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And as a recovering grammar snob myself – please don’t start about how I opened this article with a dangling preposition; it’s still bothering me – I understand the knee-jerk reaction to improper usage and mechanics. I’m an editor, for God’s sake; I eat, sleep, and breathe correct comma placement. But there’s a difference between understanding standard grammar and demanding it, between believing there’s a time and a place for so-called “proper” English and ridiculing anyone who steps outside of what you deem “acceptable.” There’s a difference between appreciating language and being a snob. And the last place that we need grammar snobbery is in social justice movements. And not just because getting hung up on the correct use of homonyms or subject-predicate agreement is distracting to the job at hand, but also because purporting one form of English as elite is inherently oppressive. … As educated (and – okay – snarky) activists, we’re quick to respond to “According to the dictionary” arguments with “Who wrote the dictionary, though?” We understand that a reference guide created by a white supremacist, heteropatriarchal system does nothing but uphold that status quo. Similarly, we have to use that line of thinking when talking about the English language: Who created the rules? And who benefits from them? As per usual, what this comes down to is an issue of privilege (of course!). In fact, grammar snobbery comes down to an intersection of multiple privileges. Let me count the ways.

Why Grammar Snobbery Has No Place in the Movement

The whole thing is very much worth the read, but here’s a list of the privileges from the article that intersect with ideas of “correct” grammar: 

1. Educational Privilege  2. Class Privilege 3. Race Privilege 4. Native Language Privilege 5. Ability Privilege

Also relevant is the idea of literacy privilege. 

(via allthingslinguistic)

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thinking in your target language: coherent and eloquent sentences. you use every verb tense perfectly, the grammatical genders are all correct, and your intonation is like a native speaker’s.

actually speaking your target language:

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On Adulting

When I was a teenager, I thought I’d never be able to adult.

For a time, I even vowed that I would never fully adult.

But little by little, I began to adult.

In college, when I almost failed out from being unwilling to adult at all, I began making a schedule each week with reminders to adult. (This was key -- the reminders to adult.)

After I realized that I was, in fact, capable of adulting at least a little, I started to adult more and more things, like getting my oil changed, a part-time job, voting, and even taxes.

Soon I was adulting an internship. Then I was adulting an entry-level job. After that, I adulted a cross-country move for a better job.

Then came my adulting masterpiece: my wife. Falling in love and getting married was some massive adulting.

My wife and I spent several very fun years young-adulting in a big city. But after a few years of this co-adulting, we decided we’d earned a break from adulting. So for a little while, we adulted extra-hard, and then we stopped adulting, embarking on a decidedly non-adulting seven-month trip around the world. Let me tell you: It was really terrific to not adult for a while.

When we returned, we had to adult extra-hard again for a while. But before long, we made it back to our previous levels of adulthood and soon surpassed them. 

Then we did some of the most adulting you can do: We bought a house. And it needed a lot of work. 

Oh, did we adult then. We adulted so fucking hard. We adulted the hell out of this house for two years. Just hammered it. We did adult things to this house that I cannot in good conscience recommend to you.

But what can I say -- you only adult once.

That reminds me: Sometimes you can really adult too much. Take breaks from adulting. I highly recommend finding something other than adulting to do sometimes.

I’m sure your adulting experience will be very different. But maybe, one day, after all of this adulting, you’ll look around at your well-balanced, rewarding life like I did, and you’ll say:

“Hey, I’m an adult!”

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This is one of those videos you can’t watch without feeling as though the very fabric of reality is coming unraveled

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An anonymous story about grief and rage after the Ghost Ship fire

One day in early September, I was out for a run around Lake Merritt in Oakland, a route close to home that I’ve done hundreds of times. As I approached the northeast corner of the lake, I entered the colonnade of the beautiful Lake Merritt pergola: 

(All photos by me.)

Lake Merritt is shaped like a heart, which is fitting since it is the heart of everything Oakland. And the gateway to this beautiful estuary is the pergola. On weekends, a cacophony of exercise classes, drum circles, dance groups, slack-liners, acrobats, and passerby gawkers fill the plaza. The grass is layered with blankets hosting every kind of sun-soaked group of humans, from snuggling couples to family picnics to beer-soaked parties. But mornings are calmer. This is our time — time for 3.3-mile loops. 

That day, as I ran across the pergola’s central seal bearing a huge oak tree, I was stopped in my tracks by something new: writing. Lots of it. All over the pillars. Graffiti is common there, but it’s usually painted over quickly. This was something else. This was a story written in Sharpie, jumping from pillar to pillar to pillar. It’s a story about something heartbreaking that happened to the anonymous writer at the exact spot it was written on these pillars.

In December 2016, the Ghost Ship fire killed 36 people at a warehouse party in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. In the aftermath of that tragedy, the pergola served as a makeshift memorial to the victims, with dozens of photos, flowers, notes, and personal items. The candles burned for days. Some of the mementos stayed for months. 

Then, one day, they were gone. I always assumed the city had finally cleaned out the last ones. Apparently, I was wrong.

Here is the entire anonymous graffiti’d story — which is now painted over:

For months, I have felt uneasy. Each time I approach the pergola, its columns adorned with flowers and pictures, slogans, stones. Each time, It looks different. Things left. Things removed. Each time I brace myself for an unpredictable feeling: loss, pain, indifference, and delight. And now, at 6:52pm on a Tuesday, the water a deep blue, sunshine, joggers bounding through the lemony light — I round the corner, knowing I will again be tempted to glance at the faces of the fire victims: 36 portraits printed on identical paper squares lying face up on the concrete, between wilting petals and permanently undeliverable letters.

