Poem: "Unu Hako Kverkon"
Dec. 1st, 2020 02:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the October 6, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Psycho" square in my 10-1-20 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. It is posted in thanks for fuzzyred updating the Polychrome Heroics pages. This poem belongs to the Mercedes thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
"Unu Hako Kverkon"
[Monday, February 15, 2016]
Blainn Amsel drifted slowly through
the Mercedes Multicultural Arts Center.
He had gone there a couple times
before to explore opportunities --
once for the New in Town meeting,
which he hadn't dared to join, and
once for a creative job fair that
had netted him bupkis in leads,
only flyers for future events.
He liked the place, though:
sleek white walls outside and
interesting galleries inside.
The first floor had a gift shop
in addition to the art galleries.
The second floor had more art,
while the third held studios for
art and dance, classrooms,
and presentation space.
Folk guitar sounded softly
through the space, not recorded
but live from a busker somewhere
hidden among the milling bodies.
Blainn favored medium-size crowds:
enough people to get lost in, but
not enough to impede movement.
He needed to stay slick, because
technically he shouldn't be out on
his own yet. He had just turned
17, but he had already been on
the streets for a year before.
He ran an anxious hand over
his baseball cap, making sure
the royal blue tufts of hair were
hidden. The rest was a midnight
so dark it could pass for black.
His foster parents had freaked out
when the bright blue came in, though,
and started beating the tar out of him,
so that he had to leave in a hurry.
Here, though, things seemed
to be different. Blainn had already
seen one person with deep teal hair
and two others with shades of pink.
He wasn't sure how much of that
was dyed and how much was natural,
but that didn't matter as much as
the fact that nobody was staring
at them or trying to beat them up.
Feeling slightly bolder, Blainn
went up to the multipurpose room,
which had some activist thing going.
The Esperanto Club had set up
on one side of the big room
in front of a large green flag.
Blainn perked up a little at that.
He'd heard that knowing Esperanto
could get your foot in the door for
certain gigs that were shady
but paid incredibly well.
He didn't mind the shade.
The Esperantists had put out
a couple platters of snacks.
The cape cookies were crispy
and had been dipped in chocolate
on one corner so that they actually
looked like they were wearing capes.
The spinach carrot brownies had
a bilingual sign asking if you
could taste the vegetables.
Blainn tried them; he could not,
and they were damn good brownies.
The teacher, Mr. Teager, was writing
a food lesson on a portable blackboard.
He sounded pretty nice. Blainn wished
that he could've finished high school.
The club seemed to have a mix
of ages, though. Another young man
in a paramedic jacket, Cody, looked
like a few years older than the teens,
and he was giving them a lesson on
emergency phrases in Esperanto.
Some of the teens were clustered
around a stack of printed booklets.
"Check out the neat boycott guideline
that I found online," a black girl said.
Her nametag read, Zahra Booker. "It
explains how to find replacements for
your favorite things made in China, so you
can buy from somewhere decent. I thought
maybe we could do an app to make it easier."
"China is psycho," someone else muttered.
"That country needs a prosthetic conscience."
"You're not wrong," said the blonde girl
wearing an Esperanto T-shirt, who seemed
to be leading the group. "I've got a list
of activist vocabulary for anyone who
wants to try translating a page or
writing demands for China."
There was a boy in the group
who made Blainn stare. His hair
was shaggy and mostly black,
but with cobalt streaks in back
and lemon yellow streaks in front.
No wonder nobody was paying
any attention to Blainn's hair if
a few blue wisps snuck out.
"Aida, there's no word for
'compromise' or 'restitution' on
here," said the colorful boy. "It's
all focused on economic attacks."
"Feel free to grab a dictionary
and expand the list, Jules,"
said Aida. "It's just a start."
The dark-haired girl sitting
beside Jules waved her hands,
not quite sign language, but
apparently something meaningful.
"Yes, Mariset, I cross-checked
all the words in at least two sources,"
said Aida. "We have dictionaries
from several different publishers
if you want to do that yourself --
extra credit if you catch an error."
Blainn himself didn't see
any reason to be that nice:
word on the street was that
China had gone from abusing
its own soups to kidnapping
foreign ones, so fuck that noise.
