morwens-cider

[morwens-cider]

it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.

it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.

i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.

in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?

i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.

except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.

my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.

during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.

something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.

something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.

[morwens-cider]

Reblog if your blog is boopable-safe so you can get all the (probably new) achievements. I don’t care about notes I just want boops

[morwens-cider]

‘Professional organizers and veteran activists have strategies for staying sane during a long fight. If you’re serious about sticking it out in the picket lines for the duration of the Trump presidency, you’re going to have to learn these strategies or else burn out in the first six months.’

[morwens-cider]

Moana Sing-Along

Goals:

Getting a group of people who don’t all know each other to relax and build trust

Laughter

Time: about 3-3 1/2 hours (2 for the movie, half an hour beforehand getting people settled in, time afterwards socializing.)

Ingredients:

1 copy of Moana (~$20 on Amazon Video right now)

1 TV, computer or screen

Seating: a couch, pillows for the floor, sleeping bags, whatever.

Some variety of: popcorn, soda, pizza (including vegetarian), booze, utensils for these

Steps:

Invite people. Try to make sure at least 2 are the sort willing to be silly and/or sing.

Secretly enlist at least 1 of those to definitely sing.

Set rules: once the movie starts, no phones (except to look up lyrics) and no politics/news. If people are going to need space to discuss the latest fuckery, make sure your event start time and movie start time have space between.

If providing food, set out cups/plates/napkins.

Make popcorn and/or take a headcount and order pizza.

Start movie.

Sing. This is the important one. It doesn’t make a difference if you sound like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. You + your enlistee are probably enough to get everyone else feeling safe enough to sing. Actually, I lied. It does make a difference if you sound like a dying duck in a thunderstorm: it makes everyone else feel even safer. You are not auditioning onstage. You are getting people you know and like to laugh and relax.

Bonus: play this 17 second clip at the end.

[morwens-cider]

Apply as necessary

Under a Trump administration many of us are going to hurt, get hurt or struggle, or find our existing struggles are made even more difficult. Many of us will need to protect ourselves; many others will need help, protection and solidarity from others.

We’ve created this survival guide – available as both an online version and a printable packet – to provide information that can help you take some initial steps to protect yourself and others, and to cope with the bad stuff as best anyone can. Unfortunately, it’s not going to magic all of the awful away. But it can help to reduce harms and, hopefully, help you and all of us get through this, and with our senses of self and humanity still intact and perhaps even improved through our own personal and political resistance.

Friends, we worked hard on this guide and we hope it helps you & those you care about. Please share with anyone who might find it helpful. Thanks to our illustrator Isabella Rotman for the lovely cover design! 

[morwens-cider]

The candle glow of Schadenfreude

Milo Yiannopoulos has been a thorn in my side since Gamergate. His diatribes against feminism and campus rape culture are a constant annoyance, he says whatever will get him attention, and he has profited off of rank bigotry, racism and xenophobia.

While his harassment of Leslie Jones wasn’t enough, nor his gratuitous transphobia, nor all the rest, he just stepped on the landmine that is the overblown conservative fear/mythos of gay pedophiles.

In addition...well, I can’t do better than Caitlín Rosberg on this:

Milo quit working at Breitbart today. Milo no longer has an employer in the US. Milo's here on a work visa.

*tea sip*

Milo is getting wrecked by the very forces of xenophobia and bigotry he promoted.

Is this petty? Yes. So? This is going to be a long few years. Stop and take the time to enjoy the irony of a Bannon sycophant’s downfall.

[morwens-cider]

Finding the Last Homely House

I'll pick many fights with Game of Thrones. But perhaps the one I have fewest supporters in is this: that there are no parties without disaster, no restful joy without hidden menace. George R.R. Martin is not alone here—I’ll charge N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy with the same, along with all our current fantasy and sci-fi that heaps urgency upon urgency, battle upon battle.  Trust, comfort, and community fall by the wayside.   

