferred to the Houston Contract Detention Facility in Houston.On June 30, Balderramos-Torres was found “unresponsive,” and medical officials at the facility were unable to revive him. He was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead Sunday morning. A cause of death is pending as officials conduct an autopsy… Unnamed El Salvadoran Man June 3, 2019: KVEO.com posted an article titled: “Salvadorian Man Dies in Border Patrol Custody”. It was written by Marlane Rodriguez. From the article: U.S Customs and Border Protection released the following statement:According to initial reports, U.S. Border Patrol agents from Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended a man near the border in Roma, Texas, at 12:10 p.m., CDT. Shortly after taking him into custody, agents called Emergency Medical Services after they observed signs that the man was suffering from an apparent seizure at 12:22 p.m. An EMT-certified Border Patrol Agent quickly initiated medical care until EMS arrived at 12:29 p.m. EMS continued emergency care and transported him to a local hospital at 12:45 p.m. Despite all efforts to save the 33-year-old man’s life, hospital authorities pronounced him deceased. At this time, CBP is not releasing the identity of the individual until confirmation that the man’s loved ones have been notified….…The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and the Government of El Salvador have been notified… Johana Medina León June 3, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “Transgender asylum-seeker dies after six weeks in ICE custody”. It was written by Ben Kesslen. From the article: A transgender woman from El Salvador seeking asylum in the United States died Saturday in a Texas hospital four days after being released from custody, officials and advocates said.Johana Medina Leon, 25, complained of chest pains and was brought to Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. That same day, ICE said she was processed for release on parole. Leon died on the first day of pride month……Leon, who was known to friends as Joe, had been detained in the U.S. since mid-April. On May 18, she received a positive credible fear finding, ICE said. Advocates told NBC News that she was seeking asylum in the U.S. as a transgender woman.Leon was being held at Otero County Processing Center, a private detention center in New Mexico where the ACLU and the Santa Fe Dreamer Project recently alleged poor treatment and of “unconscionable conditions” for LGBTQ immigrants. In a letter sent to Ice, the groups said “ICE practices at Otero have created an unsafe environment” for the LGBTQ detainees there.Leon fell ill while in ICE custody, when she also tested positive for HIV… June 9, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration”. It was written by Hannah Rappleye and Lisi Riordan Seville. From the article: …The cause of death for Medina Leon, the asylum seeker who died on June 1, remains unclear. Like Roxsana Hernandez, a transgender woman who died in ICE custody last summer, Medina Leon was diagnosed with HIV while she was detained……ICE sent Medina Leon to the hospital. The same day she went to the hospital, ICE paroled her, meaning released her from custody. As a result, the agency is not required to issue a press release about her death, nor conduct a death review. The El Paso Medical Examiner told NBC News that it will not conduct an autopsy, which is required for all in-custody deaths. June 12, 2019: The Guardian posted an article titled: “Trans woman who died after illness in US Custody had asked to be deported, family says”. It was written by Sam Levin. From the article: A transgender woman who died after becoming sick in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody asked to be deported after she was repeatedly denied medical care, attorneys said on Wednesday.The family of Johana Medina León, a 25-year-old asylum seeker from El Salvador who died this month, filed a civil rights claim against the US government this week, alleging that officials ignored her numerous requests for treatment as her health “rapidly deteriorated”.Medina León, who worked as a nurse in El Salvador, recognized that she needed IV fluids, but was denied. When she asked for water, sugar and salt so she could make her own IV, Ice also refused, the claim said. The treatment in Ice custody was so bad that Medina León, who was fleeing violence in her home country, requested to be deported so she could get medical attention, lawyers said. That request was also denied……Christopher Dolan, an attorney who filed the claim, added: “She was desperate, because the government would not provider her with assistance of any kind for her medical needs.”The death of Medina León, who was detained for more than a month despite following official procedures for seeking asylum and passing her first interview, comes at a time of escalating concerns about human rights violations in US immigration facilities. Queer and trans migrants are particularly vulnerable, suffering disproportionate rates of physical and sexual abuse behind bars and often being forced into solitary confinement……Medina León was threatened with physical violence because she is a trans woman and fled El Salvador in December 2018, lawyers said. She was granted a humanitarian visa in Mexico and then presented herself to US authorities to request asylum……She was subsequently detained in El Paso, Texas, in April and transferred to the Otero county processing center in New Mexico. Like other trans women at the privately run detention center, she was housed with men.On 18 May, authorities determined she had “credible fear” of persecution if forced to return o El Salvador, but Ice continued to detain her. She eventually became unconscious and was taken to a Texas hospital, her attorneys said. That same day, she was released on parole.Dolan, a San Francisco-based lawyer, accused Ice of finally releasing her when she became seriously ill in an effort to “absolve themselves of responsibility”…On 1 June, [her family] learned she had died of pneumonia… Óscar Alberto Martínez and his daughter Valeria June 26, 2019: NBC News posted an article titled: “Family of Salvadoran migrant dad, child who drowned say he ‘loved his daughter so much’. It was written by Daniella Silva. From the article: The mother of a Salvadoran migrant who drowned alongside his 23-month-old daughter while trying to cross into the United States said the man “loved his daughter so much” and was seeking a better life for his family.Óscar Alberto Martínez and his daughter Valeria died while trying to cross the Rio Grande on Sunday, their deaths captured by a horrific and haunting image that sparked outrage.The father and daughter lie face down on the water on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Valeria tucked inside her father’s short with her tiny arm wrapped around his neck……Estela Avalos, Tania’s mother, said her daughter also almost drowned but a friend was able to rescue her……The family had become frustrated and desperate after waiting two months in Mexico, unable to present themselves to U.S. authorities to request asylum, according to reporting by Julia Le Duc, who photographed the death of the father and daughter, for Mexican newspaper La Jornada……Immigration lawyers and rights advocates say asylum-seekers have been increasingly trying to cross the border illegally because of policies by the Trump administration, such as “metering,” or restricting the number of migrants who can be processed at a legal port of entry. The administration has also been ramping up its policy of forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases play out after presenting themselves at a port of entry to seek asylum… I put this article into this blog even though this family was not being held by Border Patrol or ICE. Instead, they were stuck in Mexico for an indeterminate amount of time, until the Trump Administration would deal with their asylum claim. This father and daughter did not die due to lack of medical care. They died from neglect and a harmful, indeterminate, waiting period imposed on people who have a legal asylum claim. Guatemalan Teen Mother and Prematurely Born Baby These two did not die while in Border Patrol custody, but likely would have if human rights attorneys had not visited the facility. June 13, 2019: (and updated June 20, 2019): HuffPost posted an article titled: “Teen Mom and Prematurely Born Baby Neglected At Border Patrol Facility for 7 Days”. It was written by Angelina Chapin. From the article: A prematurely born infant and her 17-year-old mother spent seven days being almost entirely neglected in Border Patrol custody, according to lawyers who visited an immigrant processing station in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday and Wednesday.The baby, barely a month old, was wrapped in a dirty towel, wore a soiled onesie and looked listless, said one of the lawyers, Hope Frye. The mother was in a wheelchair due to complications from her emergency C-section and had barely slept – the pain made it too uncomfortable for her to lie down and she was afraid of dropping her baby, the immigration and human rights attorney said……The mother, according to Frye, said she had been taken to the hospital at least once to receive pain medication, but the baby had received no medical attention since being in Border Control custody. The child was born in Mexico just after her teenage mother left Guatemala for the U.S. when she was eight months pregnant……Frye said one of her colleagues, an immigrant rights advocate, told her on Wednesday that the baby had not cried for five hours and had become “weak and listless.” The advocate, according to Frye, said that since the infant was wrapped only in a towel she was concerned her body temperature was dropping, which can be fatal……Frye said that she and her team worked Tuesday and Wednesday to try to get the new mother and her child released from Border Patrol custody. After alerting government officials and medical officers, they also called 911 and the local Child Protective Services office, both of which said they didn’t have jurisdiction over the federal facility, according to Frye……The lawyers later on Thursday confirmed to HuffPost that the family had been transferred to a resettlement facility… Four Severely Ill Toddlers Hospitalized Four toddlers in a Border Patrol facility were found to be extremely ill, and likely would have died if a group of lawyers had not visited the facility. June 21, 2019 (updated June 22, 2019): HuffPost posted an article titled: “4 Severely Ill Migrant Toddlers Hospitalized After Lawyers Visit Border Patrol Facility”. It was written by Angelina Chapin. From the article: Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week. The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting, and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some fo the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney……Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment – and its alleged neglect – of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.…Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies……Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula. [Ursula is a Border Patrol processing center in McAllen, Texas.)…Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-okd boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state… June 24, 2019: The New York Times posted an article titled: “Hundreds of Migrant Children are Moved Out of an Overcrowded Border Station”. It was written by Caitlin Dickerson. From the article: …Hundreds of migrant children have been transferred out of a filthy Border Patrol station in Texas where they had been detained for weeks without access to soap, clean clothes or adequate food, the authorities confirmed on Monday, suggesting that worsening conditions and overcrowding inside federal border facilities may have reached a breaking point.The move came days after a group of lawyers was given access to the station in Cling, Tex., about 20 miles southeast of El Paso, and said they saw children as young as 8 caring for infants, toddlers with no diapers, and children who said they were waking up at night because they were hungry…The visit by lawyers to the Clint facility on June 17 was allowed as a result of a judge’s orders in a long-running court case concerning the conditions under which migrant children are held in government facilities. After they arrived and observed what was happening, the lawyers, including representatives of some of the nation’s most prominent law schools, immediately began lobbying for the children to be released.Some 249 of the children were transferred into a shelter system maintained by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to Ms. Stauffer; an unknown number of others were sent to a temporary tent facility in El Paso, according to Elizabeth Lopez-Sandoval, a spokeswoman for Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, who began looking into the overcrowded facility in Clint last week after reports about the conditions there……The Border Patrol was routing children to Clint because the agency had been facing an unusually large influx of border crossers. The infants there had either been separated from adult family members with whom they had crossed the border or were the children of teenage mothers who had also been detained there. Some of the minors had been held there for nearly a month……Ms. Lopez-Sandoval said that only 30 children remain in Clint. The Border Patrol station there was meant to be temporary; children are supposed to be transferred out after 72 hours. But many had been languishing there because the Department of Health and Human Service’s shelters were full… June 23, 2019: ABC News posted an article titled: “Doctor compares conditions for unaccompanied children at immigrant holding center to ‘torture facilities’. It was written by Serena Marshall, Lana Zak, and Jennifer Metz. From the article: From sleeping on concrete floors with the lights on 24 hours a day to no access to soap or basic hygiene, migrant children in at least two U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities face conditions one doctor described as comparable to “torture facilities.”The disturbing, first-hand account of the conditions were observed by lawyers and a board-certified physician in visits last week to border patrol holding facilities in Clint, Texas, and McAllen, a city in the southern part of the state……”The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities,” the physician, Dolly Lucio Sevier, wrote in a medical declaration obtained exclusively by ABC News.Lucio ever, who works in private practice in the area, was granted access to the Ursula facility in McAllen, which is the largest CBP detention center in the country, after lawyers found out about a flu outbreak that sent five infants to the neonatal intensive care unit.After assessing 39 children under the age of 18, she described conditions for unaccompanied minors at the McAllen facility as including “extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food.”All of the children who were seen showed evidence of trauma, Lucio Sevier reported, and the teens spoke of having no access to hand washing during their entire time in custody. She compared it to being “tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease.”……Conditions for infants were even more appalling, according to the medical declaration. Many teen mothers in custody described not having the ability to wash their children’s bottle.And children who were older than 6 months were not provided with age-appropriate meal options, including no pureed foods necessary for a child’s development, Lucio Sevier reported……The attorneys who represent the children threatened to sue the government if it denied a visit from a physician. They are part of a team working under the Flores settlement agreement, a 1997 ruling that stipulated that detention standards for unaccompanied minors, including being held for less than 72 hours and in the “least restrictive setting appropriate to the child’s age and special needs.”……The Associated Press first reported in the alleged neglect at the Clint facility, reporting ABC News later confirmed.All of the detainees had been in custody longer than the 72 hours permitted for unaccompanied minors under the Flores agreement. The lengths of stay ranged from four days to 24 days……On the day they arrived, they witnessed the Clint facility was home to 351 children — most from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. More than 100 were under the age of 13, while 18 children were 4 years old or younger, including the youngest, a 4 1/2-month-old, the lawyers found……At the Clint facility, [Warren] Binford [a law professor at Willamette University who helped interview the children at the Clint border patrol facility] described conditions that included infants and toddlers sleeping on concrete floors, a lice outbreak that led guards providing two lice combs to 20 children to “work it out,” guards punishing the children by taking away sleeping mats and blankets, and guards creating a “child boss” to keep the other kids in line by rewarding them with extra food.She said one of the most striking examples was a 2-year-old Brough to her with no diaper and being cared for by “several other little girls.”… Unnamed El Salvadoran man with daughter June 30, 2019: CBS News posted an article titled: “El Salvador man dies in U.S. border custody”. From the article: A 43-year-old El Salvadoran man who crossed into the U.S. with his daughter collapsed at a border station and later died at a hospital, officials said Saturday. The man had been held about a week at the Rio Grande Valley Central processing center in McAllen, Texas, according to a law enforcement official.The official said the man, who had health issues, had been medically checked.The daughter was still in U.S. Border Patrol custody, but officials requested an expedited transfer to a shelter run by the agency that manages children who cross the border alone, an official told The Associated Press. The official did not know the daughter’s age.The child will be in a shelter until she is released to a sponsor, but that process could take weeks.U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement to CBS News acknowledging the man’s death, saying the agency was “saddened by the unfortunate death of a 43-year-old man from El Salvador who was rushed to the hospital after falling into medical distress.”……The facility where the man was being held, like most other Border Patrol stations along the U.S.-Mexico border, is overcrowded. Border station are generally at capacity with about 4,000 people and more than 15,000 are in custody. Advocates and attorneys have decried fetid, filthy conditions inside the stations that were not meant as more than a temporary holding station… Unknown Migrant Woman with Two Infants and a Toddler June 24, 2019: The New York Times posted an article titled: “Three Children and a Woman Are Found Dead Along the Border in Texas”. It was written by Mitchell Ferman and Manny Fernandez. From the article: The bodies of what appeared to be a migrant woman in her 20s and three children – two infants and a toddler – were found Sunday night near the edge of the Rio Grande outside the South Texas city of McAllen, the authorities said.Migrant deaths happen with grim regularity along parts of America’s southwestern border, largely when adults and unaccompanied teenagers succumb to harsh desert conditions or a lack of water, and die of hypothermia. The discovery on Sunday was unusual – it is rare for officials to discover dead migrant children on the American side of the border, and rarer still for the bodies of three children to be found together……Officials said there were as yet no signs of foul play, and that the four may have died from dehydration and heat exposure. The bodies appeared to be those of undocumented immigrants, but neither their identities nor their country of origin had been determined on Monday……The four bodies were found by Border Patrol agents across the river from Reynosa, Mexico, in an area of the United States side of the border that is heavily traveled by Central American families. They were in a brush-covered region southeast of Anzalduas Park on federal property managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Services, near the state-run Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area, officials said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was leading the investigation because the bodies were found on federal land……It was unclear what went wrong from the woman and children whose bodies were found: whether they had gotten lost in the brush in the heat, whether they were already ill when they crossed the river, whether they were abandoned by smugglers or other migrants. Sheriff Guerra said they were found in a makeshift staging area, a clearing near the river where groups of migrants often gather after they cross the river. From there, they typically walk deeper into the countryside to look for federal agents.South Texas is always hot in June, but the heat has been extreme in recent days… Homestead Detention Center for Unaccompanied Minors in Florida August 3, 2019: Miami Herald posted an article titled: “All children have been moved from Homestead detention center. They’re not coming back.” It was written by Pedro Portal. From the article: The remaining children at the Homestead detention center have all been relocated – and they’re not coming back, two federal sources confirmed. As a result, massive layoffs are expected on Monday and Tuesday, they said.The children were picked up in vans between the hours of 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. Saturday……”Today we are announcing that all [children] sheltered in the Homestead facility have been reunified with an appropriate sponsor or transferred to a state-licensed facility within the [Office of Refugee Resettlement] network of care providers as of August 3, 2019.,” the agency said in a statement Saturday afternoon, a few hours after this story was posted. “Since activation in March 2018, approximately 14,300 UAC have been sheltered at the Homestead site.”