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King of the Cage

 

Eldin Ring

 

Edwidge Danticat

I learned of Toni Morrison’s death at sunrise, and of Paule Marshall’s at sunset. News of Ms. Morrison’s transition, as many of my bereaved friends have called it, quickly spread on social media and via the international press. Word of Ms. Marshall’s passing—another term many of us have been using to soften the blow of both deaths—was disseminated more slowly. (Ms. Morrison was eighty-eight; Ms. Marshall was ninety.) In Ms. Marshall’s case, her death initially felt, as Ms. Morrison wrote in her 1984 essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” like “a very personal grief and a personal statement done among people you trust.” I myself heard about it from a journalist who e-mailed me in order to confirm that Ms. Marshall had, indeed, died on Monday, August 12th.


I love both women and was blessed to have spent some time in each of their company. Before I ever saw them in the flesh, I was in awe of their words.

When I was in the eleventh grade, Mr. Casey, my history teacher at Brooklyn’s Clara Barton High School, asked me how I wanted to leave my mark in the world. I told him I wanted to be a writer. The next day, he loaned me his copy of Mari Evans’s anthology “Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation,” from 1984. The book included scholarly writings on the works of Marshall, Morrison, Lucille Clifton, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, Gayl Jones, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Maya Angelou, and in some cases it also featured excerpts of their work. Ms. Morrison’s contribution to the anthology was “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” in which she wrote that “it seems to me interesting to evaluate Black literature on what the writer does with the presence of an ancestor.” Ancestors, she wrote, “are not just parents, they are sort of timeless people.” Growing up, I had been told similar things by the women in my family. I had been assured, and reassured, that our ancestors were always with us, no longer in body but always in spirit. Ms. Marshall, too, has referred to herself as an “unabashed ancestor worshipper.”

After I returned the anthology to Mr. Casey, I felt its combined words trailing me, like an ancestral blessing. It was as though a community of black women had gathered to offer me their approval. The wisdom of the women in my family had also been reaffirmed. I felt an expanded sense of my cultural lineage in learning that there were many different kinds of storytellers, novelists, essayists, playwrights, and poets. Marshall had written as much in her essay “From the Poets in the Kitchen,” published in the Times in 1983. “I grew up among poets,” she wrote. “Now they didn’t look like poets—whatever that breed is supposed to look like. Nothing about them suggested that poetry was their calling. They were just a group of ordinary housewives and mothers, my mother included, who dressed in a way (shapeless housedresses, dowdy felt hats and long, dark, solemn coats) that made it impossible for me to imagine they had ever been young.” She could have been talking about both my mother and the women who’d raised me in Haiti while my parents were toiling in sweatshops in New York to send money back home.

Ms. Marshall further wrote of the women in her family, “They never put pen to paper except to write occasionally to their relatives in Barbados. ‘I take my pen in hand hoping these few lines will find you in health as they leave me fair for the time being,’ was the way their letters invariably began.”

My letters to my parents, and theirs from Brooklyn to our family in Haiti, always began with some French variation of this, except we would always add, “Grace à Dieu” (“Thanks be to God”) after that first sentence.

To honor this connection, and the other ways I felt seen in Ms. Marshall’s short stories and many of her novels—including “Daughters,” “Praisesong for the Widow,” and “Brown Girl, Brownstones” (for which I wrote a foreword to a Feminist Press edition, in 2006)—I draped my words around hers in the epilogue of “Krik? Krak!”:


Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter’s mouths so they say nothing more.

It was my second published book, but the one I first began writing as a teen-ager, soon after I’d read both the Evans anthology and the essay about kitchen poets. As the oldest child in my family, and the only daughter of parents who were always working, I often cooked for my family—and I worried that I might not be able to cook and write equally well. Both Ms. Morrison and Ms. Marshall have helped me make my narrative dumplings. This often crossed my mind when I had the honor of actually breaking bread with them.


After “Krik? Krak!” was published, in 1995, Ms. Marshall called me to ask if I wanted to teach at New York University, where she had a permanent position. Before I went to the official job interview, she invited me over for tea at her apartment, overlooking Washington Square Park. We discussed the job a bit. Then we talked about Haiti, where she had lived on and off while she was married to her second husband, a Haitian businessman. After I got over my shyness a bit, I asked her how she’d found such a fabulous apartment so close to the university. She chuckled, then said, “When I came for my job interview, the dean asked me where I wanted to live. I looked around his lavish office and said, ‘Something like this will do.’ ”

We laughed and laughed. She had a vibrant and youthful laugh. Even though I knew I was getting neither a lavish office nor a fabulous apartment as an adjunct, I took the job anyway. That fall, she hosted a reading series and invited me to read in it, along with the novelists Glenville Lovell and A. J. Verdelle. She also encouraged me to come speak to her if I needed anything. Not wanting to bother her, I only took up that offer once, when one of my male students was particularly disruptive in our majority-female class. I had spoken to the young man, but nothing had changed, so I went to Ms. Marshall for advice. I suspected that she had taken up the issue herself, because soon after our conversation the young man reverted to regular writing-workshop banter and retreated from personal attacks.

The first time I broke bread with Ms. Morrison was in the fall of 2006, in one of the cafés at the Louvre, in Paris, where she was in residence for a month. A few months earlier, her assistant had called to ask if I would join her and Charles Burnett, Michael Ondaatje, and a group of other writers, dancers, and filmmakers there. When the call came, I had just been diagnosed with pneumonia and was still nursing my infant daughter, so I told her assistant I couldn’t go. Besides, I thought they’d made a mistake. I felt undeserving.

The next day, Ms. Morrison herself called, and I told her about my infant and my pneumonia, and she said, “You’re not going to have pneumonia for a year, and your baby’s going to grow. Tell me what you’ll need to be there.”

I made what I believed was an unreasonable request, but it was exactly what had been keeping me afloat. I told her I needed my mother, my mother-in-law, and my husband to help with the baby while I took part in the events.

She said, “Done,” and a few months later my family and I were in Paris, in an apartment near the Louvre. Seeing Paris had been a lifelong dream for my mother. When she met Ms. Morrison at the opening event, my mother thanked her profusely. Ms. Morrison smiled mischievously at both my mother and my mother-in-law and told them to go out now and then and enjoy the city.

