#College of Southern Maryland

[agentfascinateur]

To protesting students:

SEIZE YOUR CENTURY

Push back against dark times ✊🏼

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

#freespeech #righttoprotest #endgenocide

[nasa]

5 Years, 8 Discoveries: NASA Exoplanet Explorer Sees Dancing Stars & a Star-Shredding Black Hole

This all-sky mosaic was constructed from 912 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) images. Prominent features include the Milky Way, a glowing arc that represents the bright central plane of our galaxy, and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – satellite galaxies of our own located, respectively, 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away. In the northern sky, look for the small, oblong shape of the Andromeda galaxy (M 31), the closest big spiral galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. The black regions are areas of sky that TESS didn’t image. Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (University of Maryland College Park)

On April 18, 2018, we launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, better known as TESS. It was designed to search for planets beyond our solar system – exoplanets – and to discover worlds for our James Webb Space Telescope, which launched three years later, to further explore. TESS images sections of sky, one hemisphere at a time. When we put all the images together, we get a great look at Earth’s sky!

In its five years in space, TESS has discovered 326 planets and more than 4,300 planet candidates. Along the way, the spacecraft has observed a plethora of other objects in space, including watching as a black hole devoured a star and seeing six stars dancing in space. Here are some notable results from TESS so far:

During its first five years in space, our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has discovered exoplanets and identified worlds that can be further explored by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

1. TESS’ first discovery was a world called Pi Mensae c. It orbits the star Pi Mensae, about 60 light-years away from Earth and visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere. This discovery kicked off NASA's new era of planet hunting.

2. Studying planets often helps us learn about stars too! Data from TESS & Spitzer helped scientists detect a planet around the young, flaring star AU Mic, providing a unique way to study how planets form, evolve, and interact with active stars.

Located less than 32 light-years from Earth, AU Microscopii is among the youngest planetary systems ever observed by astronomers, and its star throws vicious temper tantrums. This devilish young system holds planet AU Mic b captive inside a looming disk of ghostly dust and ceaselessly torments it with deadly blasts of X-rays and other radiation, thwarting any chance of life… as we know it! Beware! There is no escaping the stellar fury of this system. The monstrous flares of AU Mic will have you begging for eternal darkness. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

3. In addition to finding exoplanets on its own, TESS serves as a pathfinder for the James Webb Space Telescope. TESS discovered the rocky world LHS 3844 b, but Webb will tell us more about its composition. Our telescopes, much like our scientists, work together.

4. Though TESS may be a planet-hunter, it also helps us study black holes! In 2019, TESS saw a ‘‘tidal disruption event,’’ otherwise known as a black hole shredding a star.

When a star strays too close to a black hole, intense tides break it apart into a stream of gas. The tail of the stream escapes the system, while the rest of it swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

5. In 2020, TESS discovered its first Earth-size world in the habitable zone of its star – the distance from a star at which liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Earlier this year, a second rocky planet was discovered in the system.

You can see the exoplanets that orbit the star TOI 700 moving within two marked habitable zones, a conservative habitable zone, and an optimistic habitable zone. Planet d orbits within the conservative habitable zone, while planet e moves within an optimistic habitable zone, the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

6. Astronomers used TESS to find a six-star system where all stars undergo eclipses. Three binary pairs orbit each other, and, in turn, the pairs are engaged in an elaborate gravitational dance in a cosmic ballroom 1,900 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.

7. Thanks to TESS, we learned that Delta Scuti stars pulse to the beat of their own drummer. Most seem to oscillate randomly, but we now know HD 31901 taps out a beat that merges 55 pulsation patterns.

Sound waves bouncing around inside a star cause it to expand and contract, which results in detectable brightness changes. This animation depicts one type of Delta Scuti pulsation — called a radial mode — that is driven by waves (blue arrows) traveling between the star's core and surface. In reality, a star may pulsate in many different modes, creating complicated patterns that enable scientists to learn about its interior. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

8. Last is a galaxy that flares like clockwork! With TESS and Swift, astronomers identified the most predictably and frequently flaring active galaxy yet. ASASSN-14ko, which is 570 million light-years away, brightens every 114 days!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[jloisse]

🔴Campus protests across the U.S. since April 17

Brown University

California State Polytechnic University

City University of New York

Columbia University

Emerson College

Emory University

Florida International Universit

Florida State University

George Washington University

Harvard University

Indiana University

New York University

Northeastern University

Northwestern University

Ohio State University

Princeton University

Rice University

Texas A&M

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Michigan State University

New School - New York, NY

University of Michigan

Tufts University

University of Arizona

University of California at Berkeley

University of Maryland

University of Miami

University of Minnesota

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of Pittsburgh

University of Rochester

University of Southern California

University of Texas, Austin

University of Texas at Dallas

Vanderbilt University

Yale university

[fiapple]

“Woodland’s aunt added that the teen started transitioning after she and her three siblings lost their mom. ‘She got the courage to start living in her truth and started her transition, which her family accepted with open arms,’ the GoFundMe reads. ‘For the years that god gave us her, she was a joy and made sure everyone she was around knew that they were loved.’

According to PGH Lesbians, Woodland studied at the College of Southern Maryland, and her social media was filled with ‘pop culture images, a lot of food and recipes, attractive shoes, and images of what she aspired for her home.’

‘She was a very real typical teenager who had a job that she described as boring, but still she went,’ the blog reads. ‘She had hopes, ambitions, dreams. She celebrated her accomplishments and triumphs. All things she deserved, things ripped away from her by gun violence and the transphobia and misogynoir that permeates our society.’ ”

[ninyard]

The Scriptures aka towning according to nin. (subject to change)

can’t do this without acknowledging the descriptions of them by @rekikiri which are just perfect plus some more stuff on them here and this wonderful background by @tara-the-star

(I owe everyone like a million socmed posts just for putting up with my shit re: this. enjoy!)

austin michael browning

- southern boy. has a soft southern accent. i was thinking something like southern georgia, but his parents have a stronger accent than he does. he didn't want to be known as the sweet darlin' southern boy when he moved to virginia for his FBI training, so he tried his best to speak a bit more neutral

- it didn't last long

- 6’2, soft brown hair, beautiful brown eyes. he’s covered in freckles and has the most gorgeous warm skin with some terrible tan lines. when he tans, he tans.

- he’s quite built but you can only tell when he takes off his suit jacket or he’s wearing just a shirt/t-shirt. if he could’ve gotten an a+ on the fbi fitness test he would’ve. he’s incredibly strong and goes to the gym most mornings (at like 6am. he’s a real early bird)

- has a bachelors degree in law/criminal justice

- was a detective for two years in georgia until he went to quantico. worked on criminal intelligence cases, but occasionally worked on juvenile crime cases. he had one particularly difficult case involving both departments (organised crime involving a minor) which inspired him to work for the FBI.

