13th SYMPOSIUM, PASSAMAQUADDY - ADDENDUM

One of the benefits of the coming 23rd Century is relatively cheap, eco-friendly travel these days. We should all take pause to remember the very real climate crisis of the 21st Century, it seems so long ago. It had taken far too long to wean ourselves from things like internal combustion engines - jet travel was the worst. How we averted 'the tipping point' is beyond me, an historian.

Okay, we have a good size group here this morning. We might call ourselves the 'hard core'…. -laughter- those who cannot seem get Gilead out of our systems. I have colleagues at Cambridge in the psychological disciplines who perhaps could tell us why. Why we cannot look away, especially at some of the more horrendous subject matter we've covered.

Do you really want to know? -cries of 'No!'-

Okay, enough. Thank you so much for rejigging your travel arrangements, I see people here from all over. Hopefully we can do what remains in a more relaxed fashion - psychoanalyze ourselves through the lens of history.

REED MORANO'S VERSION OF GILEAD

Okay. I'll briefly summarize where we are, where we can expect to be at next year's 14th Colloquium.

History departments at universities have always been fascinated with that North American (Turtle Island), theonomic-fascist State called Gilead. Strangely, we know little about its beginnings as it began, but we know less and sometimes next to nothing about the course of its history. There is much we simply still do not know. Particularly about it's eventual decline and fall. A term which centuries ago used to be applied to the old North Korea, a former State now part of a unified Korean peninsula, Gilead earned the label as The Hermit State, among others.

None of our historical tools have been able to uncover everything. We've only scratched the surface.

It's why these colloquiums were so sparsely attended prior to 2195. Before then, Gilead studies was the province of eggheads like me. We had conferences like this in downtown cafés and bars.

Neither me nor Professor Knotley Wade knew it would explode, certainly not when we'd taken possession of the Handmaid's Tapes, us making critical decisions as to the order of historical events, outlined in disordered audio-tapes found in that footlocker in town here. It was by guess and by golly.

After the Tapes, the discipline of Gilead research was fully in gear, ready to receive the Ardua Hall Holographs, as well as Witness Statements 369 a & b, which for the past two weeks we've been studying. The Testaments could be compared to a 'context' in the manner in which the Tapes could not.

To conclude my summary - there is now also the Moss-Miller folios. Folio #5 is just now being parsed. Folios #1 thru #4 are now well known, with predictable debates breaking out as to the canonicity of various parts.

Unquestioned, is the role that Folio #1 of the Moss-Miller folios play. That is the folio which roughly corresponds most directly with the Handmaid's Tapes that Professor Wade and I are responsible for popularizing.

But in that first folio, are the Reed Morano segments. Scholarship has yet to discover why that 'name' is assigned to early segments - is it a person or a location, or an institution of some sort? If it is a 'name', it most certainly belonged to an early redactor of the Handmaid's Tapes material. Albeit that it outlined some material differently.

If the term 'Reed Morano' is not a name, then research is at even more of a loss than we'd imagined.

The Reed Morano, early version of Gilead is perhaps the reason why you and me, why Knotley Wade and Maryann Crescent Moon are so obsessed - obsessed enough to let our loved ones know that we'll be in Passamaquoddy for a few more, unscheduled days.

I'm sure we're all agreed, the Reed Morano version of things is the most consistent with the original Handmaid's Tapes, is most reflective of the actual, horrific reality faced by women in the earliest days of Gilead. The Reed Morano version of things is, for good or for ill, the standard by which 'canon' of subsequent folios can be judged.

THE DEALBREAKERS

More than a week ago, Maryann Crescent Moon very graciously gave up one of her lectures so that I could muse about what was then, the coming 5th Moss-Miller folio. Now that we know a bit of the history which that folio 'fills in', I need to make some comments about what I'd got either right, or more properly - what I'd got spectacularly wrong in my surmises.

So it is, I thank you for letting me talk. I assure you, it is only for now. I can see by the looks on your faces that you, too, have opinions about what you've heard so far - what you'd expected to be revealed in the 5th Moss-Miller account. I promise you, the majority of allotted time in this 13th Symposium addendum, will be for you.

But for now please allow me. More than a week ago, I proposed some 'dealbreakers' in assessing the historicity, as well as its status as 'canon' for this 5th folio.

How wrong I was.

ONE - June must choose. Not so much between Luke and Nick, but Ms. Osborne must choose between her family in Toronto vs. caving into the giant obsession for revenge, revenge that being a victim of Gilead had generated. This is where Gilead Studies needs to bring in parallel disciplines. Neither me, nor Professors Wade or Crescent Moon, none of us are experts in post-traumatic, victim behaviour.

The 5th folio is 'canon' in the sense that it seems to describe well a historical reality. It describes well the deep valleys of guilt, plus the great heights of euphoria that victims of ritualized abuse, victims of State-sponsored crimes experience. Absent any other 'find' to compete with the Miller-Moss revelations, one can only assume that the presentation of PTSD within the 5th folio is 'canon', in any meaningful sense of those words.