There were many more moments of extreme kindness afforded to me by both Ms. Marshall and Ms. Morrison, which to share would seem to be more about me than about them. In Paris, Ms. Morrison had given me a gorgeous hairpin like the ones she sometimes wore. The next time I saw her at an event, I felt bad for not having it on, then confessed that I’d had to stash the hairpin away because my daughter loved it so much that she kept trying to eat it. The next time I saw her at another event, she gave me another pin. “Your baby can keep the first one,” she said.

Ms. Marshall wrote me a long and thoughtful condolence note after my uncle died, in immigration custody, in 2004. In 2007, Ms. Morrison was at the National Book Awards ceremony, where my book about my uncle’s death was a finalist. At the end of the night, as my family and I were leaving the hall, someone stopped me and told me that Ms. Morrison wanted to speak to me. Ms. Morrison then walked up to our group, which included my mother. We all chatted a bit about the evening, then Ms. Morrison leaned over and said, “I’ve never won one of these, either. Only the one for all my books.” She was referring to her 1996 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. At the dinner before a talk I gave for her eponymous lecture series at Princeton, in 2008—a talk that eventually became my essay collection “Create Dangerously”—as soon as we sat down to eat, she asked me if I had been well compensated. When I told her I was, she smiled that broad, generous smile, then said, “Good. I don’t want them being cheap in my name.”

During these sometimes brief and sometimes longer interactions with both Ms. Morrison and Ms. Marshall, I saw myself as lucky, but not necessarily singular. At times, I felt like a kind of representative of all their younger admirers, particularly those who enjoyed both the person and the work. And I sometimes worried, as the years went on, that one day I might have to offer this kind of testimonial and share a few of these stories, while weighed down with sadness.
Read More of Toni Morrison’s writing in The New Yorker.

Ms. Morrison was still writing toward the end of her life—she would often say so at her public events—but Ms. Marshall had not published a book since her 2009 memoir, “Triangular Road.” Every now and then, when I tried to reach her and never heard back, or asked mutual friends about her, I would imagine her writing yet another epic novel that would take me weeks to read. Ms. Marshall often said that she was a notoriously slow writer. I kept hoping that she was just being slow.

“Triangular Road” begins with a scene in which Ms. Marshall receives an invitation to go on a European speaking tour with the writer Langston Hughes. “The invitation in hand, I stood dumbstruck for the longest time,” she wrote. “Langston Hughes! None other than the poet laureate of black America had chosen me to accompany him on a cultural tour of Europe! Me, a mere fledging of a writer, with only one novel and a collection of stories published to date! Why would someone of his stature so much as consider a novice like myself?”

This also describes how I often felt in both Ms. Morrison and Ms. Marshall’s presence. Out of respect and reverence, and my particular type of upbringing, I wouldn’t even allow myself to address them by their first names. Ms. Marshall also referred to Langston Hughes as Mr. Hughes during her talks and throughout her memoir.

“For me,” she wrote, “he was a loving taskmaster, mentor, teacher, griot, literary sponsor and treasured elder friend. Decades have passed since his death in 1967 and I still miss him.” Decades from now, I imagine I will feel the same way about both Ms. Morrison and Ms. Marshall.

Death on the Nile (1978)

 

CHEF’S HOUSE By Raymond Carver

That summer Wes rented a furnished house north of Eureka from a recovered alcoholic named Chef. Then he called to ask me to forget what I had going and to move up there and live with him. He said he was on the wagon. I knew about that wagon. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He called again and said, Edna, you can see the ocean from the front window. You can smell salt in the air. I listened to him talk. He didn’t slur his words. I said, I’ll think about it. And I did. A week later he called again and said, Are you coming? I said I was still thinking. He said, We’ll start over. I said, If I come up there, I want you to do something for me. Name it, Wes said. I said, I want you to try and be the Wes I used to know. The old Wes. The Wes I married. Wes began to cry, but I took it as a sign of his good intentions. So I said, All right, I’ll come up.

Wes had quit his girlfriend, or she’d quit him – I didn’t know, I didn’t care. When I made up my mind to go with Wes, I had to say goodbye to my friend. My friend said, You’re making a mistake. He said, Don’t do this to me. What about us? he said. I said, I have to do it for Wes’s sake. He’s trying to stay sober. You remember what that’s like. I remember, my friend said, but I don’t want you to go. I said, I’ll go for the summer. Then I‘ll see. I’ll come back, I said. He said, What about me? What about my sake? Don’t come back, he said.

We drank coffee, pop, and all kinds of fruit juice that summer. The whole summer, that’s what we had to drink. I found myself wishing the summer wouldn’t end. I knew better, but after a month of being with Wes in Chef’s house, I put my wedding ring back on. I hadn’t worn the ring in two years. Not since the night Wes was drunk and threw his ring into a peach orchard.
Wes had a little money, so I didn’t have to work. And it turned out Chef was letting us have the house for almost nothing. We didn’t have a telephone. We paid the gas and light and shopped for specials at the Safeway. One Sunday afternoon Wes went out to get a sprinkler and came back with something for me. He came back with a nice bunch of daisies and a straw hat.
Tuesday evenings we’d go to a movie. Other nights Wes would go to what he called his Don’t Drink meetings. Chef would pick him up in his car at the door and drive him home again afterward. Some days Wes and I would go fishing for trout in one freshwater lagoon nearby. We’d fish off the bank and take all day to catch a few little ones. They’ll do fine, I’d say, and that night I’d fry them for supper. Sometimes I’d take off my hat and fall asleep on a blanket next to my fishing pole. The last thing I’d remember would be clouds passing overhead toward the central valley. At night, Wes would take me in his arms and ask me if I was still his girl.
Our kids kept their distance. Cheryl lived with some people on a farm in Oregon. She looked after a herd of goats and sold the milk. She kept bees and put up jars of honey. She had her own life, and I didn’t blame her. She didn’t care one way or the other about what her dad and I did so long as we didn’t get her into it. Bobby was in Washington working in the hay. After the haying season, he planned to work in the apples. He had a girl and was saving his money. I wrote letters and signed them, “Love always.”