..…Homestead was the largest for-profit, influx detention center for unaccompanied minor children in the country, with 3,200 beds at its peak. As of Saturday, the government had no plans of sending any incoming kids to the center from the southern border.The move to empty out Homestead came in the same days that HHS told lawmakers it was considering Central Florida, as well as Virginia and Los Angeles, as sites for further permanent shelters to hold unaccompanied migrant children. Last month the government said it was also looking at Atlanta, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix. Homestead will remain open as an emergency shelter in case bed space runs out at other center……A tropical wave in The Atlantic earlier in the week activated the center’s recently revealed hurricane plan, which said the facility would transfer all children at least five days before South Florida was in the cone of error. Federal officials would not say which centers they were taken to……According to HHS, during its effort to downsize, most of the children were reunited with their families.Hundreds, however, still don’t have sponsors and will soon age out of the system, according to federal employees close to the operation. When an unaccompanied minor turns 18, they are handcuffed or shackled and booked into an adult U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility… August 16, 2019: Four Democratic Senators wrote a letter to the Office of Refugee Resettlement Office (ORR) asking them to close the Homestead, Florida, detention center for unaccompanied minors. From the letter: Dear Director Hayes:We applaud your agency’s decision to remove children from the temporary influx site for unaccompanied children in Homestead, Florida, and urge the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to better fulfill its mandate to care for children in the agency’s custody by rejecting any plan to reopen Homestead or a similar large, unlicensed facility in the future.Your recent decision to stop accepting new child transfers at Homestead conforms to the recommendation of the pediatric medical community and international human rights observers to shut down Homestead. We appreciate your decision to effectively remove all children from the Homestead, Florida influx facility, and urge you to reject any future transfers to this facility, which is wholly unsuitable for vulnerable children and not in their best interest. We consequently urge you in the strongest terms not to extend or renew the current contract with Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. and its parent company Caliburn International to operate the Homestead facility.Our opposition to the Homestead temporary influx center stems from the fact that pediatric medical experts have found that detention is profoundly harmful to children, especially if they have already been traumatized by violence and persecution in their home countries. Children in ORR custody should be treated with the highest possible standard of dignity and respect and provided with education, medical care, and legal aid, while they await a determination of their asylum or other immigration claims.Many child welfare experts, including Amnesty International and Flores settlement co-counsel, have found evidence that the conditions and services provided at Homestead are below the minimum standard set by U.S. and international law. Overcrowding, insufficient and sporadic language services, ineffective remote case management services, limited pediatric medical care, and a lack of trained child welfare specialists are among the most egregious deficiencies identified in numerous reports and court filings.There is no question that the best environment for children is in a sponsor’s home, ideally that of a family member. If no family member is available to sponsor a child, efforts should be made to find appropriate non-familiar sponsors. If children must be in institutional settings, they should be placed in permanent, state-licenses facilities. And finally, if ORR determines that it requires influx capacity despite extraordinary and exhaustive efforts to expeditiously place children in permanent state-licensed facilities, with family sponsors, or in foster care, then contracts should only be awarded to non-profit entities operating facilities holding fewer than 100 children.If at any point you intend to resume transfers of children to Homestead, we request that you submit a justification in writing to Congress within 24 hours describing how your decision would be in a child’s best interest. The letter was signed by: Jeffrey A. MerkleyRichard J. DurbinChris Van HollenSheldon Whitehouse Jimmy Aldaoud August 8, 2019: Politico posted an article titled: “Iraqi man dies after Trump administration deports him”. It was written by Ted Hesson and Nahal Toosi. From the article: A 41-year-old Detroit man deported to Iraq in June died Tuesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and two people close to the man’s family.The man, Jimmy Aldaoud, spent most of his life in the U.S., but was swept up in President Donald Trump’s intensified enforcement efforts. Edward Bajoka, an immigration attorney who described himself as close to Aladoud’s family, wrote on Facebook that the death appeared to be linked to the man’s inability to obtain insulin in Baghdad to treat his diabetes.Aldaoud was an Iraqi national, but he was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young child, his family said. He had never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic, according to Bajoka……The Trump administration has sought to deport more than 1,000 Iraqis with final orders of removal, including Chaldean Catholics in the Detroit metro area, of which Aldaoud was one. Chaldeans are an eastern branch of the Roman Catholic Church who trace their roots to ancient Mesopotamia in present-day Iraq, where they are at high risk of being tortured or killed by the terror group ISIS, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a related legal case……Bajoka, the family friend, said Aldaoud suffered from schizophrenia and other mental health issues.“His mental health was the primary reason for his legal issues that led to his deportation,” Bajoka wrote on Facebook… August 13, 2019: Members of Congress wrote a letter to President Donald Trump regarding the death of Jimmy Aldaoud. From the letter: Dear President Trump,We write to express our outrage and grief regarding the death of Jimmy Aldaoud, a Michigan man who was deported to Iraq in June and died on August 6th of a diabetic crisis.Jimmy, who lived with both diabetes and paranoid schizophrenia, was brought to America as a toddler, had never been to Iraq, spoke no Arabic, and was deported without identification, money or a sufficient supply of insulin. He already faced tremendous danger in a country that was completely foreign to him, as he was entirely Americanized and a Chaldean Christian, a religious minority that is highly persecuted in Iraq. However, to force a man living with chronic illnesses into an unknown country without adequate access to life-sustaining medicine is nothing short of a death sentence. Jimmy’s death was a direct and predictable result of his deportation, and we are horrified that this cruelty was perpetrated on our watch.A decision earlier this year by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin the detention and deportation of Iraqi nationals like Jimmy – people who, in many cases, came to the U.S. as children and know no other home. Members of Congress from both parties have repeatedly called on your administration to halt these detentions and deportations:In April, more than 20 members of Congress from across the country wrote to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE requesting deferral of detention and deportation of affected Iraqi nationals.Also in April, Representatives Andy Levin (D-MI-09), John R. Mooleanaar (R-MI-04), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08), and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE-01), passed the letter on to Vice President Mike Pence, who has advocated for the protection of Christians abroad, following the news of the departures of DHS and ICE leadership.In June, Representatives Levin and Moolenaar asked for intervention from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has personally acknowledged the threats faced by religious minorities in Iraq.All of these requests have gone unanswered beyond a cursory acknowledgement. Your Administration’s total failure to act calls into question its stated interest in protecting religious minorities, especially Christians, from persecution, and underscores the horrific consequences of your immigration policies.National attention is now focused on Jimmy’s heartbreaking story. It is incumbent upon us to act, in this moment of tragedy, to ensure that this never happens again. If your Administration continues to deport Iraqi nationals, it knowingly and willingly risks more preventable deaths. As such, we implore you to end the detention and deportation of Iraqi nationals living in the United States without delay.We look forward to your timely response… The letter was signed by: Andy LevinBrenda LawrenceVicente GonzalezDebbie Mucarsel-PowellDebbie DingellAnna G. EshooDaniel T. KildeeHaley StephensAlexandra Ocasio-CortezTed LieuJames P. McGovernMark DesaulnierDonald S. Beyer, Jr.Susan A. DavisDeb HaalandPramila JayapalRaúl M. GrijalvaGrace F. NapolitanoRashida TlaibSheila Jackson LeeTJ CoxSteve CohenDavid E. PriceDiana DegetteBetty McCollumJerrold NadlerAndré CarsonJuan VargasGwen MooreNydia M. VelázquezLloyd DoggettAl GreenMarc A. VeasyAlcee L. HastingsJan ShakowskyBill Pascrell, Jr.Alma S. Adams, PhD.Bonnie Watson ColemanTheodore E. DeutchElissa SlotkinJesus G. “Chuy” García August 15, 2019: The Guardian posted an article titled: “Detained migrant children must have access to soap and other basic needs, court rules”. From the article: Migrant children detained by the US government must have access to soap, toothpaste, and other basic hygiene products, as well as edible food, clean water and places to sleep, a panel of judges has ruled.The administration had contended that detained immigrant children, who are required to be provided with “safe and sanitary” conditions, didn’t need basic hygiene products.The ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco tossed out the government’s challenge to a lower court’s findings that authorities had failed to provide safe and sanitary conditions for the children in line with a 1997 agreement widely known ad the Flores settlement.The government argued that authorities weren’t required to provide specific accommodations under the settlement, such as soap, and asked the panel to weigh in.A Trump administration lawyer tried to argue the point in June, saying the agreement was vague and might not require that a toothbrush and soap be provided to children during brief stays in custody.The appellate judged disagreed, writing: “Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep deprived are without double essential to the children’s safety.”……The Flores settlement between advocates for young immigrants and the US government says children should be held in facilities that meet certain standards and released as soon as is reasonably possible, which has been considered to be about 20 days. August 15, 2019: The Hill posted an article titled: “Appeals court rules Trump administration must provide hygiene products at migrant facilities”. It was written by Zack Budryk. From the article: A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a previous court order mandating the Trump administration to provide basic personal hygiene items to children in detention facilities in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco hands a loss to the Trump administration, which had challenged a lower court decision two years ago ordering U.S. officials to provide basic personal hygiene items as well as adequate sleeping conditions, temperatures, and food and water to children in detention facilities in the Rio Grande Valley.The appeal’s court ruling essentially backs the two-decade old Flores agreement, which mandates key aspects of how immigrant children can be held by authorities, including that they be kept under the “least restrictive conditions” possible.“Assuring that children eat edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” the appeals court panel ruled.“The district court properly construed the agreement as requiring such conditions rather than allowing the government to decide whether to provide them,” they added… August 20, 2019: CNBC posted an article titled: “The US won’t provide flu vaccines to migrant families at border detention camps”. It was written by Jessica Bursztynsky. From the article: The U.S. won’t be vaccinating migrant families in holding centers ahead of this year’s flu season, despite calls from doctors to boost efforts to fight the infection that’s killed at least three children at detention facilities in the past year.“In general, due to the short-term nature of CBP holding and the complexities of operating vaccination programs, neither CBP nor its medical contractors administer vaccines to those in our custody,” a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.At least three children who were held in detention centers after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico have died in recent months, in part, from the flu, according to a letter to Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., from several doctors urging Congress to investigate health conditions at the centers……”I can tell you from personal experience that child deaths are rare events,” Harvard pediatrics professor Dr. Jonathan Winickoff said in an email. Winickoff signed on to the Aug. 1 letter with forensic pathologist Judy Melinek and Johns Hopkins public health professors Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and Dr. Paul Spiegel……Winickoff said that current holding conditions, like being placed in close proximity to other immigrants, make it easy to spread infectious diseases from person to person. He added that contracting the flu weakens a child’s immune system, making it harder to fight off other illnesses……If conditions don’t improve, Dr. Julue Linton, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Immigrant Child and Family Health, said more children will needlessly die……Children come in to the holding centers with a sense of resilience, Linton said, and potentially stonier immune systems. But the stress from being held against their will can cause immune systems to tank, she said.That, paired with insanitary conditions, such as open toilets and “insufficient supplies” to wash hands, is a breeding ground fo infection, Linton added… THIS BLOG WILL BE UPDATED WHEN MORE INFORMATION IS FOUND. Migrants are Dying From Lack of Health Care is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Other Video GamesWhy I’m Not Boycotting BlizzardOctober 13, 2019Hearthstone / Other Video GamesAs you may have heard, there was a controversy involving Hearthstone (made by Blizzard Entertainment, which is part of Activision/Blizzard), and a Hearthstone player who publicly stated a viewpoint that has been described as political. This led to many fans of Blizzard’s games to call for a boycott of the company. (You may have seen #BoycottBlizzard trending on Twitter). I am not among those who are boycotting Blizzard. Yes, I realize that there will be people who choose to become angry with me because I am not doing what they have decided to do. I’m sharing my reasons anyway, in part because I doubt I’m the only person in the world who chooses not to join in this boycott. What Happened? Before I get too far ahead of myself, I’m going to do an explanation about what happened. A Hearthstone player named Ng Wai Chung (who is known as Blitzchung) won the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmaster tournament. On October 9, 2019, CNBC explained the situation this way: Activision Blizzard suspended a professional player from an esports tournament and stripped him of his earnings after he made a statement over the weekend in support of protests in Hong Kong.In a post-match interview on the Taiwanese stream of Blizzard Entertainment game Hearthstone, Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai wore a gas mask and goggles and appeared to shout a slogan often associated with Hong Kong protesters: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.” The day before, October 8, 2019, Blizzard posted news on its Hearthstone website titled: “Hearthstone Grandmasters Asia-Pacific Ruling“. Here is a small portion from it: During the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters broadcast over the weekend, there was a competition rule violation during a post-match interview, involving Blitzchung and two casters, which resulted in the removal of the match VOD replay. Blizzard then states that what happened violated the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmaster’s Official Competition rules section 6.1 (o) and is individual behavior which does not represent Blizzard or Hearthstone Esports. That rule states: Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website terms. Blizzard then issued a consequence: Effective immediately, Blitzchung is removed from Grandmasters and will receive no prizing for Grandmasters Season 2. Additionally, Blitzchung is ineligible to participate in Hearthstone esports for 12 months beginning from Oct. 5th, 2019 and extending to Oct. 5, 2020. We will also immediately cease working with both casters. Heavy reported on October 8, 2019, that when Blitzchung said the slogan used by Hong Kong protesters, the interviewers (or, casters) “hid under the table for a moment and then cut to a commercial.” There has been speculation about that, which seems to have led to a few unanswered questions. Were the casters taken by surprise by what Blitzchung was saying – so they hid under the table to avoid consequences? Or, did the casters know ahead of time what Blitzchung was going to say – and hid under the table in an effort to avoid consequences? I have no idea which is true. It is my understanding that the #BoycottBlizzard hashtag started trending as a result of Blizzard’s decision regarding Blitzchung (and the two casters). People posted screenshots proving that they were deleting Blizzard’s games. Some tried to let Blizzard know that they wanted the company to delete their data – but it appears that wasn’t working out as hoped. On October 9, 2019, Brian Kibler posted a Statement on Blitzchung on BMK Gaming. To