Polygroup summer waves elite pool

A rotting cage, emanating curtails and waves
Of subtle smells of death
Upon my breath, and in my face
A loose light ray that seeps through tape
Like a tracer beam bouncing off the blackout seams
Grazing the infinite walls that bleed
Clouds of f2f2ED
Dead skin curtains etched again excrete
With rays cooking human fumes within
And so its exoskeleton is on display
Of the curtains x-rayed by summers day
Zig-zagged stitch form my prison bars amidst
A hollow shallow chipped bed
As slits of light steal my daily night
As I slouch aimless in a hibernating hint
That sea of countless hours
Discombobulated by black wires
That tangle me in their rubber webs
In my RGB shrine, for its the only daylight
I could ever stand in my night to see
The data heaps
Grabbing a hold of me
Paralyzing my choice to be
As the spider lay dormant
On my desktop with its cyclops beacon
Like a light house stuttering
Its suckling on my history
Upon every terabyte about my dreams
Its cocooning me
Its melting me
In a deep dark web
I can never untangle free
https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/13z62og/idk\_what\_to\_feel\_about\_this\_honest\_opinions\_please/jmtt4ec/?context=3
https://www.reddit.com/OCPoetry/comments/13yh2kx/narcissus/jmtuavu/?context=3

PSA: There’s no tolerance for racist, homophobic, discriminatory, troll or unhelpful comments. If a post about events in DFW triggers you, keep on scrolling. I have zero Fs to give so if you insist on commenting something unhelpful, you’ll never have to be subjected to these free, helpful posts again bc you’ll be blocked.
This is not a top things to do in FW (plenty of posts if you search this sub), these are events specific to this week. There may be mistakes/things change so do your due diligence & search more info online. None of these events are vetted, they’re just copied & pasted.
Join the Fort Worth discord to connect w/other folks in FW, chat & check out different meet ups: https://discord.com/invite/9KUdWdQVdJ
[Tuesday June 6th]
Art Aid 4:30-6PM The Pool, 1801 8th Ave Free This seminar will offer real estate advice for artists looking to purchase, lease, sublet, or partner for a creative space.
Free Yoga Burnett Park 5:30PM
Silent Book Club Hotel Dryce 6:30PM
Trivia Game Night 7p Old Chicago Join us for great food, fun & PRIZES!
Murf’s Trivia J. Gilligan's Bar & Grill 7PM Triple Play Trivia
NoiseROT Presents: Strange and Eternal Tour (2023) w/ MYCHILDREN MYBRIDE The Rail Club Live 7PM $20+
Omar Torres Hyena’s Comedy Club Free 7PM
Geeks Who Drink Trivia Night T&P Tavern Free 7:30-9:30PM
Geeks Who Drink Trivia Night University Pub FW 8-10PM Free
Toad the Wet Sprocket Tannahill's Tavern & Music Hall 8PM $40+
[Wednesday June 7th]
Lunchtime Music Series in Burnett Park 12-1P Free
Indoor Vendor Market Rahr & Sons Brewing 5-9P enjoy 25+ local businesses to shop, live music, food trucks, snacks, sweets, acrylic paint pouring class
Ronda Ray at Fort Brewery & Pizza 6-9P
We Run Wednesday’s The trailhead at clearfork 6:30P
NoiseROT Presents: Victim of Suffering live at Haltom Theater Sidestage 7-11PM
Tall Bearded Guy Trivia Funky Picnic Brewery 7P
STFU Open MicJun 7, 8:00pm - 11:00pm Twilite Lounge FW check out the longest running comedy open mic in FW! Free jokes, drink specials & delicious po' boys! Hosted by Claws Out Comedy w/featured performer Marissa Nieto
Karaoke HopFusion Aleworks 8PM
[Thursday June 8th]
Fort Worth Movies That Matter Modern Art Museum 7-9:30PM Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops (2019, 96 min., TV-MA) is an intimate portrait of two Texas police officers who are helping change the way police respond to mental health calls Movies That Matter is a FREE, bi-monthly film series that highlights important human & civil rights issues. Each event features a film screening, followed by a moderated discussion w/special guests. Register for free tickets on Eventbrite
Join us every second Thursday to connect with art through cocktails, conversations, & creativity The Carter 5-8PM
Beatles vs. Stones Ridglea Theater 6:30P Jam to a musical showdown $25+
Justin Tipton Fort Brewery Pizza 7PM
Greater Tuna Downtown Cowtown at the Isis June 8-10 8PM comedy show
Anand Wilder of Yeasayer The Post at River East 8P $25+
Midnight River Choir Live Rusty Nickel IceHouse 6PM $10+
Tribute Band Thursday: Local Yoakam Jun. 8 8 p.m. Fat Daddy’s, Mansfield Free live music, Happy Hour drink specials & $12 build-your-own jumbo pizzas
Evenings on Oak Street: Roanoke Austin Street Plaza 6:30PM After Party: Modern Dance Party Hits
Geeks Who Drink Trivia Night HopFusion Aleworks 8P
[Friday June 9th]
Friday on the Green, Magnolia Green Grab your lawn chair for live music from four local musicians 5-10P free
Kimbell Happy Hour 5-7P Kimbell Art Museum free music by Allegro Guitar Society
Dustin Massey w / Generational Wealth at Lola's Doors 8:00pm, Start 9:00pm
Brent Cobb Billy Bob's Texas 6PM $18+
Koe Wetzel Dickie’s Arena 6:30P $39
Kung Fu Vampire Black Heart Machine Tour Haltom Theater 7:30PM
Stockyards Championship Rodeo Cowtown Coliseum 7:30P free
Neon Wave Pool Party Whiskey Garden 8PM
Jimmy Wallace at Twilite Lounge FW 9PM-12AM No Cover
FWSO’s Concerts in the Garden Festival Gates open 6:30 p.m. start 8:30 p.m. Music of the 80s
Dustin Massey (Band) w/ Generational Wealth at Lola's Doors 8pm Show 9pm $10 advance tickets, $15 at the door
Tab Benoit Tannahill's Tavern & Music Hall 8P $40
REYES - Nuestra Fiesta Dedicada a la Realeza de la Música Latina Tulips FW 9P $15
[Saturday June 10th]
Drag Show & Brunch Pride Edition 11AM-2PM Funky Picnic Brewery Join Kiki w/the Kweens for our monthly drag show & brunch!
Glizzy Fest presented by Fletcher’s Original Corny Dogs Martin House Brewing 12-5pm Family Friendly, Live Music, Craft Vendors, & all the hot dogs/corn dogs you could dream of. Tickets $15 if drinking = 4 beers + souvenir pint glass. Those not drinking do not have to pay.
Arlington Pride Celebration the Levitt Pavilion Arlington 6-11pm (doors open at 5) ft. performances from RuPaul's Drag Race Queens Angeria Paris VanMichaels, Symone & Kennedy Davenport, DJ Al Farb & a host of other entertainment on stage along w/a street fair full of vendors
FWSO’s Concerts in the Garden Festival Gates open 6:30 p.m. start 8:30 p.m. Star Wars
Wandering Roots Market Tanger Outlets 15853 North Freeway Shop local pop-up, live music, vendors, food trucks + kid-friendly 10AM-4PM
Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat LIVE Ridglea Room 7PM $25+
Live Jazz Performance Feat. The Rob Holbert Group The Warehouse 8P
LOCALS ONLY VOL. 3 Whiskey Garden 8P
Fenne Lily + Christian Lee Hutson Tulips FW 8P $20+
Dope City Comedy Tour FW’s Hyena's Comedy Club Doors 8:30P
Guttersluts perform Alice in Chains Unplugged w/ Garrett Owen Twilite Lounge FW 9PM-12AM No Cover
Live music HopFusion 7PM
[Sunday June 11th]
Farmers Market 10AM-2PM Funky Picnic Brewery
Giddy Up Drag Brunch Concrete Cowboy FW 1-4PM
Monthly Book Club Funky Picnic Brewery 3-4P We will be focusing on outdoor & adventure-themed books, & every few months will include an outdoor activity prior to meeting to talk about the book! Will be discussing The Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Matt Hillyer & Kayla Ray at The Post at River East 6-8P $20+
LanceBattalion at Fort Brewery 7-9PM

