#daily bear chronicles

[studiousbotanist]

rachel trying to find the kitten but unsuccessful (she is in my brother's room) they can't meet til we get her checked up but her name is momo my brother named her and it's adorable :)

bald ass mullet cat LOL

[pagesoflauren]

Calamitous Love Chronicles: Delicate Beginning Rush (3/4)

Premise: Steve Rogers blows into town in search of some estranged family. As he settles into civilian life, he realizes leaving work is hard and perhaps the world will never stop needing him.

Warnings: depictions of PTSD, mentions of abandonment by a romantic partner, complex familial dynamics, sexual content.

Thank you to @hyperfixationhovel. And if you're still around, thank you for being here as I find myself again. Also, my blog needs a huge refresh, so please bear with me while I find time to do it!!!

Main Masterlist

You’ve seen Steve one-on-one both inside and outside of work throughout the last month. 

He comes to play with the animals, preparing to adopt one and bonding with each one to find the one that connects with him the most. At first, you thought he and Major would be a perfect match. German Shepherds are intelligent, able to follow commands well and they look like a suitable pair. However, the canine is still on the aloof side, and you’ve realized that Steve needs a dog with a kinder demeanor. 

The smaller dogs are a little too intimidated by him. Despite playing, they can’t quite keep up with his wide strides as he joins you for daily walks and playtime is underlined with aggression as the little dogs try to assert some semblance of dominance over him. 

Cats are even more withdrawn, not complimenting Steve’s need for a softer, sociable companion. You laughed as he attempted to engage with them using various feathered toys and a laser pointer and failed in nearly every attempt.

“She likes you,” you remark as he sits on the floor with Willow, smiling as the golden retriever pup playfully nips at his palm. 

“I think I like her too,” he agrees with a nod. 

The clock beeps on cue, earning some whines and howls from the animals as the work day comes to a close. You begin to cover the carriers and get everyone settled for the night. As you turn to look at the puppies, Steve is putting Willow in her kennel and giving her a few more pets before shutting the door. 

You finish closing up, setting the alarm and locking up the shelter. 

“Can I join you for dinner tonight?” Steve wonders, feet tacked onto the sidewalk next to the front door.

Smiling, you nod.

- - -

Seated by the window in the diner, you place an order with the waitress before she clears away the menus. Steve is people watching on the street and you hate to disturb his peace, but the question is gnawing at you.

“I wanted to ask you something.” 

His head twists quickly to look at you, eyes attentive as he gestures for you to proceed with your question.

“Is this…” The beginning of the question begins to sound silly in your mind. It’s so high school, but you have to know. “Are we on a date?” 

You bite your lip, waiting as he purses his lips in thought. 

“Would it be bad if this was a date?”

“No,” you answer, probably a little too quickly. You stumble over your words as you try to recover from your eager response. It’s always been a pitfall of your personality; you can’t keep your ideas in for the life of you and they come out so impulsively. It’s why you decided to work with animals, unlike your sister. If you had her job, the kids at the preschool would know your business, then their parents and the entirety of Barber, for that matter. 

Your nerves show as you rip the wrapper of your straw to miniscule pieces, even more humiliated as you fail completely at saving face. 

Well, I’ve bungled another one.

Your forwardness hasn’t paid off in the past, men would often head for the hills once hearing you expressed any thought that what you felt with them was more than a mere enjoyment of their company. The moment you told them you liked them or, in this case, called an outing a “date”, it was game over.

Your wrapper is smithereens on the table, your proverbial white flag as you prepare yourself to be let down “easy” yet again. You don’t meet his eyes; you can’t bear another look of uncomfortable sympathy as another man rejects you. 

As your hands begin to retract into your lap, Steve catches them in one of his. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you flowers before taking you to dinner.” 

Blinking in disbelief and confusion, you tilt your head up to meet his gaze. 

“What?”

“It’s a date,” he laughs. “I should’ve bought you flowers. Actually, I’m overdue for flowers. Our first date was the picnic in the park.” 

“Oh, that doesn’t have to be a ‘date’...” you begin.

His fingers loosen around yours. “Do you not want to count that?”

No, no, you panic, gripping him tighter. “No,” you shake your head. When you detect the disappointment in his face, you begin to backpedal, “No, I mean, I don’t not want to call that a date. We can call it a date, our first one, if you want.” You take in his face again, not finding anything. “Or…we don’t have to.”

“Okay, how about this,” he laughs, bringing his other hand up. He laces your fingers together, palms warm against yours. “This is our first date. And I’ll bring you flowers in the morning.” 

With how much your brain likes to think, you try to go through the catalog of time you’ve spent with him. An errand here, a dog walk there, a dog bath here, and the picnic. You try to think which of those encounters you started wanting to see him day after day after day until the end of days. 

Truth is, it was the moment he walked into the shelter the first time. 

Squeezing your fingers, you add your voice to your silent affirmation. 