summarize, he states that he felt that Blizzard’s action against Blitzchung was “incredibly harsh.” He continued: …I won’t pretend to understand either the intricacies of the geopolitical situation in China and Hong Kong or the full extent of Blizzard’s business interests there, but to me this penalty feels like it is deeply rooted in both. The heavy-handedness of it feels like someone insisted that Blizzard make an example of Blitzchung, not only to discourage others from similar acts in the future but also to appease those upset by the outburst itself.That kind of appeasement is not something I can in good conscience be associated with. When I learned about the ruling, I reached out to Blizzard and informed them that I no longer feel comfortable casting the Grandmasters finals at Blizzcon. I will not be a smiling face on camera that tacitly endorses this decision. Unless something changes, I will have no involvement in Grandmasters moving forward…. On October 10, 2019, Nathan Zamora (also known as Admirable”), issued a statement on Twitter regarding Blitzchung, Hearthstone Grandmasters, and Blizzard. Here is a little bit from that statement: …I will not be part of the broadcast team for Hearthstone for the remainder of this Grandmasters season, for the Masters Tour in Bucharest, or BlizzCon.Blitzchung’s actions to support Hong Kong speak to me far more than I could have imagined. It takes courage to stand up for what you believe in, and to make sacrifices in the process. His actions are inspiring to me, and I support him wholeheartedly…. October 12, 2019, Blizzard posted news on their website titled: “Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament“. In my opinion, it appears that the backlash and controversy about their decision with Blitzchung had an effect. The post is signed by President of Blizzard Entertainment, J. Allen Brack. Some have pointed out that the wording and sentence structure in that post feels a bit… off. There has been some speculation about whether or not J. Allen Brack wrote that news himself – or if someone who was perhaps connected to the Taiwanese branch of Blizzard wrote it in Chinese (and it didn’t translate to English very smoothly). I have no means of confirming or debunking this speculation. I’m simply noting that I’ve seen this speculation passed around. The key points from the news include: …Over the past few days, many players, casters, esports fans, and employees have expressed concerns about how we determined the penalties. We’ve had a chance to pause, to listen to our community, and to reflect on what we could have done better. In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly.We want to ensure that we maintain a safe and inclusive environment for all our players, and that our rules and processes are clear. All of this is in service of another important Blizzard value – Play Nice; Play Fair.In the tournament itself, Blitzchung * played * fair. We now believe he should receive his prizing. We understand that for some this is not about the prize, and perhaps others it is disrespectful to even discuss it. That is not our intention.But playing fair also includes appropriate pre-and post-match conduct, especially when a player accepts recognition for winning in a broadcast. When we think about the suspension, six months for Blitzchung is more appropriate, after which time he can compete in Hearthstone pro circuit again if he so chooses. There is a consequence for taking the conversation away from the purpose of the event and disrupting or derailing the broadcast.With regard to the casters, remember their purpose is to keep the event focused on the tournament. That didn’t happen here, and we are setting their suspension to six months as well…. On October 12, 2019, Blitzchung responded in a tweet that contained a link to a longer personal statement. Here is part of that statement: …Many people have been asking me if I accept the latest decision of Blizzard, I will discuss that on two parts. Tournament prizing and suspension. For tournament prizing, I quote what Blizzard said on the official website, they mention that I played fair in the tournament and they believe I should receive my prizing. This is the part I really appreciate. Blizzard also said they understand for some this is not about the prize, but perhaps others it is disrespectful to even discuss it. People from Blizzard explained this to me through a phone call and I really appreciate that and I accept their decision on this part.For second part about the suspension, Blizzard changed their suspension on me from a year to six months. Once again, I appreciate their reconsideration on this. To be honest I think six months is still quite a lot to me. But I also being told that I can continue to compete in hearthstone pro circuit which they mean the grandmaster tournament. I appreciate this decision they made because grandmaster is currently the highest level tournament in competitive hearthstone. However, I wish Blizzard can reconsider about their penalty on the two casters involved… From all of this, it seems to me that the situation has been handled. Blizzard made a quick decision regarding Blitzchung (and the two casters). People who play Blizzard’s games made it very clear that they disagreed with that decision, in part by advocating for a boycott of Blizzard’s games. Blizzard reconsidered their decision, and gave Blitzchung a less harsh penalty than they originally imposed. If the backlash and negative press was specifically because people who play one or more of Blizzard’s games felt the penalty on Blitzchung was too harsh – well, it seems that’s been resolved. There is now no need for me to boycott Blizzard in response to the penalty they originally imposed on Blitzchung. What is happening in Hong Kong? There is a whole lot going on in Hong Kong. I don’t have the time to do as much research as I would like to about this in order to explain it to people who are just tuning in now about the situation. Instead, I will refer you to a BBC post that provides some context. It was written on September 4, 2019. There’s a good chance things may have changed since then, and you may want to see what else the BBC has written about Hong Kong in since then. The BBC wrote that Hong Kong “…was a British colony for more than 150 years – part of it, Hong Kong island, was ceded to the UK after a war in 1842. Later, China also leased the rest of Hong Kong – the New Territories – to the British for 99 years.” Skipping ahead in time: …Then, in the early 1980s, as the deadline of the 99-year-lease approached, Britain and China began talks on the future of Hong Kong – with the communist government in China arguing that all of Hong Kong should be returned to Chinese rule.The two sides reached a deal in 1984 that would see Hong Kong return to China in 1987, under the principle of “one country, two systems.”This meant that while becoming part of one country with China, Hong Kong would enjoy “a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defense affairs” for 50 years.As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system and borders, and rights including freedom of assembly and free speech are protected. For example, it is one of the few places in Chinese territory where people can commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, where the military opened fire on unarmed protesters in Beijing…. The BBC mentions that one “sticking point” has been democratic reform. …Hong Kong’s leader, the chief executive, is currently elected by a 1,200-member election committee – a mostly pro-Beijing body chosen by just 6% of eligible voters.Not all of the 70 members of the territory’s lawmaking body, the Legislative Council, are directly chosen by Hong Kong’s voters. Most seats not directly elected are occupied by pro-Beijing lawmakers.Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, says it should ultimately both the leader, and the Legislative Council, should be elected in a more democratic way – but there’s been disagreement over what this should look like.The Chinese government said in 2014 it would allow voters to choose their own leaders from a list approved by a pro-Beijing committee, but critics called this a “sham democracy” and it was voted down in Hong Kong’s legislature.In 28 years’ time, in 2047, the Basic Law expires – and what happens to Hong Kong’s autonomy after that is unclear… In short, the people who are protesting in Hong Kong are doing so because they want to be independent of China. There is literally more than 100 years of history to consider regarding this situation. Personally, I do not feel that deleting the Blizzard games that I currently play, canceling my WoW subscription, and trying to convince Blizzard to delete whatever data they have on me is going to make any change at all regarding what is happening in Hong Kong. I’m not an “influencer”. I’m certainly not a celebrity or a well-known politician. My social media presence is (intentionally) tiny. I don’t spend a lot of time playing video games, in part because my chronic illnesses can make it hard for me to do that. There was a time when I was streaming on Twitch, but I stopped doing that a while ago. There is no logical reason to presume that if I chose to boycott Blizzard that China would have any reason to even notice that I have done so. The country certainly isn’t going to be influenced to change their stance on Hong Kong based on what I do. There is no reason to assume that Blizzard (or Activsion/Blizzard) would immediately separate itself from working with Chinese gaming companies or the Chinese government as a result of some players boycotting Blizzard’s games. I suspect that it would not be easy to sever that arrangement. What About Blizzard Employees? I’m going to flip things around for a minute, and take a different viewpoint. Assume that the purpose of boycotting Blizzard is to cause the company to lose money. Let’s say that more than half of the people who regularly play Blizzard’s games, who purchase in-game items, and who pre-pay for expansions or other upcoming content all deleted their Blizzard games today. Let’s presume that more than half of the people who purchased BlizzCon tickets (and paid for hotel rooms, transportation costs, and intended to buy a bunch of swag at the event) instead decide not to attend. For this thought exercise, I’m going to suggest that the results of the above are enough to not only make Blizzard’s stock drop (and its stockholders angry) but also to cause a significant financial hardship for Blizzard. A half-empty BlizzCon would look terrible. Those who were boycotting Blizzard would likely conclude that their message was heard – loud and clear – by Blizzard Entertainment. What would happen next? Well, we’ve already seen the answer to that question. In February of 2019, Polygon reported that Blizzard laid off more than 800 people after 12 months of record setting financial performance. From the article: On Tuesday afternoon, Activision Blizzard told approximately 800 employees they were laid off. The company, which is comprised of Call of Duty publisher Activision Publishing, World of Warcraft and Overwatch developer Blizzard Entertainment, Candy Crush maker King Digital, Major League Gaming, and more did not have a bad year. In fact, it “achieved record results in 2018,” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said during an investor call.Activision made $7.5 billion is sales and $1.8 billion in profit last year. But in the eyes of management, the success wasn’t enough to keep the entire company employed. Record results. 800 employees out of work. Those facts are more than just a recipe for cognitive dissonance, they create cerebral friction that could spark a forest fire… In other words, I believe that if the #BoycottBlizzard trend is successful, the result won’t actually cause any harm to the “big wigs” at Activision Blizzard. (And it certainly won’t convince them to extricate themselves from whatever Chinese companies they are working with). Instead, Activision Blizzard will simply fire hundreds of employees – again. I don’t want to see that happen because exactly zero of those employees had anything to do with the decision Blizzard made regarding Blitzchung. My best guess is that many of them first heard about the controversy when they read about it on Twitter (or maybe Facebook). None of this is their fault, and they shouldn’t have to lose their jobs because of it. That’s one thing that I don’t think many people consider when they choose to boycott a big company. It is quite easy to give in to the immediate anger one feels about what was obviously a poorly made decision by Blizzard, and to decide to call for a boycott. Few appear to realize that even the most successful boycott outcome is going to mostly hurt the people who make the games that we all (until recently, it seems) love to play. If you choose to boycott Blizzard, that’s on you. I’m not your mom, and I have no interest in trying to convince you one way or the other on this subject. This blog post is my (long-winded) way of explaining why I am not going to boycott Blizzard. Why I’m Not Boycotting Blizzard is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Flight Rising: Holiday BearsOctober 6, 2019Flight Rising / Other Video GamesThere are many holidays in Flight Rising where players can purchase special Familiars by gathering up enough in-game currency. The Holiday Bears Familiar Set was released in June of 2014, through May of 2015. Each one corresponds to a specific Elemental Flight. If you don’t have them, your best chance of collecting them is through the Auction House. All of the artwork in this post is copyright of Flight Rising. Sunbeam Ursa: Familiar – Guardian of the Sunbeam Ruins. (Brightshine Jubilee 2014). Magma Embear: Familiar – Guardian of the Ashfall Waste. (Flameforger’s Festival 2014). Hibernal Starbear: Familiar – Guardian of the Starfall Isles. (Starfall Celebration 2014). Graveyard Guardian: Familiar – Guardian of the Scarred Wasteland. (Riot of Rot 2014). Craigbacked Bouldursa: Familiar – Guardian of Dragonhome. (Rockbreaker’s Ceremony 2014). Polarfreeze Defender: Familiar – Guardian of the Southern Icefield. (Crystalline Gala 2015). Murktooth Bramblekeep: Familiar – Guardian of the Tangled Wood. (Trickmurk Circus 2015). Cloudkeeper Herald: Familiar – Guardian of the Windswept Plateau. (Mistral Jamboree 2015). Wavebreak Snarler: Familiar – Guardian of the Sea of a Thousand Currents. (Wave Crest Saturnalia 2015). Timber Tender: Familiar – Guardian of the Viridian Labyrinth. (Greenskeeper Gathering 2015). Flight Rising: Holiday Bears is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Flight Rising: Goblin FamiliarsSeptember 11, 2019Flight Rising / Other Video GamesFlight Rising is a game where players control a Lair full of dragons. Each dragon can be given a Familiar. It is sort of like a pet for the dragon. Players click on the Familiar every day for Treasure. I have obtained the entire collection of the Goblin Familiars. All of them were part of the in-game holidays between June of 2016 and February of 2017. It is still possible to buy the Goblins from the Auction House. All of the artwork in this post is copyright of Flight Rising. Shining Goblin Shining Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Lightweaver (Brightshine Jubilee Holiday Familiar 2016.) Sparkling Goblin Sparkling Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Stormcatcher. (Thundercrack Carnivale Holiday Familiar 2016). Blazing Goblin Blazing Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Flamecaller (Flameforger’s Festival Holiday Familiar 2016). Enchanting Goblin Enchanting Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Arcanist (Starfall Celebration Holiday Familiar 2016) Enduring Goblin Enduring Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Plaguebringer (Riot of Rot Holiday Familiar 2016) Crumbling Goblin Crumbling Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Earthshaker. (Rockbreaker’s Ceremony Holiday Familiar 2016.) Frozen Goblin Frozen Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Icewarden. (Crystalline Gala Holiday Familiar 2017.) Obscuring Goblin Obscuring Goblin: Familiar – The eyes of the Shadowbinder. (Trickmurk Circus Holiday Familiar 2017.) Gusting Goblin: Familiar – The Eyes of the Windsinger. (Mistral Jamboree Holiday Familiar 2017). Bubbling Goblin: Familiar –The Eyes of the Tidelord. (Wavecrest Saturnalia Holiday Familiar 2017.) Sprouting Goblin: Familiar – The Eyes of the Gladekeeper. (Greenskeeper Gathering Holiday Familiar 2017). Flight Rising: Goblin Familiars is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Neko Atsume: Pile of LeavesSeptember 9, 2019Neko Atsume / Other Video GamesNeko Atsume is a game where you try and encourage cats to come visit your space. The way to attract the cats is to add stuff that they can play with. Pile of Leaves costs 400 silver fish in the Neko Atsume store. The flavor text of this item says: Fall leaves sewn together to create a soft, warm pile. Now your cats can enjoy the fall all year round. Some cats like to peek out of the Pile of Leaves. Others dive right in! Snowball Bandit Sunny Cocoa Bolt Tabitha Breezy Patsy Smokey Speckles Neko Atsume: Pile of Leaves is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Dragon Mania Legends: Ironhide Dragons CollectionSeptember 8, 2019Dragon Mania Legends / Other Video GamesThe Ironhide Dragons Collection is one of many collections of dragons that players can work on completing. The reward for completing this one is 6 tokens. I have absolutely no idea what these are used for. Dragon Mania Legends is a game where players try and collect as many different types of dragons as possible. Dragons can fight other dragons, be bred to make new dragons, or hunt for Treasure. This is what a Cyborg Dragon egg looks like. The Dragon Mania Legends Wiki says players can obtain a Cyborg Dragon by breeding two dragons that together have the Metal and Plant Elements. I think this means you need one Dragon with the Plant Element and another one with the Metal Element. Players must be Level 15 before they can breed a Cyborg Dragon. Here is what a Cyborg Dragon hatchling looks like. It has the Metal Element and the Plant Element, so it can be placed in either a Metal Habitat or a Plant Habitat. Cyborg Dragons are Uncommon. This is what a Cyborg Dragon baby looks like. I put it in a Plant Habitat. I find this dragon to be especially cute, because it looks like what would happen if Sony made a dragon-like robot dog. This is what an adult Cyborg Dragon looks like. If you look closely, you can see it has square scales on most of the green parts of its body. It resembles the style of its egg, but is not a perfect match. I am amused by the idea that a robotic dragon thinks that it is a plant and belongs with the other Plant Dragons. This is what a Venom Dragon egg looks like. The Dragon Mania Legends Wiki says can be obtained by breeding two dragons that together have the Plant Element and the Metal Element. This is the same combination that can produce a Cyborg Dragon. To me, it seems like a game of chance as you wait to see which egg is produced. Players must be Level 15 before they can breed a Venom Dragon. Here is a Venom Dragon hatchling. It has the Plant Element and the Metal Element, so it can be placed into either a Plant Habitat or a Metal Habitat. Venom Dragons are Common. This is what a Venom Dragon baby looks like. I put it into a Plant Habitat. The baby has bright orange, spiky, hair that matches the hair that was on top of its egg. Here is a Venom Dragon adult. It somehow grew arms and wings as it reached adulthood. If you look closely, you can see that it has diamond shaped scales on its back. The Venom Dragon now has large fangs and sharp looking claws. This is what a Tornado Dragon egg looks like. The Dragon Mania Legends Wiki says that players can obtain a Tornado Dragon by breeding two dragons that together have the Wind Element and the Metal Element. Players must be Level 15 before they can breed a Tornado Dragon. I obtained my Tornado Dragon during a special limited-time event. It was one where players need to play Dragon Mania Legends every day for a month, in order to pick up daily rewards. Milestone Completed! The Tornado Dragon was the reward for players who played for eight days during the Anniversary Treat event. It started on December 29, 2016. Here is what a Tornado Dragon