One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. I was working at the sink. I looked and saw Chef’s big car pull in. I could see his car, the access road and the freeway, and, behind the freeway, the dunes and the ocean. Clouds hung over the water. Chef got out of his car and hitched his pants. I knew there was something. Wes stopped what he was doing and stood up. He was wearing his gloves and a canvas hat. He took off his hat and wiped his face with the back of his hand. Chef walked over and put his arm around Wes’s shoulders. Wes took off one of his gloves. I went to the door. I heard Chef say to Wes God knows he was sorry but he was going to have to ask us to leave at the end of the month. Wes pulled off his other glove. Why’s that, Chef? Chef said his daughter, Linda, the woman Wes used to call Fat Linda from the time of his drinking days, needed a place to live and this place was it. Chef told Wes that Linda’s husband had taken his fishing boat out a few weeks back and nobody had heard from him since. She’s my own blood, Chef said to Wes. She’s lost her husband. She’s lost her baby’s father. I can help. I’m glad I’m in a position to help, Chef said. I’m sorry, Wes, but you’ll have to look for another house. Then Chef hugged Wes again, hitched his pants, and got in his big car and drove away. Wes came inside the house. He dropped his hat and gloves on the carpet and sat down in the big chair. Chef’s chair, it occurred to me. Chef’s carpet, even. Wes looked pale. I poured two cups of coffee and gave one to him.
It’s all right, I said. Wes, don’t worry about it, I said. I sat down on Chef’s sofa with my coffee.
Fat Linda’s going to live here now instead of us, Wes said. He held his cup, but he didn’t drink from it.
Wes, don’t get stirred up, I said.
Her man will turn up in Ketchikan, Wes said. Fat Linda’s husband has simply pulled out on them. And who could blame him? Wes said. Wes said if it came to that, he’d go down with his ship, too, rather than live the rest of his days with Fat Linda and her kid. Then Wes put his cup down next to his gloves. This has been a happy house up to now, he said.
We’ll get another house, I said.
Not like this one, Wes said. It wouldn’t be the same, anyway. This house has been a good house for us. This house has good memories to it. Now Fat Linda and her kid will be in here, Wes said. He picked up his cup and tasted from it.
It’s Chef’s house, I said. He has to do what he has to do.
I know that, Wes said. But I don’t have to like it.
Wes had this look about him. I knew that look. He kept touching his lips with his tongue. He kept thumbing his shirt under his waistband. He got up from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out the ocean and at the clouds, which were building up. He patted his chin with his fingers like he was thinking about something. And he was thinking.
Go easy, Wes, I said.
She wants me to go easy, Wes said. He kept standing there.
But in a minute he came over and sat next to me on the sofa. He crossed one leg over the other and began fooling with the buttons on his shirt. I took his hand. I started to talk. I talked about the summer. But I caught myself talking like it was something that had happened in the past. Maybe years back. At any rate, like something that was over. Then I started talking about the kids. Wes said he wished he could do it over again and do it right this time.
They love you, I said.
No, they don’t, he said.
I said, Someday, they’ll understand things.
Maybe, Wes said. But it won’t matter then.
You don’t know, I said.
I know a few things, Wes said, and looked at me. I know I’m glad you came up here. I won’t forget you did it, Wes said.
I’m glad, too, I said. I’m glad you found this house, I said.
Wes snorted. Then he laughed. We both laughed. That Chef, Wes said, and shook his head. He threw us a knuckleball, that son of a bitch. But I’m glad you wore your ring. I’m glad we had us this time together, Wes said.
Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case. Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?
I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.
He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not.
I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me.
But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?
Wes, it’s all right, I said. I brought his hand to my cheek. Then, I don’t know, I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him. We’d just driven up from California. I got out with Cheryl and Bobby and said, There’s Grandpa. But they were just babies.
Wes sat next to me patting his chin, like he was trying to figure out the next thing. Wes’s dad was gone and our kids were grown up. I looked at Wes and then I looked around Chef’s living room at Chef’s things, and I thought, We have to do something now and do it quick.
Hon, I said. Wes, listen to me.
What do you want? he said. But that’s all he said. He seemed to have made up his mind. But, having made up his mind, he was in no hurry. He leaned back on the sofa, folded his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything else.
I said his name to myself. It was an easy name to say, and I’d been used to saying it for a long time. Then I said it once more. This time I said it loud. Wes, I said.
He opened his eyes. But he didn’t look at me. He just sat where he was and looked toward the window. Fat Linda, he said. But I knew it wasn’t her. She was nothing. Just a name. Wes got up and pulled the drapes and the ocean was gone just like that. I went in to start supper. We still had some fish in the icebox. There wasn’t much else. We’ll clean it up tonight, I thought, and that will be the end of it.

Antikythera Mechanism - build your own!

http://www.amclock.net/





The Antikythera Mechanism is a 2200 year Ancient Greek portable planetarium

and is the first known analog computer marking the begining of modern computing.

The front dial displays the zodiac position of the first 5 planets, sun, moon phase and date.

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON by Stephen Vincent Benét

The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods—this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons—it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden—they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

My father is a priest; I am the son of a priest. I have been in the Dead Places near us, with my father—at first, I was afraid. When my father went into the house to search for the metal, I stood by the door and my heart felt small and weak. It was a dead man's house, a spirit house. It did not have the smell of man, though there were old bones in a corner. But it is not fitting that a priest's son should show fear. I looked at the bones in the shadow and kept my voice still.

Then my father came out with the metal—a good, strong piece. He looked at me with both eyes but I had [Pg 4]not run away. He gave me the metal to hold—I took it and did not die. So he knew that I was truly his son and would be a priest in my time. That was when I was very young—nevertheless, my brothers would not have done it, though they are good hunters. After that, they gave me the good piece of meat and the warm corner by the fire. My father watched over me—he was glad that I should be a priest. But when I boasted or wept without a reason, he punished me more strictly than my brothers. That was right.

