Will Hawkins

I use PAGES as my text editor, but only as I have become accustomed to it, my lap top was purchased in Portugal by my BF and therefore has a Portuguese keyboard. All the Alpha-numeric keys are the same as if it was purchased in America, but some additional keys (Such as, ç, ~, and € make it more useful for European typists. It has taken me several weeks to learn what some of these European keys do, but I am beginning to become accustomed to them. There are still several for which I have not yet found a use, but I assume they print special characters on the screen for European purposes and eventually I will learn to use those as well. Among these are ^. º. ª, and §. Also, I am never quite sure which way the virgule should face as both left \ , and right / , are on the keyboard. My confusion comes from the fact that I have always used the right facing virgule /, in hand writing, but that is a shifted key on my keyboard which makes it less convenient. Ah well, we all have our little problems! mister will

An interesting effect of a gathering storm across the American Plains is watching the buildup of white cumulonimbus clouds, their dark bottoms, and the flashes of lightning between them followed by a suspenseful pause,. its if the earth is taking in a deep breath then the buildup of the winds just before the deluge opens up. It seems to me that we are in that period of ominous anticipation that happens just before the rains start to fall. Now is the time for us readers to just sit back and enjoy the anticipation of the storm to come. There is nothing we can do about it — just enjoy the fireworks! Dorothy did that in the Oz books and look at the wonderful exciting time she had before her. Of course you, Mark, have no 'yellow brick road' to walk us down, but I am sure you will find or invent an appropriate substitute!

It is possible for Zach to change his guardians, especially because he is so close to his majority anyway, but the timing sucks. courts seldom move that fast. I will wait until the next chapter or so to get the connection to the gallery owner explained – I do not remember the name at all. If Zach's guardianship is changed, it will certainly make his last half-year before his eighteenth birthday much more pleasant and place his meddlesome parents in their proper place. But they have repeatedly demonstrated they do not know how to show him the love and support he needs. By the way, using a shift key at the same time as a return key will eliminate the long white spaces on the screen like the one above this paragraph. I do not know why that works, but try it and see if you are not more satisfied with the appearance of your text. If you wish to add an indent to the first line of a new paragraph, there is always the indent key available. while I believe five spaces for an indent is too many, that is a personal bitch on my part. I believe that can be changed in 'preferences' as well, but it has to be done every time. My personal preference would be for an automatic three-space indent at each new line, but no extra blank line between paragraphs, with a justified right margin, but I am just too lazy to figure out how to do all that automatically.

Religious based counseling is not just a mistake and in the main a failure. Firstly, it is based on rules and behaviors that are 2,000 years out of date. Even the most well-meaning councilor of that era lacked most of the knowledge about the human mind we have acquired in the intervening years. Please, Zach, don't rely on this man's advice, he does not know whereof he speaks. Just as soon as any advisor starts to quote verses from the Bible, he places himself in a sphere of knowledge that has been discounted for thousands of years. How long has it been since a raven had eyeballs for lunch? the Bible contains much poetry and interesting but discounted history. Its psychological advice is totally lacking however.

I am of the opinion that there is some sort of thunderstorm in the future. You have not yet expressed the normal extent of your twisting of the story line. I will wait with bated breath. On another subject altogether, you have demonstrated your ability to command the English language in an exemplary fashion by avoiding a common trap. Homophones are words, as you probably well know, in written English that are spelled differently and have different meanings, but sound the same when spoken. Thi causes confusion in some authors with a lesser command of the language than you. One of the most frequent traps is rain, rein and rein. in this chapter you have avoided that trap with your proper use of the word 'rein'. Rain, of course is moisture falling from the sky, reign, is the period of rule of a monarch and , as you have used correctly in this chapter, rein is a leather strap used to control a horse. Congratulations are in order. I am purposely avoiding a discussion of proper case of reflexive pronouns — putting that discussion off for another day. Reserving unto each day its proper rant!

Sidney is n interesting city, the harbor bridge climb would give a visitor a view of the various areas of the city including the opera house. That is a beautiful building, though it has many faults. It is an example of a building designed to suit the architects sense of style and not for the purposes to which it is put. When it was first opened the acoustics in the main auditorium were terrible, but since then there have been several remodels made and it is now much better acoustically.