- has four siblings. he's the middle child with two older sisters and two younger sisters.

- he’s a somalier without being a somalier. literally knows anything and everything about wine. always has the right bottle of wine for any occasion or meal. recommending wines and opening his favourite wines is his love language.

- his family live by strict traditional values - two of his sisters were married by the time they were 22, and the other two followed suit at 21 and 23. he has a couple of nieces and nephews that he doesn’t get to see too often but he’s their fun uncle. he had a lot of pressure to find a nice girl and settle down, and always brushed off the girlfriend question (he even made up a fake girlfriend when he was in college, just to get his parents off his back) ((they didn’t “date” for very long))

- his dad worked on a farm his whole life and his momma has always been a housewife. his sisters were the only ones his mom taught to cook and clean. he had to teach himself a lot of life skills in college. he still occasionally ruins his clothes by washing them wrong but he’s learned to get his work suits dry cleaned. it’s much cheaper to do that than have to get new ones when he inevitably shrinks them.

- his mom never teaches him how to cook/bake, but she gives him a handwritten book of recipes when he moves to maryland for work. it sits on a shelf in the kitchen of his apartment but he’s never used it

- (until towns visits his apartment for the first time and tells him that he has to make him some of his ‘momma’s recipes’ someday. browning falls in love, naturally, and tries a couple dishes and treats)

- he didn’t really know or acknowledge that he was gay until he was in college. he’d had a few “girlfriends” here and there in highschool but he always felt like he was forcing himself into liking them. he kissed a boy for the first time when he was 19, and everything made sense for him, but even still he buried it down quite deep and focused on his studies instead of relationships.

- his family are not accepting at all. He grew up around a lot of homophobia and slurs and disrespect of lgbt+ people, and so that made it really hard for him to come to terms with his sexuality. he started to distance himself from them when he went to college, and the weekly phone calls with his mom turned to once a fortnight, into once or twice a month, into whenever she eventually didn’t take no for an answer and kept calling until he picked up.

- the only person who knew that he was gay was his oldest sister, who he came out to when he was in the third year of his degree. she was honest and told him that their mom and dad wouldn’t be supportive of him, but she wasn’t going to tell them either.

- she always changed the topic when the “girlfriend” conversation came up when he would go home for thanksgiving or Christmas or some other occasion. he appreciated that a lot

- started smoking cigarettes in college and struggled to give it up. he barely smokes anymore but every now and again on a tough case he finds himself reaching for a packet of cigarettes (towns hates it)

samuel arthur towns

- new york new yooorkkk. he was born somewhere in new york that i haven't figured out yet.

- 5’11, mixed with a white dad and a black mom. he wears glasses. he’s not as big or strong as austin is, but he’s in really good shape. he has gorgeous dark brown eyes and spends way too much time on his hair.

- has a tattoo on his thigh.

- he’s an only child to his absolutely amazing mother and father. they’re SO supportive of him and have always trusted him to make good choices in life - he tells his mom everything. he calls her almost every other day and visits home as often as possible.

- has a double bachelors degree in psychology and law from Columbia

- was a backliner on his high school exy team but never had any intentions of becoming an athlete/going pro. he was a TOTAL jock back then

- when he graduated college he pretty quickly knew he wanted to do something good that wasn’t necessarily becoming a cop. he waited until he turned 23 and on the day he finished his two years of working in an attorney’s office, he applied for a job with the fbi

- came out as gay pretty young. his parents have always been fairly liberal (his mom was a hippie back in the day) so he came out as a teenager and they’ve always been cool with it

- right when he was in the middle of his FBI training in quantico, he was dumped by the man he’d been dating for like two years. he had to put it to the back of his mind to focus on the academy, but it was one of the things that made him and austin first start speaking

- he’s kept journals since he was a kid. he has a full shelf of journals and sketchbooks from the age he was 10 or 11 until the present. he always carries a little black notebook with him and writes down his thoughts and little sketches. (its full of doodles of browning)

- his parents also have books and boxes full of photos of him from birth. it’s like an INSANE number of photos. their attic is just full of boxes and boxes of pictures. (austin’s favourite is one they have on the wall in the living room of sammy as a teenager in his exy gear)

- in turn he’s really into photography too and always takes photos. he shoots on film, so he has loads of boxes full of photos too. his dream is to have a dark room in his home.

- his mom really is his best friend. she’s his biggest fan, and the reason he studied psychology. she’s a holistic therapist, and gives the BEST advice. his dad is a food critic.

- when he was younger a friend of his was killed after because he became involved with the wrong people and ended up in a gang. it totally changed a lot for him, and seeing the way the case was handled really inspired him to get into law/want to go into the fbi. he saw all these young black boys from underfunded and underprivileged backgrounds finding themselves caught up in gangs and when things would happen to them - it was clear the effort to stop the feuds and the violence was not as important as if a young white man had been killed, or indoctrinated because he had no choice.

- his mom was worried when he told her that he’d applied to be in the fbi. they had a very long conversation about the realities of what he would see working with the fbi, why he wanted to do it, what it would mean for his future, and the things he couldn’t do. he knew all of it already, having researched it all as soon as he realised it was the career path he wanted to go down, but she really wanted to be sure he knew what he was getting himself into. it scared him, for a little bit, but he knew it was the right choice for him.

- he has a license, but doesn’t drive that much. he didn’t really need to drive much living in new york, and 90% of the time, in maryland, austin drives him around.

- he’s partially deaf in one ear from a crash that happened during a car chase a few years into working with the fbi.

- the hardest part about working where he does was learning how to shoot a gun. he hates it. like he’s good at it and smart with it but he hates having a gun. the first time he shot a real person he held it together until he got home later and was practically in shock. (he wasn’t sure if telling his mom broke confidentiality or not, so because he was on the case with austin, he invited him over and he ended up staying the night just to keep him company)

- austin and sam only lived in seperate apartments for about six months when they moved to maryland until they decided to move in together. austin was already renting a two bedroom apartment, whereas sam was in a studio, and it just made more financial sense for them to move in together. ("financial")

- he started crushing on austin so early on in their friendship, but he had no idea that austin was pretty much the same.

- austin and sam met when they both started their training in quantico together. they were roommates at the academy but didn’t really interact too much. they only really started talking after one of the first weekends they were allowed to leave the campus - towns went home to visit his boyfriend on the Friday and came back trying to hide the fact he was a wreck on Sunday. he tried not to talk about it, because they’re judging their emotional maturity in the academy, but when browning asked if he was okay, he spilled a little too much.

