BREAKING NEWS RIGHT NOW
As often comes to pass in breaking news accounts that, so to speak, ‘go against the imperial grain,’ a scoop from TeleSur about massive and growing protests in Poland, led by women but definitely involving hundreds of thousands of men and women in conjunction, about the nations’ harsh new abortion restrictions and threats of a complete ban, actions that include proposals for a ‘general strike of women’ and more, and that have evoked sympathy outpourings in solidarity all over Europe, something that, a day after the Caracas outlet’s briefing such additional publishers as Global Voices, Washington Post, and TruthDig, among others are adding nuance and detail to the understanding of this developing story that must remain of central import to scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens who concern themselves with such matters as social justice and democracy.
This Day in History
Everywhere on Earth today, logically and ecologically, is World Animal Day, while the planet generally also starts out World Space Week; in a crucial turn in Chinese history, at roughly the same time as the erstwhile death of an historical Jesus, in the case of the Eastern realm a thousand nine hundred and ninety-three years ago, the Chinese emperor whom we know as Mang Wang, whose fourteen year reign divided the annals of Han rule in two, died in battle with forces from what was in part a widespread agrarian uprising; thirteen years fewer than six centuries after that, in 610, a somewhat similar upper class usurpation transpired when Heraclius, whose father was the Byzantine overseer of North Africa, entered Constantinople en route to defeating, capturing, and executing his rival Phocas, and becoming emperor himself at a time of vast turmoil and strife; seventeen years above six centuries beyond that point in time, in 1227, yet another royal assassination took place, with the death of the caliphic usurper Abdallah al Adil, who overthrew his predecessor in Marrakesh, which at the time was struggling with a centuries long Reconquista of its European holdings, Al Andalus or modern Spain, where the murdered Caliph Adil of Morocco had his roots; MORE HERE
A Thought for the Day
According to some wise counsel, from those who have in fact raised mountains and resuscitated corpses and generally maintained the capacity to achieve far-fetched, seemingly impossible goals, the path to such attainment is possible to summarize as such: ‘Success is hard; failure always looms just ahead; any kind of victory takes brutal commitment; nevertheless, people who do what they say and commit to each other can in fact accomplish miracles if only they remain honest with themselves and willingly speak the truth to all involved as well.’
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FANTASIES & POTENTIAL ACTUALITY IN RELATION TO MARS & MEANING
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Anthology with the theme Tales of Addiction Horror. Garden of Fiends is the working title. Submissions should be from 16,000 to 25,000 words. The publisher will have one title in the anthology, and from three to four additional works will be included. $500 payment.
LITMAG LitMag Print: Upon acceptance, we pay $1,000 for fiction or nonfiction; $250 for a poem (or the rare short short). LitMag Online: Upon acceptance, we pay $250. Fiction means short stories or novellas. Nonfiction means creative nonfiction, essays on literature/art/culture/music, biography, and memoir. No restrictions on style or form for poetry. Limit 15,000 words for print. Limit 4,000 words for online.

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An interesting read by a teacher who humorously deconstructs the trope about learning from students, while simultaneously looking at the purpose of education to begin with: “Although now that I think about it, the very idea that these kids could teach me more than I can teach them gets me a little hot under the collar. I went through four years of college and two years of graduate school and took on a mountain of debt to become a teacher, and if any one of those little snots thinks that he is going to teach me half as much as I teach him, he’s got another thing coming. If that ever happened I’d quit out of embarrassment and then nobody would be teaching anybody anything.”
An Observer post that looks at the arduous writing process through a lens that most scrappy scribes can understand and relate to while offering a possibly unusual but sensible supporting activity: “In truth, like many ventures, writing is a long hard slog. It’s more akin to a marathon of effort than a sprint of inspiration. Not that writing is a miserable profession. It isn’t. If one learns to cope with it properly, it’s quite wonderful and any who gets to do it for a living is blessed. But the coping is key. For many writers, that coping comes in a form rather appropriate to the analogy I gave above: Writers cope with writing by running.”
A City Lab article that tells of an exciting initiative in London that supports creative endeavours: “London may be a center for the creative industries, but high rents and low wages are making life for the city’s budding artists increasingly untenable. Thanks to a new plan being put together by London City Hall, however, that situation could be about to change. According to local media reports, London’s newly appointed Deputy Mayor for Culture, Justine Simons, has plans to protect London’s creative scene with special “Creative Enterprise Zones.” In an attempt to create an integrated response to the problems facing London’s artists, these zones could be set up in areas of London that already have higher concentrations of artists’ studios, such as East London’s Hackney Wick and Southeastern Peckham.”
An Informed Comment article that looks at the dire circumstances for the Saudi Arabia economy in the wake of wildly changing oil prices: “Saudi Arabia has long relied on oil to fuel its economic growth and development. Last year, oil accounted for about three-quarters of the Kingdom’s total export revenues and around 90% of government revenue. But the recent collapse in oil prices highlighted what should long have been clear: Saudi Arabia, like the other oil and gas rich nations of the Middle East, needs a more diverse development model.”