Part 1
"When we Firmas were pushed north into the Pyrimian mountain valley after the death of their chain of command, they settled down and instead of focusing on expansion focused on necessities like food. With co-operation from the first goblins and other creative minds that joined the First Wave of the migration, they managed to grow food over the summer in first-iteration greenhouses. "My parents were part of the first wave. They were old for a couple, but joined the Firma clan in founding a government and keeping the area safe, as well as spreading word. The dragonic gods didn't like their behavior at all; cities burning is more entertainment for them, so they were the first to be Forsaken in this era, publicly, in the main square of the old Dragonic Capital. "However, that backfired, with more and more dragons tired of running around and fighting all the time, they decided to settle down in a place where nobody would bother them; now that they had this place given to them, and the Second Wave started. Basically the entirety of the dragonic clans and several other species amassed in this wave, and the Sapient Unification Government held. "My parents had an egg in one of the more northern caves, right on the coast. Then, the third wave arrived and everything went downhill from there. "The Unification Wars were fought between those who wanted one government to cover this region, and those who wanted governments segregated by species. This would have been fine if the secessionists didn't step in on people's behalves, without their consent; it took fifteen years of war for the war to end. Millions died and some species like the Snow Fox beastpeople almost went extinct. My parent were part of the death wave. "The war evolved so rapidly it was impossible for a commander to last more than two months. It started with sticks and stones and within a month there were arrow volleys. A year saw guns, two tanks, three battleships, four planes. Bombs, bigger bullets, bigger guns, bigger bombs. "In the last few months of the war, the first nuclear devices were used, creating miniature stars on the land with immense destructive potential unleashed. It ended with mutually assured destruction protocols being activated, and when all was said and done the land was a snow-fallen irradiated dustball. "It took years for the survivors to pick up the remnants of our short-lived civilization and restart it into the Terra Firma Sapience Union. All the time, my egg didn't hatch because I had no incubator, but didn't die thanks to my ice type. It was located close enough to a mana vein where I just... absorbed the entire vein. When the cave was found by explorers following maps for my parents den, all they found was my egg glowing brighter than Sunstones. "I was taken to an incubation facility in Cellyia, one of the bigger cities. There I hatched, and after more than one test I grew. My growth was still... affected by the time without an incubator, so my already slow growth stopped after fifty years instead of continuing to infinity. And then I took some magic courses, did my best to drain my mana reserves, and settled down here, well away from... the bustle of Cellyia. It never quite felt like a home, you know. It was a good place to grow up, don't get me wrong, but I like it here better. Remote, and in the same place my parents met for the first time. As much as I can tell, anyway; a number of records were destroyed in the Unification War. "When your heroes continued to come up here, I would be the one on first guard. Damming a river, I used water magic to break it. Trying to destroy some transit infrastructure, I would be the first one to either fake it, finish it off, or lure them away. When your latest one decided to head for Cellyia, it was out of my range for such activities. I shadowed the party on the way and let others take care of it. "I never thought that your 'heroes' would be heartless enough to burn what they were told and even acknowledged as a hospital with patients inside. A library and museum with most of our pre-unification works inside. An orphanage, a school... an entire neighborhood of ten thousand citizens' homes. What for? To try to kill just one of us. "We... couldn't take that kind of behavior. Cellyia might have not been the best place for someone with my personality to grow up, especially without parental figures, but that orphanage still had some good memories. An all-citizens vote was called, an all-citizens vote was passed, and we started a counter-offensive military campaign into your Civilization Nations. We've been waiting for you elves, leaders of the Civilized Nations, to advance your society; it's been seven hundred years, all the most you've done is grow your population and add an extra floor to your townhomes. "So we're going to do it for you. You ran our patience down, so we're going to change your society for you. Is it a repeat of the Unification War? I don't think so, given that you Civilized Nations never rescinded the declaration of war against us 'monsters' over two thousand years ago; one that you still follow through on to this day. "But that isn't the end of my story. "When the gods forsook us, they tried to pry away our magic, our land, and our lives. So we defended. Space radars monitor their movements on the mortal plane. There's so many more technical details I can go into. All I can tell you is, at one point, the old god of Dragonic Princess-kidnapping; yes, they were a god; they came and asked us to restart worshiping them. "That went over as well as you'd expect, and the next thing that happened... was that I absorbed her mana and powers. Technically, I am an undefined god, and... at this point, I'm afraid to get a definition. "What if it's something I don't like? Something evil, immoral... something my parents, the leaders of the Second Wave, wouldn't be proud of? What if... what if it kills me? Everyone hates me? I'd no longer be free... "So my solution was to hide. Here, in a mountain cave in the middle of nowhere. This is my life, all of it... and I don't know where to go from here." ----- "So... you're a god?" I asked. I couldn't think of another question to ask. "Yes and no." The cat replied. It did nothing to satisfy my fearful curiosity. How could one both be and not be a god? "Princess-kidnapping was a... niche god, rarely prayed to by still enough to be, you know, and actual deity. So her mana ran out first, and most of it dissipated back into the environment yada yada yada, but like the sponge my mana reserves are, I sucked more of it up than I should have; enough to had just a slight touch of divine control. On par with a low-level demigod. If I was omnipresent, I'd solve me problems with a snap of my claws, and then I wouldn't be hiding from my problems here." "If your powers came from a god, how are yours undefined?" My mind was seeking knowledge now. I was a mage, after all, and this was more than just the opportunity of a lifetime; it was the opportunity of a aeon. "Because I absorbed her essence from the environment before it had the chance to fully dissipate, but still late enough where it was no longer hers." Vixie shrugged "Or something like that, mana gets weird sometimes. All that matters now is my stockpile is slowly increasing its grow rate, which gets annoying pretty fast." "Annoying?" The cat laughed again. "Do you think this is all of my baseline reserve? Half of the reason I stay away from the rest of society is because the last time someone with multiple aura got involved with politics..." She trailed off, and then let another, this time impeccably cast illusion fall. The air around her was burnt crisp with the power of several mandatory auras in her current small size. Twelve tails flicked behind her back, eleven of them made of energy. Floating specs of light, some smaller while others the size of ice crystals surrounded the air around her. The six orbs on her back were joined by six more, and were attached to a ring. Her head had two halos, and her entire body was engraved with glowing lines. If she before radiated power, now she was made of it. The lights on the cave's ceiling flickered as more and more of the illusion fell away. Geometric shapes orbiting her body, a platform made of mana at her feet, lightning whizzing between all sorts of objects. Finally, it was gone, and the cat that stared at me with big, sad, glowing blue eyes had told me her deepest secret. As soon as it had started, the illusion repaired itself, and before me was one cat, a halo, six orbs, two crystals, and two mana tails. I did the second most instinctive thing when it came to seeing a cat. I pulled her in for a hug. There was a quickly quieted hiss as she squirmed a bit in my grip, trying to get more comfortable, before letting herself get stroked by me. Several images flashed before my eyes, and a tear came out of mine. We had gone to war against the less lucky sapients on our world, and were now paying the price. It felt like hours, but then my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn't eaten in literal days. Vixie shot out of my grip and led the way down into the cave. I followed, and soon enough I was eating some salted crackers with dried meat and cheese while Vixie moved around between other caves. "What are you doing?" I asked her between bites. "Packing," She replied. "Why?" "It's time I got out of here and, to follow the phrase, touched some grass." ----- It took three days for the elf, whose name was Nick, to recover enough to be able to make the journey to Cellyia. In those three days, I realized just how - and why - the Civilized Races looked at us the way they did. For starters, I'd forgotten just how many things ran on electricity, let alone other, more complicated mechanics. Pressurized water, instant hot water, even sinks, showers, and toilets were all completely unknown to the 'civilized races.' Ah, yes. Civilized without toilet paper. Bitter ramblings about the people who set off the chain reaction of events that killed my family aside, those were the second longest three days of my life; the first was my thirteenth birthday so I could get a personal HUD and social media. I was also a mess of thoughts. The elf had shown me, over the course of the three days - aside from the two-minute get-my-life-together moment - that I couldn't hide from my problems forever, or they would team up and try to hunt me. Hence my new, reluctant guest from the overflowing hospital they had oh-so-nicely delivered to my door. I had words for the medical staff. And I was also a mess of thoughts. Did I mention that one already. In all seriousness, Nick adapted to electronics pretty well. All I had to do was explain what it was, what it did, and file it under the name of science. It took an impressive four minutes of rambling about quantum mechanics before Vick realized that he was in way over his head asking how the 'magic rock that can half-think with bottled lightning' worked. He backed out when I yanked a textbook from my knowledge hoard and flipped through the pages to the start to explain how quantum superposition affected the set of particles it was entangled to. Fun. Finding out what toothbrushes were took some convincing, but soon the elf's teeth started to recover from lack of proper dental care. Food was easier than I expected, and Vick was pretty accepting of whatever I tossed on his plate. Except for artichokes, for some reason he hated those. Over the three days we bonded, and Nick got pretty used to life in my home. On the second day I moved him to the guest bedroom I had built but never maintained, but one wave of my paw and a splurge of magic later that was solved. "Why don't you use magic more often?" Nick asked. I explained that was much as I wanted to burn my reserves like they were a forest before a forest fire, the mental strain was tough without learning proper casting, which requires one to drain their reserves to practice wielding physical willpower. That meant that I was caught in an infinite loop of negativity, so I could only get away with a couple spells a day before the mental exhaustion metaphorically turned my brain to mush. On the morning of the fourth day, we left. Honestly, Nick could have left on the first day but I wanted him to be able to have the stamina to walk around for hours on end with me in Cellyia. Either way, as long as he kept by me it would be fine. There was a small population of elves, humans, and dwarves who had come up to the TFSU for one reason or another and never left, which meant that he wouldn't be too far out of place. My plan, instead of just flying into the Cellyia while steering clear of the airport, was to make it to the closest town, Lymian, and take a train from there north to Union Station. It would dump us a bit further downtown than I liked, but Cellyia was built in levels, and I could take the footpath level to wherever I needed. All said and done and one passenger seat clipped to my saddlebag harness on my dragon form, I opened the door to my cave. And was promptly blocked by a wall of snow. "Right," I half-grumbled. I enjoyed tunneling through snow, but spray would make the entrance cave wet and that wouldn't dry for another couple days, and until it did the sound of drips would echo throughout my home like nothing else. Either way, checking one last time that Nick was secure, I prepared my wings and powered forward. The snow and ice parted for me, and then melted and fixed itself back together behind me as I power-swam through the snow the same way I would through water. After ten seconds of this, I burst up from the snow-covered mountain the snowstorm had left behind and started to change my heading for Lymian. It would take thirty minutes of flying to get there, as I was flying lower and slower than usual to take care of my passenger, but we soon enough turned the next mountain and saw the town. The elf gasped as he took in the sights, while I kept my eye out for more activity. It had been fortified as a military base due to the war, but not by much; the town was useless from a defensive standpoint anyway. I spotted the next train arriving from its winding track around the next mountain, which also meant that I was a bit early. The citizens of Lymian were used to my presence, as I usually stopped by to pick up supplies and occasionally a bit of correspondence. So when I landed on top of a several story tall snow pile, nobody cared. I let Nick out, and then transformed into my cat form and slid down the snow pile to start to jogging towards the train station. That's when I remembered that unlike me, elves without snowshoes do not float on snow. Oops. ----- The sights were more than pretty, more than beautiful... If the gods had rejected these people, they might have just as well done it out of jealousy. After I'd been dropped off on top of a snow mound, I immediately flattened myself on my stomach to not fall through. I'd been in more than enough snowstorms and snow mounds to know how it would go if I didn't. The cat climbed the hill below me, reappearing as naturally as the snow fell. "Sorry," Vixie apologized. "Here, let me..." I felt the snow melt around me and we descended down to the ground. Vixie glowed brightly, literally; Even using as little magic as reshaping some snow was threatening to cascade out of her form. We moved to the train station without incident, where the massive 'train cars' were loaded full of passengers and cargo and then taken off towards the big city. Apparently this was the same one the hero burned, but the 'rebuilding and recovery efforts we going well; no critical infrastructure had been severely damaged.' Either way, the ride there was uneventful. Stepping out into Union Station was different. It was like I had entered a busy capital marketplace or square, with everyone rushing in another direction to another place. I trailed after Vixie, where even the oddity of an elf in these mountains was outshone by just how many different races there were; beastkin and kobolds and orcs and undead all filled the streets in, well, peace. "The city is built in layers," Vixie explained. "So while yes, residential and office towers here in the capital were set alight, underground public transit, personal transit, and cargo and fluid transit was all untouched, so we were able to circle around the hero and put out the fires to be replaced with smoke generators, and a couple holograms snatched from a nearby cargo transport." I had no idea what any of that meant, only that the city also had extensive underground bits. The towers soared over everything, and lights covered every spare centimeter of the city. Vixie led me down market stalls, across plazas, through parks and through building lobbies. Eventually, the babble increased, something I didn't think was possible. "Welcome to the commercial district," Vixie said after she had pulled me into a corner away from the masses of people and crowds moving around. "We're right near the harbor, and when we get there I'm going to show you the lighthouse and explain the city a bit better." I almost lost track of Vixie as we continued to move through the throngs of people going about their daily lives. I saw a couple boarded up shops, but most of them were either undamaged or didn't care about the scorch marks on their shops. Jewelry boutiques and grocery stores lived in tandem with furniture stores and a massive slab of too-smooth-to-be-natural stone of a rock type I had never seen before. It was covered in signs depicting some kind of diagram. Right around the corner was the waterfront, with a massive promenade running alongside it. Snow-covered trees lined the walkways, and soon enough Vixie and I came out of the crowd near a large, tall abandoned - though no unmaintained - building. "Right then," Vixie explained and started climbing. "Here's the old lighthouse, it's perfect for seeing the city. They never officially decommissioned it, so it's still legal to climb and properly maintained, but they never use it either." "What was the large thing they were building?" I asked, clambering onto the next ladder. "That? Oh, that was the space elevator." Vixie replied. "The ground part has been completed for three years now, we're just waiting for the rest of the nanotubes to make it into orbit and then run a kevlar cord up, follow it down with the space-grade heavy-duty nanotube cord, and then that's that." "Space?..." I was confused. "When the gods said that they were higher than mortals, you took that both figuratively and literally; they live above you and in a higher dimension. In this case, space is where they live in terms of height, but not number of dimensions. We're working on interdimensional travel, and interuniversal too, but those aren't replicatable on any sort of large scale yet." Vixie shrugged. "Either way, it's not like I care." "But you have it?" I pressed. "Dimensional travel." "Yes." She replied. "Well," I let out a short laughed. "The Civilized Nations are screwed over." "That's putting it lightly," She climbed on top of the last platform and showed me the city against the setting sun, lit up brighter than the night sky and more lively than the earth. It was beautiful. I sat there and watched the city glow with a power not even the gods had, side by side with not a dragon or monster, but a friend. END. A/N: Rushed this last bit of the arc, but school is ramping up at the end of the year so it was either fast story or incomplete story, and I chose fast story. Happy pride month, everyone, and I hope to see more of you when I have more time.
Original Prompt: [WP] For as long as all the races have known, Dragons have been seen as violent, destructive creatures. After an attack on your village, you black out and find yourself in the den of a dragon. It's rather annoyed that that is how they're seen, and wants to prove that isn't the case.
u/Lycan_Jedi thank you for the prompt!
Part 1