- even after that, they weren’t really friends. they talked, of course, about their classes and the academy itself, but that was mostly it. towns didn’t know browning was gay, because he never mentioned it, even when towns told him he was gay. most evenings austin would sit at his desk with headphones on while studying, and sammy wouldn’t usually interrupt.

- then one time when they’re both at the gym at the same time, austin notices sam working out, and his form isn’t quite right for the work out he’s doing. austin corrects him after telling him he’ll hurt himself working out the way that he is, and he helps him through a couple of other sets that he does himself. they go to the gym together most days after that, spotting each other when they’re doing weights. they start running in the mornings, too.

- during the course of training there’s a couple of occasions where students at the academy are expected to wear business attire. they’re both getting dressed up in their suits, and austin is kind of embarrassed because he doesn’t really know how to properly tie a tie. his dad usually tied them for him, and for some reason even though he swore he knew how to do it, he’s just really struggling. sam offers to help and austin ends up talking a little bit about his family, but not giving away anything about how shitty they really are.

- one of the weekends they’re allowed off campus, later on at their time in training, towns asks browning if he wants to go out for dinner and a drink. it’s not a date, and neither of them think it is, but neither of them were going home for the weekend and they both wanted to do something. austin ends up picking a restaurant based off their wine list, and they talk about their lives outside of quantico for a little bit. they can’t exactly go out and get drunk - or they’re both afraid to do so in case they get kicked out of the academy - but they sit and talk and share a bottle of wine.

- they get closer, and when they graduate, towns’ mom and dad show up, and browning’s family doesn’t. they take pictures together (one of towns’ favourite photos ever) and sam introduces austin to his mom and dad. they’re going out for a celebratory meal, and sam’s dad invites austin along so he’s not celebrating by himself. he refuses, but when they insist, he comes along.

- oh and it’s SUCH a nice evening. he fills any rare awkward silence by explaining his wine choice to sammy’s dad, while sam’s mom nudges her son and raises her eyebrows like oh, he’s cute.

- they exchange phone numbers before they both head home to wait for their offers.

- (austin spent most of those 18 weeks smiling because of how close him and sam got. sam spent about half of that time thinking damn. am I falling for another straight guy?)

- austin calls sam first the day they find out where they’re being stationed. they tell each other on 3 that they’ve both been stationed in maryland and oh my god. Austin didn’t even know he was going to feel so relieved but he’s like holy shit. I didn’t even realise i was secretly really hoping that we were going to work together.

(there’s more but. I have to stop myself. The brain rot is setting in deeper and deeper)

[specialagentartemis]

Public Domain Black History Books

For the day Frederick Douglass celebrated as his birthday (February 14, Douglass Day, and the reason February is Black History Month), here's a selection of historical books by Black authors covering various aspects of Black history (mostly in the US) that you can download For Free, Legally And Easily!

Slave Narratives

This comprised a hugely influential genre of Black writing throughout the 1800s - memoirs of people born (or kidnapped) into slavery, their experiences, and their escapes. These were often published to fuel the abolitionist movement against slavery in the 1820s-1860s and are graphic and uncompromising about the horrors of slavery, the redemptive power of literacy, and the importance of abolitionist support.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - 1845 - one of the most iconic autobiographies of the 1800s, covering his early life when he was enslaved in Maryland, and his escape to Massachusetts where he became a leading figure in the abolition movement.

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft - 1860 - the memoir of a married couple's escape from slavery in Georgia, to Philadelphia and eventually to England. Ellen Craft was half-white, the child of her enslaver, but she could pass as white, and she posed as her husband William's owner to get them both out of the slave states. Harrowing, tense, and eminently readable - I honestly think Part 1 should be assigned reading in every American high school in the antebellum unit.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs writing under the name Linda Brent - 1861 - writing specifically to reach white women and arguing for the need for sisterhood and solidarity between white and Black women, Jacobs writes of her childhood in slavery and how terrible it was for women and mothers even under supposedly "nice" masters including supposedly "nice" white women.

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - 1853 - Born a free Black man in New York, Northup was kidnapped into slavery as an adult and sold south to Louisiana. This memoir of the brutality he endured was the basis of the 2013 Oscar-winning movie.

Early 1900s Black Life and Philosophy

Slavery is of course not the only aspect of Black history, and writers in the late 1800s and early 1900s had their own concerns, experiences, and perspectives on what it meant to be Black.

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington - 1901 - an autobiography of one of the most prominent African-American leaders and educators in the late 1800s/early 1900s, about his experiences both learning and teaching, and the power and importance of equal education. Race relations in the Reconstruction era Southern US are a major concern, and his hope that education and equal dignity could lead to mutual respect has... a long way to go still.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois - 1903 - an iconic work of sociology and advocacy about the African-American experience as a people, class, and community. We read selections from this in Anthropology Theory but I think it should be more widely read than just assigned in college classes.

Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois - 1920 - collected essays and poems on race, religion, gender, politics, and society.

A Negro Explorer at the North Pole by Matthew Henson - 1908 - Black history doesn't have to be about racism. Matthew Henson was a sailor and explorer and was the longtime companion and expedition partner of Robert Peary. This is his adventure-memoir of the expedition that reached the North Pole. (Though his descriptions of the Indigenous Greenlandic Inuit people are... really paternalistic in uncomfortable ways even when he's trying to be supportive.)

Poetry

Standard Ebooks also compiles poetry collections, and here are some by Black authors.

Langston Hughes - 1920s - probably the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance.

James Weldon Johnson - early 1900s through 1920s - tends to be in a more traditionalist style than Hughes, and he preferred the term for the 1920s proliferation of African-American art "the flowering of Negro literature."

Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis - 1830s - a Black abolitionist poet, this is more of a chapbook of her work that was published in newspapers than a full book collection. There are very common early-1800s poetry themes of love, family, religion, and nostalgia, but overwhelmingly her topic was abolition and anti-slavery, appealing to a shared womanhood.