Using the vehicle of June Osborne, one feels drawn into the depths of horrific remembrance - that one could never approach as a person from a 'normal' background.

TWO - Whither Commander Blaine? Eye of God, Commander of Gilead. Commander within the military. Passing classified documents to June Osborne, and acting as-if Mayday himself. Who is Nick Blaine? His second marriage was a surprise, but fully in line with what little we know of Gilead from that period. Rose Blaine is the daughter of a powerful D.C. Commander. The folio hints that that D.C. Commander, Wharton, is a rival to Commander Kyle Mackenzie, who also happens to be the father of Agnes Mackenzie, June Osborne's and Luke Bankole's kidnapped daughter.

Much remains to be fleshed out about Nick Blaine. Rose Blaine knows about and seems to encourage Nick's efforts to 'help' June Osborne particicute Fred Waterford.

Nick Blaine is also the subject of recruitment of the American government-in-exile. This alone suggests that Nick was not totally embedded within Mayday, that he still needs guidance from Americans, a guidance he is so far eschewing. He still straddles Gilead and freedom, for what reason, I am not sure.

Who is Nick Blaine? So far, he's also seemed to have said his goodbyes to June Osborne.

THREE - Serena and her baby, and Serena's continuing relationship with Gilead. The current segments of the 5th folio are silent on the baby. So I'll move to the other revelation.

None of us in Gilead research had ever heard of, much less anticipated, a State Funeral for Fred Waterford, one in which Mrs. Waterford would risk returning to New Gilead. But the rest of the folio seems set for some aspects of what occupied Mrs. Waterford, she as an historical figure.

She avoided Handmaid's service in Gilead, and she avoided salvaging for her relationship with the overtly traitorous husband she was married to. Yet she seemed to have parlayed a return to 'influence' within Gilead, by setting up shoppe outside of Gilead. That part was unknown to scholars. All with the blessing of male Commanders, who regarded her presence in Canada to be advantageous, as long as they gave her a staff and a budget.

As well as protection. Return to Canada put Mrs. Waterford within arm's-reach of June Osborne. History records that Osborne was to survive for decades to come, history is so-far silent as to Mrs. Waterford's longevity, much less anything indicating she'd done anything of note in Toronto.

FOUR - Folio #5's historical consistency with events outlined in folios #2 through #4. The answer to that is a provisional 'yes'. Indeed, the revelation about impromptu Mayday camps, within Canada but along the border with Gilead, fills in much previously unknown mechanics of the way things like the Femaleroad worked.

FIVE - Consistency with the Ardua Hall Holographs, as well as Witness Statements 369 a & b, known collectively as The Testaments. Indeed, we are fortunate that this 13th Symposium has had as its main subject matter, a deep dive into The Testaments' historicity. We couldn't be fresher. So far, there is nothing within the 5th Folio that calls into question either its own canonicity, or the events reported within The Testaments.

WHAT NOW?

So, where are we? Please don't fret, I'm soon going to stop jawing. You'll get your promised turn.

At a simple human level, I presume many of you have lingered past the 13th Symposium's agenda, into this addendum because of a few things, a few things you yourselves wish to cover.

What will the outcome be of Hannah Bankole's entry into a school for the domestic arts? When it comes to events of The Testaments, it is assumed that she survived to be one of its authors. Variously styled as Hannah Bankole, Agnes Mackenzie, or Aunt Victoria…..

…... Hannah Bankole is credited with being one of the erectors of the statue to Becky Grove, a project she'd had with her half-sister Nichole. That project as post-Gilead.

WHITHER AUNT LYDIA?

As for Ardua Hall and Aunt Lydia, this 5th Folio seems to be fully in line with what we've spent the last two weeks talking about, The Testaments. Remember, The Testaments covers history perhaps 10 to 15 years subsequent to the timing of the 5th Folio.

At the end of Miller-Moss's 3rd Folio, it was unclear if Aunt Lydia could survive as an Aunt. Indeed, most of the 4th Folio chronicled her alienation from leadership - she had been 'put out to pasture' in the Aunt's retirement home.

By the 5th Folio, Miller-Moss described Aunt Lydia's restoration into leadership. Indeed, themselves going unmentioned in the 4th Folio, by the time of The Testaments the remaining Founder Aunts themselves are back in 'power'. So- the 5th Folio remains 'canon' with regards to Ardua Hall, at least for what we know is going to happen a decade later.

Also, remember that by the time of The Testaments, Aunt Lydia is actively betraying Gilead, through her 'microdot' program. Through her initiation of the escape from Gilead of June Osborne's daughters. My hope is that new finds in the Miller-Moss folios fill in much need 'backstory' to how Aunt Lydia got to a place of treason.

So it is, I open this addendum up to you. There is a coming 4th segment rumoured for this, the 5th Folio, unfortunately it will not be available until we're all back home.

Perhaps we need to start a new, written thread to describe things as they become known.