- - - - - 

“Would you like to come in?” you ask, “This is a date, after all.” 

Lump in his throat, Steve has trouble finding his voice. He nods and places his hand on the small of your back as you go up the stairs. 

The space is small but the open, shared area between the kitchen and living space removes any feelings of claustrophobia. 

There’s a kitchen table with two chairs. He can see which one you use by the faded spot where you’ve gripped the top of it to pull it out. It faces the front window; fitting for you to want to take in the sunshine before getting started with your day. 

The living space has a small bookshelf with sets of novels, along with some trinkets and photos. Under the TV in the stand is a basket full of crochet supplies, a half-finished fluffy blanket spilling out of the top. He figures it’s for the animals downstairs in preparation for the winter. 

“Do you want some wine?” you offer. “Or if you’re in a crazy mood, I have some vodka.” 

“Damn,” Steve laughs. “I’m good for now.” 

“Okay,” you say, grabbing two drinking glasses. You take out your pitcher from the fridge and begin to pour water in both of them. “Water’s important, though.” 

“That’s true.” 

You hand one glass to him before leading him to the couch, turning on the TV. There’s a rerun of a late night sitcom playing, so you lower the volume and get comfy.

“What do you like to watch?” 

“Last time I watched TV, I was into Beevis & Butt-Head.” 

“Ew,” your face grimaces at weird, gross teenage-boy humor. “Sorry. Not that I was much better. One Tree Hill was my entire personality in high school.” 

“What’s that?”

Steve watches in amusement as your head turns to look at him faster than a .22 caliber bullet. “You don’t know?”

He shakes his head. “I have a feeling I’m about to find out.” 

And you’re off, spewing names and descriptions in every direction and he’s taking it all in like a mission log. His mind conjures up a relation chart, connecting the two main male leads as half brothers and their respective friends and love interests. 

“It’s so high school drama, but I couldn’t get enough of it.” 

“Can we watch an episode?” 

His heart leaps when your eyes light up.

- - -

With three episodes of One Tree Hill watched, you pause the show. 

“Interesting so far,” Steve remarks, though you notice his face is expressionless, the fronts of his eyes glistening with a slight glaze. 

“You don’t have to watch it anymore if you don’t want to.” 

“Thank you,” he laughs. “I did mean that, it was interesting. It’s just…”

“So high school?”

“Yep.” 

“That’s fair,” you say, stretching. As your muscles relax, you recline against the back of the couch. Feeling eyes on you, you look up at Steve. 

He’s looking at you oddly; you can’t figure out what he’s thinking or what he wants.

“Ste–?”

You don’t get to finish, not when he takes your face in his hands and kisses you feverishly. 

Oh, that’s why he was looking at me…

You can’t recall if anyone has ever kissed you this way, something that seems to put your body on autopilot as you lay back across the cushions with him settling on top of you, pressing his weight onto your body while his hands begin to wander down your sides. 

It’s dizzying, overwhelming as he reaches for the hem of your shirt. Your hands find the front of his chest, pressing against him to get his attention, but not enough to push him away. 

“I need to slow down,” you speak up.

“Sorry,” he pants. “It’s been…not that I’m eager to only do this, but…” He trails off, looking away from you to find the right words. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this way about someone.” 

“Me too,” you say. “The last time I dated someone was a long time ago. Just been me and the animals since then.” 

The two of you share a laugh at your shared dry spells. Around you, the air buzzes with the eager electricity of desire. 

You swallow your nerves and muster the courage to ask if he thinks the two of you would be more comfortable in the bedroom. He doesn’t answer, but instead gets up from his position above you before holding out his hand. 

Standing with him, you place your hand in his, accepting his kiss when he leans in for another one. 

With a little tug, you take him to the little corridor past the bathroom and the washer and dryer and lead him into the bedroom. You let go of his hand to turn on your bedside lamp. There’s no need to turn back and look at him when his hands come around your waist and pull your body close to his. His face finds the crook of your neck, lips pressing kisses there that ignite your body. 

His hands begin to wander, cupping your chest and gliding down your front to pin your hip back to keep you flush against him. 

Your lungs struggle, body overstimulated with all the contact against your back while your front screams for more. The clothing begins to feel stifling and you yank his hands off of you to take your shirt off to discard it on the floor. Turning to face Steve again, he’s acting before you can. 

He grips your hips again, falling back onto your mattress heavily and taking you with him. His hands guide you to straddle his hips, your groin positioned just above the growing tent in his pants. 

You feel one hand trailing up your back as he begins to undo the clasp of your bra. As he busies himself with that, you begin to pull at the hem of his shirt, bringing it up until he has to pause his act to take it off all the way. Tossing the shirt to the floor, you reach up with your other hand and unhook your bra all the way. 

“I had a handle on it,” Steve jokes, sitting up and burying his face between your breasts. 