But this time I see hands.

Soft and brown, the hands gathered up the face cards in a single swoop. A woman in a large black backpack clutched them to her chest, piling on fistfuls of bouquets and beads and notes. Balancing all these, she turned towards the lake and threw them in: one. after. another.

I watched her hurling candles, and vases, and picture frames — dumping out flowers, flinging away memory stones, muttering to an audience of none, as joggers jogged by and cyclists sped home. Each one, pulled briefly into her orbit, slowed to see ... but no one stopped. No one asked. Perhaps they thought it was just an angry black woman. Someone with a plan they didn't understand. Maybe they would read the explanation in the paper tomorrow.

I wondered what the newspapers would say: Ghost Ship Memorial Sunk? Hate Crime Against Artists? Enraged Activist Divides Creative Community? I wondered if they would ever get it right. Just an angry black woman — and what if her anger was just? What if it was rage over the too-many people never memorialized because they were too poor, or too dark, or too far away from home?

I wanted to remind her that the Ghost Ship fire victims were black and white and Asian, like Oakland. They were from America, Germany, Korea. I wanted to remind her that their art, and love of art, was a single thread that united them.

I wanted to ask her what she was trying to destroy. How had she been hurt? Who was she trying to hurt? But when I approached, her face was clouded with an indecipherable expression. Her cloudy eyes seemed focused on something I could not see. So I did not speak. I simply watched.

"You can't stop me!" the perpetrator screamed at a white woman with cropped hair and cropped sleeves, who apologized and scurried away. "This is America and there should be no gays!" the angry woman spat after her. And I wanted to comfort them both, but had no words.

Madmen are like artists. They have their tropes and their variations, and they are not always consistent: "All the world are my children," the angry woman cried. "I feel great." "My head hurts." "Bruce Lee is my uncle." "We all make mistakes," she announced, "but we should never do violence to our children, and never do violence to our elders."

Then she lunged for a garland of tiny paper hearts and crushed them in her fist.

She pulled her hair, and widened her eyes, and flung her head from side to side. She curled her lips, revealing pink gums with no teeth: smooth and even like a baby. She staggered wearily towards the lake, and cast away the paper hearts, and then slid to the ground, pulling a drink from her backpack.

Now, I thought, she is calm. Safe enough that I could ask her to stop. Not to destroy anymore. Not to hurt anyone else.

But, glancing around, I realized there was nothing left but a pinecone, and a heart-shaped pebble, and her. And it was too late, and no words could help —

I had not noticed there was another silent witness until a man emerged. He had been watching from behind this column. And now he wheeled his bike over to stand with me. Looking mournful, he said ... something ... in Spanish? But for some reason I couldn't understand.

"What?" I peered closely at his square teeth and high cheekbones, focusing on the shape of every syllable.

"She desecrated a sanctuary," he replied, turning with disgust towards the woman, who squatted in a corner, now bereft of its garlands and photo-frames. "Desecrated a sanctuary!" he said even louder.

The woman looked up to meet his disapproving gaze. "Shut up!" she screamed, with a venom equal to his disapproval. "You're not even an American!"

"It doesn't matter," said the man, but she could not hear him, because he had tucked his head into his jacket, and was tugging his bike away.

I wanted to shout that it didn't matter. That by some moral measure, one silent witness was a more ethical citizen than all those passers by. And that by some other measure, we are all mourners, and all victims, and all neighbors.

But I did not think my words would help. So I did not speak.

And no one wrote anything in the newspaper...

...Later, of course, someone power-washed the last remaining petals from the corners of the pergola...

...and someone else scrawled "Fuck the Police" on the walls. Maybe they thought it was the police who did it. Or maybe those were the only words that came to mind. As for me...

I am still anxious each time I turn this corner, because I am waiting to see the flowers again, and I don't know if they will ever come back...

...but I have hope.

P.S. This is a story without blame. Like death, like life, like destiny, it is a story without logic. Madness needs no logic. Hatred needs no logic. Art needs no logic. Love needs no logic.

Dear Oakland — choose LOVE.

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Subtle brilliance. (via KFC, edgette22)

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Conservatives: Thrice divorced Kim Davis refusing to do her job and issue marriage licenses to LGBTQ people (because lol sanctity of marriage) was an acceptable form of protest, but anybody briefly taking a knee during the national anthem, to protest racism and police brutality, that’s offensive and unpatriotic.

Republicans are hypocrites without peer.

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Mr. Rogers once sued the Klan.

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エッジさんと他14人さんのツイート: “無賃乗車した柴犬、逮捕される https://t.co/KfHpxR1y0r”

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#there are two kinds of people #the hopeful and the exhausted

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The internet is fantastic. patreon.com/chrishallbeck

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I love this shitty right-wing meme for two reasons:

1) They think the movie is named after the year it took place in.

2) Spartans had a ludicrous amount of gay sex. It was encouraged by the commanders as a way of building unity. Newlywed Spartan wives shaved their heads and wore men’s clothing to make the transition to sex with women easier for their husbands. It was just that gay.