Me and my mom just got a house so now I’m scared because it’s summer so that means the pool and no sleeveless shirts so how should I cover them up without her being suspicious

Does anyone know the current price for a family of 4 per month? Also, do you think it’s worth it for the pool on the summer? Is the pool bananas busy all the time or is it ok?

You, shmungus, are eating a hamburger on a boat when suddenly, a woman walks up to you. She asks you to help find her child. You told her you would, and she led you to where she last saw her kid. It was the back of the boat. All of a sudden, she pushed you off. You looked for something to grab onto, and you found the anchor. You held on to the chain for dear life. The ship came back to land and you hopped off and swam to shore. People started looking at you strangely. A child walked up to you and asked if you were okay. Offering her hand, the child smiled. You took her hand and she was shining with happiness. Her mom came over and picked her up. The child protested and you heard her say she liked you. You smiled, and sat down on the beach.
Chapter 2: You went to the resturaunt and sat down. A waitress came to your table and you realized that she was the woman who pushed you off the boat. You saw that her name was Kimberly. You decided to order a hamburger and when you finished eating, you exited the resturaunt and called the police. When you explained the situation, they said they'd look into it. Later, you were wandering around the city when you got tired. You had a bit of money. You decide to go to a hotel and rent a room. Later that day, you find out that there is a pool. When you're going down to the pool, you see the girl from the beach and her mom. The girl notices and waves. You wave back. You both go to the pool, and while the girl plays with the other kids, you and her mom begin to talk. You explain that you were walked out on by your wife, who took your son. The woman introduced herself as Kylie, and her daughter's name was Cynthia. The two of you talked about some fun adventures, and you find out that you like her.
Chapter 3: after a few hours of talking, you asked for Kylie's number to stay in touch. To your disbelief, she said yes. You returned to your room, and went to bed. When you woke up, you saw a text message from your son. It says "hey pops. I miss you and am going to a small resturaunt tomorrow. Can we meet?" You went to the resturaunt your son was going to, and you saw him.
Chapter 4: "Hey, champ. How you doing?" You asked. "Good. Finally moved out. Mom desperately wanted to keep me from seeing you but I miss you." Yout son replied "Jeremy, I missed you. Glad you reached out to me." You said. You and Jeremy caught up with eachother. He now has a loving wife who is expecting a baby in 4 months. You smile and look at how much Jeremy's grown. Suddenly, Kylie and Cynthia come in, and notice him. They wave and come to talk. Jeremy flashes you a look, and you shake your head, laughing. The two girls meet Jeremy, and then he goes home to care for his wife. You, Kylie and Cynthia finished eating and walked back to the hotel. It was time for you to be on the move again. You never really had a chance to live somewhere permanently. You accidentally blurted it out and Kylie offered for you to stay at their place. You scratch your neck and smile in embarrasment.
Chapter 5: When the two girls took you to their house, Kylie apologized for it being small. You told her not to be sorry for giving you a place to live. You smile and decide that you are cooking dinner tonight. You went out and bought some groceries, and whipped up some burgers. You, Kylie and Cynthia all dig in. They are joyous with how good it is. It soon became late, and Cynthia was told to get ready for bed. Kylie then asks what led you to wish ashore that day. You decided to tell her that you were pushed off of a boat. Kylie looked at you and you could tell in her gaze that she felt sorry. You told her that she didn't need to be sorry and you were grateful for Cynthia's kindness. You then fell asleep.
Chapter 6: You were having a dream of warmth all around you. No pollution or crime. It was the ideal life. When you woke up, you found Cynthia and Kylie sleeping right next to you. When Kylie woke up, you said good morning and she started apologizing. You said it was okay as long as she slept well. When Cynthia woke up, you decided to make breakfast. Afterwards, you look for a job, and find three to go for. Our of the three choices, you choose to go for welding. After a bit of training and research, you try and get the job, and qualify immediately! You're quite shocked. On your first day of work, you do so well, that the boss wants to promote you! HR doesn't allow it because it's your first day. A week later you get your first pay. You got a good sum of money, and are considering moving out. When you tell Kylie and Cynthia, Cynthia asks you to stay, and Kylie just says it is your choice.
Chapter 7: You decide to stay because of Cynthia asking. You keep making money to help with rent and you look for houses to buy, because the apartment the three of you are staying in is really loud. You find 5 houses. You choose one with two floors, two bedrooms, and three bathrooms. When you, Kylie and Cynthia moved in, you all stared in amazement. It looked magnificent. After exploring and playing around, night rolls around. You claim a bedroom, and Kylie takes the other one. Cynthia asks to go in with you. You tell her that she should accompany Kylie. She nodded and said goodnight, then you slept like a baby.
Chapter 8: The next morning you are working out and Kylie and Cynthia join. You let Cynthia and Kylie join you, and you teach them stuff from when you were a kid learning fighting. You taught them how to punch properly, throw good kicks, and trained their endurance. Weeks go by, and one day, after a workout session, Kylie and Cynthia walk over to you and give you a hug, thanking you for being there and helping them. You hugged them back, smiling. The three of you stood there for three minutes, and when you all let go, everybody smiled. You got a text from Jeremy, and it was a photo of him, his wife, and their first-born son. Beaming with pleasure, you congratulate him and his wife. He then asks if you want to come down.
Chapter 9: When you came to the hospital, you met Jeremy's wife, Amie. She was a sweet girl with a soothing aura. Amie held the baby and you took a look at it. "It's a boy. We named him Drake." Amie said. You picked up the baby gently, and held it in the air. "This baby will be spoiled rotten." You said enthusiastically. Everyone shared a quick laugh. "Mom was here earlier. She never seems to want to meet you." Jeremy said solemnly. "Never mind that Jeremy. You've got your kid and wife to take care of now." You said, hand on Jeremy's back. When you get back home you get a text from a number. It said "hey. If you're alive, head to the alley between the mall and the office building. I know this is the right number, because Jeremy had it on his phone."
Chapter 10 (finale): You go to the alley with a metal pipe and a kitchen knife. A figure in a hood stands at the other end. The figure whipped out a knife of her own and lunged at you. You blocked with the pipe and jabbed the knife out, catching the mask that the silhouette was wearing. The person jumped back, but you went forward again, underhand slashing at the mask. The mask falls and behind it lies your ex-wife's face. She charges at you, screaming. "I should've made sure you were dead when you were on the boat!" She shouted at you. You kicked the knife out of her hands and tried to go for her again, but she pulled out another knife and stabbed you in the shoulder. You wonder if you should pull the knife out and use it. You decide not to pull out the knife. You take your pipe and lunge, but soon you realize that was a mistake. Kimberly (your ex) slashed your left eye and stabbed you with another knife she had hidden. You wobbled forward and she kicked you into the ground. You lay on the ground, staring at Kimberly. She walks toward you, twirling a butterfly knife she lunges, and then something drives into her. Jeremy stands in front of your Kimberly and Kylie and Cynthia drag you back. "Mother or not, I'll hurt you if you hurt someone I love." Jeremy said, glaring. He leapt forward and kicked Kimberly. She dropped the knife and Jeremy picked it up, slashing her tendons so she can't move. "We saw the text." Kylie said. Jeremy knocked Kimberly to the ground and tied her up with a rope and called the police. They came and arrested Kimberly, and you blacked out. (Two years later...) "Honey get up." Kylie said. In the two years after the incident, you and Kylie got married, and were raising Cynthia together. You, Kylie and Cynthia were going to a meeting with Jeremy, Amie and Drake. The six of you asked someone to take a picture, and you put your arm around Kylie and Cynthia, smiling when the camera took the picture. The end.