He takes your nipple between his lips, suckling and wiping your brain of any witty comebacks so you settle for an, “Mhm.” You try to add a tone of sarcasm, but it’s hard to know how it came out as your head spins. 

Your hands find their way into his hair, gripping the short strands between your fingers as much as you can as you begin to grind your hips against him. 

The world spins as he flips you onto your back, your knees still around his waist until he stands back and unbuttons his pants. You follow his lead, reaching down and popping the button. Before you can shimmy out of the waistband, your hands are swatted away and replaced with his. 

Thumbs hooking into the sides of your underwear, those are removed too, leaving you bare in front of him. His eyes are fiery when he meets yours, holding your gaze and waiting for any sign to stop. Hands on your knees, he spreads your legs and exposes your center. His eyes catch the shine of arousal in the soft light from your lamp, mouth watering in anticipation. 

Lowering himself to his knees, he pulls you slightly closer to the edge of the bed, the perfect spot for him to lean forward and press his tongue between your lower lips. 

It draws a gasp from you, then a sound of pure arousal as he pleases you. A hand drifts up again, stimulating your breast with tugs and flicks at your nipples. The hunger behind his mouth and desperation from his hand goes straight to your head. He works you to the end and through it, sending you flying over the edge and keeping you floating until he’s satisfied. 

He stands over you, boxers off and stroking his length as he pushes you to the middle of the bed. His eyes don’t leave yours as he grabs a pillow to stuff beneath your hips and brings your knees around your hips. 

When he slides in, it’s an easy glide and the both of you have to take a moment to process the sensation. He fills you up, giving a delicious pain that makes your thighs quiver. You grip his cock so tightly, soft around him that his toes curl in bliss. 

“You okay?” he checks.

“Yes,” you respond. He’s concerned at how choked you sound.

“You sure?”

“Yes, I just…” you exhale, “I need you.” 

He obliges, withdrawing his hips and propelling them forward. He finds a rhythm, building up a steady, satisfying pattern that has you holding him tighter and crying out for him in desperation. It spurs him on further when you begin begging; you don’t need to, he’s so willing to give you everything you need. 

A string of expletives falls out of your mouth and he delivers a series of steady, forceful thrusts, resisting the loss of stamina as he finds himself finishing sooner than anticipated. He leans forward and keeps up, sucking at the skin of your neck and toying with your nipples again. When your hands fly to the comforter and your body tenses beneath his, he reaches down to stroke your clit and carry out your orgasm as long as you can bear it. 

When you shrink away from him, he slows down and eventually stops, fingers grazing over the outside of your thigh as his lips find your cheek.

“You okay?” he mumbles against your skin. 

“Mmm,” you hum in acknowledgement. 

He flips you over again, nestling you into his side so that he can keep you close as you both navigate the fog of post-coital bliss. 

- - - - -

You stumble into the living area using your fingers to undo a knot in your hair. You can smell toast and eggs, along with coffee. On your dining table is a bouquet of fresh flowers. 

Steve is dressed, transferring the eggs from the frying pan to one of two plates. 

“I hoped you wouldn’t be awake yet,” he says when he sees you. “Wanted to give you breakfast in bed.” 

“It’s okay,” you wave him off, “I don’t like getting crumbs in my bed.” 

“Fair enough,” he shrugs. “The couch then?” 

He brings the plates while you bring the coffee. The first few minutes are silent but not awkward. Just enjoyment of each other’s company as you start the day after spending the night together. 

“I was thinking,” Steve says, “I think Willow would be a really great dog to adopt.” 

You finish chewing your bite of toast before bumping his shoulder. “If you just wanted to adopt the dog, you didn’t have to do this whole ruse of taking me on a date and sleeping with me.” 

You’re pulled into his lap and smothered with kisses as the two of you laugh.

– - - - -

Steve splits his time between your place and the cabin. He doesn’t like leaving the family he semi-uprooted by his arrival, but the cabin also wasn’t puppy-proofed yet. Willow lived with you as Ari made sure everything was dog-friendly and dog-conscious. That included padding around the family furnishings and banisters that he spent precious time restoring. It would be removed when Willow was no longer teething. 

Being in less than three months with you awoke the part of him that he had hidden away. He was safe enough to share about himself and he did it so easily around you. Anyone else needed to build his trust, but as long as you would have him, he was yours. 

He holds you tighter as he gets pulled from sleep, hearing pinging from a device on the other side of the room.

Wait. He knows that sound. 

Eyes opening, he slowly unwraps his arms from around you to avoid disturbing you. He steps lightly as he rises from the bed and finds his pants, reaching into the front pocket to pull out the pager he keeps on him. 

Walking to the window, he angles the device so the screen catches the moonlight and he can see the letters scrolling across.

MISSION GOING SOUTH. BACKUP NEEDED.

His heart drops. They wouldn’t page him if they didn’t need him. He knows Bucky wouldn’t allow it. He can only imagine what the team is going through right now, how desperate they must be in order to page a teammate that was discharged because the missions consumed him. 

