Surviving Death on Netflix, A Scientific and Spiritual Investigation into the Afterlife | Movie trailer – Prudent Press Agency

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Docu string Surviving death It will arrive on Netflix after that January 6 And if we know little about it yet, the latest trailer for a trailer has finally lifted the veil of mystery that surrounds it. Surviving death It was created by director and executive producer Ricky Stern ( Ru reverse And the Joan Rivers: A Work Piece It is adapted from the novel of the same name by Leslie Kane.

It is presented as a docu series that through its six episodes it will analyze unresolved cases of NDEs, intermediate communications, and more. A detailed investigation that develops through interviews, scientific experiments, and above all, different points of view. In fact, the strong point of the series will be represented by Two methods of investigation, On the one hand scientific, On the other hand my soul.

Netflixs attempt to balance all viewpoints on one of the most poignant topics, the afterlife topic. The first trailer is very exciting so waiting for the imminent release on Netflix we leave you to see it. By the way, if you havent updated yet, here is all the upcoming January content on Netflix.

Friendly alcohol advocate. Future teen idol. Beer aficionado. Amateur music fanatic. Food guru.

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JI spiritual leader Bashir set to be released on Friday – The Straits Times

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Indonesia's top terrorist convict Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader of South-east Asia's Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror group, is set to be released from prison on Friday, the Indonesian authorities said yesterday.

The 82-year old radical cleric has been in jail since his arrest in 2009.

In 2011, he was sentenced to 15 years in jail for funding a training camp for terrorists in Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh.

Mr Imam Suyudi, the head of West Java's law and human rights regional office, said Bashir will be released from Gunung Sindur prison in Bogor on Friday after fulfilling his 15-year jail sentence, with remission of 55 months.

"He has served his punishment well and followed all rules and procedures," Mr Imam was quoted as saying by Antara.

He also noted that Bashir is "in good shape" ahead of his release.

Bashir's legal team had last year requested that the government prioritise him for early release along with other prisoners on fears of a potential coronavirus outbreak in prisons, citing his old age as a factor.

Last April, Indonesia set free 30,000 prisoners who had served two-thirds of their sentences, in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in its overcrowded prisons.

Bashir was the alleged mastermind of Indonesia's deadliest terrorist attack - the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali which killed 202 people. He was never convicted of the attack.

In December 2018, the Indonesian cleric was offered early release on humanitarian grounds by the government due to his deteriorating health.

But it was on the condition that he had to first pledge allegiance to the Republic of Indonesia as well as state ideology Pancasila, as is required of all reformed terrorists.

Bashir refused the offer.

Separately, Indonesia's national police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan told reporters that the police would ensure security and order on the day of Bashir's release.

He added that they would also monitor Bashir's movements after he walks free.

"That is not carried out only towards Abu Bakar Bashir. We have a special intelligence team that monitors those who have committed any crime," he said.

Bashir's release comes amid Indonesian anti-terrorism squad Densus 88's intensified efforts against terrorism.

In the past two months, it has arrested 23 alleged terrorists in different places across Sumatra island, including two men behind the Bali bombings - Taufik Bulaga, alias Upik Lawanga, and Aris Sumarsono, alias Zulkarnaen.

And last July, a Jakarta court sentenced Para Wijayanto, the key leader of Al-Qaeda-linked JI - whom terrorism experts believe is Bashir's student - to seven years in jail for his role in recruiting and training militants and raising funds for those going to Syria.

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JI spiritual leader Bashir set to be released on Friday - The Straits Times

New Year’s resolutions: A spiritually uplifting thing to do – Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

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Of all the popular secular rituals that sometimes enrich (Thanksgiving family meals) and sometimes degrade (Halloween vandalism) our public life, my favorite is the custom of making resolutions at the end of the year.

I know that most of these resolutions are honored mostly in their abandonment and yet I still think they are a spiritually uplifting thing to do.

There does seem to be some evidence that making a resolution has some measurable statistical impact. Studies apparently show that those who make New Years resolutions are about a third more likely to fulfill them than those who make no resolutions at all.

We cannot ever change unless we explicitly name the behaviors that are blocking the better angels of our nature from taking wing. Twelve step programs owe much of their success in weaning people off drugs and alcohol to this process.

The best resolutions are, to my mind, those that shine a light on the little known, infrequently examined weak spots in your behaviors. Making changes in little things can give spiritual energy to the big changes we all need to be about.

So here is my partial list for 2021. Some, I am already addressing and others require a little bit of help from above and from within.

This year I resolve to:

Give to beggars. I always try to do this even though I am well aware of the counter argument that many of the street beggars are hucksters. Even so, I know we all know that to humiliate oneself publicly is embarrassing and just standing out in the weather asking for help deserves some form of acknowledgment. I now have a pile of dollar bills in my car to guard against the occasions when I have had the desire to give but I had no cash on hand. If you are still worried that you are enabling a drug habit, buy some fast-food meal coupons and hand them out to the beggars you meet along your way. Giving to beggars keeps your heart soft.

The rabbis who began rabbinic Judaism taught that when the Messiah comes (I guess Christian readers can substitute, When the Messiah comes again.) he will appear as a beggar at the gates of Rome, and when someone gives to him and bandages his wounds, he will announce himself. In case they got the city wrong and really meant to say Boca Raton, I want to be ready. I dont want to be the one who keeps the Messiah away because I am not carrying cash.

Curse less. Language is so powerful we must resolve to use the highest and purest form of language we know. Cursing is lazy talk. Cursing is angry talk. Cursing is not the way we should be using our words. I dont curse that much but I curse too much for my liking. Recently, when I wanted to describe someone or some group that is tearing our country apart with acrimony and prejudice cloaked in conspiratorial theories and political diatribes from both the right and the left, I have become enamored with the phrase to describe them, They are bat-s..t crazy!

I am not sure there is a satisfying clean language alternative, but I am seeking one. Perhaps in the year ahead I will call the nut cases in our midst, pathologically deluded. That phrase does not roll off the tongue with the power and ease of bat-s..t crazy, so I am still searching. I just want to curse less, and I want to understand more.

Take the vaccine. These miracle drugs will save us, but we need to be willing to be saved. Most folks I know are thrilled and anxious to get the shots, but there remains a sizable number of people who have decided, or who will decide, to wait and see.

For any new medicine that is generally good advice, but these vaccines are, according to very smart doctors and researchers, overwhelmingly safe and effective. Also, we need to get roughly 80 percent of our population vaccinated in order to achieve what the scientists call, herd immunity, which is the percentage needed to make us all safe, even if a few people still are not immunized. So, taking the vaccine helps you and helps all of your fellow Americans. It is a win, win, win, win.

May God grant us all a good New Year. Asking for a great New Year seems selfish to me. Good is enough right now.

God bless!

Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including Religion for Dummies, cowritten with Fr. Tom Hartman. Send all questions and comments to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com.

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New Year's resolutions: A spiritually uplifting thing to do - Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

Spiritual Successors Are Keeping Iconic Game Series Alive, and They’re Not Slowing Down – The Escapist

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Beloved gaming franchises never really die. Sometimes they go away for a bit, only to be revived via remastered collections. Weve seen Activision do this plenty of times in recent years, bringing back Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Tony Hawks Pro Skater for modern audiences. Individual masterpieces like The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening, Shadow of the Colossus, Demons Souls, and Final Fantasy VII have been remade in the past few years, in very different but equally successful translations. And through it all, we hold out hope that beloved classics like Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Chrono Trigger might find a way to see a resurgence on new consoles.

But sometimes, the road to bringing back a beloved game is a bit more twisty. Maybe the rights to a series are in limbo. Perhaps the original publisher has no interest in revisiting a certain property. Or, in many cases, much of the original creative team has gone on to form a completely different studio. Its in these situations that weve seen the rise of the spiritual successor, a way of making whats old feel new again, thats showing no signs of stopping in the coming years.

In the past few weeks, weve seen quite a bit from two high-profile spiritual successors. At The Game Awards, we saw the reveal of The Callisto Protocol, the first game from a new developer called Striking Distance Studios. Right from the get-go, everything about the reveal trailer screamed Dead Space derelict space stations, colored lights on the back of a prisoners neck that seemed to display in-world information, and a reanimated corpse that mutated into a hellish creature that strongly resembled a necromorph.

But once you dig a bit deeper, the games Dead Space similarities start making complete sense, despite not being affiliated with EA. Striking Distance is led by former Visceral Games vice-president and Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. While we know that The Callisto Protocol is somehow set in the universe of PUBG, the trailer is filled with a ton of Easter eggs that point to its being a sci-fi survival horror experience cut from the same cloth as Dead Space, which is excellent news to me.

Another upcoming game weve seen quite a bit from in recent weeks is Back 4 Blood, Turtle Rocks four-player cooperative zombie shooter that is Left 4 Dead in everything but name. Again, that makes complete sense given that Turtle Rock was the developer of Left 4 Dead 2. While this new game doesnt have Valves backing or use of its IP, its clear that Back 4 Blood has all of the elements of L4D that truly matter.

Our recent hands-on impressions confirmed that it has the same nail-biting pacing, creative use of an AI director that makes every session feel uniquely dramatic, and perfect balance of enemy types, enemy quantities, and resource scarcity that keeps the tension at its peak. It even goes as far as to add the kinds of new and exciting elements that wed expert from a true sequel, like a deck-building mechanic that modifies the kinds of weapons, perks, and obstacles you and your teammates will face throughout the campaign.

While The Callisto Protocol is a few years away from being released, Back 4 Blood is already in alpha, with the final game coming this June. And while both of these games are high-budget spectacles coming from AAA studios, thats not the only way to birth a spiritual successor. Looking at the upcoming pipeline, theres Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a game very much carrying the Jet Set Radio torch, right down to original music by Hideki Naganuma. Sticking with Sega classics is Taxi Chaos, an indie game coming to consoles in February that channels the spirit of the arcade and Dreamcast classic, Crazy Taxi. And oddly enough, Sega is even distributing the game in Japan and throughout Asia.

Of course, perhaps the biggest spiritual successor announced in 2020 was Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, essentially a new Suikoden game under another name from Rabbit & Bear Studios, which is made up of a lot of folks who worked on Konamis classic RPG series. The game was revealed in July, with a Kickstarter campaign that shortly followed. It was far and away the biggest video game Kickstarter of 2020 and the third highest-grossing video game campaign in the crowdfunding platforms history. It made $4.6 million from over 46,000 backers, with an expected release date of fall 2022.

These types of spiritual successors by some of the original creators arent new in video games. Weve seen a trend in recent years, particularly in the form of crowdfunded projects that have capitalized on some of the most popular franchises of the 80s and 90s. Some of them have been ultimately disappointing, like Keiji Inafunes Mighty No. 9, which never managed to capture the magic of its classic Mega Man inspirations. There were good successors that mightve lacked some of the charm of their predecessors, like Playtonic Games Yooka-Laylee, which managed to weave in some, if not all, of what made games like Banjo-Kazooie special. And then thereve been genuinely great games, like Koji Igarashis Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which is the best Castlevania game weve seen in quite some time. That games even getting a free Classic Mode DLC in January that will transform it into something more similar to the 8- and 16-bit versions of Konamis series.