My son is 16 years old and became a lifeguard last summer. He had a great season and did very well. He enjoyed his job very much. He had his rehire interview in March with the same company. At the end of the interview they asked him which pool location he wanted to work at, and he said the same pool he was at last year. The reason for this is so he can walk to work because he is saving his money for a car. He applied early so that he could have first dibs on this pool since it’s in walking distance. The pool company told him they wouldn’t be at the pool this year, so my son told him he would not be able to work for them since they wouldn’t be there. He finished the interview and immediately started searching who would be the new pool management company. He interviewed with them, and they gave him a job right away. He’s making more money than he made last year and he’s even manager on duty this year. All good things. So two weeks into this swim season, all of the sudden over the weekend he found out that the pool company he worked for last year said he won’t be able to work at the new company because of a 12 month noncompete clause that nobody told him about that the other company wrote into their contract. From what I understand this is rarely, if ever, enforced.
He interviewed with the company that was used last year and they never told him about this being an issue!
Now he’s lost his shifts because the new company doesn’t want to deal with this threat.
Here is the letter I wrote to the man with the previous pool company I spoke with about it. I’m removing names and locations for now:
Hello _____,
I wanted to check with you before we take any further steps on behalf of our son _, to see if you have had a change of heart. I spoke with _ at ____ Club today as well as [New management company]. What I found is that your stance on this matter is strictly isolated to you. Everyone else is on our son's and the other 7 lifeguards' side. [Club Manager] mentioned that you are fully staffed and [Club] was fully staffed, so there is no good reason for you to push this issue. Everyone is surprised at the lengths you've gone to, to interrupt these teenage lifeguards' plans for SEASONAL work. Some are more affected than others, and our son is being greatly, negatively affected. The ____ Club and [New pool management Company] also find your position to be totally unreasonable, that such clauses are rarely, if ever, enforced.
As I shared with you yesterday, our son reapplied to [previous company] in March. His interview was on March 12. He wanted to be early so he could be sure to work at ____ Club, so that he could: - walk to work - earn money for a car - work hard as a lifeguard and grow his experience - add another year of lifeguarding to his resume
When [our son] named _____ Club as his location, [previous company] said that they weren't going to be there this summer. [Previous company] did not tell him he wouldn't be allowed to work there!
You said on the phone that you didn't want other companies poaching your employees. First of all, these lifeguards are minors. Second, they're working seasonal jobs. Third, you require them to go through re-hire interviews. [Our son] chose where to work this summer based on the location of the pool. No one poached him. He made the choice based on our circumstances. Your offer to find him some hours at your pools in [our area] won't work. This morning I mapped our home address to [Another Club] as well as [Country Club], and found them to be 35 and 40 minutes away from our home depending on the route, NOT 10-15 min as you stated yesterday. You literally laughed at us on the phone, as if you know better. As I type this email at 5:00pm, the distance to [Another Club] is 38-40 minutes, and to __ Country Club is 37-44 minutes from our house. So, as we previously stated, your offer to rehire [our son] and send him there just won't work. If a lifeguard can't get to your locations, they should be free to work where they can.
He reapplied early. He did all the right things. He made his plans and set goals, and here you are getting in the way of a hard working teenager being able to work his job. Since this all happened at the last minute, [our son] has lost all his shifts because of distance. Even though he made his plans early and took action toward his goals.
Though I shouldn't have to, I'm even willing to reimburse you for a portion of his training fee he paid last summer. I believe he got a $100 discount on the training. You and I both know that being a lifeguard is not a proprietary job. There are no patented secrets you taught him, and neither my son nor the handful of other lifeguards should be held in limbo because of money and greed. My husband and I will send you money to offset the cost of his lifeguard training and you can be free of this. If I were in your shoes, I'd want to be free of the guilt of hurting someone else and preventing them from working.
I hope you've thought about your impact on others and changed your mind. You're being punitive and vindictive, and my son is an innocent bystander. Looking forward to hearing back. —————
What can we do in this situation?

Past- I (28 f) had a best friend (30 f) my entire life we’ll call her A. A and I were neighbors for 15 years. She was my soul sister I thought I knew her thoughts and she knew mine. When I turned 14 she was 16 and had her first baby with K. Her parents hate K still to this day. I was 15 when we moved to a new house in a nice development across town. We kept being friends. She got pregnant again when she was 19 and I was 17. That’s when she decided to not go to school to be a nurse and just stay an STNA. And K decided to work for a delivery company. They got a small 3 bedroom house close to her parents. When I was 18 she was 20 she got pregnant again. Another girl. I left for college about a month before she found out. I returned in December and we had a huge fight. She told me I was selfish for leaving her and going to school. That I wasn’t a very good aunt to her kids for abandoning them. I apologized for leaving and told her I would be doing it again in a few weeks and she broke down crying and told me that she cheated on K around the time she got pregnant and that she was projecting. I told her it would all be okay and work itself out, they had been together since they were 13 and it could be forgiven. ( I was 18 and didn’t have a lot of relationship experience) I left for school again and returned in May. She gave birth two weeks after I got home with her daughter E. A year went by of them being the “picture perfect family”. At E’s first birthday I noticed how different she was from her siblings. She has brown hair and brown eyes where as MJ the oldest and F the middle one had blue eyes and blonde hair. That must’ve been when K noticed too. A week later he did a DNA test and E isn’t his. He told A she had a choice to make Him or E. She chose him. Long legal boring story later I have transferred to a college closer to home and have full and legal custody of E and A & K have moved away somewhere I had no idea where. Using some family connections I got a very nice paying job in the field I wanted (I got my bachelors in computer science). I graduated early and saved every penny I could. After about 2 years it was now E’s 4th birthday and I had a job making well over 6 figures and a beautiful 5 bed 4 bath house. I moved half way across the country from my family. It was tough at first but I had my E and a new partner who E calls “Mama”. (Yes I am a lesbian) During this time E was in everything a 4 year could want. Ballet, soccer, softball, language lessons, piano, anything and everything she asked for I gave her. Present- E is now 10 years old. She only stuck with Softball, volleyball, piano, violin and language lessons. She has tutoring once a week so she has help is she needs it. E had her 10th birthday party this past weekend. Catering, Bounce houses, and a gift of E, me, my partner now wife, and my grandma are all going to Disney Paris this summer for 2 weeks, then Portugal for 2 weeks. This will be her 3rd time going to Europe but first time going to Disney Paris and Portugal. She is a great kid and I love how grateful she is for everything anyone gets her. She keeps all physical gift cards and sends photos of what she gets to the people who got her the gift cards with another thank you. My favorite compliment I get about E is that she is so kind and caring. I have been working double time on this party and at work to be able to take a month off for travel. My wife has taken her to every Recreational softball practice. ( she plays both recreational and travel ball) My wife knows the story about how I got my E. However she doesn’t know what A looks like. E plays 1 year ahead of her travel ball age (10u to 12u) in Rec. she is a catcher and loves a challenge. Never in a million years did I think that A would be in the same town I moved to. I was wrong. MJ is on E’s softball team. And E being the sweetest girl on the planet invited MJ, her parents and all 6 of her siblings to her birthday party. That is right friends. A and K got married and had 4 more kids. The day of the birthday party A walks in and is in major shock. She recognized me, but didn’t recognize E. She almost starts crying. To give details for the party- My coworker did valet for us (his daughter is in college and my wife and I paid for a full semester for him to do valet and we fed him), it was catered as I said and the employees stayed for a small fee, we have an in ground pool and as I said before our house is huge. We had just put in a movie theater in the basement, so there were signs for a movie tonight when the sun went down. A stared in shock at our house, and it’s size. Her 6 kids kept saying it was mansion and why can’t we live here. It had literally been minutes since she walked through the door. I ushered her into my office and explained that E knew nothing. And I planned on keeping it that way. A agreed though she started to cry. She just kept saying she didn’t know that this was the house I lived in and that she couldn’t believe how nice it was and she took the long way home just to look at the house. In my head I thought really the house is your focus you haven’t seen E in 9 years and you focus on my house. I ushered her back into the entry way and we found my wife moving the kids out to the pool while A called K. Ten minutes later he was in my house angry as hell. He looked around and looked even more angry. He kept looking at out pictures of our little family in Europe, Disney, her travel ball team, JO volleyball, piano recital, dance recital, on cruises. Typical family photos seemed to piss him off and make A cry. When it was time for presents E was kind a respectful. She thanked every person for her gifts and truly loved every gift. When she got a brand new bat for softball that’s $400 K scoffed and made a face. E was so excited it was the bat she wanted. K under his breath said waste of money. A gave him a look and I was ready to pounce on him. He relaxed back in just seat as E kept opening her gifts. When E was done and had opened our gift for Europe K stormed off into the house. I helped E thank everyone who came and didn’t stay for the movie. A and K pulled me aside as I watched everyone head down to the basement for a movie. This is how the conversation went- A- we really love your house Me- thank you K- we live in a 3 bedroom house it’s so small for our growing family Me-oh are you pregnant again? A- yes I’m so excited but we want to ask you something Me- uh huh K- we want to trade houses, it’s just you 3 and there’s 8 about to be 9 of us Me- really? Why would I do that? A- well because we have you our daughter Me- no. This went back and forth for a long time. Until I lost it I said that they didn’t give me E like a teddy bear gift or a gift card. They abandoned her and I wasn’t going to let her have a bad life. She is my daughter and it is not my fault that they decided to pop out kids like a Pez dispenser and I decided to only have E and get a degree and save money. I told them to leave. Ever since they have been blowing up my phone. They are demanding that E stops her lessons and travel ball and JO volleyball and tutoring and going to a private school. They say she needs to be on the same level as her siblings. I told them that E doesn’t have siblings. My wife n I are considering moving away. I just needed to post.

