dandelion-network

[dandelion-network]

New Hyperfixation Dropped: Birding

That's right: birding. I've been wanting to spend more time outdoors and get involved in environmental-related activities and organizations. My lease was ending so I found a new neighborhood that does a lot of environmental justice work. Then a coworker of mine known for his vast knowledge on birds - a man who hosted many birdwalks and was active in the birding community - passed away suddenly. We weren't close by any means but in remembering how much I enjoyed going on the birdwalk he led, my brain figured 'hey that's a very good hobby to address the current need to touch grass'.

So here we are, suddenly obsessed with knowing about birds and observing them from afar. Here's some quick reviews for the first 2 birding books I've read so far:

Birding for a Better World By Molly Adams & Sydney Golden Anderson Star Rating: 3.75/5 This book reminded me of The Intersectional Environmentalist by Leah Thomas. You get the basics of the general topic of environmentalism, but this time birding, with the main focus being on how they have historically ignored or overshadowed the active participation and efforts made by marginalized individuals in these fields of study.

Adams and Anderson describe how The Feminist Bird Club was founded and its mission to create a welcoming space for marginalized folk to participant in nature and environmental activism. We get birding basics for sure but social justice really is the key component. It's no field guide but an important read to say the lest, so I respect its mission. I bought the book before reading it from the library and maybe if I had read before doing that, I might've not purchased it but I think it's a solid addition to my personal library at the end of the day.

The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America By Matt Kracht Star Rating: 2/5

This one on the other hand, I shouldn't have bought it before reading it from the library. It was on the same list as the first book as being highly recommended for beginner birders and I feel like I didn't learn shit. I mean there's a little educational information on each bird, sometimes. You get more substantial information in the end where Kracht discusses how to get started with birding but event then it's very brief. Many of the entries felt juvenile and maybe I took this too seriously, but I didn't really enjoy it at all. Really should've waited til after I read it before making the decision to buy it. I gotta stop buying before reading lol.

[dandelion-network]

So, it's been a while. I have kinda some reading updates that I'll get to in the next couple days. Been mia for a bit goin - what my friend calls it - full midwesterner in my interests, and I'll let yall define that amongst yallselves.

Additionally, I've been touchin a lot of grass but also operating in other Internet circles. But I'll try to be more attentive to this blog goin forward

[dandelion-network]

It's impressive how Neil Gaiman vanished from the internet. Wish Rowling would do the same.

[dandelion-network]

“Readers didn’t just become more efficient. They also became more attentive. To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to ‘lose oneself’ in the pages of a book, as we now say. Developing such mental discipline was not easy. The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness. Our predisposition is to shift our gaze, and hence our attention, from one object to another, to be aware of as much of what’s going on around us as possible….For most of history, the normal path of human thought was anything but linear.

To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought, one that demanded sustained unbroken attention to a single, static object. It required readers to place themselves at what T.S. Elio, in Four Quartets, would call ‘the still point of the turning world.’ They had to train their brains to ignore everything else going on around them, to resist the urge to let their focus skip from one sensory cue to another. They had to forge or strengthen the neural links needed to counter their instinctive distractedness, applying greater ‘top-down control’ over their attention…What was so remarkable about book reading was that the deep concentration was combined with highly active and efficient deciphering of text and interpretation of meaning. The reading of a sequence of printed pages was valuable not just for the knowledge readers acquired from the author’s words but for the way those words set off intellectual vibrations within their own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the prolonged, undistracted reading of a book, people made their own associations, drew their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas. They thought deeply as they read deeply.

…Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or a replenishing, of the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions. That was—and is—the essence of the unique mental process of deep reading.”

- from The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr

[dandelion-network]

favorite character from any media BUT it has to be a woman. in the tags now go (pls talk to me about your favorite fictional women pls pls pls pls)

[dandelion-network]

JOMP BPC || May 3 || Comic Books: A Wizard of Earthsea A Graphic Novel

[dandelion-network]

I've fallen off of reading because life happens and I've been working with a leftist organization since late February. Even though I have so much to read for work and leisure, I'm debating on coordinating a teach-in on Black political thought, to recreate a course I took in undergrad and put my degree to work. I don't know if I wanna do articles so that they're faster reads or focus on a full book. There's pros and cons to both, tho the articles would be easy to share since I still have the pdfs. But I might pull out Fanon's Black Skin White Masks since I read part of it before and can't remember much of it, who knows. Or maybe Black anarchism, which now that I think about it, my course didn't go over at all.

[dandelion-network]

The World, Off its Axis (portrait of the Director)

A piece based on Authority by Jeff Vandermeer, 2014

[dandelion-network]

Finished my book last night so I guess I’ll just stare longingly at my bookshelf until god reveals my next book to read to me through divine revelation

[dandelion-network]

this screenshot alone is enough to get me and my wife diagnosed i think

[dandelion-network]

Remember to also read books by Indigenous authors on this Earth Day and all year.

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do is Ask by Mary Siisip Geniusz

As Long as Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Iwígara by Enrique Salmón

Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez

The Red Deal by The Red Nation

Earth Keeper by N. Scott Momaday

Dwellings by Linda Hogan

Birding While Indian by Thomas C. Gannon

[dandelion-network]

Danez Smith, Don't Call Us Dead

[dandelion-network]

i hate when ppl act like the only reason to not like a "sad" ending is because you can't take it or whatever. personally as a tragedy enjoyer, i hate a poorly written ending. i hate an ending that is just kind of a bummer. i hate an ending that feels mean-spirited to the audience. i hate an ending that's redundant. i love a sad ending that is thematically consistent, poignant, and bespoke to the rest of its narrative.

[dandelion-network]

[dandelion-network]

My special edition of The Lies of Locke Lamora has finally arrived!

[dandelion-network]

so i hear tumblr's dying and this moby dick meme idea has lived in my head for literal years...

[dandelion-network]