After a time, I myself was allowed to go into the dead houses and search for metal. So I learned the ways of those houses—and if I saw bones, I was no longer afraid. The bones are light and old—sometimes they will fall into dust if you touch them. But that is a great sin.

I was taught the chants and the spells—I was taught how to stop the running of blood from a wound and many secrets. A priest must know many secrets—that was what my father said. If the hunters think we do all things by chants and spells, they may believe so—it does not hurt them. I was taught how to read in the old books and how to make the old writings—that was hard and took a long time. My knowledge made me happy—it was like a fire in my heart. Most of all, I liked to hear of the Old Days and the stories of the gods. I asked myself many questions that I could not answer, but it was good to ask them. At night, I would lie awake and listen to the wind—it seemed to me that it was the voice of the gods as they flew through the air.

We are not ignorant like the Forest People—our women spin wool on the wheel, our priests wear a white [Pg 5]robe. We do not eat grubs from the tree, we have not forgotten the old writings, although they are hard to understand. Nevertheless, my knowledge and my lack of knowledge burned in me—I wished to know more. When I was a man at last, I came to my father and said, "It is time for me to go on my journey. Give me your leave."

He looked at me for a long time, stroking his beard, then he said at last, "Yes. It is time." That night, in the house of the priesthood, I asked for and received purification. My body hurt but my spirit was a cool stone. It was my father himself who questioned me about my dreams.

He bade me look into the smoke of the fire and see—I saw and told what I saw. It was what I have always seen—a river, and, beyond it, a great Dead Place and in it the gods walking. I have always thought about that. His eyes were stern when I told him—he was no longer my father but a priest. He said, "This is a strong dream."

"It is mine," I said, while the smoke waved and my head felt light. They were singing the Star song in the outer chamber and it was like the buzzing of bees in my head.

He asked me how the gods were dressed and I told him how they were dressed. We know how they were dressed from the book, but I saw them as if they were before me. When I had finished, he threw the sticks three times and studied them as they fell.

"This is a very strong dream," he said. "It may eat you up."

"I am not afraid," I said and looked at him with [Pg 6]both eyes. My voice sounded thin in my ears but that was because of the smoke.

He touched me on the breast and the forehead. He gave me the bow and the three arrows.

"Take them," he said. "It is forbidden to travel east. It is forbidden to cross the river. It is forbidden to go to the Place of the Gods. All these things are forbidden."

"All these things are forbidden," I said, but it was my voice that spoke and not my spirit. He looked at me again.

"My son," he said. "Once I had young dreams. If your dreams do not eat you up, you may be a great priest. If they eat you, you are still my son. Now go on your journey."

I went fasting, as is the law. My body hurt but not my heart. When the dawn came, I was out of sight of the village. I prayed and purified myself, waiting for a sign. The sign was an eagle. It flew east.

Sometimes signs are sent by bad spirits. I waited again on the flat rock, fasting, taking no food. I was very still—I could feel the sky above me and the earth beneath. I waited till the sun was beginning to sink. Then three deer passed in the valley, going east—they did not wind me or see me. There was a white fawn with them—a very great sign.

I followed them, at a distance, waiting for what would happen. My heart was troubled about going east, yet I knew that I must go. My head hummed with my fasting—I did not even see the panther spring upon the white fawn. But, before I knew it, the bow was in [Pg 7]my hand. I shouted and the panther lifted his head from the fawn. It is not easy to kill a panther with one arrow but the arrow went through his eye and into his brain. He died as he tried to spring—he rolled over, tearing at the ground. Then I knew I was meant to go east—I knew that was my journey. When the night came, I made my fire and roasted meat.

It is eight suns journey to the east and a man passes by many Dead Places. The Forest People are afraid of them but I am not. Once I made my fire on the edge of a Dead Place at night and, next morning, in the dead house, I found a good knife, little rusted. That was small to what came afterward but it made my heart feel big. Always when I looked for game, it was in front of my arrow, and twice I passed hunting parties of the Forest People without their knowing. So I knew my magic was strong and my journey clean, in spite of the law.

Toward the setting of the eighth sun, I came to the banks of the great river. It was half-a-day's journey after I had left the god-road—we do not use the god-roads now for they are falling apart into great blocks of stone, and the forest is safer going. A long way off, I had seen the water through trees but the trees were thick. At last, I came out upon an open place at the top of a cliff. There was the great river below, like a giant in the sun. It is very long, very wide. It could eat all the streams we know and still be thirsty. Its name is Ou-dis-sun, the Sacred, the Long. No man of my tribe had seen it, not even my father, the priest. It was magic and I prayed.

[Pg 8]Then I raised my eyes and looked south. It was there, the Place of the Gods.

How can I tell what it was like—you do not know. It was there, in the red light, and they were too big to be houses. It was there with the red light upon it, mighty and ruined. I knew that in another moment the gods would see me. I covered my eyes with my hands and crept back into the forest.

Surely, that was enough to do, and live. Surely it was enough to spend the night upon the cliff. The Forest People themselves do not come near. Yet, all through the night, I knew that I should have to cross the river and walk in the places of the gods, although the gods ate me up. My magic did not help me at all and yet there was a fire in my bowels, a fire in my mind. When the sun rose, I thought, "My journey has been clean. Now I will go home from my journey." But, even as I thought so, I knew I could not. If I went to the place of the gods, I would surely die, but, if I did not go, I could never be at peace with my spirit again. It is better to lose one's life than one's spirit, if one is a priest and the son of a priest.

Nevertheless, as I made the raft, the tears ran out of my eyes. The Forest People could have killed me without fight, if they had come upon me then, but they did not come. When the raft was made, I said the sayings for the dead and painted myself for death. My heart was cold as a frog and my knees like water, but the burning in my mind would not let me have peace. As I pushed the raft from the shore, I began my death song—I had the right. It was a fine song.

[Pg 9]
"I am John, son of John," I sang. "My people are the Hill People. They are the men.
I go into the Dead Places but I am not slain.
I take the metal from the Dead Places but I am not blasted.
I travel upon the god-roads and am not afraid. E-yah! I have killed the panther, I have killed the fawn!
E-yah! I have come to the great river. No man has come there before.
It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there.
Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song.
Now I go to the place of the gods, I shall not return.
My body is painted for death and my limbs weak, but my heart is big as I go to the place of the gods!"