hatchling looks like. It has both the Wind Element and the Metal Element. So, it can be placed in either a Wind Habitat or a Metal Habitat. Tornado Dragons are Common. This is what a baby Tornado Dragon looks like. I put it into a Metal Habitat at first because it was the only space I had open. If you look closely, you can kind of see a swirling of wind around its belly. The Tornado Dragon kept the light blue color of its egg, but lacks the darker blue spots that covered its egg. Here is a Tornado Dragon adult. I was eventually able to move it into a Wind Habitat. It seemed to me that a Tornado Dragon would prefer a Wind Habitat to a Metal Habitat. The swirl of wind around its belly is easier to see on an adult dragon. This is what a Minotaur Dragon egg looks like. The Dragon Mania Legends Wiki says players can obtain a Minotaur Dragon by breeding two dragons that together have the Earth Element and the Metal Element. Players must be Level 15 before they can breed a Minotaur Dragon. Here is what a Minotaur Dragon baby looks like. It has the Earth Element and the Metal Element, so it can be placed into either an Earth Habitat or a Metal Habitat. Minotaur Dragons are Common. This is what a baby Minotaur Dragon looks like. I put it into an Earth Habitat. The Minotaur Dragon kept the horns and hair that decorated the top of its egg. Here is what the Minotaur Dragon looks like as an adult. Somewhere between being a baby and an adult, the Minotaur Dragon acquired a septum piercing. Dragon Mania Legends: Ironhide Dragons Collection is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... TV & Movie ReviewsGrace and Frankie – Season OneJune 2, 2017TV and Movie ReviewsGrace and Frankie is a show on Netflix. It is a Netflix Original. Grace (Jane Fonda) is married to Robert (Martin Sheen). Frankie (Lilly Tomlin) is married to Sol (Sam Waterson). In the very first episode, right at the start, the husbands announce they want to divorce their wives. The reasons why the men want divorces is because they have fallen in love… with each other. And they want to get married. Warning: There are tons of spoilers. Episode 1: The husbands announce they want to divorce their wives because they have fallen in love with each other and want to get married. Robert: “We can do that now.” When Robert married Grace, and Sol married Frankie, same-sex marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the United States. Robert and Sol have been having a secret love affair for the past 20 years. Later, Sol and Frankie are alone back at their home. Frankie asks Sol if that is why he got Cialis. Sol answers: “Everyone gets Cialis at my age.” Robert and Grace are alone at their home. She is sad. Robert tries to console her. “Were you ever really happy with me?” he asks. Grace thinks about it. She says they didn’t have the most romantic life. “But I thought we were normal”. This indicates that Grace and Robert hadn’t had a sex life together in a very long time. Grace thought the end of their sex life was a normal part of being a couple, or maybe because of their age. Now, she discovers that wasn’t so. She DOES NOT say she was happy with Robert. Robert says that he “wanted more.” The implication is that he wasn’t happy in his marriage with Grace, and found what he needed with Sol. * Both couples have children who are now adults. Sol and Frankie’s sons (Coyote and Nwabudike) try and console their mother. They repeat a lot of the positive encouraging phrases she must have told them. She tells them all that is “bullshit”. Grace and Robert’s daughters, (Brianna and Mallory) are angry about what happened. They immediately take their mother’s side, and don’t want to talk to their father right then. Mallory has kids. She asks “How am I going to explain this to my kids?” I don’t think this question is entirely about her father’s relationship with Sol. It’s also about the sudden divorce. * A chair is delivered to Robert and Grace’s house. She opens the box, and finds a chair that has a photo of Ryan Gosling’s face on the seat. Robert is delighted that the chair arrived so quickly and explains it is a joke between him and Sol. * For the first time, Grace notices that Robert’s office has a framed drawing of a nude man. She notices a small frame on the shelf that contains a old photo of two men, one of whom has taken the arm of the other (as a man might do with a woman). She sees books on the shelf, one of which is called “The Male Member”. And suddenly, she realizes she’s missed all these signs. * Grace and Frankie get into an argument over which one of them is more upset. Frankie says “I lost my best friend. You never liked Robert.” * Robert says he can finally breathe again – now that he’s divorcing Grace to be with Sol. Sol says he feels really guilty because he devastated someone he loves very much. It’s clear that Sol and Frankie were not just spouses, but also good friends. Grace and Robert were not friends. * Grace freaks out about the divorce. “I did everything right. I played by the rules.” She is angry. Grace asks Frankie why she isn’t angry. Frankie says she is heartbroken. * Later, Frankie acknowledges that there were times she “knew” but ignored it. She says Sol once asked her to wear a dildo. She and Grace think that could only mean that Sol was gay. Episode 2: * Sol and Robert spent the night together and are still snuggling in bed. Sol says he wants to go up on the roof and shout: “I am a homosexual and I am in love with Robert Hanson, who is also a homosexual.” Robert smiles, and jokingly talks him out of it. * As the men are getting ready to go to work, Robert says “Just because we’re out now doesn’t mean we’re gonna be gay with a vengeance.” * Two of Frankie’s friends come over to console her and take her to lunch. One of the friends is gay. Sol and Robert aren’t the only gay men in Frankie’s life. Sol sent the two friends over because Frankie won’t answer her phone when he calls her and he was worried about her. * Robert cuts off Grace’s credit card (which she discovers while trying to pay for lunch). It turns out Sol cut off Frankie’s credit card, too. Robert feels absolutely nothing about doing this to Grace – citing that he and Sol are divorce lawyers and that’s what people who are divorcing are supposed to do. Sol feels terrible about it and is upset that he knows Frankie will be upset when she finds out. * Robert asks Sol, “Which is better, feeling terrible with me, or without me.” Sal says “with you.” * Grace sends her daughters to her (and Robert’s) home to get some of her things. (She’s staying at the beach house). The daughters notice the remains of breakfast on the table and realize that Sol spent the night there. They look sad. * Frankie has a fight with Sol and kicks him out of their house. She tells him to go live with Robert. Sol says they weren’t ready to move in together yet. * Later, Frankie asks: “Was any of it real?” That’s a normal question people ask after a breakup. But, Frankie is also asking if her marriage to Sol, who had been having an affair with Robert for 20 years, was ever real. Episode 3: * Robert and Sol are having their children over for dinner. Sol is nervous. Robert tries to calm him by saying they’ve already had lots of dinners together. Sol responds: “That was before I became their new stepmother.” * Mallory and Brianna arrive together for dinner. They wait at the door of the house they grew up in. Brianna wants to just walk in. Mallory stops her and says they can’t do that because it’s not their house anymore. Brianna responds “I’ve lost both of my virginities in that house” and proceeds to just walk right in. * During dinner, Robert and Sol hold hands for a brief moment. Robert’s daughters and Sol’s sons stare at them – not really knowing how to feel about that. * Coyote tells Mallory (who is mad at him) “We’re step people now.” * Brianna and Bud have a conversation in the kitchen. Bud is preparing a cake. Brianna mentions something about how Bud seems fine with what their dad’s are doing. She asks “Would you be cool with it if they had cheated with women?” * After returning to the table, after everyone starts eating cake, an argument ensues where the kids let out some of their anger and frustration. Bud says he is “not allowed to be mad”. When Sol asks why not, Bud answers “because you’re gay.” Episode 4: * Someone who worked with Robert and Sol has died. They are going to the funeral. Sol says that this will be the first time people see him without his wife by his side. Robert says the funeral “is not our coming out party.” * Meanwhile, Grace is pushing Frankie to get ready to go to the funeral early – so they can leave before it becomes Robert and Sol’s coming out party. * Grace and Frankie see Robert and Sol – as a couple – for the first time at the funeral reception. It makes Grace and Frankie sad. * Grace notices that Sol is wearing a tie that she gave to Robert as a Father’s Day present. This makes her angry. Frankie is angry too. “They can’t leave us AND share clothes!” * Robert and Sol haven’t decided what to call each other. Robert think’s they’re too old for boyfriend. “Soulmate?” Sol asks. Robert responds, “No! I don’t even like that one with straight people.” At the funeral reception, Sol tries to use the word partner, but then awkwardly explains that they are business partners at the law firm, but also partners with each other. He confuses the people he was speaking to. * A very old man who must have worked at the same company as the deceased tells Robert and Sol that he knows they are a couple – and that they are brave. He then asks: “When did you know you were attracted to men?” He goes on to say that he had “an experience” when he was in Korea. Sol kindly walks away with him and answers the man’s question. * Robert’s sister tells Grace that she had no idea that her brother was gay. * Later, Robert’s sister accidentally mentions that her daughter is having a baby shower. It becomes clear that Grace was not invited. Robert’s sister explains that the aunties would be there (Robert’s family is Irish) and that there would be drama and it was the daughter’s day. She asks if Grace understands. Grace says of course she understands, it’s for family. After Robert’s sister walks away, Grace looks sad. * Robert gets frustrated with Sol and yells at him for talking to the widow for too long. He yells at Sol about his shoes (that Robert doesn’t like). Robert yells “You’re just not doing anything right.” Sol responds: “Oh my god. You’re angry that I’m not Grace.” Robert sits down and starts to sob. It’s probably the first time he’s cried about the divorce. Sol consoles him, saying something like he “has one, too”. Robert apologizes, and they start using the word “boyfriend”. * Frankie speaks with the widow. The widow says to her: “Oh, I think your situation is much worse than mine.” The widow points out that Frankie might live another 20 years. The implication is that Frankie will be spending those 20 years alone. * As they are leaving the funeral reception, Grace tells Robert she is so mad at him. “I’ve lost everything,” she says. She lost her husband, her house, her family… * Frankie, upset by what the widow said, and by an unfortunate comment Grace said to Robert about Frankie when Grace was expressing her anger at Robert, leaves the funeral with Grace trailing behind her. Sol drives up in his car – to pick up Robert. Frankie gets into the passenger seat out of habit. She quickly realizes what she has done, gets out, and tells Robert “I think this is for you.” Episode 5: * Brianna tells her mother, Grace, that Grace needs a boyfriend. Grace tells her daughter, Brianna “I’m sending that sentence right back to you.” Brianna is single. Her sister, Mallory, is married with two kids. * Brianna shows Grace a profile of a handsome doctor on a dating website, in an effort to convince Grace to make a profile there. Brianna says she has used dating websites and has met some “passable” guys. Brianna mentions that one of the guys had a micropenis. Apparently, Brianna still considered him “passable”. * Grace tries to make a profile on the dating site. She struggles to describe herself. Brianna sees that Grace listed her age as 70 – which is her age. Brianna argues that Grace should say she is 65, because she looks 65. Grace says that wouldn’t be honest. Brianna says it is honest because that’s the age Grace looks. * Grace doesn’t know what to put in the section of the profile marked “turn-ons”. Frankie walks past the couch Grace and Brianna are sitting on and suggests: “That he’s NOT gay!” Brianna tells her mother to say she is “open minded”. Grace hesitates, concerned that it might mean some “weird sex thing”. * Later in the episode, Grace apologizes for saying something unkind about Frankie at the funeral. Frankie accepts her apology, but wants Grace to treat her better. Frankie points out that she is Grace’s friend. Frankie also says “I’m the other person this happened to” – meaning both she and Grace are going through divorces because their husbands are gay and their husbands want to marry each other. * Grace eventually finished filling out her dating profile and posting it. * During the episode, Grace drives Brianna and Frankie to the frozen yogurt shop (at their request). Both Brianna and Frankie are high. Brianna notices that the cashier is named Brian, and that he and her have the same name – except for the “na”. Later, Brianna tells Grace and Frankie that Brian sent her friend request on Facebook. She says “That must have taken a lot of stalking,” followed by “That was sweet.” She smiles. Episode 6: * Someone on the dating website wants to have lunch with Grace. The two of them have been briefly talking on the website for a while. The man wants to have lunch with Grace today – and she doesn’t want to go because she thinks she isn’t ready for that yet. She tells Frankie she likes the attention she gets on the dating website – and likes that she can get that attention and stay home. Frankie encourages her to go to lunch with the man from the dating website. Grace says she doesn’t know him. Frankie informs her that this is what going to lunch is for – to get to know him and to get laid. * Grace realizes that this will be her first date in 40 years. * Frankie gives Grace some condoms. Grace says she doesn’t need them because she’s well past being able to get pregnant. Frankie tells Grace that because of the “penis drugs”, older people are having sex and aren’t using condoms – and are spreading STDs. Frankie says she read that in an AARP article. There is, in fact, an AARP article from 2010 that explains why older people should use condoms. The article is written by Dr. Pepper Schwartz. * An earthquake happens, and Frankie freaks out. Robert and Sol had just made plans for dinner. (They plan to order paella from a restaurant). Immediately after the earthquake is over, Sol tells Robert that Frankie is terrified of earthquakes and that he needs to go help her calm down. Sol says: “It’s her first quake alone, and she only has Grace to comfort her.” Robert immediately responds: “Go!” * Coyote rides his bike over to Mallory’s house to deliver a children’s book called And Tango Makes Three. The book was written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell and was published in 2005. The story is about three Chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo, and is based on something that really happened. Roy and Silo were two male penguins in the zoo’s penguin exhibit. Roy and Silo liked to do everything together. A zookeeper noticed that they built a nest together, just like the other penguins couples do. But, Roy and Silo could not lay an egg. One day, the zoo had an extra Chinstrap penguin egg that was produced by another penguin couple who could not care for it. The zookeeper gave the egg to Roy and Silo, who took turns keeping it warm until the egg hatched. The zookeeper named the baby penguin Tango because “it takes two to tango”. Tango is a girl. Coyote takes the book to Mallory because he remembered that Mallory said that her kids were having a difficult time understanding what was happening with their grandfather and Sol. Coyote is working as a substitute teacher, so it makes sense that he had heard of this children’s book. * Grace’s date does not go well. After they are seated, she asks Charles if he’s “done it a lot”. He gives her a funny look. She clarifies that she means “this” and gestures at the table. She wanted to know if he goes to lunch with women he met on the dating website a lot. He obviously thought she was asking him if he had a lot of sex. * Charles tells Grace to watch out for liars on the dating website. It’s an odd comment to start out a new (potential) relationship with. He gives the example of someone who said she loved to play tennis – but he later learned that she was in a wheelchair. It’s hard to know if Charles was making up that example, or if he met someone like that. As the lunch date goes on, Charles gets stranger and stranger. He doesn’t seem to understand the subtle social cues Grace gives him indicating she doesn’t think he’s funny. He tells her if he’s too much to say: “Charlie it’s too much.” Grace immediate responds: “Charlie, it’s too much.” Charlie laughs and doesn’t take her seriously. Not long after that, Charlie starts making inappropriate, and gross, comments about Grace’s mouth and the steak she is eating, and this makes Grace so uncomfortable that she quickly ends the lunch date. * After helping Frankie calm down, Sol asks if she would like to get a bite to eat. They go to lunch. Sol texts Robert that he is going to be late (which leads to a misunderstanding – more on that in a bit). During lunch, Frankie asks Sol how it started with Robert. Sol is a bit taken aback. He didn’t expect to be sharing that today. Frankie honestly wants to know, so Sol tells her. Robert and Sol were at a law conference together, and later got drunk together at the hotel bar. They rode the elevator together. Sol says Robert gave him this look that scared him. The look gave him a feeling. Robert kissed Sol. Frankie asked if it was a big kiss. Sol says they kept kissing until the elevator stopped at their floor – the 26th floor. Sol says his whole body became alive. Frankie asks if that’s when their relationship started. Sol says no, that he and Robert didn’t talk about what happened. Frankie asks: “Why not?” Sol says they couldn’t talk about it – they didn’t know how to talk about it. The relationship between Robert and Sol evolved from sex to love. Sol didn’t want to tell Frankie about it because he loved her, and he loved their family, and he didn’t want to hurt them or lose them. * Grace returns home after the awful lunch date and finds one of Frankie’s art students in the kitchen, eating a ham sandwich. Grace has seen all three of Frankie’s students once before, the day she was trying to rush Frankie to get ready for the funeral. Grace knows the men in Frankie’s art class are all “ex-cons.” Grace is surprised and asks how he got in there. She tells him Frankie wasn’t home. The man says he found the studio empty so he went inside the house to make sure Frankie was ok. The man starts flirting with Grace. She is so surprised, she drops her purse. The condoms Frankie gave her fall out, and the man sees them. He makes a comment, and Grace clarifies that Frankie put those into her purse. It is clear that Grace is attracted to the man. She is a bit flustered. He tells her that he knows about her husband and Frankie’s husband. He says: “Please tell me that if he wasn’t fucking you somebody else was.” Another earthquake tremor happens, and Grace and the man end up passionately kissing in the kitchen (which leads to them making out for a little while before Grace stops it). The man leaves. Grace is smiling. * Later, Grace tells Frankie that one of her students was in the kitchen, eating a ham sandwich. Frankie says “That must be Byron. He loves ham.” Grace doesn’t mention the kissing. * Sol comes home to Robert three hours late. Robert invited some friends over (Al and Eddie, who are a couple). They are eating Paella. Robert and Sol start bickering, and Al and Eddie run away. Robert and Sol have an argument. Robert asks “Why did we blow up our lives if you are just going to go running back to her?” Sol said he texted Robert that he would be late, and thought Robert said it was ok. It turned out there was a miscommunication. The two make up. Robert goes to get some food for