His fingers itched to get ahold of
one of those booklets, but he
didn't want to attract attention.
Then the leader handed one
to him anyway. "Hi, I'm Aida Finn,"
she said. "Would you like to study
Esperanto with us? We're dinging
China for being a bottom-ten jerk.
Or you could learn food words,
or pick up emergency phrases."
"I, um, don't really like China
much either," Blainn admitted.
He opened the booklet and
skimmed a bit. "This uh, looks
more complicated than I thought."
"Turn past the table of contents,"
Aida said. "There's a summary
of the basic steps. If you go
to the library, the librarians
can help you work through it."
"Let me guess, they don't
like China either," Blainn said.
"They hate censorship, and
the Great Firewall of China was
an egregious example of that,"
Aida said, looking smug. "Funny
how they haven't got it back up
yet. It keeps springing leaks."
"Cry me a river," Blainn said.
"China deserves what it gets."
"It will take more than this
to bring them down, though,"
Jules said with a grimace.
"Unu hako kverkon ne faligas."
An oak does not fall by a single strike.
"Plej granda potenco kuŝas en la komenco,"
Aida replied, handing out another booklet.
A good beginning makes a good ending.
Blainn took a seat at the table and
claimed a dictionary from the stack.
Laboriously he began looking up
the words he didn't know, which
was most of them -- his Esperanto
consisted of a few proverbs he'd
learned in a community center class.
He felt more comfortable in this group,
though. Maybe he'd stick around
for a while; he needed a place.
Mercedes seemed better than
what he'd heard -- it had made
the news several times, mostly bad,
especially that shit with Cold Cash.
This looked like a good opportunity;
Blainn could give China a few swipes,
too, and hopefully make it harder
for them to pick on soups.
By the time Blainn had
finished translating his page,
his stomach was growling.
It was hard to find enough food,
and he always seemed to be hungry.
"If you want something more to eat,
check out the Sankofa Club,"
Aida suggested. "They're
offering samples of things
to eat other than Chinese."
"Good plan," Blainn said.
Tucking his booklet under
his arm, he headed over there.
This club seemed to belong
to the local middle school.
A cluster of tweens were
handing out free recipes.
The young woman supervising
them looked Indian; the kids
were a very mixed bunch.
Each platter of snacks
had its ingredients listed on
a card beside it, along with
a flag of its origin country.
Imeruli Khachapuri was
a Georgian cheese bread.
Murukku Aaku Pakodi
was from India, a pile of
crunchy, spicy ribbons.
Bolón de Verde came
from Ecuador and was
made from green plantains.
All of them tasted delicious.
Blainn doubted that he could
make any of them, even if he
had a kitchen, but it was still
nice to try them and dream.
"If you like our samples,
watch for us on Friday,"
the supervisor said. "We'll
be making Green Lentil Soup for
the Traveling Cauldron Soup Kitchen."
She handed Blainn a schedule with
the addresses and recipe on it.
Well, he could stay a few more days.
* * *
Notes:
Blainn Amsel -- He has pale skin, blue eyes, and short hair that was black but is turning blue. Most of it is a deep midnight blue barely lighter than black, but some streaks are now coming in a brighter shade of royal blue. He has a silver ring through his right nostril. He is skinny and underfed. His heritage is American; he speaks English and Spanish. Blainn just turned 17 in early 2016. He entered the foster system at 9 due to neglect and his mother's boyfriend abusing him. However, foster care wasn't much better, and he found it very stressful. Once he developed superpowers, he tried to conceal them, but the brighter blue made that impossible. His current foster parents began beating him, so he ran away at 16. Blainn has been living on the streets for about a year, hitchhiking around California in hopes of finding somewhere that people won't pick on him so much. He is always hungry and has a hard time finding enough to eat. He enjoys music and collects band T-shirts, but can't play an instrument because nobody wanted to pay for lessons.
Origin: Blainn started sniffing paint at 13 to cope with the stress of foster care. When he was 15, his hair began turning dark blue, and by the end of the year it as all that blue-black shade. Then the first streaks of royal blue appeared. He has reduced the amount of paint sniffing he does, but struggles to control his addiction, and the color change is still progressing.
Uniform: Blainn wears teen boy clothes in shades of black, white, and blue. Most often that means jeans and a T-shirt. He hides his hair under hats.