All the same, when I came to the Place of the Gods, I was afraid, afraid. The current of the great river is very strong—it gripped my raft with its hands. That was magic, for the river itself is wide and calm. I could feel evil spirits about me, in the bright morning; I could feel their breath on my neck as I was swept down the stream. Never have I been so much alone—I tried to think of my knowledge, but it was a squirrel's heap of winter nuts. There was no strength in my knowledge any more and I felt small and naked as a new-hatched bird—alone upon the great river, the servant of the gods.

Yet, after a while, my eyes were opened and I saw. I saw both banks of the river—I saw that once there had been god-roads across it, though now they were broken and fallen like broken vines. Very great they were, and wonderful and broken—broken in the time [Pg 10]of the Great Burning when the fire fell out of the sky. And always the current took me nearer to the Place of the Gods, and the huge ruins rose before my eyes.

I do not know the customs of rivers—we are the People of the Hills. I tried to guide my raft with the pole but it spun around. I thought the river meant to take me past the Place of the Gods and out into the Bitter Water of the legends. I grew angry then—my heart felt strong. I said aloud, "I am a priest and the son of a priest!" The gods heard me—they showed me how to paddle with the pole on one side of the raft. The current changed itself—I drew near to the Place of the Gods.

When I was very near, my raft struck and turned over. I can swim in our lakes—I swam to the shore. There was a great spike of rusted metal sticking out into the river—I hauled myself up upon it and sat there, panting. I had saved my bow and two arrows and the knife I found in the Dead Place but that was all. My raft went whirling downstream toward the Bitter Water. I looked after it, and thought if it had trod me under, at least I would be safely dead. Nevertheless, when I had dried my bow-string and re-strung it, I walked forward to the Place of the Gods.

It felt like ground underfoot; it did not burn me. It is not true what some of the tales say, that the ground there burns forever, for I have been there. Here and there were the marks and stains of the Great Burning, on the ruins, that is true. But they were old marks and old stains. It is not true either, what some of our priests say, that it is an island covered with fogs and enchantments. It is not. It is a great Dead Place—[Pg 11]greater than any Dead Place we know. Everywhere in it there are god-roads, though most are cracked and broken. Everywhere there are the ruins of the high towers of the gods.

How shall I tell what I saw? I went carefully, my strung bow in my hand, my skin ready for danger. There should have been the wailings of spirits and the shrieks of demons, but there were not. It was very silent and sunny where I had landed—the wind and the rain and the birds that drop seeds had done their work—the grass grew in the cracks of the broken stone. It is a fair island—no wonder the gods built there. If I had come there, a god, I also would have built.

How shall I tell what I saw? The towers are not all broken—here and there one still stands, like a great tree in a forest, and the birds nest high. But the towers themselves look blind, for the gods are gone. I saw a fish-hawk, catching fish in the river. I saw a little dance of white butterflies over a great heap of broken stones and columns. I went there and looked about me—there was a carved stone with cut-letters, broken in half. I can read letters but I could not understand these. They said UBTREAS. There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman's. His name was ASHING, as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ASHING, though I do not know that god.

How shall I tell what I saw? There was no smell of man left, on stone or metal. Nor were there many trees in that wilderness of stone. There are many pigeons, nesting and dropping in the towers—the gods must [Pg 12]have loved them, or, perhaps, they used them for sacrifices. There are wild cats that roam the god-roads, green-eyed, unafraid of man. At night they wail like demons but they are not demons. The wild dogs are more dangerous, for they hunt in a pack, but them I did not meet till later. Everywhere there are the carved stones, carved with magical numbers or words.

I went North—I did not try to hide myself. When a god or a demon saw me, then I would die, but meanwhile I was no longer afraid. My hunger for knowledge burned in me—there was so much that I could not understand. After awhile, I knew that my belly was hungry. I could have hunted for my meat, but I did not hunt. It is known that the gods did not hunt as we do—they got their food from enchanted boxes and jars. Sometimes these are still found in the Dead Places—once, when I was a child and foolish, I opened such a jar and tasted it and found the food sweet. But my father found out and punished me for it strictly, for, often, that food is death. Now, though, I had long gone past what was forbidden, and I entered the likeliest towers, looking for the food of the gods.

I found it at last in the ruins of a great temple in the mid-city. A mighty temple it must have been, for the roof was painted like the sky at night with its stars—that much I could see, though the colors were faint and dim. It went down into great caves and tunnels—perhaps they kept their slaves there. But when I started to climb down, I heard the squeaking of rats, so I did not go—rats are unclean, and there must have been many tribes of them, from the squeaking. But near there, I found food, in the heart of a ruin, behind a [Pg 13]door that still opened. I ate only the fruits from the jars—they had a very sweet taste. There was drink, too, in bottles of glass—the drink of the gods was strong and made my head swim. After I had eaten and drunk, I slept on the top of a stone, my bow at my side.

When I woke, the sun was low. Looking down from where I lay, I saw a dog sitting on his haunches. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth; he looked as if he were laughing. He was a big dog, with a grey-brown coat, as big as a wolf. I sprang up and shouted at him but he did not move—he just sat there as if he were laughing. I did not like that. When I reached for a stone to throw, he moved swiftly out of the way of the stone. He was not afraid of me; he looked at me as if I were meat. No doubt I could have killed him with an arrow, but I did not know if there were others. Moreover, night was falling.

I looked about me—not far away there was a great, broken god-road, leading North. The towers were high enough, but not so high, and while many of the dead-houses were wrecked, there were some that stood. I went toward this god-road, keeping to the heights of the ruins, while the dog followed. When I had reached the god-road, I saw that there were others behind him. If I had slept later, they would have come upon me asleep and torn out my throat. As it was, they were sure enough of me; they did not hurry. When I went into the dead-house, they kept watch at the entrance—doubtless they thought they would have a fine hunt. But a dog cannot open a door and I knew, from the books, that the gods did not like to live on the ground but on high.