In thinking about where these upcoming successors fit in the modern breadth of video games, its clear that theres a deep desire for both experiences that are familiar and that are new. Some of my favorite games of 2020 were completely original, like Spiritfarer, The Pathless, and Paradise Killer. Others felt like the natural progressions of their developers, like Hades, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and Astros Playroom. And then there were the straight-up sequels and remakes, like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and The Last of Us Part II. Theres no one right way to make a great game, and if its clear that theres still interest in a franchise or idea from both fans and the original developers themselves, then Im all for teams going back to the well and trying to find that old magic once again.

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Landry: How to make spiritual New Year’s resolutions – Grandin Media

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In the last week of any year, its a long-standing tradition to write about New Years resolutions. Some write about the sorts of resolutions people might choose to undertake, the most popular resolutions consistently have something to do with personal health (exercising more, eating better) or being more responsible money.

Others write about the futility of the resolutions themselves: a quick Google search told me that somewhere between 75 to 92 per cent of New Years Resolutions fail, and that the most common day these are abandoned is Jan. 12 each year. With numbers like that, you might wonder why Im bothering to write about resolutions again.

The thing is that as Catholic Christians, we shouldnt be so quick to abandon our resolutions. When we got to confession, we are asked to pray an Act of Contrition before we receive absolution. The prayer I was taught includes the words I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.

This resolution is not the sort of thing we should just cast aside like a gym membership or the guitar Ive given up on learning how to play. Although I sin again (and again and again), I come back to confession with this resolution sincerely on my heart in hopes of making some spiritual progress. You might say that, as Catholics, we should be in the business of making resolutions (and renewing them once weve fallen short.) And so, while this is certainly not an exhaustive list, Id like to propose three areas to consider as spiritual New Years Resolutions:

A Habit of Prayer

When it comes to prayer, the best advice may come in the slogan Nike has used in promotions for years: Just do it. And though it sounds simple, many of us struggle to maintain a consistent habit of prayer. In response to a student question on prayer last year, Rev. Paul Moret the pastor of Holy Trinity parish in Spruce Grove explained that what is most important is that you make a commitment to do something simple, something you can commit to, and something youll follow through with. This may mean beginning each morning with an Our Father, and keeping to that for weeks or even months. If youd like to expand your habit do so in small increments: perhaps you make it an Our Father and a Hail Mary, or a decade of the Rosary, or something along these lines. Keep it simple, and make it something you actually do.

For those looking to dive deeper into prayer, our faith offers a treasury of spiritual classics written to help us deepen our life of prayer. For beginners, Anthony Blooms Beginning to Pray and St. Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life are both good places to start, while the works of St. Teresa of Avila or St. John of the Cross alongside the care of a good spiritual director might be a good place for someone to deepen their prayer.

Read Scripture

St. Jerome once said Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ in other words, we need to spend more time reading Scripture. And so, a decision to read the Bible is probably one of the more popular Christian New Years resolutions. If you search a Catholic Bible-in-a-year reading plan, youll most likely come across this excellent post from Brandon Vogt outlining resources to help you read or the upcoming Bible in a Year podcast with Rev. Mike Schmitz.

The thing is, when it comes to reading scripture, in my experience Father Pauls advice about prayer also applies here. I think its important to take on something simple that you can actually commit to. With more than 1,300 chapters in the Bible, you could technically read the Bible in a year if youre reading about four chapters per day. It may be more valuable to take your time, and instead read one chapter per day (even if this means you take four years to get it done!) If you want to do something along those lines, my Unfolding Scripture Bible Study might be of help. This study, based on Jeff Cavins Great Adventure Bible Timeline, will help you read your way through the story of salvation which in turn helps the rest of Scripture make more sense.

A New Spiritual Discipline

Alongside prayer and reading the Bible, theres also room for most of us to take on some other spiritual discipline. What might that look like? Well, if you look to the Precepts of the Church, you find a good starting point for what is expected of us as ordinary Catholics and it should come as no surprise that the Eucharist and Confession are high on this list. Beyond those, here are a few spiritual habits you that might take on in the coming year.

One idea would be to find a way to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament each week (between Sundays). If you are unable or dont feel comfortable to actually go into your parish church, sit in your car in the church parking lot and spend a quiet moment with Christ.

Another idea would be to take on the habit of daily praying the Rosary or the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Finally, you might take on a habit of spiritual reading of reading books and articles that will help us to grow in holiness. Its hard to go wrong with the Lives of the Saints, and a personal favourite for me will be Story of a Soul the autobiography of St. Therese de Lisieux. If you want to dive in a little further, last May Cardinal Thomas Collins, the Archbishop of Toronto, shared a list of books he recommends all Catholics read in order to better know our own faith.

As you look to the beginning of 2021, recognize that there is an opportunity to make a resolution to pray more, to read more Scripture, or to take on some other spiritual discipline. And if you have to renew these resolutions a hundred times in the coming year: so be it. In mid-March, Bishop Robert Barron spoke of the spiritual opportunities that the pandemic offers to each of us. He saw great value in the fact that at the time so many of our distractions were being taken from us and so each of us now has the chance to sit alone in a room by (ourselves), and wrestle with the really deep questions. I pray your resolutions will help you to do just that.

Mike Landry is chaplain toEvergreen Catholic Schoolswest of Edmonton, and serves as an occasional guest speaker and music minister in communities across Western Canada. Mike and his wife Jennifer live in Stony Plain, Alta. with their five children.

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Landry: How to make spiritual New Year's resolutions - Grandin Media

Contagion Spiritual Sequel In The Works From Steven Soderbergh – Screen Rant

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A follow-up "philosophical" sequel to the 2011 pandemic film, Contagion, is officially in the works from director Steven Soderbergh.

A Contagion"spiritual" sequel is in the works from Steven Soderbergh. The original 2011 film, starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, and Gwyneth Paltrow, directed by Soderbergh (Oceans Eleven) and written by Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum), centered around a deadly virus outbreak and the societal collapse as a result of it. The subject matter carries many parallels with what the United States and the world has been dealing with this year with the Coronavirus pandemic, and viewership of the near decade-old picture saw a rejuvenated surge in 2020.

Related:How Contagion Movie Accurately Predicted The Coronavirus Outbreak

In the wake of the real-world pandemic, Soderbergh was featured on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, saying that hes working on a follow-up film to Contagion. Billed as a philosophical sequel to the original, the new project in development by him and Burns wont necessarily be a directly connected or continued story, as one would find in a traditional sequel. The new film would play alongside Contagion, similar in theme, but with marked variations between the two.

Ive got a project in development that Scott Burns is working with me on, thats a kind of philosophical sequel to Contagion, but in a different context. Youll kind of look at the two of them as kind of paired, but very different hair colors. So, Scott and I had been talking about, So, whats the next iteration of a Contagion-type story? We have been working on that; we should probably hot-foot it a little bit.

Fictional works of the viral pandemic genre are nothing new in Hollywood, with modern classic films and TV shows like 1995s Outbreak starring Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, and more recently, Guillermo del Toros 2014 series, The Strain, which ran for 4 seasons on SyFy. Actually living through one now paints a different picture of how those types of stories will likely be told moving forward. Concepts based on fantasy, imagination, and speculation can now be rooted in actual true-life experience, and viewers could start to see that reflected in newer works like Songbird, Stephen Kings The Stand on CBS All Access, and Soderbergh'sContagion sequel.

Next:Contagion: What The Movie Got Right & Wrong Compared To Coronavirus

Source: Happy Sad Confused

Wonder Woman 1984: What Each Character Lost With Their Wishes

EJ. Offurum, known the industry over as 'EWLYD', is a Television Producer and connoisseur, having developed multiple programs for cable nets including, TLC, MTV, and Lifetime Network, to name a few. He's also a part-time Film Critic, Food Critic, and Urban Adventurer, tackling the very best in Entertainment and News Articles for Screen Rant! -- TV? Comic Books? Movies? Celebrities? Video Games? If it's fun, and exciting, he'll stop at nothing to bring you the lowdown! EWLYD is based out of NYC.You can follow his shenanigans on Twitter @EWLYD and IG @EWLYD.Season.2

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Contagion Spiritual Sequel In The Works From Steven Soderbergh - Screen Rant

Cristi Lewis Obituary (1970 – 2020) – The Indianapolis Star – Legacy.com

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Cristi Ann (Remster) Lewis

Clayton - Cristi Ann (Remster) Lewis, 50, of Clayton, went peacefully into the comforting embrace of God, on December 30, 2020 after a long and courageous battle with her health. Cristi was born on November 19, 1970 in Indianapolis to Robert Stephen Remster and Sherrie Ann (Cooper) Remster. On December 18, 1993 in the Mooresville First Christian Church, Cristi was united in marriage to Aaron Todd Lewis. This loving union produced her two beloved red heads, Macy and Makenzie Lewis.

Cristi attended Monrovia Schools graduating in 1989. She went on to attend college and cosmetology school where she became a talented nail technician. Cristi had many roles throughout her life such as working for Professional Garage Door, In Trend, and Abstract & Title Company. Above all these positions, Cristi was a devout wife, mother, MiMi, daughter, and friend.

There was not a meal Cristi couldn't master; to be able to enjoy one of her meals and hospitality was to love her. Her most notable dishes were her homemade chicken and dumplings, apple crisp, hash brown casserole, snickerdoodles, and pot roast. Cristi was extremely creative and could see just about any project through. From helping Macy and Makenzie with their indoor 4-H projects such as flowers or gift wrapping to creating her beautiful wreaths and Christmas trees, Cristi was exceptionally talented.

When not cooking or decorating, Cristi enjoyed vacationing in Florida, watching her favorite Hallmark movies, playing Euchre and Bunco, sitting on her front porch, talking on the phone to her brother, Trevor every day, and working in her yard maintaining her lovely landscaping. Cristi was an incredibly gorgeous woman who could light up any room she walked into. She was always well dressed and had her hair and nails done beautifully. Despite her various health issues she endured throughout her life, she persevered through each of them with grace and strength. She was incredibly faithful and attended Monrovia Christian Church, Plainfield Bible Church, and Hazelwood Christian Church throughout her life.

Cristi did not know a stranger. She could be on a vacation far from home and immediately befriend someone. She was the first to lend a smile to a stranger or give up her place in line at the grocery store. She had a generous heart of gold with a personality and spirit that were one-of-a-kind. Cristi knew just about anyone and everyone; her infectious laugh and witty antics will be greatly missed by all of those who knew and loved her.

Cristi is preceded in death by her paternal grandparents, Robert and Wanda (Stephen) Remster and her maternal grandparents, William "Bill" and Mary Ermine (Mavity) Cooper; her beloved cousins, Todd and Sandra (Corcoran) Smith; and her precious Maltese, Daffini Marie.

Survivors include her husband of 27 years, Aaron Todd Lewis; beloved daughters, Macy (Walter) Colvin and Makenzie Lewis; father, Steve (Sarah) Remster; mother, Sherrie Remster; cherished brother, Trevor (Angela) Remster; siblings, Bryan (Robyn) Hughes, Amy (Bryant) Hoffer, and Michael (Amber) Hughes; nieces and nephews, Haley, Ella, Dylan, Coleman, Griffin, and Hudson; her bonus son, Kody Sprague and bonus grandchild, Mylan Sprague; her precious poodle, Gidget Rose; and many extended family members and dear friends.

Cristi's family would like to extend a special thank you to all of the medical professionals who cared for her over the years, but especially her ICU nurses as of recent at Hendricks Regional Health: Christina Barth, Chante Mayfield, Sarah Ross, Lindsay Masters, Joey Harder, and Jaqueline Royer.