Qualities: Good (+2) Fast, Good (+2) Independent, Good (+2) Musical Intelligence, Good (+2) Street Smart
Poor (-2) Sniffing Paint
His addiction to inhalants has left him with mood swings and impairment of attention and memory. He often feels restless and jittery. Sometimes he gets headaches, especially in bright light. His hands shake when he's coming down from a high or suffering withdrawal pangs.
Powers: Average (0) Crayon Soup
Motivation: To find a home.
Sniffing paint can have unfortunate outcomes. One of the few places Terramagne is worse than here lies in drug abuse, due to more advanced chemistry and in some cases zetetics.
Caton Teager -- He has pinkish-fair skin, brown eyes, and golden-brown hair buzzed short. He is married with two young children, a son and a daughter. He tells funny stories about them in class. Caton teaches foreign languages at the high school in Mercedes, California. Previously, those consisted of Spanish and Italian. After recent upsets, he started offering Esperanto -- which he doesn't speak, so he and his students are learning it together, as a way of making Mercedes a more soup-friendly town. As a hobby, Caton enjoys making, hiding, and finding painted rocks.
Qualities: Good (+2) Enthusiastic, Good (+2) Linguistic Intelligence, Good (+2) Rock Painter, Good (+2) Teacher, Good (+2) Upstander
Poor (-2) Moral Injury
Explore the hobby of making, hiding, and finding painted rocks. Most people paint pictures or abstract designs. Some paint words or proverbs in a heritage language. Some use runes, ogham, or other symbols. See some examples. Learn to paint your own rocks, hide them, and hunt for others. This is a very popular hobby in Terramagne and people often paint positive messages on their rocks.
Cody Levitin -- He has pinkish-fair skin, coffee-brown eyes, and wavy golden-brown hair cut short. He is tall and slim with big hands and feet. He speaks English and Spanish. Cody was visiting Mercedes, California when the mall incident happened, and Cold Cash accidentally iced him to the floor, where they were subsequently rescued by the zoomwagon team from Soup to Nuts. That inspired Cody to pursue first responder training. He took a 2-month course for Emotional First Aide-Basic followed by a 2-month course for Emergency Medical Technician-Basic. Later he took a 4-month course in Emotional First Aide-Intermediate followed by a 4-month course in Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate. He also trained with Dave in handling adrenaline rushes. Cody is an active citizen and has decided to stay in Mercedes, although its occasional fork tendencies exasperate him. Cody was 18 at the time of the incident and is 20 at the time of the Cascadia Cataclysm. He is fascinated by mechanical things even though he hasn't had an opportunity to study them in detail.
Qualities: Good (+2) Adrenaline Resilience, Good (+2) Citizen, Good (+2) Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate, Good (+2) Emotional First Aide-Intermediate, Good (+2) Observant
Poor (-2) Hates the Cold
[Characters by Dialecticdreamer]
Jules Clayton on the left, Mariset in the middle. Jules often dyes his hair in bright colors. Here are examples of black/blue and black/yellow.
Zahra Booker -- She has sorrel skin, brown eyes, and long nappy brown hair usually done in cornrows. She wears glasses. She lives in Mercedes, California where she belongs to the high school Esperanto Club. Her heritage is African-American. She speaks English, Esperanto, and Spanish. She is 14 years old in 2016.
Qualities: Good (+2) Bookworm, Good (+2) Cheerful
Poor (-2) Needs Glasses
Mercedes High School Esperanto Club
The one on the left is Native American two-spirit. Next is an African-American girl (Zahra), an Asian girl, a white boy, and a white girl.
Amber Chakrabarti -- She has tinted skin, brown eyes, and wavy brown hair. She is first-generation American; her parents immigrated from India. She plays both American folk music (on guitar) and Indian classical music (on sitar) as a hobby. At 20, Amber is studying psychology in college. She works part-time at a local mall as an Emotional First Aide for college credit and pocket money.
Qualities: Expert (+4) Psychology Student, Good (+2) Emotional First Aid, Good (+2) Endurance, Good (+2) Musician
Mercedes Middle School Sankofa Club
The one on the left is a white girl, then a Native American girl, a white boy, a Hispanic girl, and an African-American boy.