Science Fiction

This is Black history to me - Samuel Delany's first published novel, The Jewels of Aptor, a sci-fi adventure from the early 60s that encapsulates a lot of early 60s thoughts and anxieties. New agey religion, forgotten technology mistaken for magic, psychic powers, nuclear war, post-nuclear society that feels more like a fantasy kingdom than a sci-fi world until they sail for the island that still has all the high tech that no one really knows how to use... it's a quick and entertaining read.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

𝑨𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 Harry and Meghan were 𝑵𝑶𝑻 amongst the lineup of celebrity commencement speakers this year by u/SeptiemeSens

🎓𝑨𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, Harry and Meghan were *𝑵𝑶𝑻* amongst the lineup of celebrity commencement speakers this year 🎓 Dear Sinners,Another graduation season has come and gone 🎓 And once again, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were missing from the lineup of notable 2024 commencement speakers. If I remember correctly, the only so-called "graduation speech" Meghan has given was this bizarre unsolicited "graduation speech" she released to the media in 2020 👀Here's a list of some of H&M's "famous friends" who have given commencement speeches over the years. These are individuals who have participated in ARO, Archetypes, and/or 40x40:📌ARO:John Legend (singer, songwriter, producer, EGOT winner) - Loyola Marymount University, 2024. John has given many commencement speeches over the years and is also the recipient of three (3) honorary doctorate degrees as well. His wife and ARO jam recipient, Chrissy Teigen however, has not given any commencement speeches nor received any honorary degreesMindy Kaling (actress & comedian) - Dartmouth University, 2018Tracee Ellis Ross (actress, daughter of Diana Ross) - Spelman College, 2023source 1 // source 2📌Archetypes podcast guests:Mindy Kaling (actress & comedian) - Dartmouth University, 2018Mellody Hobson (President and co-CEO of $14.9B Ariel Investments, Chairwoman of Starbucks Corporation, wife of George Lucas) - University of Southern California, 2015Serena Williams 🏆- Graduating Class of 2020Trevor Noah (S. African comedian) - Princeton University, 2021source)📌 40x40 Participants:Deepak Chopra (author and alternative medicine advocate) - University of Southern California, 2017Hillary Clinton (politician, wife of former US President Bill Clinton) - At age 21, Hillary famous delivered her Wellesley 1969 commencement speech. She returned to her alma mater in 2017 to deliver another commencement speechKatie Couric (journalist) - UMass Medical School, 2017 most recently. Katie has given many commencement speeches over the yearsKerry Washington (actress) - George Washington University, 2013. Kerry also received an honorary Doctorate degreesource 1 // source 2 // source 3📌 Friends:Ellen DeGeneres - Tulane University, 2009Gayle King - University of Maryland, 2023Gloria Steinem - M's bestie "Glo" has given many commencement speeches over the decades. Perhaps her most famous was at Tufts University, 1987Oprah Winfrey - Oprah has given dozens of commencement speeches and has also received numerous honorary degrees over the decades📌 Bonus:Actress Kathryn Hahn - As an interesting comparison to Meghan: Kathryn is an respected and accomplished actress, you may recognize her from Parks & Recreation, WandaVision, and Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse (IMDb). TIL that like Meghan, Kathryn is a Northwestern alumni. This year, Kathryn gave the commencement speech at Northwestern University. Northwestern also gave Kathryn, along with three other accomplished alumni [*not* named Meghan Markle], honorary Doctor of Arts degrees👉 Why hasn't Northwestern invited Meghan Markle to give a commencement speech?👉 Why hasn't Northwestern given Meghan Markle an honorary degree? 📌 Notes:In 2020, H&M signed with the esteemed NY-based Harry Walker Agency. Here is Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex's profile page. (I could not find a profile page for Harry.) This is the same high powered agency that also represents the Clintons, the Obamas, John Legend, and many others for speaking engagements. At the time, it was widely reported that H&M could charge up to $1M per speech!🤑 Where did all of H&M's dream$ of making million$ of dollar$ by giving word $alad $peeche$ go? 🤑 post link: https://ift.tt/PytGmjV author: SeptiemeSens submitted: July 03, 2024 at 02:35PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[bloodandhedonism]

RAPID-FIRE QUICK OPINIONS OF CITIES I'VE BEEN TO IN RECENT HISTORY

Rochester, New York (and other upstate NY cities in general) : Feels generic, but perhaps not necessarily in a bad way in this case. A resident said it's rare to see and live a place where kids still play in the front yard these days, so take as you will. New York, New York: What you'd expect these days. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Lots of industrial traffic as you'd expect, but cute town and good people. I made multiple and different kinds of friends here, which I consider very good for this sort of thing. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Homey. Don't go too far west, though or you'll run into Pennsylvanians. Remember James Carville! Baltimore, Maryland: Cutesy, gives vibes of home. Funny to see products from businesses by people I grew up with in places there. Washington, DC: It really does try to be a commercial with everyone perfectly chosen from central casting. Bad vibes, avoid, avoid. Get out if you live there. Imperial capital though, what does one expect. Norfolk, Virginia: Military city as you'd expect, and by far the most "Southern" feeling city in this list. Interesting contrast between the attempted beachiness and the dominating military stuff. St. Augustine, Florida: The best city in Florida by far, but losing its soul over the years and I'm very worried. Flagler College students will be window dressing for the upscale middle-aged tourists coming there. Tampa, Florida: Genuinely horrible. Worst city on this list, one huge slum posing as a 'regular' city. Unfriendly people. Telling every other billboard is for a lawyer promising to get you big money. Bad sign of the future. Orlando, Florida: Better than Tampa I suppose, but leaning way too hard into being Red State America's family vacation Mecca, which will lead to issues for it in the future. This city isn't for me. Denver, Colorado: People there like me, at least one person recognized my face from before, and mountains are cool. Las Vegas, Nevada: Very middlebrow, which I don't say as a compliment. Seeing middle aged people in cosplay out in public in non-convention contexts was embarrassing. Only interesting bit was seeing where Balrog's Street Fighter II stage was IRL. Reykjavik, Iceland: Neat place. Felt like the USA but cold and barren, of course. Icelandics are a unique people, and a small part of me almost wants to classify Iceland with North America than Europe since the society just feels different from regular Europe. I always thought it was worth noting the tectonic plate cleaves through the island. London, England: Honest with itself in that it's big, very big, and touristy too, which for said honesty reasons I respect it. I liked it. British people really are the Americans of Europe. I shouldn't, but I like the UK. I will visit the midlands soon, so I hope to see a fun contrast. Brussels, Belgium: Also an honest city, in this case in that it's a transnational confederal capital for a lot of places. Mons, Belgium: Lovely. Friendly and great people. Taking the train to it and seeing the scenes of rural life reminded me of the countryside I'd see back home. Paris, France: Genuinely lovely, and my favorite city of this list. More cities should be like Paris. I didn't see or deal with any of the bad stuff I heard about it. Friendly people. I need to go back here. Frankfurt, Germany: Definitely generic. Lisbon, Portugal: Touristy because it's warm and honest with itself about it in that case, which is also fine. I like warm weather so I liked Lisbon. Warsaw, Poland: Likable. Quite a nice city, and Poles are a very welcoming people. (Be proud of your country, @aomitois.) A friendliness emanated from the city which I liked. Has an optimism which I find intriguing. Budapest, Hungary: Strangely, I was reminded most of Salisbury, Maryland with this one: there was an odd familiarity driving and walking through the city. Like with Warsaw, it's legitimately trying hard, but that makes sense for Eastern Europe in this era.

