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 Memories of the Year in Review

2017: A year of palpable madness & a few little idiosyncrasies... 

About this time last year, people were asking if it was the worst year ever, and for good reason: the world was facing increasing uncertainties. Brexit - Britain's guilt-ridden vote to leave the European Union - was followed by the election of a rabble-rouser, Donald Trump, as U.S. president. In the Old Continent, two frightening phenomena - terrorism and populism - were on the rise. But 2016, as it turned out, wasn't the worst year ever, perhaps neither was 2017. 

António Guterres 

Trump's inauguration

The year began with the arrival on the world stage of António Guterres, a former Portuguese Prime Minister as the 9th Secretary-General of the United Nations. On 20th January, a Friday, Donald Trump took the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States. 

Trump with Flynn & Bannon

Twenty-three days later, his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, the first in a series of high-profile departures from the White House, resigned when it emerged he had lied about his contacts with Russian elements during the transition period. 

WH Counselor Kellyanne Conway

Other top figures ousted amid stormy days in the White House include Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, Communications Director, Antonio Scaramucci, Press Secretary, Sean Spicer,  and Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon. 

FBI Director, James Comey

These departures failed to calm things down in what appeared to be a dysfunctional White House, especially as the specter of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election continued to hang over Trump and his team. What was worse, FBI's unrelenting probe into the affair led to the sacking of FBI director, James Comey. 

Special Counsel, Robert Mueller

But the ouster, far from resolving the problem for Trump, resulted in the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller whose investigation seem poised to continue well into 2018. 

Theresa May

Meanwhile, in a Europe beset with an unwieldy immigration crisis and uncertainties over Brexit, two political leaders, Theresa May of Britain and Angela Merkel of Germany, were weakened by electoral misfortunes

Angela Merkel

But in France, there was a very different political reckoning. The emergence of Emmanuel Macron, a 40-year-old political neophyte with a new, untested political movement, annihilated France's scandal-tainted two-party establishment. In a year of rising populism, tensions were high and fear was rife. It was

Macron in a military vehicle up the Champs Élysées

a presidential campaign like none other in French history, and in a nail-biting finish, Macron defeated the populist candidate, Marine Le Pen to claim the presidency. 

2017 also brought the world closer to a nuclear conflict with North Korea's provocative test of ballistic missiles and the "war of words" between its leader, Kim Jong-Un and the U.S.

Kim Jong-Un of  North Korea

President, Donald Trump who nicknamed each other respectively, "Rocket Man" & "Dotard Trump." 

There were a number of heartbreaking celebrity deaths too, from Mary Tyler Moore who became a torchbearer for women with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," to Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame, to Ralphie May, Bill Paxton, Chuck Berry, Don Rickles, John Heard, and Roger

Moore, British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films, among others.

Celebrity deaths in 2017

Devastating hurricanes also struck, from Texas to  Florida, to Puerto Rico, causing upward of $290 billion in damage. Despite an outcry by scientists over the effects of human activity on the climate, the governing Republican Party in the United States continued to regard Climate Change as a hoax. And Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. 

San Francisco 49ers players 

Two hashtags - #TakeAKnee & #MeToo - which became powerful social movements against unjust killings of black men by the police and the sexual harassment of women,   made an impact, though, so far, only the latter has engineered a shift in social consciousness and caused the resignation of many influential politicians and public figures. 

In Africa, a former soccer

George Weah

superstar and the only African to have won the coveted FIFA Player of the Year, George Weah, was elected the 25th president of Liberia. And in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe who'd ruled the country for 37 years was ousted in the continent's most peaceful and camouflaged coup d'ètats. 

Another unexpected fall from grace, at least in the collective imagination of many around the world, was the Nobel Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi

Rohingya Moslems 

who, as leader of Myanmar presided over what the U.N. called a textbook case of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Moslems. 

2017 also saw the fall of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city captured by ISIS in 2014 where it declared a new Caliphate. The cost of liberation was high, nearly 40,000 civilians were said to have died in the fighting and about a million more displaced. In the Catalonia region of Spain, an unauthorized independence referendum

 Xi Jingpin

triggered a major political crisis that might haunt the country in the year to come. 

In the midst of all these, Chinese leader, Xi Jingpin, was named a "core leader" at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress which wrote "Xi Jingpin Thought" into the party's constitution, an honor previously bestowed only on Mao Zedong.

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle

On a lighter note, the year saw British singer, Adele, triumph at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards with an impressive five Grammy win. The royal family in Britain ended the year with a joyful piece of news when Prince Harry announced his engagement to American actress Meghan Markle. 


And...oh yes, 2017 was also the year of "The Great American Eclipse." 



   GOODBYE 2017!

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Anatomy of a Plot - Black Gold

Femi & Jessica!  

-------------------

A young, unassuming couple gets swept into international       intrigue by an           unscrupulous conglomerate

Lecture hall - Cà Foscari University,
Venice, where the couple met.