He looks at you, still fast asleep in the bed, then back at the pager as the message plays again. 

Putting his legs through his pants, he hesitates before replying. 

En route. Send coordinates.

Steve finds his shirt and puts it on. He opens the drawer in your bedside table and pulls out a notepad and pen. 

I’m sorry but I have to go. Take care of Willow until I come back. 

He peels the note off the pad and folds it before writing your name on it. After propping it against the base of your lamp, he stops and takes in the image of you asleep. 

He could just undress and get back under the covers. He wants to. He wants to pretend he never heard the pager and just go on the way he has with you for the past two months. But if he did, he wouldn’t sleep a wink knowing he left his team to suffer, or worse.

Leaning down, he presses a kiss into your forehead, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He’s a soldier. 

As he leaves, he ignores the tugging in his chest, stretching like elastic that’s ready to snap and bring him back to you at any moment. Down the street, back to the cabin, he boxes up the memories of you and locks them away. 

------

Tags: @nekoannie-chan @steviebbboi @raven-blue3000 @joannaliceevans-fanficblog @brandycranby @kmc1989 @spectre-posts @emerald-evans

[ceilidho]

Can you give us a summary of Bear for those who don't watch the Six? Because I read the bear fic cause I love you're writing, but I'm kinda lost about him I'm general lol

yes of course!!!

basic synopsis [stole from wikipedia lol]: Six chronicles the operations and daily lives of operators who are part of SEAL Team Six.

(spoilers below)

the overarching plot is about the kidnapping and eventual murder of Rip Taggart, a former member of Team Six. the show also goes over the personal lives of each of the men on the team and how their military careers affect their personal lives

Barry plays Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator (E-8) Joe "Bear" Graves a.k.a. Foxtrot Delta 1/FD1

most important plot points to help you get into my fic:

Bear is married to Lena, a school teacher (they were high school sweethearts); in the first episode (which takes place i think about a year and a half or so prior to the actual start of the show), they just found out that they're going to have a baby girl

Their daughter ends up dying at just a couple months old; it's hugely tragic and has a profound impact on both characters, but Bear is outwardly struggling a lot

Bear is a very religious man (like the kind of guy that can quote scripture from memory), but throughout the show, his relationship with his faith is becoming more and more strained as he feels like he's being punished for all of the killing that he's done as part of Team Six

Since the death of their daughter, Bear and Lena have also been having a lot of trouble conceiving (hence, the fertility clinic scene with Bear jacking off) - we later learn that this is due to a fertility issue on Bear's side (another thing that he takes as a sign that he's being punished - this guy is having a rough fucking time)

All of this is obviously also having a profoundly negative impact on Bear's and Lena's marriage; through the two seasons of the show, they gradually grow apart and eventually separate. Bear is fighting this the whole way through; he's intensely jealous when he suspects her of dating someone else and also struggles with the idea of moving on himself.

(I don't think it's confirmed, but we all imagine he's like Baptist or something; again, I emphasize, deeeeeppllyyy religious.)

As mentioned earlier, his former team member and close friend, Rip, dies at the end of season 1, which is just another thing causing Bear to spiral. Earlier in season 1, Team Six also lost another comrade named Buckley.

I mentioned earlier that Bear struggles with the concept of moving on from Lena and finding someone else. At one point in season 2, he does eventually sleep with someone after a night out at the bar, and to me this is a crucial moment in his character development because it shows just how far he's drifted from the church and from his religious beliefs.

Things that happen in the show but I'm not putting in my fic:

At the end of season 2, Lena is shot and killed. I'm not super interested in putting this in my fic, so in my fic, they've just officially gotten divorced and she's moved away.

[eretzyisrael]

by Moshe Phillips

Dozens of Palestinian Authority diplomats around the world celebrated the Oct. 7 massacres, according to a new study. The revelations have important implications for anybody concerned about the prospects for Middle East peace.

The study was undertaken by GnasherJew, a group of British Jewish investigative journalists, and reported by The Jewish Chronicle based in London. GnasherJew is best known for exposing the antisemitic remarks made by Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of Britain’s Labour Party.

Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top storiesFree sign up

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While the U.S. State Department, The New York Times, and J Street keep telling us that the P.A. opposes terrorism and wants to live in peace next to Israel, the statements made by the P.A.’s own representatives around the world say otherwise.

The investigators reviewed hundreds of social-media posts by more than 30 senior P.A. diplomats in the days following Oct. 7. Here’s a sampling of what these P.A. officials wrote about the most horrific mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust:

• Great Britain: Rana Abuayyash, consul at the P.A.’s mission to London, posted an image of an Israeli flag morphing into Adolf Hitler.

• France: Hala Abou-Hassira, the P.A. ambassador to Paris posted: “Israel bears full responsibility.” His colleague Nadine Abualheija tweeted: “A colonial state is not an innocent victim when its victims resist genocide.” Another P.A. diplomat in Paris, Jamila Hassan Eragat, wrote: “Don’t judge a group of people for rising up against their oppressors … violence is necessary for decolonisation.” 