* * *
Unu hako kverkon ne faligas.
• English equivalent: An oak does not fall by a single strike.
Plej granda potenco kuŝas en la komenco.
• English equivalent: A good beginning makes a good ending.
• Meaning: "Starting properly ensures the speedy completion of a process. A beginning is often blocked by one or more obstacles (potential barriers) the removal of which may ensure the smooth course of the process."
• Source for meaning and proverbs: Paczolay, Gyula (1997). European Proverbs in 55 languages. DeProverbio.com. p. 228. ISBN 1-875943-44-7.
Monday, February 15, 2016 -- Presidents' Day
The Mercedes Multicultural Arts Center is a big white building. The Multipurpose Room is on the third floor.
The Traveling Cauldron Soup Kitchen distributes food from various places in Mercedes, California.
Meetup is one way to make friends in a new city. In Terramagne-America, most municipalities with enough traffic offer a "New in Town" group to help create social ties, both with locals and with other newcomers. These are usually cohort-based with an open period to gather members, then that one closes and a new one opens.
Mercedes is growing briskly.
What is 2.37 % of 88120? 2088.4440000000004
2088 ÷ 12 = 174
174 ÷ 4 = 43.5
So Mercedes is gaining about 2,088 people per year, which breaks down to 174 per month or 43.5 per week. Most of those will want to join a New in Town group. Opening one cohort per week should produce a managable social group of around 20-30 people. However, some towns break it down different ways -- by age, by part of town, by interests, etc. to help people find compatible friends.
Esperanto is an auxiliary language designed to promote tolerance. Find out how to learn it.
Proverbs may be found in Esperanto and with English translations. Most are borrowed from other languages instead of coined inside Esperanto itself.
Enjoy recipes for Cape Cookies (superfood) and Spinach Carrot Brownies.
kompromiso -- compromise
restituo -- restitution
Sankofa snacks include Imeruli khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread), Murukku Aaku Pakodi (Ribbon Pakodi), and Bolon de Verde (Ecuadorian Green Plaintain Fritters).
Here's a recipe for Green Lentil Soup.
dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Psycho" square in my 10-1-20 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. It is posted in thanks for fuzzyred updating the Polychrome Heroics pages. This poem belongs to the Mercedes thread of the Polychrome Heroics series."Unu Hako Kverkon"
[Monday, February 15, 2016]
Blainn Amsel drifted slowly through
the Mercedes Multicultural Arts Center.
He had gone there a couple times
before to explore opportunities --
once for the New in Town meeting,
which he hadn't dared to join, and
once for a creative job fair that
had netted him bupkis in leads,
only flyers for future events.
He liked the place, though:
sleek white walls outside and
interesting galleries inside.
The first floor had a gift shop
in addition to the art galleries.
The second floor had more art,
while the third held studios for
art and dance, classrooms,
and presentation space.
Folk guitar sounded softly
through the space, not recorded
but live from a busker somewhere
hidden among the milling bodies.
Blainn favored medium-size crowds:
enough people to get lost in, but
not enough to impede movement.
He needed to stay slick, because
technically he shouldn't be out on
his own yet. He had just turned
17, but he had already been on
the streets for a year before.
He ran an anxious hand over
his baseball cap, making sure
the royal blue tufts of hair were
hidden. The rest was a midnight
so dark it could pass for black.
His foster parents had freaked out
when the bright blue came in, though,
and started beating the tar out of him,
so that he had to leave in a hurry.
Here, though, things seemed
to be different. Blainn had already
seen one person with deep teal hair
and two others with shades of pink.
He wasn't sure how much of that
was dyed and how much was natural,
but that didn't matter as much as
the fact that nobody was staring
at them or trying to beat them up.
Feeling slightly bolder, Blainn
went up to the multipurpose room,
which had some activist thing going.
The Esperanto Club had set up
on one side of the big room
in front of a large green flag.
Blainn perked up a little at that.
He'd heard that knowing Esperanto
could get your foot in the door for
certain gigs that were shady
but paid incredibly well.
He didn't mind the shade.
The Esperantists had put out
a couple platters of snacks.
The cape cookies were crispy
and had been dipped in chocolate
on one corner so that they actually
looked like they were wearing capes.