Sol. While he isn’t looking, Sol texts Frankie “goodnight”. Episode 7: * Grace comes home from an awful date. Grace tells Frankie that she took her anecdote (about saving a little bird). Frankie isn’t thrilled with that. Grace goes on to say that her date’s anecdote was about his fatty lipoma. He had a tumor that he named Farley – and it had teeth. A lipoma is a slow-growing fatty lump that’s most often situated between your skin and the underlying muscle tissue. It can feel doughy. It is not cancer. * Grace says she has another date tomorrow. Frankie points out that would be three dates in one week. * Brianna is cooking because she has a date coming over. She calls Bud to help her. Bud points out that she destroyed the Brisket, so he’s going to help her make stew out if it. Brianna says stew isn’t a second date food. Bud infers her date is with “Racist Dave”. Brianna corrects Bud – “Border Patrol Dave”. Dave sends Brianna a text, in which he cancels the date. Brianna now calls him “Racist Dave”. Brianna says that she doesn’t know what she wants (meaning in a relationship). Bud says she wants what everyone wants “Someone you can come home to at the end of the day who is happy to see you.” Brianna says she is getting a dog. * A big part of this episode focuses on the Spelling Bee, which is televised. Frankie and Sol watch it every year (it’s one of their rituals). Frankie can’t get Grace interested in the Spelling Bee, and Sol can’t get Robert interested in it. Sol unexpectedly brings Frankie a bread maker and some laser discs. Frankie sees that as an excuse to come over. Sol asks her to come over and watch the Spelling Bee with him. Frankie hesitates, unsure if that’s a good idea now that they are getting a divorce. Sol wants to continue their rituals, like watching the Spelling Bee together. Frankie says that she will be strong and say “no”. * Brianna adopts a foster dog she saw on the internet. The man who is fostering the dog brings him over. The man is cute and near Brianna’s age. She flirts with him – badly. He doesn’t appear to be interested in her, but is excited to give this great dog a forever home. Brianna is not so enthused about the dog. The dog is shy, at first. Brianna says the dog is ugly, and asks if it is the dog she saw on the internet. The foster dog “dad” gives Brianna the food the dog has been eating, and his toys. He makes a joke (about the dog leaving his patio furniture and grill so the other dogs could use it) – which Brianna doesn’t get. Foster dog man says she can call him if she has any trouble. Brianna spends hours trying to get the dog to love her. She fails at it. So, she calls the Foster dog guy, who comes over. He doesn’t see any problem with the dog (who is happily waltzing down the hallway and checking out other rooms.). The Foster dog guy makes a comment implying he thinks Brianna called to get HIM to come over. She basically agrees. They have sex. He leaves right after. Brianna is sad – until the dog leaps into her arms and starts loving her. * Frankie ends up going over to Sol and Robert’s to watch the Spelling Bee with Sol. She brought popcorn and tea. He is thrilled! They have a great time until Robert comes home and looks upset. Frankie leaves. Robert is miffed about Sol hanging out with Frankie. Robert admits that he is scared about Sol’s relationship with Frankie. He didn’t like that Sol didn’t tell him Frankie was coming over. Sol said he didn’t know she was coming over. Sol tells Robert that Frankie will always be part of his life, and that Robert has nothing to worry about. Robert agrees to watch the Spelling Bee with Sol – and they both have fun! * Grace goes on date three (of the week). It is with a man who owns a yacht and is an architect. His “name” on the dating website is “yachtcatect”. Grace thinks that is clever. She gets a table where they are supposed to meet. Unexpectedly, she sees a friend whom she hasn’t seen in years. His name is Guy, and he is a world traveler. But now, he wants to settle down. The yacht guy shows up, but hasn’t seen Grace yet. He is dressed like a television captain – hat, coat, and all. Guy asks Grace if she wants to meet that man. She doesn’t. Guy offers to sneak her out of the restaurant if she will have ice cream with him. They have ice cream together. Guy says he thinks there has always been a spark between them. They slowly start a relationship. He takes Grace to her door, and Grace kisses him. Neither expected that. Frankie sees Grace kiss Guy through the window. She leaves the television on – and the Spelling Bee – and goes upstairs. Episode 8: * Grace lets Frankie know that Guy is coming over for dinner (and she wants Frankie to either leave or stay in her room). Frankie says that Grace and Guy are gonna have sex. Frankie asks Grace if she is worried “because it’s the first time a straight man has seen you naked in 40 years.” Grace says she isn’t worried because she will turn the lights out (and he won’t see her naked). Frankie asks Grace if she is worried about vaginal dryness. Grace responds: “I am now.” * Frankie gives Grace something Frankie refers to as her “secret weapon”. It is a jar of “Frankie’s homemade yam lube.” Frankie calls it “Vag-a-kadabra.” She keeps it in the refrigerator. Grace is disturbed because she’s been eating the yam lube on toast. Frankie reassures Grace that that is good, and that her gynecologist says “You shouldn’t put anything in your vagina that you wouldn’t put in your mouth.” Overall, this advice is not a bad idea. * Grace doesn’t want to hear about the yam lube. Frankie says “It’s not a dildo. It’s a facilitator!” Frankie also says that she makes dildos. * Grace tells Frankie that men and women cannot be friends. Frankie disagrees. She is friends with Sol, and several other men, including Jacob (who grows the yams Frankie uses in her lube). Grace later informs Frankie that Jacob was flirting with Frankie. This takes Frankie by surprise. * Guy comes over for dinner with Grace. They sit on the couch afterward making boring small talk. Eventually, Grace asks: “Do you want to have sex?” Guy responds: “Oh boy yes.” Grace does, in fact, keep the lights out and does not let Guy see her naked. * The next day, Frankie asks Grace how the sex was, and wants to hear details. Grace says Guy “was no slouch in the boudoir.” Cut scenes make it clear that Grace and Guy had sex, but it was far from being good sex. Frankie asks if the sex was bad. Grace doesn’t really answer. Frankie asks Grace if she had an orgasm. Grace angrily responds: “You’re a child!” Frankie concludes, “So, that’s a no.” * Later, Frankie tries to encourage Grace to tell Guy what she likes in bed. She asks if he knows that clitoral stimulation is important. Grace is mortified – and it’s only her and Frankie who can hear this conversation. Grace says she has never talked about her clitoris. * The next day, Grace gets off the phone and tells Frankie “Well, Guy and I made plans for him to have another orgasm tonight.” * Frankie realizes that Jacob is flirting with her. She tells Grace, who gives Frankie some advice – but Frankie isn’t skilled at flirting. Eventually, she let’s Jacob know that Grace thought he was flirting with her, and so she tried to flirt with him – but is bad at it. Jacob says he thought Frankie was having a heart attack. The two of them smoke pot together. Right before Jacob leaves, he tells Frankie that he WAS flirting with her. * Guy comes over. He says he brought a flashlight. (He injured himself trying to find the bed in the dark the other night). He wants to take Grace upstairs. She stops, plays some music, and guides Guy through dancing with her. This is the closest Grace has probably ever gotten to telling a sexual partner what she likes. The dance becomes a metaphor for sex. Episode 9: * Grace got an invite to Robert and Sol’s wedding. She and Frankie make fun of the script (which is florid and loopy and overdone). Frankie asks: “I wonder how they decided whose name goes on top.” That conversation quickly ends. Typically, wedding invitations go one of two ways: (1) The parents who are hosting the wedding are listed, followed by the parents who are not hosting the wedding – and then it states that the parents are inviting people to the wedding. (2) If the couple us hosting the wedding themselves, the name of the bride always appears first (or “on top”). Neither Grace nor Frankie want to consider which of their husbands is “on top” in the bedroom, or to wonder if the order of names on the invitation match that situation. * Frankie, after seeing the wedding invitation, asks Grace to pull her finger, which Grace refuses. Frankie was asking for help – because she tried to remove her wedding ring the day of the funeral but it was stuck on her hand. Grace helps Frankie take off the wedding ring. * Frankie is making another batch of her “Vag-a-kadabra” homemade yam lube. Brianna comes over (to pick up her dog that Frankie was babysitting). Brianna asks what Frankie is making, and Frankie tells her. Brianna responds: “Mom, Frankie verbally molested me!” Surprisingly, it is Grace who explains the virtues of the lube that Frankie is making. The reason is because Brianna took over Grace’s company when she retired. Grace thinks Brianna could sell the lube because it works, and cites a statistic of how many women have dry vaginas (especially older women). This, of course, grosses out Brianna. Grace says: “It’s all natural – from farm to vagina.” Frankie says: “Personal lubricant is for everyone.” Grace makes Brianna take a jar of the lube with her to work. * Frankie calls out Grace for lying. Guy likes golf, and hoagies, and Grace is pretending to like those things too – but she really doesn’t like those things. Frankie keeps insisting that Grace needs to tell Guy the truth. Eventually, Grace says that when you are in a new relationship you lie and pretend to like things that you don’t like. Grace is worried that Guy will break up with her if he learns that they don’t like the same things. Grace is afraid of losing Guy if she is honest with him. Frankie encourages her to be honest with Guy, anyway. * Grace takes a small revenge on Robert by asking him to come over while Guy is there. Robert is coming over to borrow Grace’s wedding book – a huge binder that apparently has tons of information that is useful for people who are planning huge weddings. Grace wants Robert to know that she has a boyfriend. Robert comes over to get the wedding book and sees that Guy is there – and is overjoyed! They are friends. They are happy to see one another. Grace makes it clear that she and Guy are in a relationship. Robert is surprised, but seems ok with that. Guy says that he and Robert should get together – and Robert agrees and says he will call Guy. Grace says the she will attend Robert’s wedding – with Guy as her date. Later, Grace goes golfing with Guy, and Robert shows up. Guy says he invited Robert. The three go golfing, with Grace trying to quietly tell Robert that she doesn’t want him there. She accuses him of trying to flirt with Guy. Guy hits the ball very far, and Robert congratulates him. The two men put their arms around each other, and Guy recites part of a poem (written by Rumi) It turns out that Robert said he had no one to officiate the wedding, and Guy, who is an officiant, volunteered. He hoped Robert liked the poem so he could use it at the wedding. Robert later tells Grace that he thought having Guy officiate was perfect because Sol wanted a multicultural wedding and Guy has been around the world. * Brianna takes the yam lube to work and repeats what Grace said about it, and the “personal lubricant is for everyone” statement that Frankie told her. She puts some yam lube into small containers and asks her team to try it for themselves, and then come back the next day to talk about it how it made them feel. Brianna wants to move the company in a new direction with this product. Brianna mentions dry vaginas a lot – grossing out one of her team members. The team is made up of a woman (who just broke up with her boyfriend) a guy who is straight and may or may not be single, and a guy who is gay. The guy who is gay does not want to hear about vaginas. Brianna ends up using the yam lube with a co-worker – Barry, who is an accountant. She has sex with someone she not only works with but also is one of her employees. The next day, when the team is sharing their experiences with the yam lube, Brianna insists she used the lube “with herself”. * Frankie gets upset because Grace got an invitation to Robert and Sol’s wedding, but she did not. She makes an unexpected visit to Sol, who is living with Robert. Frankie brings him a chip and dip plate shaped like a sombrero. She also used the bread maker Sol brought her to make bread – which she brought to Sol – along with “better” (a non-dairy form of butter she hand made.) Sol asks why she brought him those things. She said she was there to remind him to get a flu shot – and that this is the last time she will remind him – because they need to have boundaries. He agrees, and the two try and work on that. Before she leaves, she tells Sol she is upset that Grace got an invite and she did not. Sol insists that Robert mailed Frankie an invite. This leads to a big, confusing, fight between Sol and Robert about why Frankie’s invite didn’t arrive. (Which gets resolved later.) Later, Sol visits Frankie (who is still living at the beach house with Grace). Frankie is in her studio, working on some art. Sol hands Frankie her invitation. She sets it aside – with a pile of mail, which has Frankie’s invitation. She made some art on the envelope, and forgot about it. Sol and Frankie get serious and ask their subconsciouses (which they have given names to) if Frankie really wants to go to Sol’s wedding. She discovers that she doesn’t want to go because it would be too painful. Sol is sad, but understands. They start acknowledging that they need to work on “divorce stuff”. * Frankie got so caught up with Sol that she accidentally blows off Jacob (the yam man). She stands him up on a lunch date, and he sends her a text. They reschedule, and she stands him up again (before rushing over to meet with him.) Jacob gently breaks up with her. She’s not ready to date yet. * Eventually, Grace starts being honest. She tells Guy that she doesn’t like golf, or hoagies (and adds some other things she doesn’t like). He accepts it. She tells him she was afraid that he would walk away if she told him, and that was scary, especially since she really likes him. Being honest solidified their relationship. Grace them goes over to Robert’s to tell him that Guy can’t be his officiant because Guy is her boyfriend. Robert shrugs that off and accepts. He tells Grace that he and Sol are getting into big fights about planning the wedding and maybe they should just elope like Sol wanted. Sol didn’t want a big wedding. Grace asks Robert what he wants. Robert wants the big wedding. He wants to tell the world that he loves Sol. Grace encourages Robert to keep planning the wedding, and points out that wedding planning is stressful. Grace says Robert would know that if he helped plan their wedding or the wedding of his daughter. There is a moment where they wonder if things would have gone differently if they had both been honest with each other about how they were feeling years ago. They decide that things would have gone the way they did anyway, but might have been less bad. Episode 10: * The episode starts with Robert and Sol, and Grace, and Frankie, and Bud in an elevator. They had just signed divorce papers. The elevator gets stuck, and Grace freaks out because she is claustrophobic. The episode is a “flashback” episode to events that took place long before the events in Episode 1 did. * The “flashback” takes place at the beach house where Grace and Robert, and Frankie and Sol, are spending the Labor Day weekend. Bud, Coyote, and Brianna are also there. Robert and Sol planned to tell their wives that they had become a couple and wanted a divorce. * Robert and Sol start trying to tell Grace and Frankie – when Mallory walks in with her husband. Mallory is super pregnant, and therefore, was not expected to arrive at all. This interrupts what Robert and Sol were trying to say – so it doesn’t get said. * Frankie is over the moon about Mallory’s pregnancy. Mallory’s husband says he sees pregnant women at work all the time, but none of them are as excited as Frankie is. Sol explains that Frankie “never got to do it herself.” Both Coyote and Bud are adopted. It has been established before this episode that Sol and Frankie are both Jewish. This makes me wonder if they chose not have biological children because they both carry a recessive gene for Tay-Sachs. * Mallory spends a lot of time in the pool. She asks Coyote to come over so she could talk to him. She asks Coyote how much cocaine he is on. He says he is naturally energetic. (Shortly before that, Coyote and Mallory’s husband smoked pot together, and Coyote snorted cocaine.) They talk a little about her pregnancy. Coyote starts to say something, that Mallory stops him from saying. She says something about “the thing we agreed never to talk about.” Coyote says “Imagine me with a 9 year old.” I think this means that Mallory and Coyote were a couple nine years ago and they either had a pregnancy scare (that turned out not to be a pregnancy) or Mallory had an abortion. Based on the timeline – Coyote and Mallory probably were in high school when the pregnancy (or pregnancy scare) happened. * Grace makes a mean comment about Frankie not knowing anything about pregnancy because she hasn’t been pregnant. Later, after Mallory unexpectedly gives birth at the beach house, fully clothed, while the family watches, Grace apologizes. She tells Frankie something like that she didn’t feel like a mother until she held her baby in her arms. Frankie says “Me too.” * Grace, who has been on the phone handling work related things for most of the day, later tells Robert that she wants to retire and give the business to Brianna. Grace says she hopes that her retiring will rekindle the relationship between her and Robert. * Fast forward to them all stuck in the elevator, and Robert explains why he stayed with Grace. “My heart broke for you, and I had to give you what you wanted.” * Bud reveals something he feels guilty about. That weekend in the beach house, he was sleeping on the couch. Robert and Sol were on the porch outside that room. Bud woke up and saw Robert and Sol kissing. Bud felt guilty about not telling his mom about that. Frankie and Grace reassure Bud that even if he had told – they wouldn’t have believed him. Frankie says “You gave me five more years with your father.” Episode 11: * Guy has been spending a lot of time at the beach house. Today, he admits that he “ambien eats” after Frankie notices more food missing from the refrigerator. Guy goes shopping to replace what he ate while he was asleep. He also says he “ambian orders” on Amazon, and has purchased the same pair of shoes, while sleeping, four times. * Frankie tells Grace she thinks Grace is going too fast with Guy. Grace says she is lucky to have him. She points out most men their age date younger women “who don’t have sagging breasts and chin hair.” * Frankie’s art student, (the one that kissed Grace during the earthquake), comes in the house to say goodbye. He is going to Mexico. (All of Frankie’s art students are ex-cons and all are adults.) Grace is flustered. He kisses her. Frankie comes in with the student’s painting – and sees them kiss. Grace says it was a goodbye kiss, to which Frankie points out that means there was a hello. Grace ends up telling Frankie about the day of the earthquake when the student first kissed Grace. * Robert and Sol are tasting food so they can pick a caterer for their wedding. The caterers have come over and are preparing food. Frankie calls Sol and tells him “Grace kissed a convict”. When Sol gets off the phone, he tells Robert about Grace kissing a convict. Robert smiles and says: “Good. She deserves some fun.” Sol is surprised by that response, and points out “but Grace is dating your friend Guy.” Robert says something like “but they aren’t married”. Long story short, Sol asks Robert if he kissed anyone else while they were together. Robert does not immediately respond – and Sol gets very upset. Later, Robert admits he slept with someone. Sol demands to know who. This conversation is happening while the caterers (who