    This story began with my discovery of the greatest era of music of all time, the classic rock era. The very first “classic rock” music that I remember hearing was The Beach Boys. I came from a somewhat culturally stifled exposure to the “secular” music of mankind, growing up. So, upon hearing The Beach Boys for the first time, I simply could not fathom the pure, raw, jubilant and harmonic energy I was hearing. I believe it was in 1998 or right around the time that I was in 6th grade, and I was up at my grandparents’ cabin in Siren, Wisconsin. I remember our next-door neighbor at the cabin had a cute girl named Jenny that my cousin Josh and I were both chasing after. I think my cousin was more interested in the girl, while I was keen on getting another chance at listening to The Beach Boys on her CD player. At any rate, I remember being instantly fascinated with the sport of surfing and I wanted to know more about it. I remember downloading or looking up a video of the 1966 “The Endless Summer” documentary directly because of having listened to The Beach Boys. It was a revolutionary moment in my cultural expansion as a young boy and that was a very memorable summer for me.       As time wore on to the early 2000’s era when music downloading was only in its infancy, I once upon a time downloaded a Deep Purple song: "Hush" because I had heard about Deep Purple whisperings from my dad. I liked this “Hush” song so much I played it for my dad, asking him if he had heard of this song before as I knew it was from his era and this might trigger an interesting response or memory from him. My Father responded affirmatively. My Dad then proceeded to tell me a story, it was a story about himself; about a Deep Purple concert he had attended when he was younger. He didn't give me too many details and I’m not sure what age he was, or I can't remember all of the details, but he told me about how, somehow; during this concert-which must have been at the Met-he had ended up at the front of the speaker stacks at Deep Purple’s front stage. He told me that he continued to spend the entire show plugging his ears as hard as he could, he said it was the most awful concert he had ever been to in his life. I’m not sure if he couldn’t get away from the speakers or why he allowed himself to be subjugated to such an incessant onslaught of auditory pain, but that’s just what transpired, I guess. He told me that afterward, he was in pain and that his ears were ringing for weeks, and he told me he believed his hearing was noticeably impaired in the months and years that followed.       So naturally, having heard my dad tell this story I was instantly even more fascinated with this powerful band called: Deep Purple. And, if you didn't know or weren't aware, Deep Purple is or was considered at one point: "The Loudest Band in the World", or something to that effect. Of course, I didn't know that at the time and my dad; I’m guessing, also did not know that at the time he attended the Deep Purple concert. So, upon hearing that story as a young man-I think I might have been in junior high school at the time-again, I was intrigued with this mysterious band: Deep Purple, that had ruined my dad’s hearing at one point in his life. Unfortunately, I didn't get too many other details about that show from him at that time, as I could tell he wasn't really too fond of the experience or memory altogether and maybe he was also little embarrassed that I was so interested and fascinated having heard about it. It is really a hilarious memory.  
    Anyway, this story my father had told me really fascinated me as a young man and I knew that- whatever I did; I must remember the name of the band Deep Purple.  
    Music was somewhat difficult to acquire at this time in my young life, unless I wanted to drop $15 for a new CD at Best Buy or perchance find it discounted at Half-Priced Books, Cheapo or the like. This was far too expensive a price to pay simply to explore the music that was out there, now yes, I did have KQRS, but the scope of KQRS, like many modern classic rock radio stations; the playlists are always limited to the five-hundred or so blue-chip hits. So, what I discovered was that used records could be acquired for much cheaper, in fact only $.99 at Goodwill, but Goodwill had limited options. Also, another problem I ran into during this time was that I didn't have a vast mental capacity quite yet built up for what the “good” classic rock era albums were. Bands or artists’ knowledge hadn’t yet really accumulated in up in my head at least not enough for quick album art recall, so it was difficult to know what was good at the time. The particular Goodwill that I frequented the most as a young man was located in Hopkins, MN and it was somewhat dingy, but I loved it. One day I discovered a very used, worn-out white ring around the sleeve of a golden “Deep Purple: Live in Japan” record, which was recorded over three nights in the late summer of 1972. I remember during those days when my classic rock album knowledge wasn’t so good, but I had a crude system of helping me “guess-timate” on what might be a good album. I would tell myself that the closer an album was in year to the late 60’s and early 70’s the better chance it was good. Because I knew, classic rock sort of lost its way and got bombastic in the 1980’s, for better or for worse. At least, this was the rock n’ roll historical narrative I had created in my head at the time. So I checked the date of the Deep Purple album: 1972, not bad. So, I bought that record because this was my chance to experience Deep Purple for myself for the first time.  
    I remember biking home with the record in a plastic bag over the handlebars of my bike and it kept bumping into the bike as I rode home getting even more scuffed up. When I got home, I put the record on my parents Onkyo (ironically also Japanese) turntable and a Genesis sound system, this was a pretty decent sound system. I remember, when I got home, I was all alone in the house, so I really had the opportunity to crank up the volume to air this album out a bit. And when I listened to that album, my life and conception of rock and roll; whatever I thought that was, flipped on its head and changed me, fundamentally as a person. Granted, I had listened to some of Led Zeppelin’s material to be sure, but I had never ever heard a band rock out so fucking hard like this in my life. It was a truly amazing experience. I highly recommend that album to everyone.  
    But what you have to appreciate is that during this time it was somewhat difficult for me to know which albums were "good" and to be sought after. I just happened to hit this one time on the motherlode with this live Deep Purple album. The knowledge was out there, yet difficult to attain for a young, sheltered midwestern Christian boy. So, I spent a lot of my time seeking out records at Goodwill after this experience, where no one could filter the music, I was listening to and naturally I developed a very steeled, rebellious, pretentious and opinionated stance on my right as a human to listen to whatever the heck I wanted to around this time as well. Plus, Goodwill had the added bonus of consistently being populated with lots of interesting people to watch, not to mention lots of fun clothes to try on and just mess around and have fun. I remember one day at Goodwill, I saw these two very particular middle-aged gentlemen, guys I would call “greaseballs”; seedy types who waited at the doors from the warehouse sorting areas, in order to get their greedy hands immediately upon the incoming records from the back sorting warehouse. They took immediate authority over sifting through the records, and it was clear to me that I was going to have to wait to get sloppy seconds after these record campers. I asked myself a question:  
“Who were these music gate-keeping fucks?”  
    Of course, I didn't know how to feel at the time, and I was just sort of annoyed and confused as a young guy. I wanted a chance at checking out the records, but these two guys clearly had the goods staked out for first dibs. At any rate, I watched over their shoulders and made note of the ones that they picked from their fast-paced sorting, trying to remember the album artwork. While they were thumbing through, I even recognized the man carrying sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV and reached out for it in desperation, but one of them instantly blurted out, something to the effect of:  
“Nuh, uh uh.”  
    Or something to that effect and gobbled it up into their stack of collections…It was from that point on I realized how cutthroat this mystic, esoteric knowledge accumulation about music and attaining music was, and I think it made my purpose ever more steeled and resolved from that point forward.  
    I had only begun to scratch the surface of my quest for discovering the depths of the greatest music of all time, classic rock. This quest had another nuance I will now attempt to explain. You see, classic rock is profane music of the secular world. Therefore, it was forbidden to me as a young man, or sometimes it was begrudgingly tolerated. So naturally, this created within me a burning need to rebel. I had to listen to classic rock if it meant shaking the fucking heavens and the earth. For some reason I really felt it necessary to rebel and to rebel hard. And somehow, coupling that with a saga to discover forbidden music, it had now become in the mind of this young man, a somewhat spiritual prerogative to fulfill this discovery quest, some way, somehow.  
    Why am I writing all of this? I guess I was bored during the pandemic and put a lot of thought and energy into thinking about this while at work. Music has always been a companion to me during the toughest times in my life, conversely music has also consistently been a celebration of exuberance and happiness during the good times. The music that existed during the mid-1960’s though the late 1980’s; otherwise known as the classic rock era, has always held a special place in my heart. However, I never could find a playlist that truly encapsulates or effectively represents all of the great music from this era. Most of the classic rock playlists out there were somehow for some reason exclusionary of certain groups, genres and styles for one reason or another. I have spent over a decade working with programs like Pandora and iHeartRadio doing research attempting to compile a comprehensive, inclusive and fully representative playlist, that faithfully showcases the music from the classic rock era. I used Pandora at first because I was lazy. I attempted to use Pandora’s algorithm to build this playlist for me, I spent years attempting to get the algorithm to do what I want, but it never could never be a truly random shuffle among other drawbacks.  
    Fast forward to Summer of 2020, I had finally had enough with Pandora and with the pandemic in full swing, I decided that I had to build this playlist by hand if I wanted to do it right. That meant taking on the herculean task of digging into every single notable band, group, singer-songwriter, “super-group”, ensemble and the like that existed during the years circa 1964-1989. Why those years? Chosen rather quickly and arbitrarily. Also, this task consisted of the inclusion factor, that meant digging expressly deeper into the deepest, darkest lairs of obscurity and obtusity that this musical era had to offer. The pandemic was this playlist’s ultimate inspiration, music was going to get me through this pandemic like it had all the other tough times in my life and I was resolved to utilize my classic rock knowledge over the years to build the best playlist I could. But what does the “Best” mean? To me, it meant a playlist that was as fully representative of this era in music as possible, without superfluous and capricious exclusion of artists, no matter how difficult or esoteric the listening experience may be. This was my formula. Therefore, the term “Rock” is used loosely when defining this playlist; this music certainly “rocks” but not all of it is strictly “Rock ‘N Roll”, however all of it was certainly influenced and indeed inspired by the burgeoning “rock” movement of the 50’s and 60’s. I hope that makes some sense. Also, I was sick of the corporate KQRS DJs of the Twin Cities, who play the same recycled 500 or so hits over and over with no room for pushing those boundaries, as was the original intention of the music to begin with.  
    At any rate, I decided I would use Spotify as the custodian for this playlist, simply because their catalog is the vastest compared to most music platforms, it is free to download and their prices are reasonable for subscriptions. I realize Spotify does have some scummy business practices for paying artists royalties and it’s a shame not to have Joni Mitchell and Neil Young among others on here, but it is what it is, and I had to make this playlist somehow. Just the same, I worked on this playlist almost every single day through the pandemic, researching hundreds of bands while I did it; all from that pristine era of music that had captivated me early on. In years past, I have put tremendous amounts of mental energy into reading up on band biographies and discographies before, but during the pandemic I researched music from that era more exhaustively than I ever have before. I really went at it with everything I had, even purchasing “The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll” to assist me referencing bands not covered much online. I guess this is what my history major B.A. degree brain remnant does for me these days. I’m going to be honest with you, this is not your dad’s or your mom’s classic rock playlist. It took me the entire first year of the pandemic to fill the playlist to Spotify’s 10,000 song threshold, but the playlist was still just a rough blueprint at that point. I spent the following two years honing, polishing, adding and removing songs in order to continue to attempt to make this playlist as representative of the era as possible, with a heavy leaning on “rock”.  
    So, with the pandemic finally coming to a close recently, I am finally beginning to feel confident that this playlist is finally finished after three long years of amazingly illuminating research and lots and lots of listening.  
    Without further elaboration or story time, here it is after three long years of hard work; 10,000 meticulously curated and extensively researched with zero dead or duplicate tracks as Spotify frequently adds and removes music. Consisting of, but not limited to the following genres: Folk, Country, Progressive, Early Metal, NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal), Space Rock, Fusion, British Invasion, New Wave, Punk, Pub, Blues, Psychedelic, Garage, Reggae (just Bob Marley), International, Krautrock, Funk, Soul, Disco, Art-Rock, Experimental, R&B and AOR (Album Oriented Rock) from circa 1964-1989 (dates chosen arbitrarily). This playlist is inclusive of race, gender and nationality. Be aware, this playlist is intended to expand your horizons and challenge your listening experience. Admittedly, this era did generate A LOT of challenging music that pushed the boundaries of numerous musical conventions, that was the point. I recommend putting this playlist on shuffle and just listening, thank you for your time reading all of this, I hope you enjoy listening as much as I have. Below is the link for the playlist, I hope you all will enjoy it:  
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4syEv4GeWCOv9LAQlKzq1K?si=341f43e85dfe4ff8