• Spain: Khaldun Almassri of the P.A. mission in Spain shared a painting of people dancing with flags of the Palestinian Liberation Organization on Oct. 7. 

• Cyprus: “Palestinians broke through with so much excitement,” the official Facebook account for the P.A. embassy in Cyprus announced.

• Mozambique: The P.A. ambassador in Mozambique, Fayez Abduljawad, posted a graphic that read: “If you are silent when Israel kills Palestinians, remain silent when Palestinians defend themselves.”

• Guinea: Thaer Abubaker, the P.A. ambassador to Guinea and Sierra Leone, wrote on X (Twitter) that the Oct. 7 slaughter was “heroic” and that “liberation is the goal of every fighter who risks their life for the sake of freedom and jihad for God’s path.” He also accused America’s secretary of state of being “a Khazar Jew” and charged Jewish immigrants to Israel with bringing “scabies and contagious diseases to Palestine.”

• Zimbabwe: Manar Alagha, a P.A. diplomat in Zimbabwe, posted a video on Facebook of Israelis fleeing the Nova music festival concert grounds, adding the slogan: “Here to victory!”

• Ivory Coast: An official at the P.A.’s embassy in the Ivory Coast, Khattab Bayyari, showed a graphic of a terrorist paraglider and added the caption: “You are the soldiers of Allah in the field.” He also posted a photo of a man with a sign displaying an anti-Israel vulgarity.

• Japan and South Korea: The P.A.’s ambassador to Japan and South Korea, Waleed Siam, wrote on X/Twitter: “Zionism is really curse on all humanity,” and added, for good measure, that Israelis “have yet to find proof of their imaginary temple.” (Asked by the Jewish Chronicle about those messages, Siam replied: “I have Semitic origins myself.”)

• Turkey: The P.A.’s consul general in Istanbul, Hana Abu Ramadan, circulated a hate cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a devil with horns.

• United Nations: Khuloussi Bsaiso, a P.A. diplomat at the United Nations, distributed a Middle East map without Israel that had the slogan, “Palestine as it should be.” 

• European Union: Hassan Albalawi, the deputy head of the P.A. mission to the European Union, called the Hamas massacres “heroic.” Adel Atieh, the P.A. ambassador to the European Union, hailed the terrorists as “the people of the mighty,” who are fighting for “freedom and breaking tyranny.” Another P.A. diplomat at the European Union, Lema Nazeeh, wrote on X that the Hamas invasion was “decolonisation in tangible terms,” a day of “dignity and triumph.” 

And because no review of Palestinian Arab antisemitism is complete without a dose of old-fashioned religious bigotry, it’s worth noting that Salman El Herfi, the former P.A. ambassador to South Africa and France, who is now a top adviser to P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas, posted a medieval Christian image next to a photo of a mother and child in Gaza with the caption: “The pain of the Mother is the same as it was 2,000 years ago. The same killer.”

The P.A.’s diplomats around the world are the “best face” of the Palestinian Arab cause. They are the P.A.’s most articulate and urbane spokespeople. They wear suits and ties; they speak the best English. One would imagine they would be the most concerned about appearing “moderate” in the eyes of the wider world.

Yet here they are—the P.A.’s most sophisticated officials—openly celebrating the mass murder, gang rapes and baby-burnings of Oct. 7. That tells you all you need to know about their alleged interest in peace with Israel.

[burningvelvet]

Every Instance of Lord Byron Hating On John Keats, Listed in Chronological Order.

“No more Keats I entreat — flay him alive. If some of you don’t I must skin him myself.”

To his publisher John Murray, 12 October 1820:

“‘I’m thankful for your books dear Murray / But why not send Scott’s Monastery?’ the only book in four living volumes I would give a baioccho to see, abating the rest of the same author, and an occasional Edinburgh & Quarterly – as brief Chroniclers of the times. — Instead of this – here are John Keats’s piss a bed poetry – and three novels by God knows whom [..] Pray send me no more poetry but what is rare and decidedly good. — There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables – that I am ashamed to look at them. [..] – I am in a very fierce humour at not having Scott’s Monastery. – You are too liberal in quantity and somewhat careless of the quality of your missives. – [..] No more Keats I entreat – – – flay him alive – if some of you don’t I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin. – – – – – [editor’s note: ‘dashes degenerate into scrawl’]”

To his publisher John Murray, 4 November 1820:

“They Support Pope I see in the Quarterly. [Let them] Continue to do so – it is a Sin & a Shame and a damnation – to think that Pope!! should require it – but he does. – – – Those miserable mountebanks of the day – the poets – disgrace themselves – and deny God – in running down Pope – the most faultless of Poets, and almost of men – – the Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch or whatever his names are; – why his is the Onanism of Poetry — something like the Pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane – this went on for some weeks – at last the Girl – went to get a pint of Gin – met another, chatted too long – and Cornelli was hanged outright before she returned. Such like is the trash they praise – and such will be the end of the outstretched poesy of this miserable Self-polluter of the human Mind [editor’s note: ‘untranscribable scrawl’]. W. Scott’s Monastery just arrived — many thanks for that Grand Desideratun of the last Six Months.”