I'm sure there's more cities that can go on here, probably a lot more, but this is off the top of my head and the entry is big enough as is. COMING SOON: The Middle East and East Asia! Maybe Latin America. Africa is more likely than Australia. Watch as I wind up in Antarctica for some dumb reason.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA's mini BurstCube mission detects mega blast

The shoebox-sized BurstCube satellite has observed its first gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion in the universe, according to a recent analysis of observations collected over the last several months.

“We’re excited to collect science data,” said Sean Semper, BurstCube’s lead engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s an important milestone for the team and for the many early career engineers and scientists that have been part of the mission.”

The event, called GRB 240629A, occurred on June 29 in the southern constellation Microscopium. The team announced the discovery in a GCN (General Coordinates Network) circular on August 29.

BurstCube deployed into orbit April 18 from the International Space Station, following a March 21 launch.

The mission was designed to detect, locate, and study short gamma-ray bursts, brief flashes of high-energy light created when superdense objects like neutron stars collide. These collisions also produce heavy elements like gold and iodine, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. 

BurstCube is the first CubeSat to use NASA’s TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) system, a constellation of specialized communications spacecraft. Data relayed by TDRS (pronounced “tee-driss”) help coordinate rapid follow-up measurements by other observatories in space and on the ground through NASA’s GCN.

BurstCube also regularly beams data back to Earth using the Direct to Earth system — both it and TDRS are part of NASA’s Near Space Network.

After BurstCube deployed from the space station, the team discovered that one of the two solar panels failed to fully extend. It obscures the view of the mission’s star tracker, which hinders orienting the spacecraft in a way that minimizes drag. The team originally hoped to operate BurstCube for 12-18 months, but now estimates the increased drag will cause the satellite to re-enter the atmosphere in September. 

“I’m proud of how the team responded to the situation and is making the best use of the time we have in orbit,” said Jeremy Perkins, BurstCube’s principal investigator at Goddard. “Small missions like BurstCube not only provide an opportunity to do great science and test new technologies, like our mission’s gamma-ray detector, but also important learning opportunities for the up-and-coming members of the astrophysics community.”

BurstCube is led by Goddard. It’s funded by the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. The BurstCube collaboration includes: the University of Alabama in Huntsville; the University of Maryland, College Park; the Universities Space Research Association in Washington; the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington; and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

IMAGE: BurstCube, trailed by another CubeSat named SNOOPI (Signals of Opportunity P-band Investigation), emerges from the International Space Station on April 18, 2024. Credit NASA/Matthew Dominick

[garadinervi]

Aracelis Girmay, Arroz Poetica, in Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other USA, Edited by Jon Andersen, Smokestack Books, Middlesbrough, 2008, pp. 61-63 (text here) (reading here)

Aracelis Girmay, Arroz Poetica, Connections Literary Series, March 7, 2008, College of Southern Maryland, La Plata, MD

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 8!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about the history of Black education and the Freedom Schools!

Schooling During Slavery-

[Image ID: A small, black-and-white image of a modest room crowded with Black people, mostly Black children, some standing and some sitting in chairs, for informal schooling. End ID.]

Education has long been known to be one of the most powerful tools at society’s disposal- it’s how we learn to interact with the world in a significant way. It’s how we learn to live in the world- and how we learn to change it.

That was the reason that, during slavery, white people despised the prospect of Black Americans being educated. White supremacists believed that if Black people were allowed an education, it would result in them being able to fight back against their oppression. Stripping Black people of their human right to education was wielded as a weapon to lock Black people into a cycle of oppression- if they didn’t get educated, they couldn’t learn about how to rebel against the system of slavery. 

So, for a very long time, education was outlawed for Black people in most places. Black children were forbidden from attending schools, and any and all education of Black individuals was met with fierce pushback from white citizens and the government. That didn’t mean; however, that Black people didn’t ever access education during slavery.

On plantations, Black people formed communities, many of them “underground”, to informally access education. They sometimes established informal schooling systems, but for the most part, Black education during slavery was about dedicating oneself to being self-taught. A majority of enslaved people never learned to read or write, but many taught themselves to.

Education During ‘Reconstruction’-

[Image ID: A color image of Tolson’s Chapel, a small square white building with a large white cupola. It is surrounded by grass and trees and the sky is blue. End ID.]

During Reconstruction, the period immediately following the Civil War in American history, Black Americans and their efforts laid the foundation for public schooling systems across America. Though heavy oppression and suppression still impacted the education opportunities available for Black Americans during Reconstruction, much progress was still made.

During the Civil War, the education slaves could receive was limited to unofficial schools that they set up for themselves in rooms and buildings around, and often the reach of these education attempts were stunted by violent opposition. These attempts formed the foundation of early education drives for Black Americans during Reconstruction. It became commonplace for Black people to set up schools in small buildings, especially in the back of Churches, to teach their children. Historically Black colleges and universities began to appear more across America during the Reconstruction era.

One famous place that became a hub of Black education during Reconstruction was Tolson’s Chapel, which still exists today, in Sharpsburg, Maryland. There were many struggles with operating such a place- it was difficult to find teachers since most Black people had never been given the opportunity to learn to read or write, and they were often too impoverished to be able to pay teachers fairly, and attaining funding for such a school was difficult. Nevertheless, the Sharpsburg community advocated for getting funds from the commonly-dubbed ‘Freedmans Bureau’, which resulted in getting assigned two official teachers from the Bureau at Tolson’s Chapel, along with many other teachers, both Black and white, who came down from the North to help educate Black children.

Despite the struggles faced in the pursuit of education, efforts to increase public education expanded across the South and border states. Black activism played a key role in the establishment of public school systems in Southern states. For example, Mississippi's 1868 constitution, required the state to create a public schooling system, and that same year, Florida's constitution said it was the state's "paramount duty … to make ample provision for the education of all the children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference." 7 years later, half the children in both of those states as well as South Carolina were enrolled in public school- Black and white students both. Segregation in schools was not a huge issue during Reconstruction, and was outright banned in some places.