As someone who's played/dipped my toe in a lot of MMOs, DDO's monetization is honestly one of the worst and most frustrating for new players that I've ever seen, primarily because the core functions of it are to make it so new players feel both isolated and frustrated. This game does not excite you to buy things. It is not like, "Look, here's this fun thing you can do if you buy in!" It's much more "Buy in or end up face extreme annoyance.
Quests
Let's start with the obvious issue of quests. The game has a lot of decent content below level ~10. Around there, you start to hit a wall, and by the time you're level 17, you've now got 3 quests to get you all the way to 20, and getting to 30 is a total pipe dream on f2p content alone, as you've got 4 level 21 quests, and then your next quest is a level 26, then two level 28s, then a bunch of 31-32s, all of which will somehow have to account for the millions of EXP points you need.
But that's not even the biggest issue. DDO is a game with a limited playerbase that is further limited because it's stretched between several servers. The game was obviously designed to be ran in groups, with various sections quests having more or less benefit for certain types of characters.
But if you don't own the most recent expansion packs, say goodbye to grouping. Because of the 5-20 LFGs that will be available at any time, a solid 90% of them are always going to be content that f2p players don't own past level 5-6. Sure, you can say, "just bring your own group!" but MMOs are something a lot of people do so they can find new friends. The fact that paywall = well you'd better play this game alone most of the time is going to be a huge quit point for new players.
As a returning player, I own Sharn, MOTU, Gianthold, Delara's, Vale, and Sorrowdusk. Most of the time when I look for groups, my entire screen is full of "you can't play with this group because they're doing a quest you don't own"... and the only times I've ever been able to find them has been in the pay packs I already do have. For a genuinely new player who hasn't sunk tons of money into the game, grouping is pretty much out of the question once they clear things like Water Works. I'll bet most players who buy VIP would still fare badly, since it seems most of the play happens exclusively in expansion packs.
Loot/Economy
But hey, maybe a few new players are willing to deal with having to solo the entire MMO and re-grind the same 3 quests they have for four levels straight. They'll then hit another wall. Unless they are willing to spend at least a bit of money on the game, they can't actually participate in the economy. The game's platinum economy was facing a critical issue when they took money caps out--too much money was coming in, not enough was being spent. So in their infinite wisdom, the people behind monetizing the game decided that they needed to make a real-money auction house instead of the regular platinum one, basically saying "Well, if platinum economy is dying, we're just going to force you to spend money to use the new one."
This is a two-punch. Punch one: Unless you're premium, you can't participate at all, and even then, you have to buy at least a few astral shards, since you need to pay shards to post on the thing in the first place. And because platinum
Punch two: Two people have extreme advantage here--the players who've been playing forever, or the ones who don't care about dumping stupid amounts of money into the game.
So as a new player, you might be saving money, being excited that you've started earning decent amounts finally... only to realize that it's utterly useless beyond a few basic things, and that the only way for you to actually participate in the game's ALREADY stretched economy is to buy your way in. And then you realize, further, that you'd either have to pay a lot, or else buy an expansion because most of the loot anyone would care about is locked behind quests you don't have.
So not only are you going to be questing alone, you're also not going to be involved in a larger economy either.
Power
I've seen so many posts justifying the game's blatant and obvious P2W monetization by saying that it's okay, because this game is mostly PVE and because you can earn things through favor.
First, the favor argument is so ungrounded in reality. First, aside from the initial 900 ddo point infusion you get from running 1 toon to 100 favor on each server, these points accumulate extremely slowly... and even more slowly if you haven't already bought your way in.
Let's say you farm 100 favor on each server, you'd have netted a total of 1125. Then let's say you do literally all of the f2p quests in the game on one account--dozens of hours of work, especially considering you'd have to repeat them all three times to get up to elite, as well as a lot of other repetitions and wilderness areas in order to make your way to the required levels. That's another 350 store points. That's it. total 1475. Not enough for an expansion pack--no, to afford one of those, you'd have to do all of the quests again another ~3 times, which would actually be 9 times each. Unless you TR, but that's a really bad idea since now you need way more EXP and you've still got a pitiful quest pool.
So that's just to start buying some of the quest packs... let alone, other features such as the shared bank for the account, which is both the ONLY way to transfer loot between characters, since everything and its dog is bound-to-account these days, and it's also going to cost you all the DDO points you'd save up from doing the 1st time bonuses + doing an entire run of all the f2p quests on elite.
And if I made it sound too easy... the first time bonuses only come first time, meaning it's going to be much slower from there on out.
For people on the TR hamster wheel who are either VIP or 3rd life +, the issue of opening quests normal, then hard, then elite seems like not a problem, and they can blow past quests in 3-4 minutes. For new players, those same quests might take 30-40 minutes, particularly if they're scrounging crates and optionals because of their extremely limited EXP options. Let alone, having to do that 3 times in a row, possibly more because they have to solo content they've never done before, and might die. And, as an added bonus, people on the TR wheel get such insane buffs from their numerous past lives that they are, again, able to solo things far more easily.
Meaning veteran players can earn points at an 'okay' clip, while new players, especially if they haven't bought in, earn them slower than a snail's pace.
There's an insane amount of direct power to be bought in this game, whether it's universal +8 tomes, 32-point builds (Something f2p players cannot access first life because there isn't enough favor to get them), a huge slew of in-quest boosts, etc. And universal enhancements, in particular, are such a huge source of power that f2p players have 0 access to, since you can never earn enough favor to hit one.
But beyond even directly buying power, all of the normal methods for achieving power are expedited greatly with purchases. TRs give a huge boost, and the game has literally sold "get to 20 and TR instantly!" options. Exp tomes are both expensive and a massive boost to farming speed. Bravery bonuses are basically only there for VIPers or people who already TR'd twice, as well as slayer pots which just raw make it take 3X less to get those rewards. And most every crafting has huge incentives in the store as well.
And when it comes to loot, the best loot is, of course, with the power creep in new expansions, meaning you always have to keep buying if you want the best gear. But even for decent gear, almost all of it is going to come as named drops in the chests, which you can't directly buy, but buying pots to boost the odds, buying rerolls to let you keep trying for it... all of that gives a massive edge to people willing to shell out money. Let alone, the edge that comes from being more powerful, and therefore being able to run things far quicker.
Convenience/Frustration
DDO seems to have the horrible habit of noticing a problem, and then fixing that problem by making you pay for the solution. Inventory management sucks worse than most every game I've ever seen, not in small part due to the gigantic stacks of random items that build into / collect into other things. DDO's solution was to make bags which are almost exclusively paid, since you can only buy one copy of the really small you can get for free. Bank space is premium-locked if you want more. Loot can only be shared between toons if you buy the privilege. Materials storage in the bank is a bought privilege as well.
DDO also noticed an issue where players are spending way too much time running around between NPCs or wildnerness areas to get anywhere, instead of questing. So we've got mounts, which help you get around... but also premium locked.
The game has several quests which are extremely difficult to solo, and probably impossible for new players. They were designed for groups. It also has quests that are often points of frustration. But the game incentivizes saga completions. So players end up frustrated as they try over and over on quests, failing them. But don't worry! you can buy your way past them in the saga too. Because again, noticed a problem and sold, rather than helped, the solution.
DDO shoves the store in your face more often than most every game I've ever seen. Every time I open up the bank, store. Every time I die in a quest, store. Every time I try to recall from the quest, store. It literally begs for money at every turn.
Most games have conveniences that they sell. But at the same time, there's a difference between something that is nice, and something that is either necessary or would require a lot of frustration in order to skip. Making your players put up with outdated, frustrating things just so that a solution can be sold is bad practice, and ends up losing customers rather than gaining money.
Conclusion
If you've made it through this wall of text, congratulations! But main highlights are that DDO's monetization is extremely frustrating and isolating for new players. It is my honest opinion that DDO bleeds customers because of this issue more than any other. The content give codes DO help alleviate those problems a lot... for existing players who happened to be around when they happened. But for every player that tries to join tomorrow onward, all the problems I listed out are still there, and 'favor grinding for points' is nowhere near enough to actually penetrate the wall of content you need to buy to engage with this game.
Existing players can say all they want about how new players CAN just grind past it with stupid amounts of time, or else how new players should just buy in. But the reality is, when most people hit these frustrating paywalls, the reaction is almost always going to be to quit rather than to pay up.
And because of this, a lot of DDO is so dominated by old players who've been doing this forever with massive in-game resources and power, that new player economies, groups, and play experience as a whole suffers. It creates a feedback loop, where no new players = experience sucks for them = new players leave = no new players. And mid-tier players, who might not have as much, but still have maybe 1-2 past lives total, are hit just as hard.