Note: “onanism” refers to masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 9 November 1820:

“Mr. Keats whose poetry you enquire after — appears to me what I have already said; such writing is a sort of mental masturbation — he is always frigging his Imagination. I don’t mean that he is indecent, but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state which is neither poetry nor any thing else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium.”

Note: “frigging” was slang for masturbation.

To his publisher John Murray, 18 November 1820:

“P.S. — Of the praises of that little dirty blackguard Keates in the Edinburgh — I shall observe as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a pension. ‘What has he got a pension? then it is time that I should give up mine!’ — Nobody could be prouder of the praises of the Edinburgh than I was — or more alive to their censure — as I showed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers — at present all the men they have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. — Why don't they review & praise ‘Solomon's Guide to Health’ it is better sense — and as much poetry as Johnny Keates.”

To his publisher John Murray 26 April 1821:

“Is it true – what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it – though I think he took the wrong line as a poet – and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and Surburbing – and versifying Tooke’s Pantheon and Lempriere’s Dictionary. I know by experience that a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author – and the one on me – (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down – but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel – I drank three bottles of Claret – and began an answer – finding that there was nothing in the Article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head in an honourable way. However I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article – for all the honour & glory in the World, – though I by no means approve of that School of Scribbling – which it treats upon.”

To Percy Shelley, 26 April 1821:

“I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats — is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of ‘Endymion’ in the Quarterly. It was severe, — but surely not so severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.

I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress — but not despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena. ‘Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.’

You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, — because it is of no school. [..] I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead — or that he was alive and so sensitive — I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing.”

To Percy Shelley, 30 July 1821:

[First page missing] “The impression of Hyperion upon my mind was – that it was the best of his works. Who is to be his editor? It is strange that Southey who attacks the reviewers so sharply in his Kirk White – calling theirs ‘the ungentle craft’ – should be perhaps the killer of Keats. Kirke White was nearly extinguished in the same way – by a paragraph or two in ‘the Monthly’ – Such inordinate sense of censure is surely incompatible with great exertion – have not all known writers been the subject thereof?”

To his publisher John Murray 30 July 1821:

“Are you aware that Shelley has written an Elegy on Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him?

‘Who killed John Keats? / ‘I,’ says the Quarterly, / So savage and Tartarly; / ‘Twas one of my feats.’ / Who shot the arrow? / ‘The poet-priest Milman / (So ready to kill man), / Or Southey or Barrow.’’

You know very well that I did not approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but, as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any M.S.S. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article; — you Review people have no more right to kill than any other footpads. However, he who would die of an article in a Review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. The same thing nearly happened to Kirke White, who died afterwards of a consumption.”

4 August 1821, to his publisher John Murray:

“You must however omit the whole of the observations against the Suburban School – they are meant against Keats and I cannot war with the dead – particularly those already killed by Criticism. Recollect to omit all that portion in any case.”

To his publisher John Murray, 7 August 1821:

“All the part about the Suburb School must be omitted – as it referred to poor Keats now slain by the Quarterly Review — [..] I have just been turning over the homicide review of J. Keats. – It is harsh certainly and contemptuous but not more so than what I recollect of the Edinburgh R. of ‘the Hours of Idleness’ in 1808. The Reviewer allows him ‘a degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right way’ ‘rays of fancy’ ‘gleams of Genius’ and ‘powers of language’. – It is harder on L. Hunt than upon Keats & professes fairly to review only one book of his poem. – Altogether – though very provoking it was hardly so bitter as to kill unless there was a morbid feeling previously in his system.”

To Thomas Moore, August 27th 1822:

“It was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's pocket, but John Keats's poems.”

From his poem Don Juan Canto Eleventh written October 1822 and published August 1823. He was going off the popular gossip shared to him by Shelley (who believed it), which was that Keats health had sharply declined due to receiving bad reviews:

“John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, / Just as he really promised something great, / If not intelligible, without Greek / Contrived to talk about the Gods of late, / Much as they might have been supposed to speak. / Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; / ‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, / Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.”

To his publisher John Murray, 25 December 1822:

“As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinion, between Leigh Hunt and me, there is little or none. We meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man, and must do as I would be done by. I do not know what world he has lived in – but I have lived in three or four – and none of them like his Keats and Kangaroo terra incognita – Alas! poor Shelley! – how he would have laughed – had he lived, and how we used to laugh now & then – at various things – which are grave in the Suburbs. You are all mistaken about Shelley – – you do not know – how mild – how tolerant – how good he was in Society – and as perfect a Gentleman as ever crossed a drawing room; – when he liked – & where he liked. – – – – –“

The excerpts above are taken primarily from Peter Cochran’s transcriptions.