During Reconstruction, North Carolina saw a particularly progressive and active approach to public schooling. A Black man named Bishop James Walker Hood drafted North Carolina’s state constitution in 1868, detailing inclusive, integrated public school systems to educate all children. James was later elected to be superintendent of NC’s public schools, and lots of progress was made. However, there were still many issues- primarily Black schools were underfunded despite Black efforts to gain equal funding, and Black teachers were not paid equally to white teachers.

Across the South, Black people fought for equal amounts of schools for Black children as there were for white children. Black activism throughout Reconstruction laid the foundations for public schooling in America.

HBCUs-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of a medium-sized group of Black students standing together in rows outside a school building. All the girls are in the front rows wearing white, lacey dresses, and the boys are in the back rows wearing dark suits. A few teachers are standing in various positions around the students. End ID.]

Early on in America, Black students faced immense challenges in schooling. They were denied entry to colleges and universities, and they were treated horribly when they were allowed to go. Because they weren’t allowed in already existing universities, Black people created their own universities where they could learn and pursue their dreams without being denied and discriminated against. Such institutions are known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs.

In Pennsylvania in 1837, what is now Cheyney University was established as the African Institute by Richard Humphreys. It was the first HBCU ever, and it taught reading, math, writing, arts, and religious studies, but at the time it was only for free Black people, so enslaved Black people couldn’t access those education opportunities. Three more HBCUs- Miner Normal School, Lincoln University, and Wilberforce- were established during the 1850s. Established by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Wilberforce University was the first HBCU to actually be operated by Black Americans. However, the majority of HBCUs were established during Reconstruction. 

Universities like Shaw and Howard University, Shaw being the first HBCU to be founded in the South, have been monumentally influential. Many influential Black people attended those schools. In 1890, Black activism succeeded in securing land grants for Black communities to build their own higher education institutes in states where higher education institutes were segregated. Black activism continued to win support, both financial and social, for the growth of HBCUs across the 19th and 20th centuries.

HBCUs were, and are, revolutionary. They have helped educate millions of Black students, and were influential in movements like the Civil Rights Movement and the Harlem Renaissance, both of which saw an increase in activism which was fed by HBCUs that offered education on activism and social justice. Student activism, which sustained the Civil Rights Movement, was heavily influenced by organizing among students at HBCUs. The commitment to Black education through HBCUs has had a deep impact on the world of activism and racial justice. Today, there are 101 HBCUs in America, most of which are in the South.

Citizenship Schools-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of a group of five Black adults sitting with pencils and pads of paper around a small table in a small room. They look to be studying and discussing things together. End ID.]

In the first half of the 20th century, segregated schools became a much bigger problem than they previously had been. However, growing sentiments added additional motivations for creating Black education systems in America- and those motivations were voting rights.

Even though Black men technically had the right to vote in America, in practice, they were extremely disenfranchised from being able to vote because of policies put into place designed to discourage Black voters. These policies included poll taxes and literacy tests. Racist policymakers knew that Black communities had been disenfranchised from education, so they instituted literacy tests as a requirement for voting in many areas in the South, knowing that it would disenfranchise the Black voters who had been barred from learning to read and write. 

So, a renewed goal of education in Black communities was to learn to read so that racist literacy tests could no longer disenfranchise their communities. A solution to this were the Citizenship Schools- a grassroots organization that founded almost 900 schools (some sources say over 1000) across the South to teach Black adults how to read, write, and become civil rights activists. 

The roots of Citizenship Schools can be traced to 1932, when a white man named Myles Horton established an interracial school to train civil rights activists in Tennessee, called the Highlander Folk School. This school hosted workshops that trained Rosa Parks, Esau Jenkins, and many others- including Septima Clark, who went on to co-found the Citizenship Schools program.

In 1957, after attending workshops at the Highlander Folk School, Septima Clark worked with her cousin, Bernice Robinson, who became the first teacher at citizenship schools, and a Black man named Esau Jenkins who was a South Carolinian bus driver, to establish the first citizenship school in the South. It was on John’s Island, and it specialized in teaching about South Carolinian voter laws, and how to challenge them through literacy and teaching Black adults how to read. 

The John’s Island citizenship school was immensely successful, so Septima, Esau, and Bernice founded two more similar schools in nearby areas to extend the reach of their program. In the following three years, those schools helped over 600 Black Americans become registered to vote, which led to the rapid growth of citizenship schools across the South.

In the following decade, Septima Clark worked with Martin Luther King Jr. at the helm of the SCLC to charter and create hundreds and hundreds of citizenship schools across the South. Clark herself is credited with educating and teaching 10,000 civil rights activists, and the citizenship schools helped many thousands of Black Southerners to become registered to vote, making it one of the cornerstones of the voting rights movement that eventually secured the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Freedom Schools-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of two Black girls, both wearing dresses and one wearing a wide-brimmed hat, smiling as they lean out a window in a brick building. Below the window is a banner that reads ‘FREEDOM SCHOOL’. End ID.]

Inspired by the citizenship schools, the Freedom Schools were a coordinated project that extended the goal of citizenship schools to children. Citizenship schools had been aimed at teaching Black adults and training them to become activists and registered voters, and the Freedom Schools focused on teaching Black children the same things, though they also largely served Black adults.

During the Freedom Summer of 1964, a voting rights training program run by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the SNCC also founded the Freedom Schools, whose aim was to educate both children and adults to become informed voters, registered voters, and civil rights advocates. 

Over 2,500 people received training and education at the more than 40 Freedom Schools that were established. With roots in the ‘Nonviolence High’, a temporary Black high school established when 100 Black students were expelled for being involved in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a conference set up for Freedom Schools in 1964, the Freedom Schools became a part of the growing amount of younger people becoming active in the Civil Rights Movement. A history professor from Spelman College named Staughton Lynd became the leader of the Freedom Schools project.

Freedom Schools taught a wide variety of subjects over a period of 6 weeks of curriculum, and over 250 volunteers, both Black and white, from states across the country came to participate in the Freedom Schools as teachers. The Freedom Schools taught reading, writing, math, history, civics, art, among other things. They were introduced through a proposal by SNCC local leader Charlie Cobb, and they, along with the Citizenship Schools, were a key part of Black suffrage movements during the 1960s. Today, the legacy of these schools lives on in continuing Black activism towards suffrage and voting equality.