are a gay couple) are there. Sol says “We know five gay people in the world and two are in the kitchen.” It turns out Robert slept with one of the caterers, 12 years ago, when Robert and Sol were broken up. The caterer tries to console Sol by saying that he and Robert were incompatible. This does not make Sol feel any better. The caterer mentions something about how gay couples don’t have to fit into heterosexual norms. Later, Sol asks Robert “Are we doing this wrong?” He is referring to their upcoming wedding. He is worried they are getting out of one box and going into another. Eventually, Robert and Sol make up after talking things out. They end up choosing these caterers because their food is delicious. * Grace discovers that Frankie told Sol about her “kissing a convict” – and that Sol told Robert. She is absolutely livid! She tells Frankie that she is a private person and expected her to keep what she shared a secret. They argue, and Frankie tries to apologize. At this moment, Guy returns with the food he bought for Frankie. He overhears that Grace kissed a convict – that day – shortly after he left. Guy leaves, but comes back hours later. When Guy returns, he tells Grace that he is in love with her. Grace gives him a hug, but doesn’t say anything. She looks troubled by this news. * Later, Frankie tries to make amends by giving Grace one of her most embarrassing secrets. It is a VHS tape. The tape is a sex tape that she and Sol recorded in the 80′s, while wearing gladiator costumes. Frankie tells Grace she can watch it, laugh at it, tell the kids, put it on the six-o’clock news, do whatever she wants with it. Grace asks: “Can I burn it?” Frankie responds: “Please do.” Frankie says that the idea of watching yourself have sex is much better than actually watching yourself have sex. Frankie offers to give Grace $50 and another one of her secrets. Grace accepts. Frankie says: “I once made out with a monkey.” It turns out she made out with Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees. Episode 12: * Frankie makes a video on her phone saying she is moving on from Sol. She takes off her wedding ring (forever) and puts it into a box. * Bud and Coyote are tasked with throwing their father, and Brianna and Mallory’s father, a bachelor party. Bud and Coyote don’t know what to do. Mallory quickly puts together ideas for food and drinks, gets supplies, etc. Brianna thinks the Dads need to have a tacky bachelor party with jokes about balls. Bud and Coyote think the Dads want a classy party. Coyote sent invitations that had a cowboy in “assless chaps” on them. A friend of the Dads, named Nelson, arrives unexpectedly. Nelson is from Utah and doesn’t really approve of same-sex marriage. This makes the Dads feel like they HAVE TO keep the party very classy. The party is boring, so Bud and Coyote call Brianna for help. She orders a huge, pink, penis – that functions like a mechanical bull – and has it placed on the front lawn of the Dad’s home. Robert and Sol freak out. Nelson gets mean – telling Robert and Sol he doesn’t mind that they are homosexuals, but doesn’t want them to “throw it” into his face. Robert nearly punches Nelson, but Sol stops him. Meanwhile, the rest of the guests – all men (most of whom are heterosexual) are lined up around the penis/mechanical bull, waiting for their turn. Brianna’s idea made the party fun. Robert and Sol choose to stay inside – and do not want to ride the mechanical penis that is on their front lawn. * Frankie is sad – and Grace tries to cheer her up. They end up doing a “Say Yes” night. It is something that Frankie and Sol used to do. You have to say “yes” to everything that is offered the whole night – until you go home or get arrested. Frankie and Grace end up having fun. The fun includes accepting whiskey flights from two men at the bar Frankie selected. The two men are around the same age as Frankie and Grace. Frankie and Grace end up dancing on the bar and get kicked out. Meanwhile, Frankie’s car got towed. Frankie decides that, for those reasons, this “Say Yes” night is at least in “the top five”. * Grace admits to Frankie that when Guy told her that he was falling in love with her, Grace didn’t say it back. Episode 13: * Inside Frankie’s studio, near the door, there is a bumper sticker that has been posted sideways. It says “Viva Gore Lieberman 2000”. It is a political bumper sticker that was promoting Al Gore for President and Joe Lieberman for Vice President. The bumper sticker was for the 2000 election. * Grace wants to break up with Guy, but has been avoiding it. She says she is afraid that if she breaks up with him she might be alone forever. Frankie says that Grace needs to vlog about it. That evening, Grace had dinner with Guy and they watched two movies together. Grace didn’t break up with Guy, but still wants to. Guy comes downstairs and starts eating lasagna. Grace breaks up with him, and he takes it quite well. He offers to leave, but Grace insists that he stay because it was the middle of the night. She sleeps on the couch. The next morning, Frankie finds Grace on the couch and asks about Guy. Grace says she broke up with him. Guy comes downstairs and, based on his mood and words, doesn’t seem to be aware that Grace broke up with him. Frankie figures out the problem. “It was an Ambien breakup”. Guy was sleep-eating when Grace broke up with him. Grace eventually takes Frankie’s advice and vlogs (using FaceTime). She mentions Guy, and Robert, and then unexpectedly mentions a man named Phil whom she was in a relationship with. She discovers what she wants in a relationship, and that she isn’t getting it with Guy. Later, Grace tells Frankie that she has broken up with Guy (for real this time). * Robert is trying to write his vows but is having difficulty. It is important to Sol that they both write their own vows. Sol has already written his. Robert’s daughters find them and feel all kinds of emotions – so what Sol wrote must have been really good. Robert eventually writes a ridiculously long thing that was supposed to be vows but sounds like something written for a court case. Brianna asks her dad “Are you suing Sol for his love?” Brianna and Mallory take away the legal brief and edit it into something beautiful (and very appropriate as wedding vows). * Frankie goes to the home she and Sol once shared because it is moving day. They sold the house and need to pack up things and take them away. Frankie, Sol, Coyote, and Bud are going through boxes and sharing memories. They have a big, family hug. Sol says they should light the Shabbat candles one more time. The family agrees. Sol lights the candles and begins a prayer, but then gets too emotional and starts crying. Frankie sends their sons to go do the plans they had that night, and consoles Sol. Sol says “I have so much love for all of you my heart….” Frankie finishes “Hurts?” Sol nods. Frankie and Sol kiss, and they end up having sex. Both of them look quite distressed about that afterwards. * Grace comes home and finds Sol in the beach house. Frankie is not there. Sol looks extremely upset, and he’s not making a lot of sense. He says he wanted to make sure Frankie was ok. Grace eventually figures out that they slept together. She yells at Sol and tells him to go away, and that she will take care of Frankie. Sol is afraid to go home. To summarize, Grace convinces Sol that he has to tell Robert about what happened between him and Frankie, “or live the rest of your life the way you spent the past 20 years.” Sol goes home, still visibly upset. The viewer can hear Robert practicing his vows by reading them out loud as Sol stands at the front door, gathering courage to go inside. It doesn’t appear that Sol can hear Robert. Frankie was out on the beach. Frankie says something about not realizing it was over until now, and that Grace figured out it was over right away. Frankie says that sleeping with Sol “didn’t feel right”. She explains, “It felt like we don’t go together anymore.” This review of Grace and Frankie – Season One is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on Patreon or at PayPal.me. Thank you!... Notes About Things in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt – Season 1April 24, 2017TV and Movie ReviewsUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a Netflix Original TV series that is about a woman who is rescued from a doomsday cult. Kimmy is trying to make a new life. The show is goofy and weird. I put together some notes about things that stuck in my mind after watching each episode. Warning: There are spoilers. Episode 1: * Kimmy and her “sisters” were taken into a bunker by the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. He told the girls that the world had ended at Y2K (2000) and that nothing was left outside. People really did believe that something would end at Y2K, but it wasn’t the end of the world – it was the end of computer networks. Computer analysts speculated that the all the computer networks would crash at midnight on January 1, 2000. This would, they said, cause mass dysfunction because of how many things relied on those computer networks (including banking, satellites, etc). Way back in the 1970s, computer programs included a date code that started with 1900. Every year, the computers would automatically go up one year. By 1999, people started realizing that the computers would not be able to go to 2000, because they hadn’t been programmed that way. One speculation was that the computers would just roll the year over to 1900 – which would obviously screw up a lot of things. Of course, the world didn’t end at Y2K, and the computers somehow managed not to revert back to 1900. So, it makes sense that Kimmy and her “sisters” would believe that the world ended at Y2K. * Bunkers exist. President Kennedy urged Americans to build bomb shelters to protect them from nuclear fallout in the event of a nuclear war. A year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, and some people built bomb shelters – just in case. Today, people who call themselves “Preppers” build or purchase bunkers (or bomb shelters) for their families to live in – just in case the world ends or anarchy happens. So, what I’m trying to say is it would be plausible that Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne had a bunker. * Doomsday cults also exist, but I couldn’t find any that held people in an underground bunker. * Kimmy had a Baby-Sitter’s Club book when she was in the bunker. That series was published in 1986. It was a series designed for middle-school aged girls to read. That fits the timeframe of when Kimmy would have been kidnapped and taken to the bunker. * Kimmy and her “sisters” were on TV (as “the mole women”). Her “sister” Gretchen says that she met Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne after he bought some of her hair on Craigslist. Apparently, it is possible to buy human hair on Craigslist. Episode 2: * Titus mentions something about needing to pay Columbia House or his tapes wouldn’t be sent to him. Columbia House would let people buy 11 cassette tapes for a penny. Then, they would sign you up for membership in a club or service, and you would start getting monthly shipments of cassette tapes – which you would be billed for. The process is called “negative billing” and (may not be legal anymore). Columbia House originally sold record albums, and later sold compact discs. * Kimmy realizes that Xanthippe, the bratty stepdaughter of Jacqueline (the woman who hired Kimmy) has been telling her friends a lie. Xanthippe said she had a boyfriend who was a surfer and that they had sex on the beach, and they only meet at night. Kimmy figures out that the story that Xanthippe is telling matches the story in The Baby-Sitter’s club Mystery #12. She threatens to tell Xanthippe’s friends. This would, of course, embarrass the stepdaughter who was trying to look cool to her friends. Those books are made for middle schoolers, and the stepdaughter is a high schooler. * The Baby-Sitter’s Club Mystery #12 includes a surfer named Thrash, who meets Dawn (one of the Baby-Sitters Club girls who has moved to California). Thrash calls Dawn “kelea” (after a Hawaiian goddess). Thrash is about 20, and Dawn thinks he’s too old for her (but she has a crush on him.) Thrash fakes his death and disguises himself, but Dawn figures that out. He then tampers with another surfer’s board (because that guy tampered with his) – and there’s some kind of surfing competition going on. The book does not involve any characters having sex on the beach. Episode 3: * Titus shows Kimmy an old photo of himself. He is wearing a t-shirt that says Dole – Kemp – ‘96. Bob Dole (Republican) was running for president. His running mate was Jack Kemp. They lost to Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore. * In the same photo, Titus had a “flat top” haircut, that was really tall. It was probably inspired by the “flat top” worn by Kid (of Kid ‘n Play). * Kimmy is given a smartphone to use. She flips it over and asks: “Is that a Macintosh?” People used to call computers made by Apple “Macintosh” computers, or “a Macintosh”. That changed to “Mac” later – but Kimmy would have been in the bunker when that happened. Episode 4: * Kimmy drags a huge tube television into the apartment. She says she can’t believe people throw away good TVs. Titus insists the TV must be broken and won’t work. Somehow, when Kimmy plugs it in – the TV works. * Jacqueline (whom Kimmy calls Mrs. Voorhees) tells Kimmy she needs to send a photo of herself to Buckley’s school. One of Kimmy’s jobs is to pick him up from school. Kimmy asks where there is a Sears Portrait Studio. The last of the Sears Portrait Studios closed in 2013. Jacqueline teaches Kimmy how to take a selfie (after explaining what a selfie was.) * Titus and Kimmy go to a video arcade because Titus needs to use the photo booth to make headshots for his audition. Kimmy comes back from the arcade and says she didn’t like how she looked in the selfie, and wants to use a different photo. The photo she wants to use is a “Baby-o-matic” photo that shows what Kimmy and Titus’s baby would look like. It is hideous. Today, there are several apps for that. Episode 5: * Kimmy invites her mole woman “sister” Cyndee to visit her in New York. Cyndee brings with her a boyfriend that Titus is convinced is gay. Later, it turns out that Cyndee knows Brandon is gay, but doesn’t care. He was her middle school crush and after leaving the bunker, she set out to achieve all of the plans she made when she was in the bunker. The reason I put this into this post is because I’m also watching Grace and Frankie (another Netflix original series) at the same time. Two completely different shows that handle the concept of a woman dating/married to a gay man in very different ways. Episode 6: * Kimmy is trying to get her GED. She is attending an adult education class in a public school. The teacher has totally given up and plays VHS movies instead of teaching math. The teacher has tenure, which he believes means he can never be fired no matter what he does. In reality, tenure gives a teacher the right to due process. It means that a tenured teacher cannot be fired without a school presenting evidence that the teacher is incompetent or behaves unprofessionally. Or, they have to prove that there is no funding for whatever class, course, or subject the teacher teaches. In this case, Kimmy’s teacher could be fired because he is clearly incompetent. Kimmy talks to the school secretary, who makes it clear that this teacher has been incompetent for years. Teachers do not automatically get tenure. There is a probationary period of three or four years before a teacher can get tenure. Once they have tenure, it is possible for a teacher to be laid off (which happened to a lot of teachers in 2008-2009 during the recession.). A union cannot prevent an incompetent teacher from being fired or competent one from being laid off. In short, the room that Kimmy’s teacher showed her, that looked like a teacher’s lounge where all the teachers were sitting and reading magazines – and getting paid to do it – doesn’t exist. * Somewhere in this episode, The Expos baseball team is mentioned. This team started as the Montreal Expos. They moved to Washington D.C. in 2005. Kimmy is surprised to hear that the Expos moved. She would have been in the bunker by the time the Expos played their first game as the Washington Nationals. The Washington Nationals used a red cap that had a curly W on it – which was originally used by the Washington Senators. Episode 7: * Jacqueline went to China and returned with her husband. Kimmy asks “Was everything there upside down?” This is an another example of Kimmy’s limited education before she was kidnapped and put in the bunker. In an earlier episode, it is revealed she never finished eight grade. In the previous episode, Kimmy tries to enroll in a Middle School, but is told she cannot do that – and that she should get her GED instead. * Jacqueline tells Kimmy that she thinks her husband is having an affair. She says that he is on the phone, and laughing, and she wants to know who he is talking to. Kimmy suggests “Maybe Gallagher?” Gallagher is a comedian best known for his Sledge-O-Matic sketch (in which he smashes a watermelon with a sledgehammer). He is still touring today. * Jacqueline decides to hold a fancy party and invite the person she thinks her husband is having an affair with. She has a plan to catch him cheating on her. Kimmy is working at the party, and needs to look fancy (which Titus helps her with). Kimmy was able to hire Titus to sing at the party. Before the party starts, Kimmy tells Jacqueline that she feels like she’s on Bravo. “They still show operas, right?”, Kimmy asks. Bravo is an American basic cable and satellite television network and flagship channel. It launched on December 1, 1980. Bravo originally focused on programming related to the fine arts and film. In the early 2000s, Bravo changed its format and started focusing on reality shows, fashion and makeover shows, and celebrities. Kimmy would have been in the bunker when Bravo changed its format. * At the party, an attractive man with an accent starts talking to Kimmy. He is a guest, and he makes an excuse about why he ended up arriving to the party early. The man assumes that Kimmy is also a guest, so she decides to pretend that she is a guest. The man notes that Kimmy has arrived early, too. Kimmy tells him that her assistant put the wrong time into her PalmPilot. The PalmPilot 1000 was introduced by U.S. Robotics in 1996. It cost $299, had 128k of memory and a monochrome, touch-screen display. 