To do their part in preventing the spread of COVID, the Lewis family will hold a private family visitation for Cristi. On Thursday, January 7th, 2021 at 11:00 AM Cristi's funeral service will be live streamed by visiting http://www.CarlisleBranson.com. Following the funeral service, Cristi will be buried near her family at White Lick Cemetery in Mooresville. In lieu of flowers, Macy and Makenzie have made the decision to start a scholarship fund in their mother's memory that benefits a child who is active in 4-H in both indoor and livestock projects as Cristi was very passionate about helping the girls with their projects. Checks can be made to the Cristi Lewis 4-H Memorial Scholarship Fund, and can be mailed to Carlisle-Branson Funeral Service, 39 East High Street, Mooresville, IN 46158. Please visit http://www.CarlisleBranson.com to leave an online condolence or to share a favorite memory with Cristi's family.

Published in The Indianapolis Star from Jan. 1 to Jan. 3, 2021.

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Cristi Lewis Obituary (1970 - 2020) - The Indianapolis Star - Legacy.com

Daily Dose of the DUB: Bleackley heads to Allen, Winquist signs with Nailers, and more – DUBNetwork

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Conner Bleackley (259GP, 80G, 103A with Red Deer 11-16) has signed with the Allen Americans of the ECHL. Bleackley joins his fifth ECHL team in five seasons, having played in Missouri, Tulsa, Idaho, and Maine.

Josh Winquist (301GP, 101G, 115A with Everett 09-14) has signed with the Wheeling Nailers of the ECHL. Winquist had been playing with HC Banska Bystrica of Slovakias top professional league. Winquist is joining his fifth ECHL team having had previous stints with Bakersfield, Orlando, Utah, and Toledo.

Adam Helewka (244GP, 119G, 119A with Spokane and Red Deer 12-16) has been returned to the Cleveland Monsters in preparation for the AHL season. The 25-year-old centre was playing for HKM Zvolen in Slovakia where he scored three goals and added six assists in 17 games.

Jesse Zgraggen (258GP, 12G, 58A with Chilliwack/Victoria, Calgary, and Regina 10-14) has been loaned to HC Davos from EV Zug. He has been made available to HC Davos until the end of January. Zgraggen had played 11 games for EV Zug, registering an assist. It is the 27-year-old defensemans third season with Zug and seventh playing in Switzerland following his WHL career.

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Daily Dose of the DUB: Bleackley heads to Allen, Winquist signs with Nailers, and more - DUBNetwork

Outback Bowl Q&A with Red Cup Rebellion – The Crimson Quarry

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Were less than two days away from the Outback Bowl, and to help us get a better feel for what Ole Miss might look like on Saturday, we touched base with our friends at Red Cup Rebellion.

Thanks to Zach Berry for taking time to fill us in.

This staff accomplished everything they needed to do this season. They showed massive improvement on offense and that there are plenty of early playing time opportunities on defense. On top of that, they currently have a top-20 signing class after the early signing period. Its about as good as it can get in a pandemic-abbreviated season sans a few head-scratchers.

Well, the one constant is Matt Corral. Despite playing in his third offense under his third coordinator in his third season, he has been tremendous. Sure, hes had a few games that he would like to forget, but you have to remember the enormous amount of pressure hes under to essentially score every single possession due to the defenses limitations. It starts and ends with him, but be sure to have an eye on the backfield. Ealy is most likely not playing, but Snoop Conner is a bruiser with home run speed and true freshman Henry Parrish is the future.

Without knowing him personally and just reading body language, I dont think that affects Corral much, if at all. Hes a quarterback and the good ones have a short memory. Hes also highly competitive and plays with an edge. I look for him to want to come out and make a statement as he heads into his junior season with a ton of hype.

Its a mixed bag, but its mostly a lack of talent. There are maybe three dudes on that defense, give or take, that would start and/or see time on another SEC defense. There are some that have made the transition over from offense to help out in the secondary with the lack of quality depth over there and overall, theres a lack of team speed. I had the opportunity to be down field level for the Egg Bowl against Mississippi State and it appeared that the players were in position more times than not, but they were just a step or two slow.

Short answer: recruiting is how you fix it

Hes not exactly unheralded, but he hasnt done much this year so lets go with it. John Rhys Plumlee became a household name in 2019 with his elite speed and big-play ability, but hes been the backup to Corral all year. And now that Ealy, Moore, and Sanders are all out, the Rebels lack a true game-changer on offense. Look no further than Plumlee to potentially be a weapon on Saturday. I anticipate Kiffin and offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby to use him in a variety of ways.

I think the Hoosiers are going to play angry and have a chip on their shoulder after being snubbed by the College Football Playoff committee. Ole Miss is battling injuries, opt-outs, and their defense is a disaster. The offense should keep them in this one, but I expect Tuttle and the gang to put up big numbers in a track meet that is ultimately won by Tom Allens bunch.

Indiana 44, Ole Miss 38

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Outback Bowl Q&A with Red Cup Rebellion - The Crimson Quarry

If You Can’t Stand the Heat – The Atlantic

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Illustrations by Nicole Rifkin

It was September 2019, and Id been slow-roasting in a small Southern Oregon town for a couple of weeks, waiting on a big one. A wildfire. An opportunity. A chance to prove myself useful and, preferably, profitable. This was the pre-coronavirus era, a simpler time.

From the South, I had driven out West in hopes of embedding with workers at a fire camp, the catchall phrase used to describe the base of operations during any major wildfire. Fire campsmany established in the middle of nowhereare where frontline containment is coordinated, resources are mobilized, personnel are sheltered and fed. These are usually federally led operations, with anywhere from 150 to 2,000 people on-site.

Devastating wildfires have become a regular feature of life in the American West. The cost of fighting them currently burns through 53 percent of the U.S. Forest Services budget, compared with 16 percent in 1992. Even the Department of Defense has declared climate-change-related wildfires a national-security threat. The summer and fall were traditionally prime fire timewith fire camps following the blazes like circuses on the harvest-festival circuit. But now scientists, journalists, and government officials have christened extended, seemingly year-long fire seasons the new normal.

Every fire camp is a mini city, albeit a temporary one. My plan had been to report on what the new normal of months-long fires looked like from the center of such a city. I wasnt particularly curious about the much-glorified firefighters, the distraught victims, or the anguish over the loss of inanimate structures. Nor did I want to engage in hand-wringing about climate change. I just wanted to know about the people laboring at fire camp.

This kind of job didnt really have a name way back in 2019. But during the pandemic, we (the media, the public) began referring to these behind-the-scenes operators as essential workers. Before anybody cared, however, youd just call them grunts.

I assumed previous occupational experience in the hospitality industry would give me a chance to get in on the action. While failing to be a respectably employed journalist, I often moonlight as a kitchen grunt. Ive worked in slop joints, shopping-center fusion, hippie shacks, and fine dining. Its a fallback career Im forever falling back on, and just one of the reasons the food-service industry, I think, provides the truest glimpses of where we are and where were headed as a culture. Follow whats happening in the food world, and you dont just have a finger on the pulse of society; you have an ear to its stomach.

I made inquiries about becoming a laborer at a national-disaster site, working full-time for a company that caters, quite literally, to mass emergenciesone of the 16 companies that run 29 federally contracted mobile food-service units (MFSUs) specializing in fire-camp cuisine. I called all the western-based MFSUs, offering my services. In return, they offered zero promises. The thing about most restaurants, though, is that theres high employee turnover. I figured I could show up unannounced with a modicum of experience and eventually a kitchen would give me a shot. Sure enough, a couple of MFSUs warmed to my proposal.

A manager of Stewarts Firefighter Food Catering said I could come hang out on the lot of its MFSU kitchen in Lakeview, Oregon, a warehouse on a flat expanse of gravel behind a car dealership. Camping would be free of charge (the company put me in a cozy trailer) and should a major fire break out, Id be right there from the beginning.

I showed up and waited, using my time to catch up on the doorstop-size federal contract, the Blue Book, that spelled out the rules and regulations for emergency mobile food service at great length and in exacting detail. The many specific requirements and compliances would be enforced, it said, by the food-unit leaderpart of Overhead, the governments on-site management team at fire camp.

In the mid-20th century, the Forest Service tackled wildfires as its forefather the Army had, as a military campaigntotal domination. In and out. Everything run in-house. Latrine duty and field rations. Engaged in an endless War on Fire over the past few decades, the government has turned to private contractors for most aspects of fire suppression. In 1973, five private companies formed the National Mobile Shower and Catering Association. A cobbled-together industry quickly professionalized and standardized. Around that time, a man named Tom Stewart was running a family grocery in Lakeview, where Overhead teams had been purchasing supplies. In 1977, they struck a deal no longer than a few contractual pages. His first call was that summer. Stewarts Firefighter Food Catering grew in size, as did the number of disaster businesses and the thickness of the Blue Book.

See: Australias bushfire catastrophe in photos

One of the few disaster-catering companies still under original ownership, Stewarts retains its retro logo and is now a family business in its third generation, with the fourth occasionally pitching in.

The days in Lakeview dragged by; the fire season itself had been unusually slow that year. Occasionally, a few of us would pile in a truck and drive out of town, park high above a ridge, and look for smoke signals in the beige distance. The boredom and ennui were palpable.

On September 5, clouds started forming. That night there was lightning. The next days sky, however, was peaceful and picturesque. I turned in early. One more day, I told myself, then back home to find a real job. Freelance journalism wasnt paying the bills, and I began resigning myself to the likelihood that Id return home in search of regular kitchen work. Maybe as a prep or line cookI lacked the skills to be a sous chef, certainly not a head honcho. A kitchen would have to be in real bad shape to put me in charge of everything. Such a situation would require a divine act or an extended period trapped in a state of disaster.

To use a phrase Ive never heard uttered: Thank God for California.

Our chief banged on my trailer door at 8 a.m. The South Fire had been officially reported near Californias Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Stewarts team in Klamath Falls, Oregon, had been tapped to run the fire-camp kitchen. They had a full crew, the chief said, but maybe they could use the few of us hanging around the Lakeview lot. We secured our gear and took off. At the Klamath warehouse, we got a quick pep talk from the site boss, Tom Stewarts grandson. There was poor access to the heart of the inferno because, next to Shasta-Trinity, the Red Bank Fire had already torn through more than 6,000 acres. Our fleet of vehicles convoyed five hours south-southwest across the state line. By the time we got to our designated location, the South Fire had spread across 1,200 acres. It was on.

Fire camps get established where the Forest Service deems necessary. For the South Fire, it had commandeered a mid-tier camping sitea recreational heaven, according to the propertys websitethat had a small general store and was just 45 minutes off Interstate 5. We were directed to a cul-de-sac half a mile from the general store, at the end of a cabin-filled lane. It seemed a little cramped for a federal-disaster kitchen, but the prospect of small amenities made it significantly less backwoodsy than some fire-camp locations Id heard about. There was no cell service, but there was spotty Wi-Fi.

Under a boiling 98-degree sun, I watched as the kitchena converted semitrailerwas slowly backed into a flat, open clearing. Behind me, the caravan idled. There was the beverage trailer, the dry-storage cargo truck, a small refrigerator truck and a semi-length walk-in freezer (called reefers), as well as four or five pickups, hauling everything from a 1,000-gallon water tank to a smoker capable of cooking 750 pounds of meat to a generator the size of a bison. Running the trucks air conditioners or stretching their legs were the other 22 crew members, wearing the same thick navy-blue cotton tee, with Stewarts branded on the left breast.