Hi all. So I’m 22 years old just got a full time office job. I’m still new to my position and I work with all women who are in their late thirties and late forties (there’s around 15 of us in the department ). I’ve always dressed more modestly and grew up that way. I also feel more comfortable in modest clothing and more professional at work. My work is business casual and my coworkers mostly wear tank tops and open toed shoes. So far, many of my coworkers have made comments about my outfits. Things like “you’re wearing winter clothes,” “aren’t you hot,” “do you have summer dresses” or “I thought you were just wearing those because you haven’t gotten a pedicure yet” (I wear closed toe shoes to work). It’s a strange thing to see grown adults so concerned about my outfits on the daily, and lately it’s just been taking a toll on me. Last week my manager went around asking all of us if we wanted to move our team meeting outside (in a plus 32 degree heat wave). Everyone in the office said yes, but when she asked me I said no but I if the team wanted to then I of course would be fine with that. I was wearing a long sleeve blouse and dress pants from artizia so I also knew the flood of comments would come pouring in. Everyone starting making comments like “you’ll be sweating for sure” or “yeah I mean you’re literally wearing winter clothes.” I’m not sure what to make of this whole situation or if I’m just being sensitive. I’m not sure why anyone would want to sit through a 2 hour meeting in a heat wave and then have to go back into the office. Nothing I wear is super out of the ordinary, just mostly ankle cut dress pants and a blouse or a light cardigan. I know it’s not the norm for the summer maybe but it’s also not completely crazy (in my opinion).
After I said I would prefer not to go outside when my boss asked me what I wanted, I overheard her and my other managers saying something along the lines of “she’s literally 22, like go outside and be normal and enjoy the sun.” Idk if I’m the one in the wrong, but I genuinely just think remarks like that are snarky and rude. If you ask me what I want to personally do, then don’t get mad when I’m honest. Office culture is so confusing and I’m genuinely just upset that people constantly feel like they can comment on how I show up at work and what I wear even though it’s entirely professional and put together. Am I being out of touch here? Is it weird to cover up in the office? Please share your honest thoughts

Valid theories as to why Nine Mile Hole was so very special to Forrest Fenn are out there, if one cares to look carefully enough. But nobody yet to my uncertain knowledge has pointed to hints in The Thrill of the Chase or other evidence that explain why Fenn might have been so emotional about his journey to the special place that he cryptically described in the poem. Yes, it was the place he wanted to die, and that alone would be a good enough reason for emotion. Yet the sort of sentimentality that Fenn betrayed about the place – for example when he read the poem out loud – suggests something even deeper and more sorrowful: a sense of loss that is larger than the man himself.
It so happens that there truly is a source of information that reveals why Nine Mile Hole was so sacred to Forrest Fenn: an emotional connection had been forged as a result of dual tragedies. It is contained in poetry masquerading as prose written by Ernest Schwiebert, an expert on flies and flyfishing, in his seminal Nymphs: Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and Other Important Insects including the lesser mayflies, Volume II (2007).
The existence of this text and its importance to the chase was originally revealed by Vertigo, who first shared it on The Hint of Riches forum. Later, Vertigo reposted the excerpt from the Schwiebert text on Medium here along with the other results of his excellent research. All the Vertigo entries are a must read if you want to try walking in the shoes of Forrest Fenn. I won’t repeat that portion of the Schwiebert text previously shared by Vertigo in its entirety although I will include a few of the most relevant excerpts to help tie everything together.
What I want to focus on here is the emotional and motivational parts of the tragic story that Schwiebert eloquently told in the paragraphs that Vertigo did not quote. This material is critical in my opinion to understanding the importance of Nine Mile Hole and what happened there to make it the place where Fenn wanted to die.
To summarize, the fires that devastated Yellowstone in 1988 were in part the result of government mismanagement of forest fires on Federal land, much of which was due to political games (e.g. to discredit members of the other political party). These fires created havoc and destruction in the Madison watershed and its fisheries that went largely unacknowledged by environmentalists and the public at large. Only those who had fished those flywaters in the decades before the fires could truly understand the extent of the negative impact on the river and its riparian ecosystem.
Among other casualties, the brown trout hideout at the famous Nine Mile Hole was spoiled, and the spring-fed pond secreted in the woods nearby was literally wiped off the map. Its crystal clear waters – a quarter mile up a cold rivulet from the legendary hole on the Madison – had once rewarded the most tenacious Brown with the perfect spot to spawn. Now there was only brown sludge in its place. To someone who had intimately known Nine Mile Hole, its matronly crystalline pond, or any other riverine wonder of the Madison watershed in Yellowstone, it was enough to utterly break their heart.
Forrest Fenn's feelings about the ordeal were very much in the same vein as those expressed by Ernest Schwiebert. The difference was that the latter man did not need to keep a secret and therefore could lay bare his emotional injuries.
Indeed, the 1988 fires must have devastated Fenn similarly if not more so. But this grand tragedy was not quite as catastrophic to him as being diagnosed with cancer and given slim odds of surviving it. The year 1988 was not particularly kind to the man.
Fortunately, the forests and rivers of Yellowstone always seem to recover from the worst tribulations that nature could manage to throw at them, and so did Fenn. But not without a profound impact. The battle for survival and the scars left behind had connected Fenn to his special place at a level so primal and emotionally raw that it was almost umbilical. How could there ever be another consideration when it came to the somber task of choosing the place to take his last breath?
And then came the FBI raids in 2009. The Feds had had a hand in destroying his Shangri-La in Yellowstone in 1988, and now it seemed they wanted to finish robbing him of treasure while desecrating his reputation and castle in Santa Fe.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, he said to himself through sublime gritted teeth and with a resolve that only the gravely aggrieved can muster. I'm going to carry out my plan. In Yellowstone Park, damn the consequences!
The following is taken from Nymphs: Volume II, starting on page 237. Unless noted otherwise, boldface is mine for emphasis.
I note that Vertigo excluded an important portion of the first paragraph of the story so I will re-quote this paragraph in its entirety. He then faithfully reproduced the next 7 paragraphs, which I won't repeat but will highlight a few excerpts. See Vertigo's Medium post for the full text of the 7 paragraphs, or "DYODD" and buy the book.
Schwiebert's account contains several additonal paragraphs beyond the 7 quoted by Vertigo that are just as important in my opinion, plus there is a footnote that helps enormously to shed light on things. I quote these in their entirety as fair use in order to support the theory being advanced in this entry.

But the entire Yellowstone was ravaged by a series of wildfires in the drought of 1992, and one of the worst of these fires had crossed into the park from Bridger National Forest in Wyoming, just north of Grand Teton National Park.⁶ The great lodgepole forests of the Bechler and Firehole watersheds had become a tinderbox, and vast acreages of primeval timber were surrendered to the fire. Magnificent stands were transformed into fire-blackened cemeteries of snags. Entire mountainsides were utterly scorched as steep timber-filled ravines became incandescent chimneys filled with fire. Slopes of unstable volcanic soils were stripped of their trees and rendered vulnerable to the erosive impacts of winds, rains, and melting snowpacks. Frightening shrouds of talcum-fine soil and ash were carried aloft as storms worked across the Yellowstone Plateau. Gullies were quickly cut into unstable hillsides, and large alluvial fans of gritty clay and ash were formed at many places along the Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole. Such fans were visible immediately below Seven Mile Bridge on the Madison, and there was much worse damage at its famous Nine-Mile Hole, which had been the most popular pool.

Schwiebert makes an error here: the great drought and fires were actually in 1988 as he correctly states in Footnote 6; see near the end of this post.
The next 7 paragraphs are faithfully reproduced in full by Vertigo … I highlight a few key lines. Following this, I start to quote the paragraphs that are excluded from Vertigo's work.

Nine-Mile lay just below the highway, in a beautiful corridor of primeval lodgepoles and ponderosas …
It was a striking place with secrets. There was a crystalline springhead pond across the water, about a quarter mile beyond the river, and completely hidden behind a dense screen of intervening conifers.
Large brown trout were known to enter this minor lodgepole tributary in October to mate and lay their eggs …
I once caught a good fish in the little pond itself … a handsome five-pound hen that had apparently spawned and wintered, and then elected to stay.
The cold spillages of the crystalline creek entered the river in the uppermost shallows at Nine-Mile …
It was a spring-hole worth knowing. Large trout often gathered there in hot weather, basking in its cool temperatures where the ledge rock shelved off into a secret pocket. I could usually count on at least one good fish there, because most anglers simply fished the primary currents of Nine-Mile without covering the pocket below its aquatic weeds.
The fate of Nine-Mile, however, was a terrible surprise.

Compare to page 141 in TToTC with the following words bolded and in red: "Cancer is a terrible word." Boldfaced and redlined text is used within the memoir in only four places, twice in reference to cancer and twice to suggest a warning that something is scalding hot: "DO NOT TOUCH!". The reason for this editorial oddity should be obvious: red for fire, and the red boldface connects cancer to fire.

The fish-filled secret below the weeds was smothered with silt and trash, and the spring-hole itself was gone. I became curious about the fate of the forest pond, and forded the river to inspect it. Dour rivulets of slurry came spilling through the trees, and I was astonished when I reached the tarn.
Its crystalline shallows were completely filled with slurry and trash. A tiny paradise had been destroyed. The outlet was clogged with refuse and silt, and the barrage of trash had raised the water in the lake until its overflows were forced into several braided channels farther downstream. No trout could ascend such gritty rivulets to spawn, and no freshly hatched juveniles would use its spatterdock riches to reach smolting size. Nine-Mile itself had been irrevocably changed, and after dutifully suiting up, I found myself angry and unable to fish.

Compare to "There'll be no paddle up your creek, Just heavy loads and water high."
Consider why Schwiebert was "angry": the full extent of the devastation was perhaps preventable if Forest Service management had actually cared about the ecosystem within their purview instead of trying to score political points.
Schwiebert continues the story as follows, not quoted by Vertigo.

Some ecologists have argued that postfire impacts have largely proved beneficial because natural lightning-strike fires are obviously implicit in our natural forest ecosystems. The science of such truths remains clear. Lodgepole cones do not surrender their seeds without exposure to hot temperatures associated with natural fires, and the argument that ancestral fires have played a substantial role in the ecological history of such forests is sound.
Such apologists further contend that once-dangerous thickets of deadfalls and dry tinder in these lodgepole forests had healthily been purged, and argued that these Yellowstone fires had cleansed its historic forests. The new grasslands created were alleged to have improved bison and elk habitat because both are grazing species, but both bison and elk lacked major predators then and had become much too plentiful before the fires. The ecosystem did not need more bison and elk. Other apologists waxed poetic about the beneficial impacts of the fires on avifauna and their prey within the boundaries of the Yellowstone, but none mentioned their horrendous impact on the famous Yellowstone trout streams.
Some fishing writers have written pieces echoing the doubtful thesis that everything had been improved through the purging of the fires, and that the fishing had also been helped. One reported unusual numbers of larger fish in the Firehole. This was irresponsibly wishful conjecture on the part of observers who lacked a fifty-year perspective on the Yellowstone and its fisheries, and were not competent to pass such judgment. The truth is much less felicitous. Several key tributaries had become so choked with postfire sedimentation, ash, and charred debris that their fish, including large trout that had never seen anglers, had been displaced from their headwaters to find refuge in the Firehole itself.
Such fish were not a happy portent.

Compare the above paragraphs to Fenn on page 141 of TToTC where he follows up the redlined and bolded "Cancer is a terrible word" with "The disease it defines represents nature in its most repellent form."