[Pg 14]I had just found a door I could open when the dogs decided to rush. Ha! They were surprised when I shut the door in their faces—it was a good door, of strong metal. I could hear their foolish baying beyond it but I did not stop to answer them. I was in darkness—I found stairs and climbed. There were many stairs, turning around till my head was dizzy. At the top was another door—I found the knob and opened it. I was in a long small chamber—on one side of it was a bronze door that could not be opened, for it had no handle. Perhaps there was a magic word to open it but I did not have the word. I turned to the door in the opposite side of the wall. The lock of it was broken and I opened it and went in.

Within, there was a place of great riches. The god who lived there must have been a powerful god. The first room was a small ante-room—I waited there for some time, telling the spirits of the place that I came in peace and not as a robber. When it seemed to me that they had had time to hear me, I went on. Ah, what riches! Few, even, of the windows had been broken—it was all as it had been. The great windows that looked over the city had not been broken at all though they were dusty and streaked with many years. There were coverings on the floors, the colors not greatly faded, and the chairs were soft and deep. There were pictures upon the walls, very strange, very wonderful—I remember one of a bunch of flowers in a jar—if you came close to it, you could see nothing but bits of color, but if you stood away from it, the flowers might have been picked yesterday. It made my heart feel strange to look at this picture—and to look at the figure of a [Pg 15]bird, in some hard clay, on a table and see it so like our birds. Everywhere there were books and writings, many in tongues that I could not read. The god who lived there must have been a wise god and full of knowledge. I felt I had right there, as I sought knowledge also.

Nevertheless, it was strange. There was a washing-place but no water—perhaps the gods washed in air. There was a cooking-place but no wood, and though there was a machine to cook food, there was no place to put fire in it. Nor were there candles or lamps—there were things that looked like lamps but they had neither oil nor wick. All these things were magic, but I touched them and lived—the magic had gone out of them. Let me tell one thing to show. In the washing-place, a thing said "Hot" but it was not hot to the touch—another thing said "Cold" but it was not cold. This must have been a strong magic but the magic was gone. I do not understand—they had ways—I wish that I knew.

It was close and dry and dusty in their house of the gods. I have said the magic was gone but that is not true—it had gone from the magic things but it had not gone from the place. I felt the spirits about me, weighing upon me. Nor had I ever slept in a Dead Place before—and yet, tonight, I must sleep there. When I thought of it, my tongue felt dry in my throat, in spite of my wish for knowledge. Almost I would have gone down again and faced the dogs, but I did not.

I had not gone through all the rooms when the darkness fell. When it fell, I went back to the big room looking over the city and made fire. There was a place to [Pg 16]make fire and a box with wood in it, though I do not think they cooked there. I wrapped myself in a floor-covering and slept in front of the fire—I was very tired.

Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night. When I woke, the fire had gone out and I was cold. It seemed to me that all around me there were whisperings and voices. I closed my eyes to shut them out. Some will say that I slept again, but I do not think that I slept. I could feel the spirits drawing my spirit out of my body as a fish is drawn on a line.

Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body—I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods.

It should have been dark, for it was night, but it was not dark. Everywhere there were lights—lines of light—circles and blurs of light—ten thousand torches would not have been the same. The sky itself was alight—you could barely see the stars for the glow in the sky. I thought to myself "This is strong magic" and trembled. There was a roaring in my ears like the rushing of rivers. Then my eyes grew used to the light and my ears to the sound. I knew that I was seeing the city as it had been when the gods were alive.

That was a sight indeed—yes, that was a sight: I could not have seen it in the body—my body would have died. Everywhere went the gods, on foot and in [Pg 17]chariots—there were gods beyond number and counting and their chariots blocked the streets. They had turned night to day for their pleasure—they did not sleep with the sun. The noise of their coming and going was the noise of many waters. It was magic what they could do—it was magic what they did.

I looked out of another window—the great vines of their bridges were mended and the god-roads went East and West. Restless, restless, were the gods and always in motion! They burrowed tunnels under rivers—they flew in the air. With unbelievable tools they did giant works—no part of the earth was safe from them, for, if they wished for a thing, they summoned it from the other side of the world. And always, as they labored and rested, as they feasted and made love, there was a drum in their ears—the pulse of the giant city, beating and beating like a man's heart.

Were they happy? What is happiness to the gods? They were great, they were mighty, they were wonderful and terrible. As I looked upon them and their magic, I felt like a child—but a little more, it seemed to me, and they would pull down the moon from the sky. I saw them with wisdom beyond wisdom and knowledge beyond knowledge. And yet not all they did was well done—even I could see that—and yet their wisdom could not but grow until all was peace.

Then I saw their fate come upon them and that was terrible past speech. It came upon them as they walked the streets of their city. I have been in the fights with the Forest People—I have seen men die. But this was not like that. When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the [Pg 18]sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city—poor gods, poor gods! Then the towers began to fall. A few escaped—yes, a few. The legends tell it. But, even after the city had become a Dead Place, for many years the poison was still in the ground. I saw it happen, I saw the last of them die. It was darkness over the broken city and I wept.

All this, I saw. I saw it as I have told it, though not in the body. When I woke in the morning, I was hungry, but I did not think first of my hunger for my heart was perplexed and confused. I knew the reason for the Dead Places but I did not see why it had happened. It seemed to me it should not have happened, with all the magic they had. I went through the house looking for an answer. There was so much in the house I could not understand—and yet I am a priest and the son of a priest. It was like being on one side of the great river, at night, with no light to show the way.

Then I saw the dead god. He was sitting in his chair, by the window, in a room I had not entered before and, for the first moment, I thought that he was alive. Then I saw the skin on the back of his hand—it was like dry leather. The room was shut, hot and dry—no doubt that had kept him as he was. At first I was afraid to approach him—then the fear left me. He was sitting looking out over the city—he was dressed in the clothes of the gods. His age was neither young nor old—I could not tell his age. But there was wisdom in his face and great sadness. You could see that he would have not run away. He had sat at his window, watching his city [Pg 19]die—then he himself had died. But it is better to lose one's life than one's spirit—and you could see from the face that his spirit had not been lost. I knew, that, if I touched him, he would fall into dust—and yet, there was something unconquered in the face.