One employee, who had a chefs knife tattooed on his forearm, waved his ink toward the epicenter of our soon-to-be pop-up restaurant and said, Lets put up the circus. The scurrying began as soon as our kitchen was dropped off. Reefers and storage trucks glided into place. Out came hoses and tubes and cords the size of pythons. The metal bones of the two dining tents were laid out across the dirt like an elephant graveyard, then raised. The crashing and cranking and clamoring and cursing carried on well into the evening.

The winds picking up, my knife-tatted co-worker said, as we continued working after dark. Thats bad for the fire. Then he shrugged. Good for us. It might have sounded like a twisted sentiment if I hadnt spent years with a similar mentality as a journalist. Burly members of the crewwhich was about 90 percent menslowly, methodically reorganized boxes and supplies in the dry-storage truck. Job security, they kept calling it. A way of milling the hours.

Because the 2019 wildfire season had had such a slow start, everyone was desperate for the hours. The years payout was looking thin. In a normal year, you could make $20,000 in four or five months. No benefits, but food and lodging were provided. A lot of folks, I was told, live off that, supplemented by welfare, unemployment, or short-term jobs during the off-season.

By 2 a.m., most of the setup work had been done and people had really started drifting away. Except for the snorting generator, fire camp was quiet. The only person still up and working was a guy whod been permanently attached to various electronics since we met up with the Klamath crew. Earlier, during the circus, hed called me boy despite what seemed like an obvious and reverse age difference.

His name was Kaleb. He had long, flat hair past his shoulders. He was folding cardboard containers the size and shape of small trash bins. Food boxes, Id learn, meant for something called spike camp. I stood in front of him for a solid minute before he looked up. A break? Sure. And dont fret. My first time, I wandered around for a week not knowing what to do.

I hadnt had the time, or perhaps the good sense, to set up my tent beforehand and was too exhausted now. I crashed, sitting straight up in my truck. Id figure things out tomorrow.

Upon arrival, Id been assigned to freight, which was under Kalebs supervision. In restaurant parlance, the dining area is front-of-house and the kitchen is back-of-house. Here, freight was more like back-of-back-of-house, true grunt work: unloading deliveries from the Sysco semi that had dropped off all our supplies; churning out hundreds of sack lunches, assembly-line-style, in the semi reefer; deep cleaning and odd jobs.

Freight was primarily guys who had obviously cut their teeth on rougher life experiences and could still smile about it through weathered faces. The gallows humor extended to the companys nickname, as represented by the kind of employees it attracts: Stewarts Rehab.

Working freightbe it in the dusty heat or the arctic reeferbecame soul-suckingly monotonous after two days. So I made a play for real kitchen work.

Actually, yeah, Ruby said when I popped my head into the kitchen at about 4 a.m. on day three and asked if she needed any help. My cooks are asleep, apparently.

Ruby was the head cook, the kitchen manager, and I immediately pegged her as a type. She had jet-black hair, proudly identified as a gamer girl, and her Nightmare Before Christmas socks were not simply a film tribute but a way of life. Ruby and her second-in-command, Josie, a petite collegiate blonde not a day over 22, were scrambling. For Josie, it was literal. She was quietly pouring bags of yellow liquid egg into a tilt skillet and stirring the soup into a solid using a three-foot-long stainless-steel paddle. The ovens, I was told, were on the fritz, so Ruby had me drop bacon into the deep fryers.

It didnt take me long to understand that we were cooking stomach anchors, not taste-bud tinglers. Instead of foie gras and bordelaise, our crew made large batches of heavy sustenance: things such as well-done chicken, powdered potatoes, instant gravy. Canned veggies were heated and dressed in brown sugar and spices. The liquid for Josies scrambled eggs came in 20-pound bags, and deep-frying bacon was an hour-long process. This was high-volume catering. The situation, and the contract, demanded it.

The Missoula Technology and Development Center, a Forest Service outpost in Montana, has long established that male firefighters need up to 6,000 calories a day. Studies have broken that need down even further by energy group (protein, carbohydrates, fat). This is a primary reason for the strict food standards and exacting portion sizes specified in the Blue Book.

Changes in societys general food preferences have affected the contract requirements over the years. There are now more vegetarian options and an increased emphasis on natural ingredients and fresh products. More recent Forest Service nutritional studies recommend that firefighters eat continuously throughout the day, to better maintain a healthy physiology during extended periods of high-stress energy output. So we made sacks of grazing lunches, full of protein, fruits, and vegetables, each weighing a good three or four pounds.

When Tom Stewart got his first wildfire call, in 1977, he rushed to the scene in his delivery truck. Upon arriving, Stewart found that the back was loaded with crab puffs, shrimp puffs, cream puffs, meat traysa bevy of lovely appetizers. They had been put there by his wife, Ann, who was supposed to be catering a wedding that day. The firefighters ate the party delicacies instead. Stewart remembers making hearty stews from scratch, too, although he wouldnt be allowed to improvise like that these days and keep the contract. Itd be impossible to know whether each portion contained the correct amount of protein, carbohydrates, and vegetables. Josie put it most succinctly when I once asked her what we were making for dinner. Some kind of meat, some kind of potato, she said, barely looking up from her task.

Exacting calculations lay behind the menus at fire camp. Each plate of disaster catering costs about $28 to make. Chefs make similar per-plate calculations in normal restaurants. Here, though, actual cuisine was as abstract as the wildfire we were on. At least mass-frying bacon gave me time to survey the kitchen.

At the front end of the semi was the walk-in cooler, about 60 square feet, behind clear plastic. The door connected to a ramp that led into the reefer semi. Cramped inside the kitchen were two 40-gallon stainless-steel tilt skillets that each looked like a billionaire childs Jacuzzi; a six-gallon kettle, also stainless steel; two deep fryers; two griddles below a venting system and atop the six fritzing convection ovens; and, finally, an eight-foot-tall warming cabinet. The possibility that this semi would be my entire world for much of our time at fire camp was strangely comforting.

Id gone through three or four boxes of bacon when two other cooks came bounding in. Josh looked about my age, maybe a few years younger. He was a California Latino, had a solid base frame, and moved with the grace of a sports car in low gear. Already smiling at 5 a.m., he beelined to the stereo and cranked some club beats. Ryan, wirily handsome in a locally sourced and free-range kind of way, seemed to coast on a young white mans charm. He gravitated toward Josie, who kept on working with the efficient, quiet industriousness of a seasoned pro.

By 5:30, the kitchen was bustling. By 5:50, the whole camp had started to come alive. We were strictly open for breakfast from 6 to 9 a.m. For three hours, we served plates of precise portions. I was tasked with ladling oatmeal into bowls. It beat freight work.

Near the end of breakfast, Ruby cornered me. Ryan was okay, but I stayed focused. I pressed my advantage. By the end of day four, Id spent the past two breakfast and dinner services on the line, and Ryan was sent to freight, voted off, it seemed. The period felt a little like an extended episode of Hells Kitchen. I had won the challenge.

My tent was up. My job was set. The basic work rhythms made sense. I was finally in a groove, and fire camp at large seemed to be getting into one as well. The outhouses had finally arrived, as had the mobile shower company. There was talk, too, that a laundry business was en route. When a T-shirt merchant set up shop just past the border of our tent city, near Overhead and the general store, we knew the South Fire was the real deal.

At the start of day four, exactly zero percent of the fire had officially been contained. The excited refrain was: We could be here until October. Think of the hours!

The front of our kitchen faced west, toward the dining hall and, far, far beyond that, a long ridge. When the sun set, the crests glowed with every iridescent shade of red and orange. It looked as if the ridge was aflame. We never saw any actual fire, though.

Long gone are the days when fire camp was established as close to blazes as possible. Tom Stewart told me about driving into walls of smoke and praying he made it through. That was decades ago. Not that disasters dont happen sometimes. One old-timer told me about one of the most famous wildfire photos ever, taken in Montana in 2000. He said it was shot from the fire camp where his entire kitchen got burned over. Now, however, veterans told me, the safe distance required between fire camp and the inferno is growing and growing.

Fire camps various rules, regulations, and general safety precautions took some of the romance out of the whole adventure. The entire operation was run by Overheads incident-management team. Most of its members were older white men with trim white beards or ruddy faces, a Leatherman looped through a belt buried at varying depths of paunch. Some of the younger ones were built and clean-shaven, and gave the impression that they longed to reenlist. In general, Overhead looked like stiff bureaucrats on a mandated fishing expedition, government lifers. Unlike everyone else at fire camp, they never looked dirty. They liked to run camp as if it were a semiformal military operation.

Everything was regulated. Lights-out came at 10 p.m. on the dot, when a crew of young whippersnappers from the California Conservation Corps would go around killing the floodlights. The CCC is a service for 18-to-25-year-olds who do various chores and small projects around fire camp. The Cs dressed crisply in matching tan button-ups, work pants, and hiking boots, and always moved in packs of twos or fours (apparently this was a safety requirement). The girls looked like they had all been on the deans list and the boys looked like they were all trying to do their best James Dean.

All the fun things in lifesex, guns, booze, drugswere prohibited. Women on our crew told me that the firefighters were discouraged from flirting with the kitchen staff, although errant notes were slipped through the serving window or into a personal tent on more than one occasion. Temporary tent cohabitation was a no-no, although everyone assured me that people got plenty laid.

Apart from an STD, it was unclear how someone might actually get reprimanded for having sex. Those other vices, however, were policed by private security. It struck me as odd that there would be a Checkpoint Charlie at the front of camp, but a guard told me that thefts are a not uncommon problem. Among the few people I actively disliked was one security guard, a jacked gym rat on a no-nonsense keto diet. She was stiffly arrogant as she patrolled the camp and, unprovoked, would explain her perpetually sour demeanor by saying things like I cant help telling it like it is or Thats just how redheads are.

In place of booze and drugs, there were at least the wan pleasures of consumerism, which were more abundant than one might think. Anytime theres a major wildfire, swag vendors will crank out a batch of clothes and set up shop at the border of fire camp. The production is as quick and cheap as the design. Except for some fresh lettering that details the name of the fire and its location, the shirts are interchangeable. The one I bought for my significant other says South Fire above pictures of some piney mountains, a green fire truck, and a large elk.

Everyone, it seems, gets a fire shirt whenever theyre at a new disaster and wears their old souvenirs at the current one. Our vendor had more than just the standard rags. The gear included fireman-related thermoses (First in, last out). Other T-shirts were of higher quality and played with iconography. There was the stoic, black-and-white American flag often used by Blue Lives Matter, except this one had a red stripe in the middle. Another was made to look like the label on a bottle of Fireball, with Firecall replacing the brand name. Yet another had graphics that mimicked the Parental Advisory, Explicit Content sticker:

STRAIGHT

OUTTA

FIRE CAMP

It was far and away the most popular. Ryan, in a shopping frenzy, bought more stuff than anyone else did, nearly $200 worth. There was money to be made at fire camp.

Private fire-related businesses were everywhere. After a veteran of many a fire camp found out what I did during the off-season, he went on about how I should start a trade magazine for the wildfire-and-disaster industry. He said I could make big money by selling ad space to the various businesses. Honestly, it wasnt a bad idea.

Disaster capitalism is hardly a new concept, although the phrase itself is attributed to Naomi Klein, who used it in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, as a way to describe how corporations profiteer off war and crises on a large scale. As climate change has created a new normal, its also expanded the definition and scope of disaster capitalism.