3Com acquired U.S. Robotics in 1997. In 1998, 3Com had to stop using the name “Pilot” because of a legal dispute with the Pilot Pen company. The PalmPilot became the Palm. The Palm III organizer was based on the Palm 3.0 OS. It cost $399. By 1999, more than five million PalmPilots had been sold. 3Com started selling the first Palm device with a wireless antenna, the Palm VII, for $599. Today, Palm and the PalmPilot are no longer used because people use smartphones instead. Kimmy has a iPhone (which Jacqueline gave to her earlier in this season). It seems that Kimmy doesn’t quite understand that the status of having an iPhone would be much greater than having a PalmPilot. When Kimmy was a kid, having a PalmPilot meant you were rich and important. This is likely why she told the man that she had a PalmPilot when she was pretending to be a guest. Episode 8: * Kimmy uses Titus’s Walkman. It plays cassette tapes. It runs out of batteries while she was using it. Kimmy was singing “Unbelievable” by EMF. When the batteries die, she says “Unbelievable!” The song topped the Hot 100 Chart in 1991. * Kimmy tried to have her GED classmates meet together as a study group in the library. Almost all of them stopped coming. Kimmy goes down the list of classmates, noting what happened to them. “Fatima got deported,” Kimmy says. * Jacqueline tells Kimmy that she is getting a divorce. She tells Kimmy about friends of hers who got divorced. One friend’s ex-husband “died on top of his girlfriend”. Kimmy asks, “You mean… like bunk beds?” * Titus starts his new job at a themed bar and grill. To make a long story short, he is dressed as a werewolf. Kimmy is excited. “You’re a werewolf! Just like in the Bible!” * Kimmy finally tells Jacqueline that she was a “mole woman”. Kimmy tells her this because she is trying to show Jacqueline that women can be strong (so Jacqueline will go through with her divorce). To paraphrase, Kimmy tells Jacqueline that she and her “sisters” ate bags of dirt and passed it into a kiddy pool to survive. Jacqueline says she hopes that was a metaphor. Kimmy says it wasn’t a metaphor – they needed the iron. Scientific American posted an article in 2012 about geophagia (people and animals eating dirt and/or clay). The article noted that dirt can contain iron. it also noted that dirt can also contain parasites. Episode 9: * Kimmy has turned 30. She says she hit the big 30-oh. She probably meant the big three-oh. * Kimmy throws herself a birthday party and invites friends. Somehow, the detective that found her (when she was in the bunker) arrives at her apartment with his teenage daughter. He wants to give Kimmy her birthday present. Kimmy is not happy to see them. The detective (Randy) married her mother while Kimmy was in the bunker. Her mom and the detective had a baby girl (the teenager that the detective has brought with him). Then, her mom disappeared. Kimmy tells them to leave. (They do, but then appear at the party later.) The daughter (who is named Kymmi “Kee- Me”) is played by Kiernan Shipka – who played Sally Draper on Mad Men. I find this interesting because I finished watching all seven seasons of Mad Men right before I started watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. * Kimmy asks Titus to select the playlist for her birthday party. She says “I haven’t been to a Sam Goody since 1988.” The last Sam Goody store closed in 2012. It was in San Diego. Kimmy is in New York City. * During the party, the detective (Kimmy’s stepfather) gives Kimmy a necklace that has a locket on it. Later, she takes it off and her stepsister, Kymmi, grabs it, saying it is hers and that it belonged to her mother. Kimmy points out that they have the same mother. The heart shaped locket on the necklace holds a photo of Kimmy and a photo of Kymmi. * Kymmi says she wants to go to the Olive Garden in New York City that has three floors. It exists. Episode 10: * Kimmy’s boyfriend, Logan (who she met at Jacqueline’s party) wants Kimmy to stop being friends with Dong (who she met at the GED class). Logan and Dong got into a physical fight at Kimmy’s birthday party. * Logan apologizes to Kimmy for the fight, and says he overreacted because he is not used to obstacles. Kimmy asks “What would the Care Bears say” about how Logan has been acting. He responds: “It would depend on the Care Bear.” Kimmy accepts this response. * Kimmy tells Titus that she decided to stay with Logan, and that she will have to say goodbye to Dong. Titus responds: “Oh no! Am I gonna teach you about birth control?” He seems appalled by the idea. Kimmy says “not yet.” In another scene, it becomes clear that Kimmy understands kissing but doesn’t have a clue what making out or sex is supposed to be like. * Xanthippe calls Kimmy a bitch. Kimmy responds: “You mean, the thing that makes puppies? Thanks!” * Kimmy goes to the restaurant that Dong delivers food from to say she can’t see him anymore. She discovers that immigration came and took almost everyone who worked there away while Dong was out making deliveries. Now, he needs to find someplace else to live because immigration is after him. Season One of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was released in 2015. I’m watching it in 2017. What may have been an uncomfortable joke in 2015 has become reality for undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2017. Kimmy brings Dong to her apartment (which she shares with Titus) and tells Dong he can sleep on her couch. After they get there, she tells Dong that Logan is her boyfriend and she can only be friends with Dong. * Long story short, Xanthippe creates this ridiculous scene in an effort to encourage her mother to decide to let Xanthippe live with her father. Kimmy ends up kissing Dong. He leaves, saying he will find a new place to live. There is chemistry between them. * Logan later tells Kimmy that he was the one that called immigration. He thinks he’s hilarious. Kimmy breaks up with him, and rushes to find Dong before he gets on a bus. They become a couple. Dong says that he is still worried about immigration coming for him – and says it would be safer if he and Kimmy got married. Again, what was a dramatic moment in the 2015 TV show is something that has become reality for some people in the United States in 2017. That being said, the rules have changed, and American citizens who were married to undocumented immigrants have actually had their spouse deported (or prevented from entering the country.) Episode 11: * Kimmy gets summoned to testify at a trial against Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. She doesn’t want to go. * Kimmy talks to Jacqueline about all the things she’s worried about. Kimmy worries about getting Jacqueline through her divorce. She is worried about maybe marrying Dong. And now, she’s worried about the trial. Jacqueline takes Kimmy to a spin class called “Spiritual Spinning.” Jacqueline says it gets her mind off of everything except herself. * This is the episode where it is revealed that Jon Hamm is playing Reverend Wayne Gary Wayne. Jon Hamm played Don Draper on Mad Men. So, that’s two people from Mad Men (which I finished watching before I started watching this) who have appeared in Season 1 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. * The trial is a farce. Kimmy’s “sister” Cyndee keeps calling Kimmy, leaving messages and texts, in the hopes that she will come to the trial. Kimmy and Cyndee have smartphones and know how to use them. Gretchen arrives at the trial still dressed like she was in the bunker. * Titus helps Kimmy see that the Spiritual Spinning class is basically a cult. It’s run by an (apparently) charismatic man, who tells them what to think (and what NOT to think about) and who rewards some of them with extra attention. Kimmy eventually gets what Titus is saying. She agrees it is a cult, and asks “Why does this keep happening?” This realization makes Kimmy decide to go to the trial and testify against the Reverend. But first, Kimmy shows the entire spin class that the guy running it is a fraud. Episode 12: * Kimmy and Titus ride a bus to Indiana so Kimmy can testify at the trial against Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. Titus is reading a magazine called “Land Mall”. It appears to be the bus version of Sky Mall, a magazine that people find on airplanes. Sky Mall is filled with stuff for people to buy (most of which are things that no one really needs). Land Mall doesn’t exist. * Later in the episode, Titus is wearing a t-shirt that has Z 101 FM on it. He got the t-shirt because he was on the air (probably talking about the trial Kimmy is testifying at). The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt aired in 2015. I am watching it in 2017. Right now, Z 101 FM is a Spanish language radio station from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. * This episode reveals what the real purpose of the “Mystery Crank” in the bunker was. Episode 13: * Part of this episode, and the previous one, mentions viral videos. The man who sings in the intro of the show warns Titus that having a video go viral isn’t necessarily a good thing. The viewer can assume that the intro of the show was a remixed viral video that included an interview he gave to a TV crew as the “mole women” were being rescued from the bunker. Titus, who gave a hysterically bad interview on TV in the previous episode, had become the star of a viral video (when someone else remixed it). He is certain that the video will make him famous – and that being famous will solve all his problems. The first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt takes place on 2015. If I remember correctly, at that time, videos that went viral made the news (and made it onto multiple news channels and websites). That doesn’t really happen anymore. * The trial against Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne takes an unexpected turn when Kimmy introduces a video tape that … oddly enough… is sort of a remix of its own. Each clip had the date and time it was taken right there on the screen. * The first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt wraps up the main storyline of the show. It also starts some new storylines that will probably be picked up in the next Season. Notes About Things in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt – Season 1 is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on Patreon or at PayPal.me. Thank you!... Where did the Children Come From in “The Lobster”?April 13, 2017TV and Movie ReviewsThe Lobster is a bizarre dystopia where everyone must be part of a couple. Those who become single are sent to The Hotel where they have 45 days to “fall in love” with a new partner (who, ideally, also falls in love with them.) Those who do not manage to pair up with someone are turned into animals. It’s a very dark and disturbing film, and you probably shouldn’t watch this one if you have recently had a romantic relationship come to an end. Warning: There are spoilers in this post. I’m not revealing why the movie is called “The Lobster.” And, I’m leaving out a whole lot of things that happen in the movie. The movie focuses on David (played by Colin Farrell), who has come to The Hotel. His wife of 11 years left him, which means he is now single. There is no indication that they had children. The check-in process at The Hotel is depressing. David arrives with his brother, who has been turned into a dog. He is allowed to keep his-brother-the-dog, but must keep him in the hotel room. People who arrive at The Hotel have almost all of their belongings taken from them, including their clothing. The Hotel gives everyone identical outfits to wear. The men are given some slacks (of two different colors) and some shirts. Women are given multiple, identical, blue dresses and multiple flowered dresses. Everyone is given just enough clothes to get through their stay (including socks and underwear.) My guess is the purpose of this is to make everyone look as much like everyone else as possible. There is a moment when the camera focuses on a group of the saddest looking people, most of whom look depressed and unattractive, sitting in their underwear, waiting to be assigned a room. At first glance, I found it difficult to believe that any of these people had a good chance of finding a new partner. David is asked the same question all guests are asked: Are you heterosexual or homosexual? At first, he answers: “heterosexual”. But then, he recalls that there was a man… so he declares himself “bisexual”. The Hotel does not allow that. If I remember correctly, the person checking David in says that he is not allowed to be bisexual. They tried that, and it messed up their system. So, David thinks about it a little while, and decides to declare himself heterosexual. I thought it was interesting that The Hotel placed no stigma at all upon a person’s sexual orientation. Being heterosexual was accepted. Being homosexual was accepted. Being bisexual was acceptable, too (and would still be if The Hotel could work that orientation into their system.) Later, David finds himself as part of a group that includes both men and women. Presumably, there are other groups: one made up entirely of men, and the other made up entirely of women. We never see those groups in the movie. Each person is asked by The Manager what animal they want to be turned into if they are unable to find a partner. The idea is that a person who cannot find a human partner might have better luck finding a partner after they have been turned into an animal. The Hotel doesn’t place any sigma upon a person’s sexual orientation – but they do have some very strange rules regarding sex and masturbation. No one is allowed to masturbate while they are at The Hotel. There is a scene that involves David and The Maid. She is kind of grinding on him, but in a way that seems very mechanical and unappealing. It’s a service that is being provided. The Maid stops before David reaches orgasm. It appears that the purpose of this is to… encourage the male guests to find a woman to become a couple with? There is a severe punishment for the men who masturbate in The Hotel. It is disturbing, but not as disturbing as the punishments that The Loners have for those who kiss or have sex. The Loners are a group of people who escaped from The Hotel and are living in the forest. The point I’m trying to make is that the people who are in The Hotel aren’t allowed to have sex with anyone else – until after they have become a couple. The Loners are not allowed to have sex with anyone, ever (but they are allowed to masturbate – so long as they are doing it alone.) So, where are the children in “The Lobster” coming from? There is a point in the movie where two people have officially declared that they are in love. The new couple is removed from the group and given a hotel room to share. If that works out, the couple will spend some time together on one of the small yachts that is owned by the hotel. The new relationship is closely monitored by the staff of The Hotel, as well as by the Hotel Manager and her husband. They want to make sure the couple is really a couple before releasing them from The Hotel. The Manager tells the new couple that if they have any tensions, any arguing, that they cannot resolve themselves, they will be assigned children. She says that usually helps a lot. People don’t want to argue around children. Things do no go super smoothly with this couple, and we see them later with a daughter that looks to be about eight years old. Where did this child come from? The couple could not be the child’s biological parents because not enough time has passed for them to have an eight-year-old daughter. Without giving too much away, there are scenes from The City. It seems to be the place where couples live. Everyone there is a couple. The police stop a few single people and basically ask for their papers. There aren’t any children present. Now, I suppose it’s possible that The City is a place that is only for adults, and that children aren’t allowed there. Maybe the kids are in school (or daycare) when the parents go to The City. It’s also possible that all of these couples have relationships that are smooth enough that they didn’t end up being assigned children. Later in the movie, there is a part where one of The Loners introduces a few other Loners to her parents. She doesn’t look anything like her parents, so one can assume she was an assigned child. “The Lobster” is a movie that gives the viewer just enough story, and leaves them to imagine the parts that aren’t specifically laid out for them. The movie didn’t give me any answers about where the assigned children come from. Here are my best guesses about that: 1. The children are “orphans”. A couple that has been assigned a child (or more than one child) breaks up. The parents become singles. In this world, people cannot be single. So, someone – maybe The Hotel – takes the children away from both parents. This allows each parent to find a new partner, or to be turned into an animal if they are unable to find a new partner. The former parent can focus all of their attention on finding a new partner without worrying about what happened to their assigned children. There must be a large orphanage somewhere (and it probably isn’t located in The City). The children become “orphans”. They might get assigned to new parents one day. 2. The children are from accidental pregnancies. Two people at The Hotel become a couple. They have lots of sex. They are either not using any kind of birth control, or their birth control of choice fails. The woman gets pregnant. There are no examples in the movie of a couple that is raising their biological child together. Maybe this accidentally produced child is automatically sent to the orphanage after he or she is born. This child would one day be assigned to another couple (who need a child because they cannot resolve their differences and are arguing too much.) It is possible that all of the adults in the movie were raised in an orphanage (until they were assigned parents). If so, then the couple with the accidental pregnancy would consider it quite normal to send their newborn to the orphanage. This society highly values couples, and places a huge stigma on single people. The society doesn’t seem to give much thought to children (or who raises them). 3. The children are “test tube babies” or clones or are produced in some way that doesn’t involve a typical pregnancy. Viewers must accept the premise that The Hotel is quite capable of turning a person into an animal. From there, it doesn’t seem too difficult to imagine that The Hotel collects DNA from the guests, and sends that DNA to a lab for the purpose of making babies. 4. The children are coming from an entirely different society that has an abundance of children and not nearly enough parents to raise them. Maybe the other society doesn’t care if people are single, or part of a couple, and also doesn’t care who decides to have sex with whom. Sometimes, a pregnancy occurs. Parents can decide for themselves if they want to raise the child or send it away for someone else to raise. 5. The children are coming from a situation that I haven’t thought of. Where did the Children Come From in “The Lobster”? is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Things from Mad Men that are Different from Today – Season SevenApril 8, 2017TV and Movie ReviewsSeason Seven was the final season of Mad Men. I was kind of sad to have reached the end of the story, but I liked how it ended. I can always re-watch it if I want to. My husband and I watched the entire series of Mad Men on Netflix. I took notes on the things in Mad Men that are different from today. Before you read this post, you might want to read what I wrote about previous Seasons: Mad Men Season One Mad Men Season Two Mad Men Season Three Mad Men Season Four Mad Men Season Five Mad Men Season Six Warning: There are spoilers. Episode 1: Don flies to California where his wife, Megan, is living. She has a tiny black and white television. He buys her a huge console television. The thing is so heavy that it requires two big men to carry it inside. It looks like a cabinet with the television embedded in it, and I think it had built in speakers on either side of the TV. This was a top-of-the-line, expensive, color television…. that Megan didn’t want. Episode 2: * Don wakes up to a buzzing noise. It is coming from his alarm clock, which can be described as an analog electric alarm clock. The numbers flip over. * Don and his daughter, Sally, are at a diner. She wants to call her friends. Don put two quarters on the table. Sally takes the quarters, gets up, walks across the diner, and puts the quarters into the payphone that is on the wall. Today, Sally would have picked up her smartphone and made the call (or would have borrowed her dad’s smartphone to make the call). Episode 3: * Harry finally tells one of the other partners that he’s been lying – for a long time – about there being a computer that he uses to figure out the best ad placement for television ads. He’s been lying to the customers about it, too. There is no computer. This revelation sparks a conversation about the company needing to invest in a computer. Today, its hard to imagine an entire office without computers. * Betty goes on a field trip with her son, Bobby. She is a chaperone. Betty and Bobby ride on the school bus with his classmates, teacher, and a few other moms. Betty smokes a cigarette on the way, and ashes out the window. Episode 4: * The creative’s lounge is taken away from them because the office is going to put a computer there. It takes up that entire space. The only thing this computer could do was “crunch numbers” – literally computing. * The computer is an IBM 360. It is a mainframe computer that was accessed by remote terminals. It had 8,000,000 characters in bulk core storage. Monthly rentals ranged from $27,000 for a basic configuration to $115,000 for a typical large multi system configuration. * The “System/360″ became available for delivery in 1965. The office in Mad Men is getting it installed in 1969. Today, most offices do not invest in computers that are four years old. * Harry asks the IBM guy who is overseeing the computer installation to tell him where to