Black Gold was an interesting read. Cerebral at times, emotional too, but an accurate portrayal of life at all times! Themes that held me throughout the novel were:

Jessica Rhodes & Femi Adeola

    The interracial marriage—the joy of being free to choose, the pain of the disruption of relationships, of outgrowing one’s family, and of missing loved ones who no longer understand who you have become. The pain of knowing you cannot go back, that “Home” is no longer your home.

    The unsettling environment of “the first ‘real job,’” of being easy prey for the pawn movers, and knowing there is little you can do to protect or defend yourself.

The plot centers around how two brilliant but impulsive university students find each other from opposite sides of the globe, and how these naive “babes in the woods” navigate the treacherous waters of the corporate world while keeping their relationship intact. The pacing of the storyline fits with the topic—no slow slogging parts! 

A waterfront view of Lagos
where the blackmail scene is set

The characters—Kudos to the author, the characters walk off the page, from Femi and Jessica to the cigar-puffing corporate CEO, and the confused parents who grieved, watching their son walk away with his foreign bride.

The writing—I find the writing excellent. Sam is able to draw word pictures that make a reader “see” the image the author has in his mind. Although the reader might sometimes feel distanced from the action on the page, almost as if he were in the narrator’s head, now and then the author drops the reader right in the center of the emotion of the characters. For example, the scene depicting Femi’s shock when he realized the job he had was not the one he had signed up for—the moment he became aware of his precarious situation, the sudden realization of how unscrupulous his boss was, and how he could do nothing to stop the train he was on. That scene was palpable! The editing was also excellent—no typo distractions or grammar confusions. I appreciate a clean read.

Reviewed by
Carol A. Brown
Retired Educator | Midwest USA

                                             Movie Book Trailer - Black Gold

               

Rosie Amber  
Roses are Amber Book Club

“I like the trouble this interracial marriage caused when the couple met Femi’s parents and I enjoy the scenes set in Italy; the author’s knowledge of the country make them believable. He also puts his poetic ability to good use and there are lots of examples of this in the descriptive sections.” 

Venice - Home of Cà Foscari University

“Black Gold is chock-full of lyrical imagery and metaphors. Frequently, the result is beautiful.” 

- J.W. George | Author

“The language is flowery and evocative. Every scene, every setting, every action, every emotion, is described in luxurious detail, with perhaps more similes than I’ve ever encountered in a single novel.” 

– Dave Saari | Retired Aerospace Engineer

A Novelist with the Heart of a Poet

Augustine Sam - Journalist | Author | Poet

“Literature must be relevant to its times. It must be both timely and timeless. It must resonate with the people and the period in which it is set, and contribute to the discourse, political or otherwise, as well as put events in their proper historical and social contexts. It is my belief that fiction, used properly, can be a very effective vehicle for expounding on real-life issues. And they don't necessarily have to be politically correct.”

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Authors Byte

By Alicia Dean

Today’s Author Byte comes from Augustine Sam, author of Mystery/thriller, THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE 

📚 ~*~*~*~AUTHORS BYTE ~*~*~*~ 🔊

Fun Fact about The Conspiracy of Silence: It was inspired by a radio play Augustine wrote and starred in many years ago.

1) What’s your favorite childhood book? Your favorite grown-up book?

Augustine: My favorite childhood book was a novel titled “One-Eyed Sunday” (now out-of-print).
My favorite grown-up book is “The Collected Oscar Wilde.”

2) What’s your favorite line from a TV show, movie, song, or book? (Other than your own)

Augustine: My favorite line from a TV show is a declaration by Walter White in Breaking Bad: “I am not in danger, Skyler, I am the danger.”

3) What is your favorite quote?

Augustine: My favorite quote is Bertrand Russell’s: “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

4) If you could be a character in any of your books, who would you be and why?

Augustine: If I could, I’d be Bill in my debut novel, Take Back the Memory, because he had the unique chance of reuniting with his childhood crush, Paige who loved him in ways she couldn’t explain even to herself, since “love is a mystery, an indecipherable mystery.”

5) If you were going to be executed, what would you choose as your last meal?

Augustine: I’d forgo the last meal for a soothing, final smoke of my aromatic pipe.

Question: How far can you go to save your lover from a murder rap if your life/career is at stake?

About the book:

Sex scandals in high places… a depiction of the life-and-death struggle of a young female lawyer who goes to great lengths to outwit a diabolical trio with a very dark secret in order to save her lover from a murder rap.

Excerpt: 

On this particular night, there were no lovers necking by the fountain, but there was something else. A black diamond Cadillac was parked beside the fountain. The curiously unusual sight caused the dim figure’s hands to shake with excitement. Cars were not allowed that far into the park, so whatever fantasies within the limits of human accomplishment the Cadillac’s driver had conceived, this was the wrong night for it, he mused. This’ll be my last murder, he decided, the climax of a long, enterprising career as the greatest hitman of all time. He was a killer so efficient and so elusive that even the FBI nicknamed him Shadow of Death for his uncanny ability to dissolve into a penumbra after every hit.