The Atlantics own Alexis Madrigal has noted that the past few years have seen the rise of private firefighting companies for the rich and disaster-related trinkets for the rest of us. Yet disaster capitalism takes on more mundane forms too, especially at fire camp.

In 2008, the Forest Service spent $757 million on more than 1,000 private contracts, roughly 52% of its $1.46 billion budget for wildfire suppression, according to a 2011 Fortune article. Those figures havent much changed. Debbie Miley, the executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, which represents the private wildfire industry, told me that private contractors make up about 40 percent of all of the resources that are available. That number can fluctuate a little bit depending on the fire season In some regions [such as] Oregon and Washington ... we can make up to as much as 65 percent of the industry thats available.

Most of the private contractors, Miley said, are small companies with a few employees. I had never before considered how many private businesses operated at fire camp. At ours, there was Triple Flare, which advertises itself as fire-camp recycling. There was a traveling mom-and-pop laundry service that spent the fire season cleaning clothes in a converted horse trailer. There were the grease collector, the water guys, the porta-potty company, and, of course, the food-service vendors like Sysco that have reps throughout the West who specifically work with MFSUs.

Grayback, our on-site shower service, was the only business I dreaded going to. It wasnt because I was told that the private shower stalls were a popular place to masturbate and where, on at least one fire, someone had taken a shower shit. Though there was that. It was because I started getting I dont want to say harassed. That sounds like Im making a direct comparison to what women experience (not even close). Its wordy but lets just say that I received a relentless barrage of unreciprocated advances.

Whenever I needed to take a shower or use a sink, which was every day, I had to steel myself against the female Grayback employee. She kept complimenting my looks and literally said, You should smile more. I didnt know a polite way to get her to stop so I smiled silently and tersely. This only made things worse. She started addressing me as Mr. Smiley. When I flatly told her my name, she just said, Hmm, no, you dont look like a Jeff.

I couldnt tell her to fuck off, because then Id have to deal with that drama every day. I felt trapped. Employees couldnt be forced to stay on-site, but leaving camp was strongly discouraged, as was bringing ones personal vehicle to the site. The bosses wanted us to stay close, and be ready to work at all times. Getaway wheels were too tempting a pleasure. I was trapped.

The oppressive September heat, all the working hours, the regulations, the relentless barrage of unreciprocated advances, the prohibitions on self-medicatingit was all starting to feel a little claustrophobic.

Lying down in the tent after lights-out, I thought about how good it would feel to sink into a whiskey oblivion. Even to float on a cloud of THC, which Im not partial to, as it usually makes me a tad edgy. Through the tent, however, Id occasionally catch an inviting whiff. Probably just a California skunks pleasant fart, I thought. Surely nobody would be breaking the semiformal military rules specified by our benevolent federal overlords.

Did anybody get sent home last night? Josie asked, as calm as ever. It was 5 a.m, still too early to know whether we were getting kicked off the fire. Wed been prepping for dinner the previous afternoon when it became obvious that a problem was afoot. Crew members began coming in through the kitchens back door, then carefully and strenuously craning their neck out the front threshold, their body half-hidden, like secret agents spying on the enemy.

All our tents were grouped together about 30 yards from the kitchen. It was the Cooks Alley of fire camp. Because we were camping, on contract, within a federally designated emergency zone, wed ceded basic Fourth Amendment rights. For reasons that were completely hazy to me, the redheaded guard had brought in a gun-toting forest ranger and a very eager drug dog. News of the sting operation got passed around faster than a joint at a high school house party while the ranger took her time rummaging through our tents, the dog tearing holes in the fabric as it pawed and snorted for contraband.

Ruby told me that when a drug check happened at another fire she was on, half the catering crew took off to hide in the nearby woods. Just imagine the sight!

This time, nobody ran. The gossip, however, was that people could be sent home or fined. Overhead could even terminate our contract and bring in an entirely different MFSU.

The prohibition of intoxicants at fire camp, even in a disaster kitchen, makes a bare minimum of sense. But theres a reason few respectable restaurants do a urine test. The high pressure and low pay of essential kitchen work are often offset only by the steady employment and flexible rules. Ruby knew this.

Kitchens are filled with masochists and addicts, shed said with deadpan authority just before dinner service on day five.

She was only in her first year as a full-fledged kitchen manager, but at 29 Ruby had spent her entire adulthood in the biz, working primarily in high-volume institutional fare. Before Stewarts, Ruby had cooked at an airport restaurant, at a senior center, in hospice care, and with another disaster-catering company. During the off-season, she worked at an expo center.

Away from fire camp, Ruby and I would probably orbit in different circles. On the line, though, she seemed like my kind of person. I got into kitchen work in the mid-aughts, at the height of our food cultures star-focused obsession with the chef-auteur. The glorification of masochists and addicts was the sort of braggadocio Id experienced and admired in my late teens and early 20s.

The young crews I was on had our heroes: Thomas Keller, Ferran Adri, et al. But we really gravitated toward the badasses. Anthony Bourdain in particular, with his seminal 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, made food service fashionable, turning crass, hard-partying hourly grease slingers like us into underground rock stars.

A lots changed since. Ten years after his memoirs publication, Bourdain wrote that he encountered young fans of Kitchen Confidential, for whom the book was a validation of their worst natures. It was a prescient observation. An atmosphere that fostered the idea of the chef and cook as a difficult visionary (almost exclusively a white man) glossed over or ignored the realities of the kitchenbehavior that was every flavor of abuse.

During the past few years, the culture, both at large and in kitchens, has begun addressing toxic issuesharassment, shoddy labor practices, poor mental health, and addictionin the past few years. And as the world burns unabated, celebrity chefs have turned their skills to culinary triage. Call it disaster gastronomy if you want to sound fancy. Jos Andrs founded World Central Kitchen in 2010, and when Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico in 2017, WCK sent a chef relief team that served more than 3.7 million meals, garnering massive media attention. Afterward, he wrote a book about the experience, titled We Fed an Island. Since then, WCKs volunteer-chef relief teams have been cooking every single day, serving more than 45 million meals at hurricanes, floods, and, of course, wildfires, according to its website.

Even the mayor of Flavortown has gotten in on the action. The same year as Hurricane Maria, Guy Fieri served up barbecue for thousands of evacuees of the Tubbs Fire, which tore through Californias Sonoma County. Fieris wine-forward Food Network peer Tyler Florence made the Sonoma disaster the subject of Uncrushable, his documentary about the painful resilience of first responders and victims. Fieri was also at both the Carr Fire and the Camp Fire in 2018. So many great people stepping up to take care of one another, he tweeted above a photo of a fire truck, a wall of flames behind it. Hashtag: #ProudAmerican.

As the New York Times food critic Tejal Rao put it in an August column about the death rattle of the toxic chef-auteur era, its rise and current decline has informed the industrys culture at every level. Perhaps, too, the disaster gastronomy trend will move in a positive direction. As far as our middle-of-nowhere kitchen was concerned, however, things were still pretty rough. The whole experience was getting to me. Bad. I dont want to project, but it seemed to be getting to others too. Even our rock, Josie, started showing cracks. What a weird day, she said after the drug-raid dinner service.

Cruising altitude is what Ruby, during the chaos of a planned Tex-Mex night, had called the manic exhaustion that had already settled in all of us, just a week into camp. Its just what you learn to live with and embrace, she said. Maybe, I thought.

Day-seven breakfast went smoothly enough, despite lingering paranoia from the previous evening. No one got sent home, and we still had the contract. But when I came in later for day-seven dinner prep, the kitchen wasnt just manic; it was madness. The bad kind of chaos. Unorganized.

I think it had something to do with prepping for spike camp, where the fire crews at the battles front lines sleep in the rough and have their meals delivered daily. Thered been some kind of screwup with the chow load. Bug-eyed and trembling, Ruby pressed her hands against her head in a vise grip. This, Id learned, was a tic of hers. She also began mumbling to herself.

Id worked in restaurants that had collapsed. It was pretty clear to me that our cruising altitude wouldnt be high enough to clear approaching mountains. Kalebthe wire-bound freight captain Id met on day oneseemed like a likely candidate for a crash.

In theory, work was organized into split shifts, which are two eight-hour blocks of work broken up by one eight-hour block of rest. In reality, everyone seemed to be working 12 to 14 hours at a time, buffered by the occasional snooze. Folks kept talking about overtime, which I understood, and something called California OT, which apparently meant time and a half plus another half after working more than 12 hours a day.

Everyone, all the time, talked about the hours. One crew member told me, I want the hours and I want the sleep, but was evenly split over which they wanted more. There was an unspoken agreement among the crew to not work too fast, especially because management was trying to limit OT, California OT in particular.

Youre the only one whos excited about getting off, Ruby told me. Excited was the wrong word, but I certainly expressed no desire to work a second longer than necessary. For starters, I was in excruciating and inescapable physical pain. Standing on ones feet all day can do that.

Lying down in the quietude after fire camps official lights-out, I could hear the screams of my lower half. Trying to nap during the day was better, if only because the heat forced things into relative perspective. My tent was an oven, and it either melted me into a restless sleep or had me resigned to sitting in a shaded chair, very still, until the dinner shift. Keeping drug- and alcohol-free meant there was no temporary relief. Id had a rough two years alreadyfull Millennial burnout. I could tell I was particularly vulnerable to an actual breakdown and had enough sense and good fortune, as well as a safety net of financially stable loved ones, to recognize the impending problem. Others didnt seem as lucky.

Kaleb took a beating. He probably slept about three hours a day.

There was a moment, maybe on day four, when I watched him squat on a tiny wheelbarrow. He just sat there, hunched over, for five minutes before lurching back to work. The next day, he was slouched just outside the big reefer, deflated. Somebody would open the door and itd bop him on the back. He never reacted.

Kaleb made it four more days, until day nine.

You didnt hear it? Ryan asked, as he waited for a ride out of camp. He meant that literally. One of our crew managers had berated both Kaleb and Ryan so loudly, it could be heard halfway to Overhead. Ryan told me his and Kalebs side of the story. It seemed like one of those things where you had to be there. They got straight outta fire camp that evening, after we made them hearty to-go plates.

Why, exactly, Kaleb and Ryan left or who was at fault, I never figured out. When I started researching disaster-catering companies, one of them told me that it had been approached several times by reality-show people. The Forest Service stonewalled any and all efforts. In fact, the latest Blue Bookthe one issued for the 202024 contract periodincludes a line regulating any reality-TV productions or other commercial filming. Probably for the best. Fire camp is already a can of gasoline and doesnt need a digital match.

Camp had become isolating. Like any city, I suppose. I was told it was common for people to get Dear John letters from home. Josh was in one of the porta-potties and heard a guy in the adjoining toilet sobbing to someone, over the Wi-Fi cell service, that his girlfriend had just dumped him. My worst day at fire camp was after my significant other called me, very upset, after a bad personal experience. I couldnt do anything but worry and work.

I was scrubbing the grill on day 10 when Ruby came in, stomped to the middle of the semi-kitchen, and let out a blood-curdling scream.

Sorry, she said, I just needed to get that out.

The immediate reason for Rubys uncorked rage was that one underling had given herself a nasty knife cut. Somebody suggested that we deep-fry the finger, to cauterize the wound. This idea was collectively nixed, mostly because it would mean cleaning out the fryer afterward, a job nobody thought was worth the hours.