[albertfinch]

Daily Meditations And Affirmations - July 29, 2024

"Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, 'repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" - Matthew 3:1,2

The Word of God demonstrates instances where men and women of God were used to bring heavenly interruptions. Think of David interrupting the broadcast of a ranting demonic giant with breaking news of victory, or the prayers and petitions of a king and a heavenly interruption of worship rising on the battlefield in 2 Chronicles 20 that ushered in confusion and defeat among the enemy armies.

Jesus' disciples were commissioned by Him to be heavenly interrupters. We are conduits for heavenly interruptions. We are designed to interrupt the regularly scheduled program of sickness, disease, poverty, bondage, and brokenness with breaking news of the fullness of God.

God deals with us on a personal level to interrupt someone's regularly scheduled program of sickness or depression outside the four walls of the Church and bring them breaking news of a Kingdom that is at hand.

The question is – are we willing to be interrupted by Heaven to bring a Heavenly interruption to those needing a touch from the Father?

Be a conduit for His glory. You were made for more!

Romans 8:13,16  -  "For if I live after the flesh, I shall die; but if I through the spirit to mortify the deeds of the body, I shall live.  The Holy Spirit bears witness with my spirit, that I am a child of God."

                   Affirmation:    

           I DOMINATE MY MIND AND MY BODY WITH MY SPIRIT SINCE I MAINTAIN MY SPIRIT PROPERLY - FEEDING, STRENGTHENING, AND DOMINATING MY INNER MAN WITH THE WORD.

LET US DECLARE:

That I will come into a greater revelation of the restored relationship I have with our Heavenly Father (God's PURPOSE for my life - my CALLING in Christ) and His Kingdom through the Cross!

That in revelation of my sonship I will occupy the full authority I have in the earth and bring all of creation back into subjection to the dominion of the King!

My environment will be forever changed as I pray, say, and do what the Father shows me and I see Heaven invade every place I go and everyone I meet.

ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY

[rumplestiltsbear]

hi!

i'm salem/bear, any pronouns, and i'm a minor

i'm genderqueer/genderfluid + probably aroace :]

i write! (pls ask me about my ocs, i love talking about them!!!)

obsessed with game of thrones/asoiaf/hotd, orlando (the book and the movie), billie eilish, hozier, the left hand of darkness and earthsea and always coming home and every word ever written by ursula k le guin. my ursula k le guin sideblog is @bespok3n

(some of) my other fandoms (though i don't post about them *quite* as much): good omens, star wars, the locked tomb, kingkiller chronicle/the name of the wind, atla, lotr, ted lasso, ...

i WILL steal ur post and make it about my fandom (or ocs) so be warned :3

DAILY CLICK FOR PALESTINE

PALESTINE FUNDRAISERS POST

🍉🇵🇸🍉

[theblackbookofarkera]

Fog Men

In the secluded Valley of Tath, nestled within the mountainous expanse of Huria, resides the enigmatic tribe known as the Fog Men. Their existence is a tapestry of paradoxes, for they venerate Dagomar, a merciless deity of the sea, despite their homeland being a vast distance from any ocean. This peculiar worship suggests a deep-seated connection to a maritime past, now lost in the mists of their valley.

The Fog Men are a testament to the valley's isolation, bearing the physical hallmarks of a people shaped by their environment and history. Their skin, a pallid shade of green-grey, mirrors the fog-laden stones of their home, while their limbs, unnaturally elongated, and eyes, bulbously protruding, speak of generations spent adapting to—or perhaps declining within—this insular world.

Survival for the Fog Men is a daily challenge, as the valley offers little in the way of sustenance. They are hunters and foragers, eking out an existence from the sparse wildlife and meager vegetation that the valley begrudgingly yields. Agriculture is an art lost to them, if ever it was known, and so they remain bound to the whims of nature for their nourishment.

Adorned in the primitive garb of furs, leathers, and bones, the Fog Men carry the raw essence of the valley on their very bodies. Their attire is a patchwork of necessity and ritual, each piece a silent chronicle of survival and sacrifice. The weapons they wield are as rudimentary as they are essential—forged from the stones, woods, and bones that the valley provides, each tool is a lifeline in the unforgiving embrace of Tath.

Language, too, has evolved—or devolved—among the Fog Men. Their speech is a harsh, guttural dialect, fractured and coarse, reflecting the brutality of their lives and the bleakness of their spirits. It is a tongue that has diverged sharply from its roots, now as alien to the outside world as the Fog Men themselves.

In the shadow of the Octopus Emperor, the Fog Men persist, a tribe out of time, their very existence a riddle wrapped in the fog of the Valley of Tath. They are a people apart, feared and shunned, yet undeniably a part of the fabric of Huria's dark and storied tapestry.