He immediately recognized the wonderful head of hair and the slender, sensual neck as the lone occupant of the Cadillac appeared in silhouette against the fountain. Suddenly his pulse quickened. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and contemplated the lady’s mesmerizing beauty. It seemed odd to him now to think of her as a victim. He had loved her once; in fact, he still loved her. And therein lay the quandary—a lethal clash between his obsession and his survival instinct. The survival instinct, of course, must win, he told himself, for between them now stood the only thing that love could not subdue—a very dark secret.

Bio:

Augustine Sam is a journalist by profession, a novelist by choice, and a poet by chance. A bilingual writer and an award-winning poet, he writes not only hard news but literary works as well.

While pursuing hard news, he fell in love with poetry the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. He was the winner of the Editors’ Choice Award in the North America Open Poetry Contest & a Finalist in the International Book Award Gala. His poems have been published in international anthologies, including “Measures of the Heart” & “Sounds of Silence.”

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Tourist English

From AuthorSuite Travel Journal                                   

Outside a fuel station in Lagos

Google image

For many travelers, holiday fun doesn't end with the summer. The Fall is also a great season for vacation. So, whether you had a summer or a Fall vacation, now that you are back the question is: did you pick up something special during your travels, like souvenirs, foreign currency, or photos? Well, I picked up a non-tangible collectible which I'll call #TouristEnglish. You see, people in non-English speaking countries sometimes go out of their way to communicate with their English-speaking tourists.

Fall Reflection: Cincinnati Spring Grove Cemetery& Arboretum

Now, as part of the #AuthorSuite #HumorWeek, I'm sharing here a list of hilarious signs and expressions seen around the world: 

The Coliseum, Rome (Google image)

At a laundry in Rome:  LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME. 

At a doctor's office, Rome: SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES. 

Hotel brochure, Italy: THIS HOTEL IS RENOWNED FOR ITS PEACE AND SOLITUDE. IN FACT, CROWDS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD FLOCK HERE TO ENJOY ITS SOLITUDE.  

A giraffe at Nairobi National Park (Google image)

In a Nairobi restaurant:  CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

In a Pumwani maternity ward: NO CHILDREN ALLOWED.

A sign outside a cemetery: PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES.

A sign on the hand dryer in a restroom: DO NOT ACTIVATE WITH WET HANDS.

                                                                

A news item in an East African newspaper: A NEW SWIMMING POOL IS RAPIDLY TAKING SHAPE SINCE THE CONTRACTORS HAVE THROWN IN THE BULK OF THEIR WORKERS.

Mt. Fuji with fall colors in Japan (Google image)

Instruction on using a hotel air conditioner, Japan: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

In a Tokyo bar: SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Hotel service flyer, Japan: YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

Tokyo hotel's rules and regulations: GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING BEHAVIOURS IN BED.

St Moscow, Basil’s Cathedral (Google image)

Car rental brochure, Tokyo: WHEN PASSENGER ON FOOT HEAVE IN SIGHT, TOOTLE THE HORN. TRUMPET HIM MELODIOUSLY AT FIRST, BUT IF HE STILL OBSTACLES YOUR PASSAGE THEN TOOTLE HIM WITH VIGOUR.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery: 

YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Google image

An advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist: TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

Supermarket, Hong Kong: FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, WE RECOMMEND COURTEOUS, EFFICIENT SELF-SERVICE.

On the box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong: GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

Elephant-Parade, Thailand (Google image)

Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

Hotel room notice, Chiang Mai, Thailand: PLEASE DO NOT BRING SOLICITORS INTO YOUR ROOM.

In a Bangkok temple: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN EVEN A FOREIGNER IF DRESSED AS A MAN.

Bangkok, Thailand (Google image)

At a Budapest zoo: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Hotel lobby, Bucharest: THE LIFT IS BEING FIXED FOR THE NEXT DAY. DURING THAT TIME WE REGRET THAT YOU WILL BE UNBEARABLE. 

Google image

Tourist agency, Czech Republic: TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS. WE GUARANTEE NO MISCARRIAGES.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen: WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

Hotel, Zurich: BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest: IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OUR BLACK FOREST CAMPING SITE THAT PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH

EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Hotel, Vienna: IN CASE OF FIRE, DO YOUR UTMOST TO ALARM THE HOTEL PORTER.

Hotel, Bosnia: THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE IS THE JOB OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

On the menu of a Swiss restaurant: OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.

On an Athi River highway: TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.

Hotel, Acapulco: THE MANAGER HAS PERSONALLY PASSED ALL THE WATER SERVED HERE.

Cocktail lounge, Norway: LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

*** Do you have holiday stories to tell? Send it to: #AuthorSuiteStories

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