Rubys fretting was irksome to me. I had started making a list of petty grievances. Her awkward, passive-aggressive commentsmeant innocently, Im surewere off-putting as well. More than once, she said I was getting fewer hours than other people and should remember that when I do my story. At one point during day 10, she complimented my work ethic by saying: Most new people would have quit by now.

The crews only other newbie had dropped out around day three. So the thought had occurred to me.

Ruby fell completely to pieces right before the dinner rush. It was steak day. Everyones favorite. We had just sent out the spike-camp delivery.

Our first task of the dinner shift was always spike camp. If fire camp is the base from which general troops are sent to the front, then spike is the tactical outpost behind enemy lines. At spike, personnel fight the wildfire, eat, and sleep. Thats about it. They dont come in for a shower or to take advantage of the Wi-Fi.

We prepped 50 to 100 daily spike meals, which were cooked and quickly packaged in bin-size cardboard boxes. They had to be loaded on pallets by 4:45 p.m. exactly so that they could be airlifted or driven to spike for scheduled supper. Plates and utensils and condiments and cups and beverages both hot and cold were sent along as well. Its not that dissimilar from a standard food-delivery service such as Uber Eats, just large-scale and without the tips.

Along with the spike payload came the dead-mans plate. This wasnt for eating. It was a plastic-wrapped display of the full hot dinner, portioned out so that crew chiefs could see exactly how much food each firefighter was supposed to get. The phrases morbid etymology was obvious enough. It was a reality that hung over us all.

Read: 72 hours on the fire line, every week

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If You Can't Stand the Heat - The Atlantic

Conservative Writer: Dr. Anthony Fauci is Immoral Because He’s a Humanist – Friendly Atheist – Patheos

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Cheryl K. Chumley is one of the worst writers for the conservative Washington Times, which isnt easy. Its not enough to just offer right-wing takes on current events; she willfully misunderstands what shes writing about, whether shes calling for the takedown of Satanic monuments that dont exist or saying that Christians who oppose Christian Nationalism are very un-Christian.

Her latest diatribe involves trashing Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the only voices of reason coming from the government during the pandemic.

She doesnt bother pointing out anything he said thats untrue. Instead, shes criticizing him for being an atheist. Fauci said in a 2015 interview that he was a humanist despite his Catholic upbringing because I have faith in the goodness of mankind.

This is apparently very problematic for Chumley.

More than that, hes a humanist meaning, he takes his moral compass from his own mind. He has little-to-no concern with the stuff of higher authority the constraints that come from fears of heavenly accountability.

An atheist in charge of U.S. government, policy, economics, education and constitutional freedoms, as they relate to coronavirus response what could go wrong, right?

Hes unelected. Hes largely unaccountable to the people. Hes atheist, which speaks volumes about his character, his moral compass and his understanding of American Exceptionalism and basic founding and constitutional principles. And hes just been outed for lying.

The path is clear: He has to go.

He was not outed for lying. Shes referring to a piece written by Sen. Marco Rubio, whos downplayed the pandemic, in which he criticized Fauci for saying the percent of immunized Americans needed to achieve herd immunity was higher than he felt Americans could tolerate. In other words, he made a decision when it comes to communicating the importance of getting vaccinated because he didnt want to generate fear in a public that includes many anti-vaxxers. Maybe that deserves criticism, but thats a far cry from lying about the science, and nothing he said changes COVID restrictions or policies regarding the vaccines.

But Chumley, who cant simply criticize that decision, thinks his non-religiosity is why he cant be trusted, even though the entire administration is full of conservative Christians who have been openly lying to the public about damn near everything for the past four years.

As for his character, Fauci was recently named one of the most admired men in America by Gallup, though that poll is really more about fame than anything else. (Trump was at the top of the list.)

Heres a difference Chumley never brings up: Fauci doesnt spend any time talking about his personal religious beliefs unless hes specifically asked about them. The evangelicals surrounding Trump cant stop talking about their faith because they constantly fantasize about a theocracy.

Also: Why is it okay to slander Fauci because of his humanism? As American Atheists president Nick Fish rightly noted, you would never see something like this in a legitimate publication:

If the New York Times calls out conservative Christians, its because theyre using those beliefs to inflict harm upon other people, not because theyre Christians. Chumley has no substance to use against Fauci, so she just cites his religious label, as if atheists shouldnt be allowed in positions of power. Its embarrassing and its awful journalism. Which means its par for the course for the Washington Times.

By the way, not that it matters, but Faucis boss is Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health and an evangelical Christian. Collins has no issue with Fauci. You would think that would carry some weight with Chumley. I guess not.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

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Conservative Writer: Dr. Anthony Fauci is Immoral Because He's a Humanist - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Loss, despair marked 2020. Let healing be the hallmark of 2021 – The Times of India Blog

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In this brand-new year, lets pump up the positivity and raise a glass to a beautiful 2021. Beautiful, in every way. In a real way.While a pale pink pearly dawn breaks over the distant horizon, I find myself singing an old Hindi film song: Dekh tere sansar ki halat kya ho gayi BhagwanKitna badal gaya insaan Its an evergreen song from the 1954 film Nastik (The Atheist), a crime drama written and directed by the irrepressible I S Johar. We all asked god exactly this question in the year just gone we urged Him to take a good, hard look at the state of the earth, while we lamented on how mankind had changed. It has changed irrevocably, and one fervently hopes, for the better. Since most of us had no choice but to stay cold sober this New Years Eve, unless of course you were Bollywood love birdscelebrating in Ranthambore, our thoughts turned to ourselves.

By default, this has been a year designed for introspection. Given the universal state of despair and panic, as the pandemic raged on and on and on, people started on a journey that was entirely unplanned a long, tumultuous one within their own selves. They arrived at places they did not know existed. Speaking personally, it was one hell of a ride! What started off as a distraction to keep dark, morbid Covid thoughts at bay, turned into an adventure, an exploration scary and thrilling at the same time. Not sure how many of you experienced insignificance and smallness, but I did.

Compared to the scale of global mass devastation and so many deaths my life shrank and shrank in a good way. In the larger scheme of things, we all figured how very inconsequential our pedestrian concerns were. A heightened state of awareness generated mixed feelings anxiety on one hand, and liberation on the other. We were freed from the pettiness of our daily insecurities. We asked ourselves tough questions, and all those trivial preoccupations of the past slunk away guiltily, leaving us feeling that much lighter.

My biggest learning involved waste. Waste in a larger context. Time became the most precious commodity who knew how much time was left for each one of us? I became possessive and frugal about my waking hours. Figuring out how best to maximise the one resource (time) that cannot be either bought, borrowed or stretched, made me consciously cut, cut, cut. We all became great editors of our own narratives. We ruthlessly chopped non-essentials this included people. So many important but tricky decisions that had been kept on hold for decades became crystal clear as we pruned all the annoyances and irritations, the blocks and barriers. Time became an extravagance, a luxury beyond any other. Yes, there was loss so many of us dealt with the deaths of people we loved. Memories started playing games, as did a surfeit of information. How much more could we possibly absorb?

No matter who propounded which theory, the virus was one step ahead of us all. The French have a lovely expression, cest la vie. It is mandatory to shrug while uttering these words. It is true, life is what it is, what it has always been, what it will continue to be. We poor creatures will have to adapt and change. Why not? A hard lesson has been learnt by the world. The vaccine will be here shortly. It will provide just one of the answers for our survival, not all. We will certainly beat the virus, and any mutant that shows up. What is equally imperative is for us to change our wretched ways and think anew.

Enough has been said about the environment and how we have abused the very matter that sustains us and nurtures life. If we dont understand the meaning of the word respect now, we will have learnt absolutely nothing during the pandemic. But we are not that stupid, right? We are like cockroaches we survive! And like cockroaches, we crawl out of dark spaces when required to find food, find partners, mate, reproduce. We are hard to crush, even when a heavy boot lands on us. During these past months, when everything appeared pretty hopeless, I channelled my inner cockroach and scurried about in my restricted space, confident that I would make it to the other side. The tragedy being, so many didnt.

To all those who lost loved ones, and to all our courageous frontline workers, 2020 belongs to you. We are alive, thanks to you. Its a debt that can never be fully repaid. We shall go forth from this point onwards, stronger, wiser, healthier the journey has just begun. Heres to a gorgeous new year! I am singing Michael Jacksons immortal anthem as I write this: Heal the worldmake it a better placefor you and for me and the entire human race there are people dyingif you care enough for the living make it a better place for you and for me.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Loss, despair marked 2020. Let healing be the hallmark of 2021 - The Times of India Blog

Jason O’Toole column: It will be tough to follow in the footsteps of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – Irish Mirror

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I believe George Bernard Shaw was spot on when he quipped: I am an atheist and I thank God for it.

I can count on one hand the number of times I darkened the doors of a church these last 30 years.

But it would be below the belt to use the outgoing Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martins retirement as an excuse to now bash the Church ad nauseam.

It would be like shooting fish or rather Ichthys in a barrel.

You have to know when to pick your David versus Goliath battles, which is something Archbishop Martin would tell you himself after being on the losing end of so many in recent years.

He was ordained a priest aged 24 in 1969 and no doubt there mustve been times during these 50-odd years when he felt like throwing in the towel.

So, it would be mean-spirited not to doff your hat to someone sailing off into the sunset after spending their entire life in the same job.

I once interviewed Dr Martin and walked away with tremendous respect for the man himself.

The 75-year-old mightve lived in palatial splendour but he had the common touch something desperately lacking in his two arrogant predecessors.

He never forgot his humble roots thanks to the hardships in his own early life.

He first lived with relatives in the inner city before his parents got a council house in Ballyfermot, Dublin, when he was aged five.

It probably explained why he could be found shopping in Lidl.

He joked: I have also been in Aldi and Tesco Im not going to go in for advertising!

Dr Martin never courted the limelight himself because he turned down most interview requests.

Archbishop Martin mightve had aspirations of becoming a BBC broadcaster in his youth, instead of possessing any great calling.

But he obviously didnt like hearing his own voice for the sake of it.

Its a real measure of the man that he only talked to the media when he had something important to say. Perhaps he learnt that from his older brother Seamus ironically an atheist who was a foreign correspondent for the Irish Times. He seemed to be someone who practised what he preached and had a love the sinner, hate the sin mentality.

His innate compassion shined brightly, like the sun does through a church stained glass window, when the elephant in the room raised its ugly head during our lengthy chat.

His voice became emotionally charged when he spoke to me about his tremendous anger towards those priests who sexually abused children.

On the downside, I was disappointed with how he danced around my question about the Church either covering up or turning a blind eye to abuse in some incidences.

But I admired how Archbishop Martin, who described himself as thick skinned, was able to handle the pressure of being first in the firing line at a time when the Church was constantly under attack.

He said: Im never one to have a martyr complex. Im never one to think, Wouldnt it be great to have been archbishop 20 years ago when everything was different? You cant live like that.

Now, it would be stretching credulity to hail him as some kind of maverick lone voice in the wilderness. He was not the type hell-bent on radically reforming the Church.

Archbishop Martin was a safe pair of hands and a team player, who was willing to toe the (hard)line for Rome.

In fairness, I think hell will freeze over before the Church softens its stance on abortion or civil partnership.

But I found it disappointing when he dismissed the idea of married priests. Perhaps Dr Martin wouldve been less mealy-mouthed if he wasnt speaking with his Archbishop hat on.