Summary-

Before and during slavery, Black Southerners were strictly forbidden from participating in education, so they created underground education systems in small rooms and church back rooms

During Reconstruction, Black activists established places like Tolson’s Chapel, informal schools, where they taught their children, and their activism led to the basis of somewhat progressive public school systems across the South

Because Black people had been barred from existing higher education institutions, during Reconstruction they began building many Black colleges, called Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and today there are over 100 in America

During the Civil Rights Movement, activists Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins established more than 1,000 ‘citizenship schools’ to help prepare Black adults for being registered voters and help teach them how to read and be an activist

Following the success of the citizenship schools, the SNCC created Freedom Schools during Freedom Summer to help register thousands of Black adults to vote and teach Black kids how to read, write, and about history and math

Sources-

https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/history2.html

https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/10/honoring-reconstructions-legacy-educating-souths-children

https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-americans-and-education-during-reconstruction-the-tolson-s-chapel-schools.htm#:~:text=During%20the%20Reconstruction%20Era%2C%20African,people%20placed%20in%20their%20path. 

https://www.tmcf.org/history-of-hbcus/ 

https://hbcufirst.com/resources/hbcu-history-timeline 

https://www.searchablemuseum.com/citizenship-schools 

https://ncwomenofcivilrights.wordpress.com/septima-clark/highlander-and-citizenship-schools/

https://www.crmvet.org/docs/citdocs.htm 

https://americacomesalive.com/septima-clark-founded-citizenship-schools/

https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/exploring-history-freedom-schools 

https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/culture-education/freedom-schools/ 

tagging @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @transhaunting​ @neopronouns​ 

[beardedmrbean]

College of Southern Maryland

[rickybowensfever]

28. “I should have stayed home”

@sicktember - Day 28

28. “I should have stayed home”

NEW CHARACTERS!!

I'm introducing my new characters in this fic. Meet Jessie and Luke!

Jessica “Jessie” Rose Baker (She/her): Fat; curly long blonde hair; Southern Belle from Alabama currently living in Maryland, bisexual; dental hygienist. She is fresh out of college. Age: 23

Luke Olsen (He/him): Trans guy; light brown hair and green eyes; slender; from Maryland; 2nd grade teacher at a public school. Age: 22

Bio: Jessie and Luke met at John Hopkin’s University in Maryland. They live together in a small apartment complex and have been together for three years. They met during their junior year of college.

OCTOBER 5, 2023

Sitting at their table in the dim light of the venue, Luke could feel his head pounding as the DJ announced Jessie’s sister and her brother-in-law.

“Everybody give it up for the first time as husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds!”, the room erupted with applause and cheering as the newlyweds made their grand entrance to the dance floor.

Meanwhile, Luke lay his head on the table dressed in a white tablecloth, covering his ears trying to drown out the sound.

What feels like twenty minutes later but is only a few minutes, he feels Jessie’s hand on his back. Her long blonde curls hitting his shoulder and the smell of her rose perfume was strong.

“You okay?” she whispered into his ear. Throughout the last two weeks, Luke had felt something coming on. With the seasons changing and a month into the school year, it was inevitable. Only two years into teaching and his immune system had yet to catch up with his germ-infested students. But he held out hope that the beginning of school sickness would hold out until after the wedding.  

He was very, very wrong.

“I should’ve stayed home” his voice muffled as he kept his head on the table. Jessie sighed at her boyfriend and immediately grabbed her purse from the chair beside him. She sat down and rummaged through it until she found her emergency pack of pain relievers.

Luke knew what Jessie was thinking since they had just had this conversation yesterday. Luke was feeling run down from a long week of rowdy (and snotty) second graders that he skipped the rehearsal dinner that night to rest on the couch and watch [redacted show because the SAG-AFTRA & WGA are on strike!]  for the fifth time.  

Jessie told him repeatedly he didn’t have to go to the wedding sick. But Luke was as stubborn as they came, and he wanted to support her. But now he wanted to kick Past Luke for not listening to her.  

Jessie nudged Luke’s arm trying to get his attention, holding onto the sleeve of his suit jacket. He slowly pulled his head off of the table and looked at her with his big glassy, green eyes. She pouted her lip; she wore rose red lipstick to match her maroon-colored dress.

As the DJ called everyone to watch the father-daughter dance, Jessie handed him the small white container shaped as a cylinder and directed him to take the medication. Luke shook out two pink tablets onto his palm and chase them down with the complementary glass of water he was given when they walked into the reception.

“Why don’t I give you the key to the hotel and you can go lie down?” she suggested, looking at him and back up at the dance floor.

Luke knew she was right. At his job, he was constantly solving childish problems that his seven and eight-year-old students thought were the end of the world so why was it so hard to let someone else solve his easy problems for once?

“I think I’ll be okay” he lied as his head continued to pound to the rhythm of the music.

Jessie had been looking forward to being a bridesmaid in her sister's wedding since the engagement back in Fall of 2019 which happened to be the same time she and Luke met at college. He wanted to be there for her to witness her brother’s big day.

Jessie smiled a thin-lipped smile and put a hand on his back. “If you start feeling bad, let me know and a car can drive you over to the hotel. Seriously,” she said looking into his eyes sternly.

Luke nodded his head in agreement. He would wait at least until dinner and head back to the hotel. He had at least attended the wedding, he told himself trying to convince his anxious thoughts he was doing good by her.

[fredbydawn]

Just cuz I wanna be a bitch, here’s some especially stupid things an ex-friend of mine said that continue to rattle my brain:

When we would hang out I joke about us being “just two southerners” cuz they were from Texas and I grew up in Maryland. Now do I actually consider myself southern? No, but depending on how you look at it, Maryland is sometimes considered part of the south. My friend would say that I’m absolutely not southern. When I asked what they would consider a southern state I offered the Carolinas as examples and they said they didn’t think the Carolinas were part of the south either. I asked they what states they did consider southern and they said, and I quote, “any state below the Mason-Dixon line.” Now, I don’t know what kind of geography they teach in Texas, but for those otherwise unaware, the Mason-Dixon line is the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania (and also Delaware and what is now West Virginia, but you get the idea), the Carolinas both also being south of this line.

This friend also thought I was pretentious for knowing a handful of phrases in other languages. Now maybe this is just something my family does, but we tend to just casually use phrases from other languages in conversation. My dad will use Russian cuz he has a fascination with the Russian revolution (high keys he might be autistic but that’s a story for another day), my mom will use Yiddish or Hebrew cuz her stepdad growing up was Jewish and her two youngest siblings are also Jewish, and we all know at least a handful of phrases in French and Spanish. It’s not like I would be holding whole conversations in another language, but this ex-friend, who I once again feel the need to emphasize, spent 19 and a half years of their life in Texas, would be completely baffled by “mañana” and “mi madre” which they would chalk up to me knowing cuz ‘I could afford fancy languages lessons’ even though I had mostly just learned them from like Dora and library books as a kid. I was also just friends with kids growing up who were bilingual and who spoke Spanish at home, something evidently this friend didn’t do.