The spinach carrot brownies had
a bilingual sign asking if you
could taste the vegetables.
Blainn tried them; he could not,
and they were damn good brownies.
The teacher, Mr. Teager, was writing
a food lesson on a portable blackboard.
He sounded pretty nice. Blainn wished
that he could've finished high school.
The club seemed to have a mix
of ages, though. Another young man
in a paramedic jacket, Cody, looked
like a few years older than the teens,
and he was giving them a lesson on
emergency phrases in Esperanto.
Some of the teens were clustered
around a stack of printed booklets.
"Check out the neat boycott guideline
that I found online," a black girl said.
Her nametag read, Zahra Booker. "It
explains how to find replacements for
your favorite things made in China, so you
can buy from somewhere decent. I thought
maybe we could do an app to make it easier."
"China is psycho," someone else muttered.
"That country needs a prosthetic conscience."
"You're not wrong," said the blonde girl
wearing an Esperanto T-shirt, who seemed
to be leading the group. "I've got a list
of activist vocabulary for anyone who
wants to try translating a page or
writing demands for China."
There was a boy in the group
who made Blainn stare. His hair
was shaggy and mostly black,
but with cobalt streaks in back
and lemon yellow streaks in front.
No wonder nobody was paying
any attention to Blainn's hair if
a few blue wisps snuck out.
"Aida, there's no word for
'compromise' or 'restitution' on
here," said the colorful boy. "It's
all focused on economic attacks."
"Feel free to grab a dictionary
and expand the list, Jules,"
said Aida. "It's just a start."
The dark-haired girl sitting
beside Jules waved her hands,
not quite sign language, but
apparently something meaningful.
"Yes, Mariset, I cross-checked
all the words in at least two sources,"
said Aida. "We have dictionaries
from several different publishers
if you want to do that yourself --
extra credit if you catch an error."
Blainn himself didn't see
any reason to be that nice:
word on the street was that
China had gone from abusing
its own soups to kidnapping
foreign ones, so fuck that noise.
His fingers itched to get ahold of
one of those booklets, but he
didn't want to attract attention.
Then the leader handed one
to him anyway. "Hi, I'm Aida Finn,"
she said. "Would you like to study
Esperanto with us? We're dinging
China for being a bottom-ten jerk.
Or you could learn food words,
or pick up emergency phrases."
"I, um, don't really like China
much either," Blainn admitted.
He opened the booklet and
skimmed a bit. "This uh, looks
more complicated than I thought."
"Turn past the table of contents,"
Aida said. "There's a summary
of the basic steps. If you go
to the library, the librarians
can help you work through it."
"Let me guess, they don't
like China either," Blainn said.
"They hate censorship, and
the Great Firewall of China was
an egregious example of that,"
Aida said, looking smug. "Funny
how they haven't got it back up
yet. It keeps springing leaks."
"Cry me a river," Blainn said.
"China deserves what it gets."
"It will take more than this
to bring them down, though,"
Jules said with a grimace.
"Unu hako kverkon ne faligas."
An oak does not fall by a single strike.
"Plej granda potenco kuŝas en la komenco,"
Aida replied, handing out another booklet.
A good beginning makes a good ending.
Blainn took a seat at the table and
claimed a dictionary from the stack.
Laboriously he began looking up
the words he didn't know, which
was most of them -- his Esperanto
consisted of a few proverbs he'd
learned in a community center class.
He felt more comfortable in this group,
though. Maybe he'd stick around
for a while; he needed a place.
Mercedes seemed better than
what he'd heard -- it had made
the news several times, mostly bad,
especially that shit with Cold Cash.
This looked like a good opportunity;
Blainn could give China a few swipes,
too, and hopefully make it harder
for them to pick on soups.
By the time Blainn had
finished translating his page,
his stomach was growling.
It was hard to find enough food,
and he always seemed to be hungry.
"If you want something more to eat,
check out the Sankofa Club,"
Aida suggested. "They're
offering samples of things
to eat other than Chinese."
"Good plan," Blainn said.
Tucking his booklet under
his arm, he headed over there.
This club seemed to belong
to the local middle school.
A cluster of tweens were
handing out free recipes.
The young woman supervising
them looked Indian; the kids
were a very mixed bunch.