Considering he spent most of his vocation in Rome and knew the lay of the land there, I reckon he mightve made a good Pope.

I suppose thats the biggest compliment you could pay any man of the cloth.

Hes going to be missed and I wish him all the best in his retirement.

His successor Archbishop Dermot Farrell certainly has big shoes to fill.

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Jason O'Toole column: It will be tough to follow in the footsteps of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin - Irish Mirror

Wrestling With Foam-Pillow Atheism – National Catholic Register

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I admit that I dont know anything about the popularity of brothels. They may well be as old-fashioned as Blake Morrison thinks. His theologising and preoccupation with sainthood now look as old-fashioned as his fondness for brothels, he writes in The Guardian. Hes reviewing a new biography of the writer Graham Greene, who was a Catholic, but lets say a peculiar one.

Morrison may be right about brothels. I dont know anyone who goes to them or even where youd find one, but maybe he has a wider experience of life than I do. But I do know hes wrong about theologizing and sainthood. People will always think about the deepest things and always pursue deep goodness, because thats part of being human.

His is what I think of as Yeah, whatever atheism. Its a lot more common than we realize and a lot harder to deal with.

Christian apologists love jumping on the new atheists and for that matter the old atheists. Those guys say with great certainty and clarity, No one can believe that religious stuff, and we can respond with Yes we can, and for very good reasons. They make arguing for the faith easy.

Even in my secular youth, atheists annoyed me, because they were so triumphantly confident about things they couldnt know. For all they knew, God could be working behind the scenes for reasons of his own. Or he might be working right in front of them and they either refuse or are unable to see him at work. I grew up in an academic world and knew a number of atheist academics who would find God really annoying, and their disbelief seemed self-interested.

But the yeah, whatever atheists, theyre a problem. You can play a kind of theological whack-a-mole with the hard atheists. You cant with the Yeah, whatever atheists. All you can do is play whack-a-fog.

The English newspaper The Guardian is like our Washington Post, though farther to the left and more secular. Its produced by people and read by people for whom Christianity is as relevant to real life as the kind of conversation you had with your favorite stuffed toy when you were 3.

Morrisons a good example. He seems not to believe anything religious. He doesnt seem to see the point. He believes you can think about the deepest things if you want to, as long as you dont expect to find anything there.

In another review, he approves the definition of religion as wrestling with the mystery of existence. But he doesnt really mean wrestle. When you wrestle, you either pin the other guy or you get pinned.

Morrison doesnt believe this. He believes that when you wrestle with the mystery of existence, you wont find any conclusive answers, because the universe remains unfathomable. The universe, he says, is ungetbehindable. You cant pin the universe, and it cant pin you.

But like many such people, he also insists that doesnt invalidate the struggle to make sense of how we began, why were here and what (if anything) happens next. Why struggle to do something he says we cant do? He doesnt really believe we should. We should, he declares, live with uncertainty without any irritable reaching after fact.

Its all a mess. Wrestle and struggle, he says. But theres no point in doing that, he says. Wrestle and struggle anyway, he says. Well, okay, dont wrestle and struggle, he says. If I were him, I wouldnt bother. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. That would be my motto, were I him. All that time pointlessly wrestling and struggling is time you could be spending eating a steak, drinking a beer, and having a good time with your friends.

Thats what Yeah, whatever atheism is. Theres no God to be found, but you can think about him if you want. Theres no meaning to your life that you can find, but if you feel like it, you can ponder this too. You can do either of those as long as you dont find God or the meaning of life. Because its relaxed atheism, a casual unconcerned atheism, even genial atheism, but its still atheism.

Its the most common kind of atheism youre likely to run into. In your secular friends, for example. Maybe without realizing it, because its not obvious, like the kind of direct attacks on Christianity and religion you see in the Richard Dawkinses and Christopher Hitchenses of the world. You can argue with those guys. But arguing with the Yeah, whatever atheist is like boxing with a big foam pillow or a giant marshmallow. Every time you land a punch it dimples a little, but then in a few seconds the dimple pops out.

What do you do when you see that youre engaging a Yeah, whatever atheist? In my experience, you dont bother arguing, the same way you dont box a big foam pillow. Theres no point. But the Yeah, whatever atheist very often has a weak spot. He cares for real goods. As Morrisons struggle/dont struggle confusion suggests, hes not always very clear about what he wants. His desires can be better than his beliefs. Try to find those desires, desires only God can satisfy.

Morrison himself is an example. In the reviews very last sentence, he calls Greenes book The End of the Affair his masterpiece. It tells the story of a writer who falls in love with a married woman who gives up their affair for God, and after some miracles, the writer himself becomes a believer.

Remember that Morrison patronizes Greenes theologising and preoccupation with sainthood. Theyre as old-fashioned as brothels! But what is The End of the Affair, the book he acknowledges as a masterpiece, about? Its a theologically informed story that reflects on the love of God above worldly loves, which is one way of saying sainthood.

If you find yourself talking with a Yeah, whatever atheist, ask him what he wants from life and what he respects and admires. Perhaps ask who his heroes are and what he thinks makes a good man, who he wants to be like. You should find, eventually, that he believes more than his atheism supports. That only gives you a starting place, but he may be open to looking for God when he realizes his casually waving God away keeps him from something he truly wants.

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Wrestling With Foam-Pillow Atheism - National Catholic Register

Russian New Year: At The Heart Of A Wide Tapestry Of Winter Traditions – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

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As part of an occasional series on how the end-of-year holidays are celebrated in our broadcast region, we talked to Irina Lagunina from RFE/RL's Russian Service about seasonal traditions in her country.

Western visitors to Russia at this time of year may be surprised to discover that the locals usually refer to the seasonally decorated conifers you see everywhere as "New Year firs" or "New Year spruces."

So why would they call them this when they're commonly known as Christmas trees in many other places?

According to Irina Lagunina from RFE/RL's Russian Service, it's largely a quirky legacy of the country's Soviet past.

"It was really weird because, after the socialist revolution, the Bolsheviks actually banned not just the festivities of the Christmas season -- this wonderful season of the year -- but also the Christmas tree, which was considered to be a religious symbol," she says.

"They decided that, since the main ideology is atheism, the Christmas tree should be banned. And that remained up until the mid-1930s when the New Year and the Christmas tree were kind of rehabilitated."

When the Christmas tree was "rehabilitated" amid much fanfare in 1935, the official atheist ethos of the time ensured that it would primarily be associated with New Year celebrations and its Christian connotations were jettisoned.

It's something that has endured to this day and the unveiling of the "New Year spruce" at the Kremlin every year is still a big event for thousands of children, although it is no longer decorated with a big Soviet star.

In a way, it's perhaps fitting that the tree is still firmly associated with New Year's rather than Christmas, as "Novy God" (New Year) has long been the focal point of the festive season in Russia.

Like many other Orthodox believers, most Russians typically celebrate Christmas Day on January 7. But for many, the day itself is quite low-key compared to other festivities that are observed in the country at this time of year.

"For those who celebrate it in Russia right now, Christmas is a purely religious event," says Lagunina. "Believers go to the churches -- the churches are actually full these days -- but there is still no kind of notion and tradition of family gathering on this day or having something special."

According to Lagunina, the main day of celebration "is actually not Christmas, but New Year."

"It's all about New Year," she says. "This comes first in the Orthodox calendar, so Christmas is basically the next seven days, [but] the main festivity is New Year's night, and that's when Russians prepare the dinner of the year, the main celebration for family, unity, and so forth."

Although Lagunina says New Year in Russia is "like everywhere else in the world, with a lot of champagne and a lot of fireworks," it is also the centerpiece of a wider tapestry of formal and informal celebrations that are observed at this time of year.

"Well, in Russia right now, of course, there is a reason to celebrate everything," she says. "Russians start to celebrate with the Western Christmas, then New Year, Orthodox Christmas. Basically, it's three weeks of festivities. You cannot get sober during this time!"

One of the most famous traditions observed during this period is not for the fainthearted.

"Ice swimming is a big deal in Russia," says Lagunina, referring to the many hardy souls who brave the freezing waters of their local lakes and rivers for a bracing dip on January 19 to celebrate the Epiphany.

Amid all the festivities, however, New Year is always seen as the big event when people get together with close friends and relatives.

Gifts are exchanged and copious amounts of food and drink are often consumed.

Many families also take the time to watch The Irony Of Fate, a Trading Places kind of musical comedy that has been broadcast on state TV every New Year's Day since 1976 and is now a firmly established tradition.

But it is frequently the food that is at the heart of New Year proceedings.

Lagunina says her seasonal table usually includes typical Russian fare, such as "pirozhki" pastries with various fillings and "kholodets" -- cold stewed meat in aspic. Stuffed duck is also a very common dish on this day and "a regular middle-class family" might even have "a little bit of red caviar, sometimes salted salmon," the main idea being that the choice of food on offer is "the best of what you can imagine."

No New Year's feast is complete, however, without a typical Russian salad or "Salad Olivier," which according to legend was first invented by a French chef of that name while he was working in tsarist Russia.

Lagunina says a Salad Olivier is one of the "absolute must-have dishes on the table" at New Year. She puts the dish's popularity down to its versatility, which allows it to be easily adapted for anyone observing a strict pre-Christmas fast.

"Olivier is made of peas, potatoes, carrots, pickles, ham, and mayonnaise, but the ham can be replaced," she says. "Depending on how strong a believer you are, it can be replaced with chicken, crabmeat, fish, practically everything. So it's this kind of multicultural, multireligious, suitable-for-everybody dish, and you can even make it for vegetarians without any meat or chicken."

Ingredients

1 small can of peas (100 grams)

1 large or two small potatoes, peeled and boiled

1 large boiled carrot

4 hard-boiled eggs

10 salted pickles (Irina makes these herself at home, but they can be shop-bought)

2 slices of sweet onion, finely chopped

200 grams (about 1/2 pound) of ham (common alternatives include a Mortadella type of sausage, crabmeat, boiled beef tongue, or fish. Irina has chosen "Doktorskaya kolbasa or "Doctor's sausage," a lunch meat that has been popular in Russia since Soviet times.)

Method

"Like all Russian salads, all the items should be the size of the smallest ingredient that cannot be divided," says Lagunina. "The peas are the smallest undividable element, so everything you cut should be the size of a pea [at most]. That's the basis of all Russian salads."

As everything should be cut into pea-sized cubes, Lagunina uses a potato slicer for this purpose.

"This tool is very popular not only in Russia but also in the Czech Republic, Austria, and all other places where they make potato salad," she says.

Lagunina is in favor of breaking with tradition and grating the carrots even smaller, however, as cutting them into cubes gives the salad "an overwhelming taste."

Like the carrots, Lagunina also prefers to cut the eggs smaller than the peas, as they help "cement the salad."

Once all the ingredients have been tossed in a bowl, mix in some mayonnaise (according to taste) and sprinkle with black pepper as the "final touch."

Lagunina stresses that the mayonnaise should be added "only before you serve the salad on the table," as it will ensure a "fresher" flavor.

Written by Coilin O'Connor based on an interview with Irina Lagunina from RFE/RL's Russian Service

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Russian New Year: At The Heart Of A Wide Tapestry Of Winter Traditions - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Pope Francis accepts resignation of Archbishop Kondrusiewicz days after return to Belarus from exile – Catholic News Agency

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Vatican City, Jan 3, 2021 / 06:15 am MT (CNA).- Less than two weeks after Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Minsk was allowed to return to Belarus after a four-month exile, the Vatican announced Sunday that Pope Francis had accepted the archbishops resignation on his 75th birthday.