I feel you do such an excellent job on your stories, Mark, I will not ask for more of this or that character. You balance the appearances of your characters beautifully. It is your story, Mark, write it just the way you want to.

These guys were just towing the line, — These guys were just toeing the line, This expression comes from athletics, To toe the line means to line up evenly before a race. To place your toes in a line. because my father wanted them too —- because my father wanted them to My goodness Mark, two errors in the same paragraph, your editor must have been asleep.

Let's talk about Zach for a minute. He is an athlete and good at what he does on the field. The fact that he is good and knows it is not unknown among athletes. The fact that he loves a man is unusual however. His "beard" is the religious disguise he puts on. Will needs to get used to that guise, it will protect Zach and Will's relationship to a great extent. Beautiful characterization, and a great story within the overall story of the relationships of all the men.

I see Maarten is trashing Will again. Someday that Dutchman will recognize the fact that Will is still very young and makes the mistakes the young often make. JJ makes mistakes also, but his errors are more expressed on the ice and therefore subject to judgement by professionals than are the personal mistakes that Will makes.

I feel sorry for Zach — he has two mutually incompatible goals in life and he is young enough to find it difficult to balance them. Even in this later (2019) and more accepting time, being gay and a professional sport star is a very difficult row to hoe. The ten-year period between the time frame of the story and modern attitudes has seen a great change in attitude, but it is not a total change. There is still an onus to being gay in the locker room especially in professional sports. Even though there is a little more acceptance among the general public, the evangelists still hold firmly to the idea that any man who sleeps with another as with a woman, is cursed by God and will spend an eternity in the fires of hell.

Something tells me the fourth floor in Boston is going to be interesting — I can see smoke leaking out under the doors.

The last time one of those religious nut-balls handed me a tract, I made sure he saw me toss it into the garbage without even reading it, but I was tempted to grab ALL of his handouts and stuff them in the garbage. When I was living in Covington, a superb of Seattle, it was the nut-balls that came to my door and tried to give me Watchtower or Awake that bothered me, This in spite of the rainbow flag I had hanging in my window.

1. Alex is reverting to type. By taking on the sexuality (libido) of his Granger ancestor. 2, It makes no difference who the father of Tiffany's latest contribution to the family may be, The baby, also no matter what sex, will be loved by both potential fathers, though there will be a friendly argument about which 'little wigglers' got up the tubes first (unless the argument gets settled by genetic proof.) 3. Having all those hot men in one house in Boston is going to liven up the menage considerably. Alex's introduction to American communial living will be like watching a ping- pong match from a seat at the net line! But we must remember, Alex's prime requirement is to marry legitimately and produce an heir to carryon the line.

I had to do some research on the two differing tests for AIDS as I was pretty well out of the 'scene' at the peak of the AIDS scare — living well out in the fringes of the Seattle suburban area and being both married and teaching in a Community College at the time. I was fortunate in that I escaped much of the early furor. My research showed me that you are 'spot on' in your descriptions of the two different tests and their effectiveness, as well as the reluctance to perform the more expensive and longer period of uncertainty before the results of the Western Blot Test are available. JJ is behaving so accurately (and so ass-hole-y) as a competitive figure skater — you are doing an excellent job of characterizing him. While I have a ton of respect for their skill and dedication, it seems to me that many of them, like JJ, are 'prima donnas. It is almost that an 'attitude' is a requirement for excellence in that skill. I was a little taken aback by Alex's low libido. Somehow in the intervening generations the libido of his grandfather, who would have meetings 'with benefits' with many of the various members of the Admiralty whenever he reported in to Westminster, got thoroughly diluted! But I also understand that we are not through with him yet as he will be joining our family in the USA for a while. I agree that his primary duty is to develop a legitimate heir for the Granger family, however. And he cannot do that by screwing around with men.

Okay, so it was a Jaguar and not a Bentley, but I will still bet it was Bridgemont blue as was the wallpaper in the entry hall. A place to stay for the Earl when he first goes to the US sounds like an ideal situation. There will be somebody there that he knows and who knows him. Good, whether it turns out to be permanent or not. You refer to the letters as 'the Stewart letters' that means they are not written by George. Too bad, correspondence from that era would be right up JP's alley. Though the thought enters that any letters written by George (to anyone other than his wife) might be a little too revealing of family secrets.