Each platter of snacks
had its ingredients listed on
a card beside it, along with
a flag of its origin country.
Imeruli Khachapuri was
a Georgian cheese bread.
Murukku Aaku Pakodi
was from India, a pile of
crunchy, spicy ribbons.
Bolón de Verde came
from Ecuador and was
made from green plantains.
All of them tasted delicious.
Blainn doubted that he could
make any of them, even if he
had a kitchen, but it was still
nice to try them and dream.
"If you like our samples,
watch for us on Friday,"
the supervisor said. "We'll
be making Green Lentil Soup for
the Traveling Cauldron Soup Kitchen."
She handed Blainn a schedule with
the addresses and recipe on it.
Well, he could stay a few more days.
* * *
Notes:
Blainn Amsel -- He has pale skin, blue eyes, and short hair that was black but is turning blue. Most of it is a deep midnight blue barely lighter than black, but some streaks are now coming in a brighter shade of royal blue. He has a silver ring through his right nostril. He is skinny and underfed. His heritage is American; he speaks English and Spanish. Blainn just turned 17 in early 2016. He entered the foster system at 9 due to neglect and his mother's boyfriend abusing him. However, foster care wasn't much better, and he found it very stressful. Once he developed superpowers, he tried to conceal them, but the brighter blue made that impossible. His current foster parents began beating him, so he ran away at 16. Blainn has been living on the streets for about a year, hitchhiking around California in hopes of finding somewhere that people won't pick on him so much. He is always hungry and has a hard time finding enough to eat. He enjoys music and collects band T-shirts, but can't play an instrument because nobody wanted to pay for lessons.
Origin: Blainn started sniffing paint at 13 to cope with the stress of foster care. When he was 15, his hair began turning dark blue, and by the end of the year it as all that blue-black shade. Then the first streaks of royal blue appeared. He has reduced the amount of paint sniffing he does, but struggles to control his addiction, and the color change is still progressing.
Uniform: Blainn wears teen boy clothes in shades of black, white, and blue. Most often that means jeans and a T-shirt. He hides his hair under hats.
Qualities: Good (+2) Fast, Good (+2) Independent, Good (+2) Musical Intelligence, Good (+2) Street Smart
Poor (-2) Sniffing Paint
His addiction to inhalants has left him with mood swings and impairment of attention and memory. He often feels restless and jittery. Sometimes he gets headaches, especially in bright light. His hands shake when he's coming down from a high or suffering withdrawal pangs.
Powers: Average (0) Crayon Soup
Motivation: To find a home.
Sniffing paint can have unfortunate outcomes. One of the few places Terramagne is worse than here lies in drug abuse, due to more advanced chemistry and in some cases zetetics.
Caton Teager -- He has pinkish-fair skin, brown eyes, and golden-brown hair buzzed short. He is married with two young children, a son and a daughter. He tells funny stories about them in class. Caton teaches foreign languages at the high school in Mercedes, California. Previously, those consisted of Spanish and Italian. After recent upsets, he started offering Esperanto -- which he doesn't speak, so he and his students are learning it together, as a way of making Mercedes a more soup-friendly town. As a hobby, Caton enjoys making, hiding, and finding painted rocks.
Qualities: Good (+2) Enthusiastic, Good (+2) Linguistic Intelligence, Good (+2) Rock Painter, Good (+2) Teacher, Good (+2) Upstander
Poor (-2) Moral Injury
Explore the hobby of making, hiding, and finding painted rocks. Most people paint pictures or abstract designs. Some paint words or proverbs in a heritage language. Some use runes, ogham, or other symbols. See some examples. Learn to paint your own rocks, hide them, and hunt for others. This is a very popular hobby in Terramagne and people often paint positive messages on their rocks.
Cody Levitin -- He has pinkish-fair skin, coffee-brown eyes, and wavy golden-brown hair cut short. He is tall and slim with big hands and feet. He speaks English and Spanish. Cody was visiting Mercedes, California when the mall incident happened, and Cold Cash accidentally iced him to the floor, where they were subsequently rescued by the zoomwagon team from Soup to Nuts. That inspired Cody to pursue first responder training. He took a 2-month course for Emotional First Aide-Basic followed by a 2-month course for Emergency Medical Technician-Basic. Later he took a 4-month course in Emotional First Aide-Intermediate followed by a 4-month course in Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate. He also trained with Dave in handling adrenaline rushes. Cody is an active citizen and has decided to stay in Mercedes, although its occasional fork tendencies exasperate him. Cody was 18 at the time of the incident and is 20 at the time of the Cascadia Cataclysm. He is fascinated by mechanical things even though he hasn't had an opportunity to study them in detail.