find a keypunch service. The IBM 360 ran on punch cards. A keypunch service had people (often women) whose job it was to put a deck of blank cards into a hopper. The worker would type an operator command, and the hopper machine would feed one card at a time into a punch station. A series of dies punched holes into an individual card. Harry needed a service to make those cards for the office’s computer. * In order to operate the mainframe, a person needed to – by hand – put the stack of punchcards, in a specific order, into the mainframe one by one. * I have personally done that a few times when I was a little kid (because my dad sometimes took me to work with him.). Dropping the punch cards on the floor was a complete disaster. It meant you had to stop entering the cards, stop the computer, take the time to put the cards back in order, and start putting them into the computer again. If you accidentally put one card into the computer in the wrong order – the computer wouldn’t work. Once all the punchcards were correctly entered, you had to wait around for the mainframe to process them before you could start working from a terminal. * Don uses a typewriter at his desk to get some work done. He has a piece of white paper, then a sheet of carbon, then another piece of white paper sandwiched together. The purpose of this was so Don could make two copies of what he was typing at the same time. Episode 5: * There is now a secretary who sits at the terminal inside the room the giant computer is in. She appears to be typing something into the terminal. Behind her is a computer with a magnetic reel tape drive. * The giant mainframe computer makes a constant humming noise. The computer room always has the doors closed because it needs to be in an air conditioned room. Episode 6: * Peggy is working on an ad campaign for Burger Chef. She and Don decide to come up with a new idea rather than what they originally planned. Peggy mentions something about the ad including a mother who is picking up Burger Chef for her family on the way home from work. Don says “Mothers who work is too sad for an ad.” Peggy points out that he is surrounded by mothers who work. This doesn’t change Don’s mind. They end up going with a completely different idea. Episode 7: * This episode focuses on the Moon Landing. Everyone watches the rocket lifting off on television. Then, they watched the first space walk on television. * Peggy is in Indiana with Don, Pete, and Harry because they are pitching to Burger Chef the next day. Peggy went out to get alcohol, but Indiana was dry on Sundays – meaning stores could not sell alcohol. She ends up having to buy two cans of beer from the hotel clerk. Indiana was dry on Sundays until July 1, 2016. The laws changed on that date to allow distilleries, breweries, and wineries to sell alcohol on Sundays. The laws still did not allow people to buy alcohol and bring it home with them on a Sunday. Episode 8: * Don has an answering service. He calls and a female worker answers and tells him who called him and when. The service is not work related – it is taking calls from women in Don’s social life. * Joan and Peggy are talking to their client, Topaz pantyhose, about a problem. L’Eggs pantyhose – a competitor – is a lower price and is selling more than Topaz. L’Eggs pantyhose came in a plastic egg shaped container. Episode 9: * I didn’t see anything new in this episode, that you don’t see today (that hadn’t already been mentioned in this post or in posts about previous seasons.) Episode 10: * Sally’s friend Glenn comes to visit. He is now 18 years old. Glenn, and a female friend he brought with, ask Sally to go to Playland with them. Glenn reveals that he has joined the military and will be going to Vietnam. Sally gets very upset about this and rushes to her room. Later, Glenn returns, knowing that Sally is not there. (She was on a class trip.). Glenn came to see Betty. Betty gives Glenn a beer. The legal drinking age in New York was 18 until 1982 – when it went up to 19. On December 1, 1985, the legal drinking age in New York moved up to age 21. * Don was running late for work, so he shaves at his desk in his office while his secretary fills him in about what is scheduled for the day. He uses a battery powered electric razor. Those types of razors increased in popularity in the 1960s. * The office has a darkroom which Stan (one of the creatives) uses to develop film – usually for ad campaigns. People have to knock on the door before coming in because opening the door lets light into the room. Doing that at the wrong time can completely destroy film. Episode 11: * Peggy and Stan are working with children for an ad campaign. There is a table of toys in front of the kids. One of the toys is a metal slinky. Episode 12: * The office gets absorbed by McCann. They lose the computer that took over the creative’s lounge. Harry says that McCann has a team of people who do statistics – so they don’t need the computer. * McCann has an informal “ladies club”. The women who work there get together to complain about work (and drink). * Peggy’s last remaining creative guy chooses not to go to McCann. He is still at the old office. He says he is still being paid, so he thought he’d “make some long distance calls”. Long distance calls were very expensive at the time. Episode 13: * Don has gone on an impromptu road trip. He doesn’t carry luggage. Instead, he has a large paper bag with a change of clothes in it. The bag says Sears. Today, a lot of Sears stores are closing. Episode 14: * Don’s road trip continues. This time he is carrying a bag from Penney’s. The bag probably came from JC Penney’s (which, today, is also closing a lot of stores.) Things from Mad Men that are Different from Today – Season Seven is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on Patreon or at PayPal.me. Thank you!... Things from Mad Men that are Different from Today – Season SixApril 7, 2017TV and Movie ReviewsAs my husband and I watched our way through Mad Men, I took notes about things that are in the show that are different from today. This post is about Mad Men Season Six. We watched the entire series on Netflix. Before you read this, you might want to read what I wrote about previous Seasons: Mad Men Season One Mad Men Season Two Mad Men Season Three Mad Men Season Four Mad Men Season Five Warning: There are spoilers. Episode 1: * Megan uses a Kodak Instamatic camera to take a photo of Don while they are on a work/vacation in Hawaii. The Kodak Instamatic was launched in 1963. It used a 126 film cartridge. The Kodak Instamatic 104 was released in 1968. It had a holder for a single flashbulb on the top of the camera. Take a photo with the flashcube, and cock the camera for the next exposure (meaning – roll the film for the next photo). The flashcube would turn 90 degrees to bring the next flashbulb into position automatically. * The maid was vacuuming while Don was watching TV. The television had two squiggly lines of interference across it – one near the top of the screen and one near the bottom. It was not a common problem, and the TV went back to normal when after the vacuum was shut off. Episode 2: I did not see anything in this episode that was different from today (and that wasn’t already mentioned in this list or the lists about previous seasons.) Episode 3: * The news in the background on televisions in various scenes discuss the Vietnam War. It has been said that Vietnam was the first “television war”, or the first “living-room war” (the room people watched television in.) Being able to sit in your home, in front of your TV, and watch what was happening in a war far away had an effect on people. At first, TV stations were trying to be upbeat – providing wire reports or a battlefield roundup. Later, things got darker and some “horror of war” was televised. The ability to watch the war on TV had an effect on people’s opinion about the war. In 1968, the Tet Offensive happened. It appears that this is what the television news is talking about in this episode of Mad Men. Episode 4: * Joan and her friend Kate go to a restaurant where there is a telephone at every table. The name of the restaurant is “Ma Bells”. The name is a play on The Bell Telephone Company. Ma Bells was the creation of Restaurant Associates. The restaurant actually existed. Every table had a telephone on it. People called their order into the kitchen. The telephones could also be used to call someone who was sitting at another table. * Megan and Don go out to dinner with Megan’s coworker and boss (who are a married couple.). During the dinner, it is revealed that the couple are “Swingers” who are interested in swinging with Megan and Don. Swingers were people who had open relationships. Some were heterosexual, and some were bisexual. Being a swinger became popular in the late 1960s, when the “free love” movement was taking place and casual sex was becoming an accepted thing among some people. Swingers felt it was natural to have sexual desires outside of your relationship, and to act on those desires (if the desired person was consenting.) Episode 5: * This episode focused on when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. * Someone (I forgot who) turns on a black and white television. A bright dot appears in the center of the screen, which becomes a horizontal line, that eventually spread out over the screen. This was how televisions at the time warmed up if they had not been turned on in a while. * Don takes Bobby to watch a movie. They see “The Planet of the Apes.” At the end of the movie, it’s clear that Bobby liked it. Don asked “Do you want to see it again?” Bobby does, so they stay in their seats and watch the movie again. This wasn’t unusual and was allowed at the time. Episode 6: * I didn’t see anything in this episode that hasn’t already been mentioned in this list (or the lists I put together about previous episode) Episode 7: * Pete’s mother comes to his apartment. The handyman calls Pete to let him know she is there. Pete tells the handyman to fix his mother a drink. The ice cube tray is made out of aluminum. It has a quick release handle on it that you pull up to crack the ice cubes. Today, ice cube trays are plastic and you twist them to crack the ice. Episode 8: * The office is visited by a “doctor” (brought in by one of the partners of the company that Don’s company merged with). The man is not really a doctor. He was brought to “fix everyone up.” Don agrees to see the “doctor” because he is suffering from a bad cough. The “doctor” injects several of the men in the office with an unknown concoction. Based on the actions of the men who took this injection – it appears that at least some of it is amphetamine. The “doctor” appears to be somewhat based on a real person named Max Jacobson who was known as “Dr. Feelgood”. Jacobson did have a background as a doctor – but was known for mixing up unknown ingredients (along with amphetamine) and injecting that into the (often famous) people who came to him for help. Jacobson “treated” JFK, Marylin Monroe, Eddie Fisher, and others. Episode 9: * Don stops at a gas station and tries to get the gas station attendant’s attention. It was a full service gas station (which was standard at the time). People did not pump their own gas – the attendant did it for them. The gas station attendant would fill the tank, check the tire pressure, check the oil, and wash the cars windows. People paid for the gas, but the other services were provided for free. Gas stations used to hand out trinkets as well – for travelers to collect. (drinking glasses, key chains, calendars, road maps, etc). There are some places in the United States today where people are required by law to allow a gas station attendant to pump their gas for them. It is no longer a common practice – and does not come with the extra services. Episode 10: * Joan tells a potential client that Harry works on figuring out where to place television ads “with a computer as big as this room”. The first personal computer wasn’t introduced until 1975 – and they were kits that people had to put together themselves. * This episode focused on the 1968 Democratic National Convention that took place in Chicago. * Megan watches the violence that took place outside the DNC. She calls Don, who is watching it, too, (while away on business). Megan says she can’t vote – but still cares about what’s going on. Megan is Canadian. She was from Quebec. * There is a lava lamp on the desk in the Creatives Office. The lava lamp was created by Edward Craven Walker (who was a British accountant). He sold the U.S. manufacturing rights in 1965 to a company named Lava Lite. In 1968, lava lamps were marketed to executives. Episode 11: * The office, which is in New York, receives fresh oranges from California from Sunkist (who is a client). In a previous episode, Roger’s daughter told him that her husband had this great idea about investing in refrigerated trucks that ship produce. This indicates that it was not easy to obtain fresh oranges from California if you lived in New York. Those oranges were a big deal. * Sylvia and Arnold (Don’s neighbors) have a son, Mitchell, who is 18. He returned his draft card as a form of protest of the Vietnam War. After Mitchell dropped out of school, the military re-classified him 1-A. This designation meant that it was extremely likely that Mitchell would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Mitchell tells his problem to Megan (who relays the problem to Don). Megan said that Mitchell was “going to run”. This meant that Mitchell was going to leave the United States and go to Canada in order to avoid being drafted. Megan considers helping Mitchell because she has family in Canada. Much of this episode is about how to solve Mitchell’s problem. Episode 12: * I didn’t notice anything new in this episode (that wasn’t already mentioned in this post or in posts from previous seasons.) Episode 13: * Sally get suspended from boarding school because she used a fake ID with her mother’s name on it and bought alcohol for herself and the other girls. Betty calls Don, all upset. Betty tells Don that the reason why “nothing is working” and “the bad is beating the good” is because Sally is “from a broken home.” That’s not a phrase people use today in regards to a child from a family where the parents got divorced and remarried. Things from Mad Men that are Different from Today – Season Six is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on Patreon or at PayPal.me. Thank you!... CockatielsChange of SeasonSeptember 15, 2019CockatielsPepper, Marvin, Pinky, and Morris were making excited and curious little chirps today. They noticed that the weather is starting to cool off and the humidity is lower than it has been. The cockatiels are ready for Fall! This post was originally posted on Book of Jen. It is not allowed to be posted to other websites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Peaceful CockatielsAugust 16, 2019CockatielsPinky is interested in the camera, while Pepper snoozes in the background. The photos you see in this blog post were taken by Shawn Thorpe. Morris is suddenly interested in the camera. Morris doesn’t sit still for very long. He got distracted by the door that we open up when their water needs to be refilled. Morris likes to open and shut that little door, over and over. Morris likes to sit in the corner of the cage, with feet spread apart so he can touch two sides at the same time. He has become interested in the lemon tree outside the window, and has spent time watching it. The tree is growing, and needs to be cut back. We think Morris has bad vision, so maybe this is the first time he’s seen the tree. #Blaugust2019 Peaceful Cockatiels was originally posted on Book of Jen. It is not allowed to be posted to other websites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... CrackersJanuary 24, 2019CockatielsMorris was offered some crackers as a treat. He sang a nice song to the crackers, and decided to chew on the napkin. Morris does not want a cracker right now. This post was originally posted on Book of Jen. It is not allowed to be posted to other websites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Bring Back the SunJanuary 5, 2019CockatielsMorris is politely asking me to bring back the sun. He expects to see it shining brightly through the window every morning, and thinks that I have the power to make that happen. This post was originally posted on Book of Jen. It is not allowed to be posted to other websites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... FootDecember 15, 2018CockatielsMorris sometimes flies down the hall to sit on my computer. He usually sings a happy song. Today, he decided to sit and preen his foot. This post was originally posted on Book of Jen. It is not allowed to be posted to other websites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Coloring PagesJohanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – MayJune 27, 2019ColoringI’ve been coloring through the 2019 Johanna Basford coloring calendar. It is fun and relaxing. I fell a little bit behind in May because it was a busy month. Still got it done, though. May 1 May 2 May 3 May 4 and 5 May 6 May 7 May 8 May 9 May 10 May 11 and 12 May 13 May 14 May 15 May 16 May 17 May 18 and 19 May 20 May 21 May 22 May 23 May 24 May 25 and 26 May 27 May 28 May 29 May 30 May 31 Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – May is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – AprilMay 2, 2019ColoringColoring is relaxing, and good for my rheumatoid arthritis (which is in my hands). A friend gave me the Johanna Basford 2019 coloring calendar as a gift. I’ve been having a great time coloring the pages! April 1 April 2 April 3 April 4 April 5 April 6 and 7 April 8 April 9 April 10 April 11 April 12 April 13 and 14 April 15 April 16 April 17 April 18 April 19 April 20 and 21 April 22 April 23 April 24 April 25 April 26 April 27 and 28 April 29 April 30 Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – April is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Johanna Basford Coloring Calendar – MayApril 23, 2019ColoringI’ve been slowly working my way through the Johanna Basford 2018 coloring calendar. It has been a very relaxing experience, and good for my rheumatoid arthritis (which is in my hands, among other places). My chronic health issues make it difficult for me to keep up with the “do one of these every day” type of projects. I will be done whenever I get there. In this blog, I have the coloring pages from the May 2018 part of the calendar. May 1 May 2 May 3 May 4 May 5 and 6 May 7 May 8 May 9 May 10 May 11 May 12 and 13 May 14 May 15 May 16 May 17 May 18 May 19 and 20 May 21 May 22 May 23 May 24 May 25 May 26 and 27 May 28 May 29 May 30 May 31 Johanna Basford Coloring Calendar – May is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – MarchApril 17, 2019ColoringI’m working my way through the 2019 Johanna Basford coloring calendar. A friend gave it to me as a Christmas gift. My goal is to try not to fall too far behind. Coloring is a good for my health. It reduces stress (which is bad for my fibromyalgia). I also color to keep my hands active, which is good for my rheumatoid arthritis. March 1 March 2 and 3 March 4 March 5 March 6 March 7 March 8 March 9 and 10 March 11 March 12 March 13 March 14 March 15 March 16 and 17 March 18 March 19 March 20 March 21 March 22 March 23 and 24 March 25 March 26 March 27 March 28 March 29 March 30 and 31 Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – March is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!... Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – FebruaryMarch 1, 2019ColoringColoring is relaxing. A friend gave me the Johanna Basford 2019 coloring calendar as a Christmas present. I am really enjoying it! I have rheumatoid arthritis in my hands (among other places). I’ve heard it is good to keep my hands and fingers active. Coloring is a good way to do that. February 1 February 2 and 3 February 4 February 5 February 6 February 7 February 8 February 9 and 10 February 11 February 12 February 13 February 14 February 15 February 16 and 17 February 18 February 19 February 20 February 21 February 22 February 23 and 24 February 25 February 26 February 27 February 28 Johanna Basford 2019 Coloring Calendar – February is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites. If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on PayPal.me. Thank you!...