Wonderful, Mark, to meld the Bridgemont story in a contemporary story. For one thing that makes me feel that you will not leave out Captain freezing his ass off in the Baltic as he has to breed some ancestors for the present Earl. I can just envision the contemporary Earl driving up in a Bentley, Bridgemont blue of course. bringing these old letters for JP- I note that Maarten is back to biting Will's ass, even when Will's conversation was made in jest. He is really fixated on making Will out to be dog poop.

Oh, Dude, your comment to Maarten — was it really a requirement to poke the bear? I am sure Maarten can create his own negativism about Will without your complicity!

Well it looks like Maarten is back riding Will's case again. I guess I will have to put up with his viewpoint, but I don't have to like it. It seems that as far as Maarten is concerned, Will can do nothing right.

I am pleased to see that Maarten is not grumping about Will as much as he used to. I wonder what happened to his bad attitude? What I am not so pleased about is the constant begging for you to publish more/faster/more frequently. These beggars do not realize that GA puts a limit on how often an author publishes. You ARE a superior technician — you get the correct words in the right places (except for an infrequent problem with pronouns, which we can agree to put up with as everything else is so well done). Because of that technical perfection, your chapters are so easy to read and so pleasurable even to a grumpy old school teacher such as me. Keep up the publication schedule just as you are doing and fuck the beggars.

As the years go on, we forget, thankfully, how pervasive and intense the homophobia was in previous times, especially in professional sports (other than perhaps gymnastics and figure skating). Being 'queer' was the kiss of death in that era. Even today it is still newsworthy when a professional athlete 'comes out', though it may not be as important as it once was. I am totally enthralled and overjoyed as a gay man, to see that one of the Democratic pre-candidates for president in the 2020 campaign (at this time, the final candidate has not been chosen) is gay, out, married to a man, and proud of it. (Though, unfortunately, I don't feel ((as of November, 2019)), that he has a chance of being the final candidate), or, if he were, of defeating the Republican nominee! But I will reserve comment on that subject for the Pit.

I am presently living in Northeastern Brazil where the great majority of the residents are descendants of the slaves brought into the country to work in the sugar cane fields. At the present time my BF is on vacation in Portugal and the property here and I am being taken care of by a black man, his wife, his younger brother and the younger guy's girlfriend. There is totally no negativity toward those workers. They are taking good care of me and as I am 87 yers old, I need the help. One of the men, the younger brother is called Negão which is Brazilian Portuguese for 'Black Man' in other words Negro. I realize that term would have many negative sub-meanings in my native country (USA), but here it is an accepted term, a nickname for the young man. Because of the conditioning of my youth, I was greatly surprised at its acceptance, even by the youth himself. It still gives me a small start to hear a shout out across the pasture for him! Because my lap-top is of Portuguese manufacture, the keyboard even has keys with which I can spell such words as Negão, as well as linguiça (a Brazilian sausage) with the correct letters and accents. There is another symbol ^ which I have not yet learned to use, but I will ask my partner (who is Portuguese by birth) where it is to be used. These special symbols make my writing so much easier for a person of Portuguese birth to read and do not interfere with the use of the lap top for writing in English.

I am very much an un-snob. Because a man has skilled hands it is not a sign of a lack of intellect! It would be very normal that a person from the forests of Oregon would understand how to work with wood. Northern California, Oregon and Coastal Washington are Valhalla for a man who understands 'wood' (Ahem, in the tree-growing sense).

it seems to me that Maarten is often off the mark with his interpretations of character. Is this a result of his very Dutch background? I have a friend who is Dutch born and raised and has only moved out of Europe later in life. His current partner is very British and the agreements/disagreements between the two of them are legend. Even so they seem to be happy living together. Their lifestyle is most interesting to an American (me). It seems to be built upon friction, but they are very fond of one another!

I am constantly gob-smacked by the continuing high number of comments each chapter receives (29 fr this chapter). That demonstrates how interested all of your audience is in the story. Congratulations.