I’ll pick many fights with Lord of the Rings too. In a world where dwarves and hobbits and elves can befriend one another, there is no humanity for the “swarthy men,” the Easterlings and Southrons. The dwarves are Jewish caricatures mashed into Norse mythology. Yet look at the havens. We know one does not simply walk into Mordor. It is a slog, a marathon, an unending march for Frodo and Sam. But along that slog, Tom Bombadil and Goldberry welcome the hobbits into their house on the Withywindle; Elrond’s Rivendell gives laughter, music, healing, a safe haven for planning, and space to reforge the broken sword Narsil; Galadriel offers urgently-needed rest, repair, and reorientation to the Fellowship in Lothlorien. When Gandalf cures Theoden, Edoras’s Golden Hall becomes once more a meadhall of parties, the living core of the community.

Much has been made of Tolkien’s industrial hellscapes. Mordor’s volcanic wasteland and Saruman’s repurposing of Isengard into the factory-esque, treeless Orthanc are the ultimate evil. Tolkien writes a different bleakness and depression into social decay, imbues a particular horror in the grim, pre-revitalization Edoras. In Minas Tirith under Denethor’s hopelessness. In the lost capital Osgiliath.

In contrast, the Shire centers around the Green Dragon Inn for drink and merriment. The Inn literally shines light out into the darkness. Bilbo strikes up a party for his hundred and eleventh birthday with dancing, fireworks and food. Minas Tirith begins to rebloom and repair itself even in the most dire of times, once it has a functioning community again. Eowyn can host fellowship in the Golden Hall despite knowing that the world (and the hall itself!) remains precarious, despite her own grim thoughts—she knows, too, that those inside are themselves, are united once more, and need celebration.

We read histories of resistance, resilience and rebellion without asking how individuals found endurance. We barely look at the political roles of French women’s salons, gathering people for intellectual debate and progress, support, and networks. We keep the relatively recent role of bathhouses and queer spaces relegated to a queer-specific dynamic, forgetting why Stonewall was important in the first place. We have written out most of the rest as the history of either women or POC, un(der)valuing the social labor that enabled events and creations we prioritize. It’s unquantifiable, difficult to trace, and gendered.

But again, imagine the Fellowship without Rivendell, the “Last Homely House.” Frodo would not have healed from the Ringwraith’s blade, physically or psychically, enough to go on. The Fellowship would have hit Moria unrested after prior encounters with Ringwraiths, worn down even further and squabbling more, low on energy, provisions, and weapons. No widely multi-species party would have formed; remove Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir from the Fellowship, or replace a neophyte-hobbits-and-one-wizard cadre with a platoon of detached elves. A battalion of Boromir’s men. Gandalf alone. What would Thorin’s overwhelmingly dwarvish group from The Hobbit have accomplished with the Ring?

Imagine Dumbledore’s Army without the Room of Requirement, the jokes and the dances and the hammocks. Or the Order of the Phoenix with neither Grimmauld Place nor the Burrow. Harry, Hermione and Ron’s camping trip is dreary and unsustainable—Ron gives up and goes home. And then, once he’s recuperated, returns.

This first week of Trump’s administration I’ve watched my friends as their energy and well-being has drained away. We try to act, but are bombarded by too much to respond to. The battle is already costing lives via the assault on people’s mental health. We feel depressed, stressed, alone and hopeless. The stress causes very real deterioration of our health—an effect we are increasingly coming to recognize in those populations oppressed by racism. The emotional distress eats up energy and leaves inertia and fatigue. We would be close to tapping out were there only an acceptable way to do so.

Don’t. Make the Last Homely House. Find a space: a dorm room, a frat, someone’s home, a local cafe. Invite friends over. Set this up now, to have it established as a resource before vitally necessary. Create trust, warmth, laughter, and a network of support. Establish distributions of emotional labor and connections between disparate groups. Celebrate and share. We might manage without these spaces. But most of us will accomplish far more and stay in the fight far longer if we can form Fellowships in our Rivendells.