That is all of my story, for then I knew he was a man—I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men—they went a dark road, but they were men. I had no fear after that—I had no fear going home, though twice I fought off the dogs and once I was hunted for two days by the Forest People. When I saw my father again, I prayed and was purified. He touched my lips and my breast, he said, "You went away a boy. You come back a man and a priest." I said, "Father, they were men! I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law—but still I know they were men."

He looked at me out of both eyes. He said, "The law is not always the same shape—you have done what you have done. I could not have done it my time, but you come after me. Tell!"

I told and he listened. After that, I wished to tell all the people but he showed me otherwise. He said, "Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you may die of the truth. It was not idly that our fathers forbade the Dead Places." He was right—it is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.

Nevertheless, we make a beginning. It is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now—there are [Pg 20]the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken—but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods—the place new-york—not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others—the gods Licoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.

Where you at quiz

Telephunken - WEST COAST, EAST COAST

Watch of the Week: Grand Seiko SBGE262

 

Correlation

 

The Grain Elevator – Stalingrad

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2016/05/17/the-grain-elevator-stalingrad/




16-21 September 1942

In the south of Staingrad, battle groups from the 24. Panzer-Division (Generalmajor Arno von Lenski) and 94. Infanterie- Division (Generalleutnant Georg Pfeiffer) were involved in smashing Soviet resistance near the southern train station, while the 29. Infanterie-Division (mot.) (Generalmajor Max Fremery) and 14. Panzer-Division (Generalmajor Ferdinand Heim) were clearing the Russians from the Leather Factory in Kuporosnoye. The defenders in the south were augmented by the presence of an armoured train yet by the 16th the Soviets had retreated to the Grain Elevator. This massive concrete structure dominated the whole of the city south of the Tsaritsa Gorge, and it quickly moved high on the German list of objectives as from this vantage point, accurate artillery fire could be brought down on every German unit operating to the east and south of Minina.

As the 24. Panzer-Division struck north through the railway yard to link up with von Hartmann, the 94. Infanterie-Division ran into increasing difficulties with Soviet troops in the Grain Elevator. Although by the 16th they were only 30 strong (the 35th Guards Rifle Division began the battle with 250 men), they were causing a real headache for the Germans. Following an urgent call for help, the 92nd Naval Rifle Brigade arrived that night and was immediately dispatched to Rodimtsev’s left flank with a platoon being sent to reinforce the Grain Elevator.

Every drink in Wake in Fright

Sekiro

 

The Column of Marcus Aurelius

 

"Lu Xun Combat Team" with the stamp of "Fushun No. 37 Middle School Red Guard"

 

Moar Warhammer 3!!!

 

2,000 year-old drawings by ancient Egyptian school-children

 

Mushroom Cloud Over the Northern Capital: Writing the Tianqi Explosion in the Seventeenth Century

On the morning of May 30, 1626, in Ming records the sixth day of the fifth month of the sixth year of the Tianqi era, an astonishing explosion resounded through Beijing. Within the next minute, a giant black mushroom cloud appeared in the sky above the capital city; thousands of houses near the Xuanwu Gate were burned to ash, thousands of people were killed or injured, and the whole city fell into a great panic. The explosion of the Imperial Gunpowder Workshop, or the Wanggongchang, was the most horrifying public catastrophe to take place in Beijing during the final decades of the Ming Dynasty.1 This extraordinary event occurred just when the political struggle between the eunuch faction headed by Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) and the Donglin faction, mainly comprising scholar-officials from the Jiangnan region, had grown unprecedentedly fierce. Bloody confrontations taking place both at the capital and in Jiangnan reached a climax when many officials from the Donglin side were persecuted to death.2 The explosion, which happened to take place during this politically tense moment, attracted the attention of many contemporary scholars and, subsequently, frequently appeared in [End Page 71] miscellaneous writings produced during the seventeenth-century Ming-Qing dynastic transition.

The earliest record of the Tianqi explosion appears in an official gazette (dibao), a bulletin primarily written for the sake of distributing important news to bureaucratic agencies. Scholars also transcribed the report and preserved it in several textual miscellanies under the title "Official Report on a Heavenly Incident" (Tianbian dichao or "Official Report").3 Later, in their 1635 work recording the history and culture of Beijing titled A Sketch of Sites and Objects in the Imperial Capital (Dijing jingwulüe; hereafter A Sketch), two scholars—Liu Tong (1593–1636, jinshi 1634) and Yu Yizheng (1597–1636)—incorporated many of the strange details provided by the gazette and carefully situated the Tianqi explosion in the contemporary urban environment.4 After the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century, a generation of scholars began to seriously reflect on the socio-political origins of Ming dynastic failure through writing historical miscellanies.5 In A Compendium of Events in the North during the Last Years of the Ming (Mingji beilüe, 1670), Ji Liuqi (1622–?) presented the Tianqi explosion as a testimony to the Donglin activists' "righteous protestations" against eunuchs, which was from his perspective heroic and honorable. Meanwhile, in another miscellany, The Compendium of Appeasing [End Page 72] Bandits (Suikou jilüe, 1658), Wu Weiye (1609–71) further intensified the cosmological interpretation of this disaster as an omen from Heaven, foreshadowing the end of the Ming regime.

Following changing social contexts from the late Ming to the early Qing, writers who politically aligned themselves with the Donglin party strove to consolidate the relationship between court politics and the extraordinary explosion. In seemingly repetitive accounts of the same event, they strategically modified and adjusted the text within diverse literary conventions to express their own specific political agendas, among which one of the most important was the criminalization of Wei Zhongxian. This article examines these different types of discourses on the Tianqi explosion—the gazette, A Sketch, and historical miscellanies—to investigate the varying textual strategies used to politicize the disaster over the course of the seventeenth century. How did the reiterations and reframings of the Tianqi explosion contribute to these historical constructions? And to what extent can the local setting of this extraordinary event interfere with the narrative and thus influence people's rationalizations of historical figures' behaviors? The following sections will track the writers' manipulations of the text, especially their accounts of violence and death in the urban context of Beijing, and reflect on the roles that the explosion played in shaping the discourse of late Ming political history.