Qualities: Good (+2) Adrenaline Resilience, Good (+2) Citizen, Good (+2) Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate, Good (+2) Emotional First Aide-Intermediate, Good (+2) Observant
Poor (-2) Hates the Cold
[Characters by Dialecticdreamer]
Jules Clayton on the left, Mariset in the middle. Jules often dyes his hair in bright colors. Here are examples of black/blue and black/yellow.
Zahra Booker -- She has sorrel skin, brown eyes, and long nappy brown hair usually done in cornrows. She wears glasses. She lives in Mercedes, California where she belongs to the high school Esperanto Club. Her heritage is African-American. She speaks English, Esperanto, and Spanish. She is 14 years old in 2016.
Qualities: Good (+2) Bookworm, Good (+2) Cheerful
Poor (-2) Needs Glasses
Mercedes High School Esperanto Club
The one on the left is Native American two-spirit. Next is an African-American girl (Zahra), an Asian girl, a white boy, and a white girl.
Amber Chakrabarti -- She has tinted skin, brown eyes, and wavy brown hair. She is first-generation American; her parents immigrated from India. She plays both American folk music (on guitar) and Indian classical music (on sitar) as a hobby. At 20, Amber is studying psychology in college. She works part-time at a local mall as an Emotional First Aide for college credit and pocket money.
Qualities: Expert (+4) Psychology Student, Good (+2) Emotional First Aid, Good (+2) Endurance, Good (+2) Musician
Mercedes Middle School Sankofa Club
The one on the left is a white girl, then a Native American girl, a white boy, a Hispanic girl, and an African-American boy.
* * *
Unu hako kverkon ne faligas.
• English equivalent: An oak does not fall by a single strike.
Plej granda potenco kuŝas en la komenco.
• English equivalent: A good beginning makes a good ending.
• Meaning: "Starting properly ensures the speedy completion of a process. A beginning is often blocked by one or more obstacles (potential barriers) the removal of which may ensure the smooth course of the process."
• Source for meaning and proverbs: Paczolay, Gyula (1997). European Proverbs in 55 languages. DeProverbio.com. p. 228. ISBN 1-875943-44-7.
Monday, February 15, 2016 -- Presidents' Day
The Mercedes Multicultural Arts Center is a big white building. The Multipurpose Room is on the third floor.
The Traveling Cauldron Soup Kitchen distributes food from various places in Mercedes, California.
Meetup is one way to make friends in a new city. In Terramagne-America, most municipalities with enough traffic offer a "New in Town" group to help create social ties, both with locals and with other newcomers. These are usually cohort-based with an open period to gather members, then that one closes and a new one opens.
Mercedes is growing briskly.
What is 2.37 % of 88120? 2088.4440000000004
2088 ÷ 12 = 174
174 ÷ 4 = 43.5
So Mercedes is gaining about 2,088 people per year, which breaks down to 174 per month or 43.5 per week. Most of those will want to join a New in Town group. Opening one cohort per week should produce a managable social group of around 20-30 people. However, some towns break it down different ways -- by age, by part of town, by interests, etc. to help people find compatible friends.
Esperanto is an auxiliary language designed to promote tolerance. Find out how to learn it.
Proverbs may be found in Esperanto and with English translations. Most are borrowed from other languages instead of coined inside Esperanto itself.
Enjoy recipes for Cape Cookies (superfood) and Spinach Carrot Brownies.
kompromiso -- compromise
restituo -- restitution
Sankofa snacks include Imeruli khachapuri (Georgian Cheese Bread), Murukku Aaku Pakodi (Ribbon Pakodi), and Bolon de Verde (Ecuadorian Green Plaintain Fritters).
Here's a recipe for Green Lentil Soup.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-01 04:56 pm (UTC)-Charles H. Spurgeon
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/744825-begin-as-you-mean-to-go-on-and-go-on