In a statement Jan. 3, the Holy See Press Office said that the pope had accepted the archbishops resignation in accordance with the Church canon that requests that a bishop offers his resignation to the pope at the age of 75.

The Vatican did not name a successor metropolitan archbishop of Minsk-Mohilev, but appointed 75-year-old Bishop Kazimierz Wielikosielec, the current auxiliary bishop of Pinsk, to serve as apostolic administrator of the archdiocese.

In Belarus, Catholics celebrated Kondrusiewiczs 75th birthday on Jan. 3 by creating a video honoring his life of service to the Church and holding signs of congratulations.

Kondrusiewicz returned to Belarus on Dec. 24, nearly four months after he was barred from entering his native country after he had spoken in defense of protesters following a disputed presidential election.

Belarusian authorities permitted his return to the country to celebrate Christmas at the request of Pope Francis, according to the nunciature in Belarus.

The challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and the socio-political crisis call us to return to true religiosity, which shows that we are created for something more than just caring for earthly affairs and pleasures, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz said Dec. 24.

The doors of the former Soviet Union, where militant atheism has prevailed for three generations, have opened to Christ. We got freedom, including religion. Unfortunately, we soon forgot that freedom is not only a gift, but also a responsibility, he said in his homily, according to the website of the Catholic Church in Belarus.

Protests in Belarus began Aug. 9 after president Alexander Lukashenko was declared to have won that day's election with 80% of the vote. Electoral officials said that the opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, earned 10% of the vote. The opposition claims that she actually garnered at least 60% of votes.

Thousands of protesters against the election results were detained, including a number of priests. Archbishop Kondrusiewicz prayed outside of a prison where protesters were being held on Aug. 20.

Later that month Kondrusiewicz, who had been visiting Poland, was blocked from returning to Belarus by Belarusian border guards. His passport had been invalidated.

Lukashenko, who has served as president of Belarus since the position was created in 1994, suggested that Kondrusiewicz might be a citizen of more than one country a claim that the archbishop denied.

The U.S., U.K., and EU no longer recognize Lukashenko as the Belarusian president. Canada, the U.K., and the EU have placed sanctions on senior Belarusian figures.

Lukashenko secured a $1.5 billion loan from Russian president Vladimir Putin in December as Putin denounced external pressure on Belarus.

Relations between the Holy See and Belarus have been strained over claims the Church in Belarus is being used to exert foreign influence, as well as Archbishop Kondrusiewicz exile.

Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, apostolic nuncio to the United Kingdom, acted as a special envoy of Pope Francis to Lukashenko, delivering a letter Dec. 17 with a request regarding Archbishop Kondrusiewicz.

Archbishop Kondrusiewicz said that when he was finally allowed to cross the border and return to Belarus on Dec. 24 he knelt down, prayed and kissed the ground.

Kondrusiewicz had served as metropolitan archbishop of Minsk since 2007 and as president of the Belarusian bishops conference since 2015.

He was consecrated as a bishop by St. John Paul II on Oct. 20, 1989 in St. Peters Basilica in Rome. As bishop, Kondrusiewicz founded the Grodno Higher Theological Seminary and reopened about 100 churches that had been closed during the communist persecution, according to the website of the Catholic Church in Belarus.

In his homily on Jan. 1, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz called on Catholics in Belarus to entrust the year ahead to God so that it may be a time of successful resolution of socio-political and epidemiological crises and a time of blessing that will bring many spiritual fruits to us and our society."

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Some States May Already Be Close To Herd Immunity From COVID-19 – The Federalist

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The coronavirus epidemic is surging and taking with it the economy, our ability to gather with friends and family, and our hopes for the future. We need to get it over with. But in the midst of the explosion in new cases, some states are experiencing declines in the number of new cases while other states are witnessing increases.

Changes in the rate of infections have been attributed to political affiliation, defiant lifestyles, and irresponsible leadership. But there may be a simpler answer. Some states may be running out of people who have not already been infected.

Experts estimate that at least two-thirds of the population need to have neutralizing antibodies in order to reach herd immunity. Two-thirds of the 325 million people in the United States is about 218 million people. You can get antibodies that neutralize the virus in one of two ways: taking an effective vaccine, which is only being starting to be administered, or having been infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

About 19 million people in the U.S. have had confirmed cases of COVID-19. But confirmed cases may be the tip of the iceberg. Although estimates vary, the Centers for Disease Control believes that about eight people have been infected for each one person with a documented case. If we multiply the 19 million known cases by 8, it is possible that about 152 million people are already immune. Yet the proportion of people who have been infected and the rate of new cases varies significantly by state.

Using publicly available data sources, I estimated the number of people who might have immunity in each state. The simple calculation multiplies the number of known cases in each state by 8. Then, I divided the number of expected immune people by the state population. The numbers vary dramatically across the country, with North Dakota topping the list at 92 percent in contrast to the least affected state, Vermont, at a mere 7 percent.

A very crude estimate suggests that new cases should begin trending downward when about 60 percent of the population has been infected. My rough estimate showed that five states are likely to have more than 60 percent of their populations previously infected (North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska) with three others (Utah, Rhode Island, and Wyoming) approaching 60 percent.

In each of these states, the recent trajectory for new cases is declining. States where the seven-day rolling averages aretrending upward tend to have a lower rate of previous infections: South Carolina (39 percent), Texas (36 percent), Massachusetts (34 percent), California (32 percent), West Virginia (29 percent), the District of Columbia (28 percent), and New York (17 percent).

We have good reason to believe that a previous infection provides immunity. The two new vaccines are estimated to be about 95 percent effective in preventing infections. However, those who have suffered a previous infection may enjoy greater than 99 percent protection.

True, there have been a few cases of COVID-19 survivors who became reinfected. But reinfection is very rare. There are only 31 documented cases among some 81 million people who have been infected.

In two large vaccine trials, people taking the active vaccine were 95 percent less likely than those getting a placebo to get COVID-19. But those injected with placebo were still 200 times more likely to get COVID-19 in comparison to the rate of reinfection among COVID-19 survivors.

To be clear, I am not advocating that people deliberately get exposed to coronavirus. It is simply too large a gamble. COVID-19 can have devasting consequences, including death. That is why so many people oppose achieving herd immunity through careless life choices.

But unfortunately, many people have already become victims of the coronavirus. If they survived without lasting effects, they are not likely to get a new infection. In the states where the virus has hit hardest, we may be running out of people who are likely to get a new case of COVID-19.

We are a big country with the unified goal of defeating the coronavirus. But we are also a federation with 50 states. One size does not fit all, and we must recognize that our state leaders face very different situations.

It is possible that some states may be approaching herd immunity, even without a vaccine. Others remain highly vulnerable. For now, all states should continue to advocate for prudent behavioral approaches to masking, distancing, and hand washing.

State leaders might use the information on previous infections, perhaps augmented by new surveys on antibody prevalence, when they evaluate how they can best prioritize their limited vaccine supplies. Since previous infection may offer protection equal to or better than a vaccine, it makes no sense to give two doses to someone who hasalready been infected.

In North Dakota, that would free up at least 180,000 doses enough to give the first injection to nearly a quarter of the population. Leaders could also be better armed to face equally fraught decisions, such as how to ease restrictions and when to open public schools. With prudent use of resources and data-based planning, a return to normalcy may be in our future.

Republished from RealClearPolitics, with permission.

Robert M. Kaplan, Ph.D., is a faculty member at Stanford Medical School Clinical Excellence Research Center, a former associate director of the National Institutes of Health, and a former chief science officer for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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Some States May Already Be Close To Herd Immunity From COVID-19 - The Federalist

Make America Beautiful Again: The Executive Order You Might Have Missed – The Federalist

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On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Director of Classical Architecture at Catholic University James McCrery and President of the National Civic Art Society Justin Shubow join Senior Editor Christopher Bedford to break down President Donald Trumps recent executive order promoting classical and traditional architecture in Washington, D.C.

There is a requirement that federal buildings be beautiful, that they command the admiration of the American people, and that there should be a particular regard for classical and traditional architecture, Shubow explained.

Thats the kind of architecture that is truly called civic and that a great civilization like ours needs and demands, McCrery added. And we dont get it.

The order, however, is not without controversy.

It has trumped up this big controversy but even thousands of traditional and classical architects are proof that thats simply not the case, McCrery said. The traditional and classical architecture is very much of our time and is very much alive and well in schools of architecture.

It is not architecture for architectures sake, McCrery added. It is architecture for the people and ultimately for our society.

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Make America Beautiful Again: The Executive Order You Might Have Missed - The Federalist

Hemingway: If Lockdowns Worked, California Wouldn’t Have This Problem – The Federalist

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The Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway criticized Californias strict lockdown policies for not only failing to prevent a public health crisis but also disregarding scientific findings and hurting people and the economy in the process.

If lockdowns worked in terms of public health, California would not be having a problem right now, Hemingway said on Fox News Outnumbered on Monday.

The New York Times is reporting that, of these shortages in hospitals, a big part is staffing shortages, she continued. Thats because something like one out of every seven nurses is unable to work because of the lockdowns of schools. If a lot of nurses have children, and when their children arent able to be at school, that means they cant be at the hospitals.

Hemingway noted that instead of following the science about COVID-19 spread, many government officials havent thought through the repercussions of these things and chose to mandate lockdowns and shut down the economy.

A lot of governors and mayors and other government officials want to look like theyre doing something rather than actually following the science, Hemingway said.

There is no scientific basis for shuttering schools. There is no scientific basis for shuttering restaurants for the reasons that you already alleged, she continued, noting that restaurants in New York were shut down for just over a 1 percent virus transmission rate.

While states such as California and New York have turned to strict lockdowns and restrictions on activities, Hemingway said these restrictions have caused great harm to people and businesses.

The reality is this is a virus. Its going to behave as a virus, Hemingway concluded. And it is not something as simple as what we have been told will keep these things under control, whether its mask mandates or destroying small businesses so these large corporations can flourish.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Hemingway: If Lockdowns Worked, California Wouldn't Have This Problem - The Federalist

Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. There Were 72,000. – The Federalist

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President-elect Joe Biden spiked coronavirus hysteria early this month, warning Americans the nation would suffer 250,000 additional deaths from the novel Wuhan coronavirus by the end of the year.

Christmas is going to be a lot harder, Biden said during a small business roundtable on Dec. 2, a week after Thanksgiving. I dont want to scare anybody here, but understand the facts were likely to lose another 250,000 people dead between now and January. You hear me?

At that point, The Atlantics COVID Tracking Project reported nearly 262,000 Americans had succumbed to the virus, making Bidens prediction a near doubling of the nations nine-month death toll within a 30-day period. According to the latest data from the COVID Tracking Project, however, the U.S. death toll stands at nearly 334,000, meaning Biden was off by about 178,000 with 72,000 deaths in December.

The nation now leads into the new year with two FDA-approved vaccines in distribution to front-line health care workers and senior individuals at the highest risk of complications from the novel coronavirus. While vaccines are being distributed, however, the pandemic continues. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released figures Thursday showing the United States hit a new record of deaths, with 3,764 deaths on Wednesday.

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Biden Estimated 250,000 COVID Deaths This Month. There Were 72,000. - The Federalist