One time I was reminiscing about film photography, which I had taken as an art credit in senior year of High School, and they said “I always wondered how they got the pictures off the SD card before computers were invented.” To which, of course, I said, “Huh?” “You know the SD card.” “Yes,” I said, “the SD card that holds the pictures on digital cameras.” “Well how did they get the pictures off the SD cards on film cameras?” This person was 20 years old and thought that film cameras, which we’ve had since like, the Civil War, stored photographs on Secure Digital memory cards.

This friend was, and presumably still is, in college. They are taking a World Wars class for a History credit. One day they called me up to say “Hey, did you know that Franz Ferdinand was a real person and not just a band? And that his murder started World War 1? And that everyone blamed Germany for the conflict after the war?” And I said yes, I did know that. They asked how I knew that. Again, I don’t know what they teach in Texas, but at the risk of sounding like a northern elite or intelligentsia, I told them the truth, which is that I had learned that in 7th grade.

And you may be wondering, what is this ex-friend of mine going to college for, specifically. They are going to college to become an elementary school teacher.

[tcmartinwrites]

beginnings

I want to start at the root of things, which for me often means a poem.

I first read "the killing of the trees" in the fall of 2020. I had just started my MFA program (not in poetry but in nonfiction, my primary genre) when a classmate introduced me to the work of a poet I did not then know.

Lucille Clifton was her name. And imagine my surprise at discovering that she had lived and worked and taught in my home state of Maryland for years – had in fact been our state's poet laureate for a spell (1979-1985). Maryland is not what I would call a literary state. California has Joan Didion, Florida has Karen Russell, Ohio has Toni Morrison, New York has Baldwin and Wharton and Fitzgerald and too many others to count.

And Maryland has – well, just a few names. Edgar Allan Poe, Rachel Carson, Ta-Nehisi Coates. I had read their work (Poe's and Coates's, that is; I still need to acquaint myself with Carson) and enjoyed it, but I never felt "Maryland"-ness in it, if that makes sense. Poe's work was too antique and fantastical, and Coates's was rooted in Baltimore, which Maryland treats more like a tumor than the vital organ it actually is.

After learning of Clifton's poetry, I devoured every volume I could find, including quilting, the collection in which "the killing of the trees" appears. This was when I realized Clifton's unique connection to Southern Maryland, the part of the state where I'm from, a place I had never seen depicted in literature of any sort. Finding her poem felt like catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Who is that? Oh, I realized. It's me. Us.

Anyway, the poem is a knife-sharp dissection of one of our region's main industries: subdivision-building. Not exactly a Romantic subject, but one in which Clifton nevertheless finds meaning. The poem reminds me of my own childhood growing up in Hughesville on a road named after my father's family, a road that used to belong to the farm that my great-great-grandfather had purchased sometime in the early 20th century. Its original shape contained hundreds of acres on either side of the road. But over time it had been chopped up into housing plots for family members, which later sold to people of no relation to us. Still, several of us live on the road: 5 or 6 holdout households on the southern side, all sharing power tools and sugar and muscle as needed.

One winter break home from college, I noticed the tree line in our backyard had suddenly thinned. Through the bare branches I could make out the frames of future homes. Big homes, two or three times the size of ours, in a freshly paved cul-de-sac. The sense was that the subdivisions had circled us. We had always known they were out there: metastasizing, unseen. Now, though, we felt surrounded. Trapped.

It was a feeling shared by many old guard Southern Marylanders, people whose families had lived here for multiple generations. The place was becoming too crowded, too busy, too dense. Logic dictated that this was a good thing: more people arriving meant our home was an attractive place to live, with good jobs and good schools to draw in talented workers. But for long-time locals who were dealing with more traffic, bigger class sizes, and constant construction, the compliment fell flat amidst disruption.

I share this grumpiness, but I also remain skeptical of its origins. Many of the newcomers to our area were Black, Latino, and Asian; many (most) of the curmudgeons like myself were white. I find Clifton’s poem useful for examining where my grievances with our region’s growth begin. Like the speaker in Clifton’s poem, I cringe to watch more woodland forest be cleared for another cookie-cutter development. And yet, the speaker and I can both see our own role in that destructive pattern. Just because we came here earlier doesn’t make us any less complicit. Long-time Southern Marylanders can feel the urge to proclaim: We were here first. But were we?

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the killing of the trees by lucille clifton the third went down with a sound almost like flaking, a soft swish as the left leaves fluttered themselves and died. three of them, four, then five stiffening in the snow as if this hill were Wounded Knee as if the slim feathered branches were bonnets of war as if the pale man seated high in the bulldozer nest his blonde mustache ice-matted was Pahuska come again but stronger now, his long hair wild and unrelenting. remember the photograph, the old warrior, his stiffened arm raised as if in blessing, his frozen eyes open, his bark skin brown and not so much wrinkled as circled with age, and the snow everywhere still falling, covering his one good leg. remember his name was Spotted Tail or Hump or Red Cloud or Geronimo or none of these or all of these. he was a chief. he was a tree falling the way a chief falls, straight, eyes open, arms reaching for his mother ground. so i have come to live among the men who kill the trees, a subdivision, new, in southern Maryland. I have brought my witness eye with me and my two wild hands, the left one sister to the fists, pushing the bulldozer against the old oak, the angry right, brown and hard and spotted as bark. we come in peace, but this morning ponies circle what is left of life and whales and continents and children and ozone and trees huddle in a camp weeping outside my window and i can see it all with that one good eye.

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further reading:

A great essay by Emily Jorgenson about Lucille Clifton's feminist ecopoetics: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/engl205-07h-fall-2017/panel-2-person-2

A video of Lucille Clifton reading "the killing of the trees" at the College of Southern Maryland in 1990: https://youtu.be/Vba8o-7xhU0

[iguessitsjustme]

A very impolite question: why can’t you exactly explain where you’re from? 🤔

I get this question all of the time because people try to pin down my accent sometimes and it's hard cause it changes ever so slightly so I don't find this question rude at all.

I moved around a lot as a kid and that kind of followed me into adulthood. The easiest answer is that I'm from Maryland because that's where I spent most of my life but a version of the long answer is:

Born - Colorado Early childhood - Iowa/Texas/Maryland Middle School/High School - Maryland College - Oklahoma (this is where I picked up the southern accent)

I've lived in more places since then but I'll spare you my adulthood moving around because I'm still recovering from all of my recent moves. I've landed pretty nicely in the Chicago area and I'm not planning on leaving any time soon. I like it here. I like my job, I like the people, I like my life here. So if you or anyone else is in the Chicago area, feel free to hit me up to go grab coffee or drinks or something!