Tokyo 2010

A Tramp Abroad

Does Georgism Work?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-land-really




Georgism is a school of political economy that is really upset about, among other things, the Rent Being Too Damn High. It seeks to liberate labor and capital alike from those who gatekeep access to scarce "non-produced assets," such as land and natural resources, while still affirming the virtues of hard work and free enterprise. George uses the term "Land" to mean not just regular land, but everything that is external to human beings and the things they produce–nature itself, really.

Georgism's chief insight is to move economic thinking from a two-factor model (Labor and Capital) to a three-factor model (Land, Labor, and Capital). It's chief (but not only) policy prescription is the Land Value Tax (LVT), which taxes real estate at as close to 100% of its "land rent" as possible (the amount of rent due to the land alone apart from "improvements" such as buildings). In actual practice, most Georgists seem to think 85% is a reasonable figure to target.

Let's carefully unpack what those terms means. "Land value" refers to the full market value of a property, excluding all of its improvements, such as buildings. This is the portion of a property's value arising solely from its location and natural attributes (agricultural fertility, endowment of stuff like water, minerals, etc.). "Land rent" (AKA "ground rent") refers to the recurring rental income a property is capable of generating from the market because of its land value.

It is Land Rent which Land Value Tax is intended to capture. You can think of it as a Location or Site Value Tax if that's more helpful. It's not a tax on the full market purchase price of a property, nor is it a fixed amount of tax per acre of land, but rather a tax proportional to the market value of the land alone (or better yet, the land rent). When assessed correctly, as LVT approaches 100% the market selling price of the land itself will approach zero.

Don't let the "100%" confuse you, either. If a piece of land costs $10,000 to buy, and is leased for $500/year, then an LVT that captures 100% of the land rent is $500/year, which works out to a 5% annual tax of the land value.

LVT should not be confused with a property tax. Property taxes consider land plus improvements (typically buildings). An LVT considers land value alone.

Georgists assert that if we sufficiently tax land in this manner, we'll not only end the housing crisis but also fix a bunch of misaligned incentives that cause poverty to persist alongside economic progress, while raising a bunch of revenue that can lower or even eliminate other less efficient taxes, such as sales and income taxes.

This is because virtually all economists agree that LVT has zero "deadweight loss"–a fancy word for a drag on the economy that makes certain activities no longer profitable. Other taxes with no deadweight loss include Pigouvian taxes on bad things, like congestion and pollution.

But won't landlords just raise the rent to make up for the LVT, passing the burden of the tax on to the tenants? Georgists say no, because land is special in that it is scarce and nobody can make any more of it. Indeed, LVT is a rare form of taxation that actually boosts the economy, because it discourages rent-seeking and speculation. Some Georgists even go so far as to say that LVT can raise enough revenue to replace all other less efficient taxes, becoming the so-called "Single Tax," but this is not a universally held position among modern Georgists. To be clear, proponents of the "Single Tax" believe that LVT is sufficient for all public purposes and that no other taxes (such as income tax, capital taxes, and tariffs) are necessary for revenue generation, although they still might support carbon taxes or "sin taxes" on things they want to discourage.

Georgism doesn't begin and end with the LVT, however, and the movement isn't solely concerned with real estate and tax revenue. Henry George was an early proponent of what we now call "Universal Basic Income," or as he called it, the "Citizen's Dividend" (funded by LVT, naturally). But even if you threw every penny of LVT revenue into the sea, the anti-sprawl effects of the policy are appealing enough by themselves to earn the endorsement of YIMBY's and urbanists like Strong Towns.

If you take Georgism to its natural conclusions, you might start to question government-enforced monopolies over other kinds of "Land," such as electromagnetic spectrum, water and mineral rights, and orbital real estate for satellites, not to mention the deadweight loss created by intellectual property gatekeepers over, say, research papers.

And if you have my day job as an analyst for the video games industry, one day you'll find yourself applying the observed 30-year history of housing crises in MMO's to virtual real estate sales in leading blockchain games.

Some people come to Georgism because of their aversion to income and capital taxes, some want to use LVT to fund generous social programs, some are motivated by the beneficial environmental effects, and some just think the Rent is Too Damn High. No matter where you come from on the political compass, there's probably a way to mix up a club soda and Georgism that's right for you.

daves_archive_1

 https://www.flickr.com/photos/foundin_a_attic/

ULUS: Legends of the Nomads

https://www.ulusgame.com/



A game to save a culture.
Gods. Monsters. Champions.
The most powerful woman in the history of the world; the sculptor-poet emperor who invented alphabets.
Eagle hunters, ancient deer stones, the Mongolian Death Worm.
Who will decide the future of the Mongol lands, the Mongol soul?

An Isolated Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected Through Astrometric Microlensing

https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.13296








We report the first unambiguous detection and mass measurement of an isolated stellar-mass black hole (BH). We used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to carry out precise astrometry of the source star of the long-duration (t_E ~ 270 days), high-magnification microlensing event MOA-2011-BLG-191/OGLE-2011-BLG-0462, in the direction of the Galactic bulge. HST imaging, conducted at eight epochs over an interval of six years, reveals a clear relativistic astrometric deflection of the background star's apparent position. Ground-based photometry shows a parallactic signature of the effect of the Earth's motion on the microlensing light curve. Combining the HST astrometry with the ground-based light curve and the derived parallax, we obtain a lens mass of 7.1 +/- 1.3 M_Sun and a distance of 1.58 +/- 0.18 kpc. We show that the lens emits no detectable light, which, along with having a mass higher than is possible for a white dwarf or neutron star, confirms its BH nature. Our analysis also provides an absolute proper motion for the BH. The proper motion is offset from the mean motion of Galactic-disk stars at similar distances by an amount corresponding to a transverse space velocity of ~45 km/s, suggesting that the BH received a modest natal 'kick' from its supernova explosion. Previous mass determinations for stellar-mass BHs have come from radial-velocity measurements of Galactic X-ray binaries, and from gravitational radiation emitted by merging BHs in binary systems in external galaxies. Our mass measurement is the first ever for an isolated stellar-mass BH using any technique.

Year of the Tiger

 

Dorohedoro