This paragraph is one that I cut from my former and maybe still current WiP, working title Passing:
Those saddlebags I had packed, which she was carrying along with me when shot, contained my still bloody sewing scissors, as no one had had the time to think of cleaning them. Smith had been overheard boasting that he could now use them to give his wretched hunting dogs a fresher sample of my scent, the better to hunt me and my friends down with as soon as he was authorized to do so, and this by his master, the Senator, not by the laws of any northern state. Had I thought to get rid of them, or at least to clean them, this, at least, would not be one more weapon that I had given to our enemies. What made it even worse was the fact that it might have been true even earlier. I wondered if it were possible for Smith to have hidden one of his special bloodhounds that the Senator had told me about, after that first time. He’d boasted of having paid for some special kind of surgery on the poor animal that rendered it incapable of barking, so that it could be used to search in utter silence, tracing its prey without giving away its presence, as dogs normally did. If that were so, then I realized with growing horror that Smith could be using that animal even now, to track us, or me, and with me, Anna,
for the reward that Charles Price must have on her, far more effectively if it had smelled my blood on those scissors.
Now, at least, I knew of one thing that I could do. I could dispose of those bloody scissors. I would have to consult with others who knew more than I as to whether the blood could effectively be cleaned off of them, or in what place and manner they could best be disposed of so as not to lead a trail directly back to myself, and with me, everyone else.
This paragraph was from page 234 to 235, out of a total of 311. There will more dead darlings assuredly.
It is based, obviously to those who were following my writing last year or so, on my earlier popular series here that was called Ann & Anna, which I used as the Act I for the rough draft and quick pass of a horrible First Draft of my new novel Passing, with some modification, of course. You can find out what the Rough First Draft looks like, if you wish, be requesting it in the comments. I still hope to finish shaping it into a proper novel, one day, but today is not that day, and it looks like this year is also not that year. As for the Omer, this year, today, Thursday May 16th, is Day 23rd Day of the Omer, and my non-traditional counting grid 
emphasizes public transportation, which Willow could not use in her escape, at least not up from the Federal City and through Maryland, but we shall see if that changes later, up North, and housing of course is crucial for everyone at all times, back in 1855, and in our time, today.
Shira
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. Today is all about how empathy and public transportation combine with each other, which is a difficult one for me, because I so often have been moved to tears on the approach to a metro station seeing all of the people lining the sidewalks at the entrances, suffering from want. Yet public transportation, when it is clean, efficient, and accessible, fills a vital public need, and can also in itself help build empathy if riders try. It also takes and in turn builds empathy to support improvements in the mass transit system. What do you think, Thoughtful Readers?
comes as a short post on financial self-defense in DC history, which is one of the pre-requisite bits of knowledge to be proven before one can show that one is a true Serving Adult, in the proposed Service Adulthood Challenge. This part of the three parts of self-defense (physical, financial and emotional self-defense), involves knowing your rights and responsibilities in your state or region, as well as in your nation of residence (and origin, if that nation, as often happens, has a claim on you, still). It also involves understanding our shared histories. This book, happily, has a good bit of DC history, even Black history, and a bit of Jewish DC as well.
in Bath, England, back in 2007 (yes, the same year that I 
from Balt. & all MD counties…
was also part of that category. No clear motif sprang immediately to mind for such exploitation, and that stymied my outlining for a while, so I went back to doing my family history research, seeking to find out if any of ‘those who stayed behind’ of the GU272 had been Halls, and if my furthest back traced Halls might be related to them. I have hit the famous Civil War 1870 census wall that many of us do, when tracing our ancestors, due to the lack of records kept prior to the war on enslaved persons. But a motif did emerge while looking at both my Porter side, free before the war as a dress maker, and my other side, my Manzilla ancestresses, who had also been free before the war: once my part of that side of the family fell into hardship, a great aunt of mine was hired out multiple times as a house servant, which fits the pattern of light-skinned poor women. So, it seemed reasonable to set one of my main characters in the house, doing something similar to dress-making. It turned out that there were enslaved weavers on plantations, including those four owned by the Jesuits in Maryland, so I made her one, which gave me a motif of loom weaving and even finger-weaving from reeds and grasses found locally. That allowed her husband to weave, in a way, as well. But it was still not really a motif.
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