Fires also ravaged the hillsides along the lower Gibbon. Steeper slopes had quickly eroded, forming labyrinthine networks of raw gullies and wounds leaving the narrow highway below Gibbon Falls buried under great alluvial fans of mud, gritty precipitates, and trash. Heavy equipment had cleared the right-of-way, leaving great windrows of marl in many places, and the Gibbon became choked with waist-deep strata of raw sediments and ash. The great beauty of the box canyon below the Gibbon Falls had been charred and scarified by fire, leaving a river littered with postfire trash and mud winding through cemeteries of charred lodgepoles. I did not attempt to fish, and decided to investigate the fire damage along the Firehole.
The fires had decimated its remarkable lodgepole forests in many places between the Cascades of the Firehole and the Fountain Flats above Nez Perce Creek. I turned south on the old freight road toward Ojo Caliente, and found more fire damage there, but worse burns had overwhelmed the shores of Goose Lake. Its trees had been killed in fires of such temperature and intensity that their fire-seared trunks looked like they had been coated with shiny black lacquer. Fire had smoldered in the great mattresses of dead needles that once carpeted the entire forest floor, and when I used a tire iron to root deep into the burned earth, I found that fire had festered into its thick mattresses of pine needles to depths of eight and ten inches. Goose Lake was now encircled with skeletal lodgepoles that had been killed and charred by fire, although damselflies were still emerging from its shallow margins, swimming ashore to climb the blackened deadfalls and split their nymphal skins.
The scars were much worse beyond the lake.

Compare to cancer as above and to the poem words "Tarry scant": the word tarry could also mean covered by tar in addition to its more common interpretation of delay.

I reached the river and simply sat in the car, staring at its crippled forests with tears in my eyes, remembering the circling seasons I had enjoyed in these uncommon meadows. There were decades of happy memories from this place. I had shared a number of wonderful picnics at Feather Lake with old friends like the late John Hemingway, the late John Daniel Callaghan, and Bud Lilly. I particularly remember awakening from a post-lunch nap on the lodgepole bench at Feather to find Hemingway looking upstream toward the geyser plumes at Midway.
"Know what's wrong with this place?" Hemingway said with a sigh.
"No," I confessed.
"We don't own it," he said.
The narrow trace and cul-de-sac were no longer sheltered in a theatrical corridor of lodgepoles and big ponderosas, and a place of remarkable beauty had been utterly sacrificed and lost. The Firehole still flowed under the fire-blackened bench, a glittering necklace of bright water, with great billows of steam still rising from the geyser basin upstream. I had shared this place with a long parade of people across more than fifty years, and the morning was filled with echoes. I left the car and was surprised by the silence. There were no birds, no brash camp robbers arrived to beg for table scraps, and no skittish chipmunks scuttled across the forest floor. There was nothing for buzzards to scavenge, and no voles to interest circling hawks. The pale September sky was empty. Wind stirred in the blackened snags, which groaned and creaked. The meadow had offered some remarkable sport over the years, and I had hoped to fish, but there was no thought of fishing now.
I drove slowly back along the washboard trace toward Ojo Caliente, through its fire-scarred mausoleum of trees, as a big storm was starting to gather and build along the Pitchstone Ridge. Its conifers had also been ravaged as the wildfires crossed into the Firehole watershed, leaving its summits a raw wasteland of charred earth and gritty ash. The sun had quickly surrendered to an ominous gunmetal sky, and as the storm finally broke along its battlements, immense clouds of loose soil and ash billowed high into the darkening gloom. Such spiraling squalls of silt and windmilling ash would eventually reach the little Firehole itself, and further despoil its hyaline currents. I suddenly understood how profoundly its watershed had been changed.
And it utterly broke my heart.

😪
Footnote 6 on page 735 is revealing. It reads:

There is much credible evidence that these fires had begun outside Yellowstone Park, in the Absaroka headwaters of the Yellowstone in the Shoshone National Forest, and in the Teton National Forest north of Jackson Hole. The fires were fought on national forest tracts, but firefighters were withdrawn once the fires entered the national park itself. The fires were permitted to burn inside the national park for short-term political purposes, because 1988 was an election year. Our natural-fire policy had actually emerged under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and was based on sound forest science, but its application became a regional political issue when both Nathaniel Pryor Reed and Cecil Andrus refused to extinguish a number of controversial fires on federal land. Political opponents fought the Yellowstone fires aggressively outside the national park because the blazes had apparently begun in campfires and lightning strikes on the national forests. Firefighters had been deployed while these fires were still burning on tracts of commercial saw timber, but were stopped once the fires had crossed into Yellowstone. Some of the worst damage occurred on the Firehole and Thoroughfare, and these fires were not fought until they threatened park installations at Canyon and Fishing Bridge, and the historic art sauvage hotel located at Old Faithful. Andrus was no longer Secretary of the Interior when I met him, but during an interview in his office at Boise, I sought his opinion of the Yellowstone fires. Andrus still believed that the bipartisan natural-fire policy had been supported by good science, and pointed out that more than twenty petrified forests within park boundaries suggest that Yellowstone had survived worse destruction, although that perspective is little comfort to anglers who will never again enjoy the pristine Madison and Firehole of recent memory. He agreed that Yellowstone itself was not large enough to protect its aggregate ecosystem, and further conceded that a zealotry that had continued to advocate natural-fire policy in the worst drought summer in recorded history had perhaps been unwise. But he shook his head over the political tactics of appointees in the Forest Service, who had protected tracts of commercial saw timber while later permitting the Yellowstone itself to burn, and had further attempted to discredit the Carter Administration during the election of 1980.

From TToTC page 26: "One day my father gave me a spanking at school for running across some stupid desks, then that night he gave me a spanking at home because I got a spanking at school. The more I thought about that the more I felt put upon. When I explained to him that I'd been double jeopardized he told me that those things didn't count in a dictatorship. That's when I started to mistrust governments."
From TToTC page 147: "Now I feel that my father is sitting on the edge of a cloud somewhere watching. If he knows everything about me he's pretty busy lighting candles, some of them on both ends. But I hope he knows that I've been sometimes guilty only by innuendo, and that's why I wrote my epitaph with such profundity: I wish I could have lived to do, the things I was attributed to."
In 2009, the FBI raided Fenn and several other art dealers – and alleged looters – of Native American artifacts in the Southwest. The raid resulted in the confiscation of just four items from Fenn (none of which could be proven as having been obtained by him illicitly).
https://www.sfreporter.com/news/coverstories/2009/08/19/stealing-the-past/
This was more than just a nuisance … Fenn's reputation had been impugned and two other dealers who were arrested after the raids committed suicide. These guys were likely people he knew or may have even been his friends. A third man arrested in the case also committed suicide; he was a government informant who essentially helped the federal agents entrap the Four Corners dealers.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/dealer-blame-fbi-for-seller-suicides-in-four-corners-looting-case/article_f8613507-1b71-513a-ba21-43a6b0622c0b.html
Fenn was supposedly very angry and threatened Tony Dokoupil with legal action when the reporter spoke with old "pothunting" acquaintances and revealed some unsavory information about Fenn's artifact-collecting past, for example: "... Fenn wasn't just taking a treasure or two but returning to caves and stripping them clean …" In the end, the publicity of appearing in Newsweek magazine at such an early stage in the treasure hunt must have overridden Fenn's desire to keep some of those things that he "was attributed to" under wraps.
https://www.newsweek.com/forrest-fenn-wants-you-find-his-treasure-and-his-bones-64427
The FBI raids – based on purchases of artifacts by a government informant using government money to entice dealers to specifically sell him contraband, and which were conducted by multi-agency SWAT teams – were highly controversial for many locals. No doubt Fenn was pissed off at the Feds more than ever at that point. Despite the epitaph he wrote for himself, he certainly did not want to be remembered as "the old guy in Santa Fe raided by the FBI".
Less than a year later, he published his memoir with its treasure hunt poem. Little chance the timing was just a coincidence.
Finally, does anybody find it intriguing that Fenn rarely if ever talked about the 1988 fire in Yellowstone? It happened the same year he got cancer (or did it?), and he talked plenty about that personal ordeal. The fire and its aftereffects utterly destroyed some of his most cherished places where he had fished for trout and melded with nature since he was a young boy, including his (probably) favorite fishing hole at TOP SECRET "Nine-Mile" and not to mention the magical wood on the far bank of the river with its secluded crystal pond to which he would have gone alone and sat under pine trees, napping, daydreaming, watching wildlife, marveling at the mountain and river vistas, and writing poems or love notes to his wife. Yet not a peep from him about the conflagration that ravaged all of that? Curious.

Hi all. So I’m 22 years old just got a full time office job. I’m still new to my position and I work with all women who are in their late thirties and late forties (there’s around 15 of us in the department ). I’ve always dressed more modestly and grew up that way. I also feel more comfortable in modest clothing and more professional at work. My work is business casual and my coworkers mostly wear tank tops and open toed shoes. So far, many of my coworkers have made comments about my outfits. Things like “you’re wearing winter clothes,” “aren’t you hot,” “do you have summer dresses” or “I thought you were just wearing those because you haven’t gotten a pedicure yet” (I wear closed toe shoes to work). It’s a strange thing to see grown adults so concerned about my outfits on the daily, and lately it’s just been taking a toll on me. Last week my manager went around asking all of us if we wanted to move our team meeting outside (in a plus 32 degree heat wave). Everyone in the office said yes, but when she asked me I said no but I if the team wanted to then I of course would be fine with that. I was wearing a long sleeve blouse and dress pants from artizia so I also knew the flood of comments would come pouring in. Everyone starting making comments like “you’ll be sweating for sure” or “yeah I mean you’re literally wearing winter clothes.” I’m not sure what to make of this whole situation or if I’m just being sensitive. I’m not sure why anyone would want to sit through a 2 hour meeting in a heat wave and then have to go back into the office. Nothing I wear is super out of the ordinary, just mostly ankle cut dress pants and a blouse or a light cardigan. I know it’s not the norm for the summer maybe but it’s also not completely crazy (in my opinion).
After I said I would prefer not to go outside when my boss asked me what I wanted, I overheard her and my other managers saying something along the lines of “she’s literally 22, like go outside and be normal and enjoy the sun.” Idk if I’m the one in the wrong, but I genuinely just think remarks like that are snarky and rude. If you ask me what I want to personally do, then don’t get mad when I’m honest. Office culture is so confusing and I’m genuinely just upset that people constantly feel like they can comment on how I show up at work and what I wear even though it’s entirely professional and put together. Am I being out of touch here? Is it weird to cover up in the office? Please share your honest thoughts