[mugiwara-lucy]

In my next installment of ALL GAS AND NO BRAKES UNTIL NOVEMBER 6TH, I'd like to remind everyone about this idiot:

And this is a guy that Trump says will not only be in charge of Food Handling but WOMEN'S HEALTH TOO:

I'd like to go into this guy's history shown down below:

This guy has NOT ONLY KILLED ANIMALS but cheated on his wife to the point where he committed SUICIDE. Not only that but he's a misogynistic liar like Trump who's Anti-Vax lies led to the deaths of EIGHTY THREE PEOPLE IN SAMOA:

And he bragged about having a freezer of ROAD KILL:

Let's go down the list; having a National Abortion Ban, RFK Jr in charge of women's health and food handling and Trump's camp banning Medicare and Medicaid along with Social Security and them dismantling FEMA and privatizing Weather Broadcasts......the death toll in America will be IMMENSE.

While you guys sit on that, here is the link to register to vote along with the deadlines varying by state! Also, your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! ALSO PLEASE check your registration DAILY because MAGA WILL purge your voter registration!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and try early voting that way you can avoid MAGA fuckery on November 5th! Here’s the link down below listing the dates by state:

Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option! BUT if you decide to go with Mail In/Absentee Ballots; PLEASE mail your ballots at the ACTUAL USPS office!! That way MAGAts won't fuck with it.

And lastly voting abroad is something I’ve seen people take advantage of and i HIGHLY recommend it!! Here’s the link!!

Trump wants to let a weird old guy with BRAIN WORMS in his own words "go wild":

If you listen to him talk, the asshole LITERALLY sounds like he's one foot from the grave. And again he bragged about having a FREEZER OF ROADKILL;

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 4: Mutual Aid Among the Barbarians

The great migrations. — New organization rendered necessary. — The village community. — Communal work. — Judicial procedure — Inter-tribal law. — Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries — Buryates. — Kabyles. — Caucasian mountaineers. — African stems.

It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life. Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress. Man is no exception in nature. He also is subject to the great principle of Mutual Aid which grants the best chances of survival to those who best support each other in the struggle for life. These were the conclusions arrived at in the previous chapters.

However, as soon as we come to a higher stage of civilization, and refer to history which already has something to say about that stage, we are bewildered by the struggles and conflicts which it reveals. The old bonds seem entirely to be broken. Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots, separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And, with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better life for humanity in times to come.

And yet, as soon as the every-day life of man during the historical period is submitted to a closer analysis and so it has been, of late, by many patient students of very early institutions — it appears at once under quite a different aspect. Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but they hardly bear any trace of the countless acts of mutual support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience; they hardly take notice of what makes the very essence of our daily life — our social instincts and manners. No wonder, then, if the records of the past were so imperfect. The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars and calamities which harassed their contemporaries; but they paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting. The epic poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace — nearly all historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of peace, not with peace itself. So that the best-intentioned historian unconsciously draws a distorted picture of the times he endeavours to depict; and, to restore the real proportion between conflict and union, we are now bound to enter into a minute analysis of thousands of small facts and faint indications accidentally preserved in the relics of the past; to interpret them with the aid of comparative ethnology; and, after having heard so much about what used to divide men, to reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite them.

Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines, so as to take into account these two currents of human life and to appreciate the part played by each of them in evolution. But in the meantime we may avail ourselves of the immense preparatory work recently done towards restoring the leading features of the second current, so much neglected. From the better-known periods of history we may take some illustrations of the life of the masses, in order to indicate the part played by mutual support during those periods; and, in so doing, we may dispense (for the sake of brevity) from going as far back as the Egyptian, or even the Greek and Roman antiquity. For, in fact, the evolution of mankind has not had the character of one unbroken series. Several times civilization came to an end in one given region, with one given race, and began anew elsewhere, among other races. But at each fresh start it began again with the same clan institutions which we have seen among the savages. So that if we take the last start of our own civilization, when it began afresh in the first centuries of our era, among those whom the Romans called the “barbarians,” we shall have the whole scale of evolution, beginning with the gentes and ending in the institutions of our own time. To these illustrations the following pages will be devoted.

Men of science have not yet settled upon the causes which some two thousand years ago drove whole nations from Asia into Europe and resulted in the great migrations of barbarians which put an end to the West Roman Empire. One cause, however, is naturally suggested to the geographer as he contemplates the ruins of populous cities in the deserts of Central Asia, or follows the old beds of rivers now disappeared and the wide outlines of lakes now reduced to the size of mere ponds. It is desiccation: a quite recent desiccation, continued still at a speed which we formerly were not prepared to admit.[114] Against it man was powerless. When the inhabitants of North-West Mongolia and East Turkestan saw that water was abandoning them, they had no course open to them but to move down the broad valleys leading to the lowlands, and to thrust westwards the inhabitants of the plains.[115] Stems after stems were thus thrown into Europe, compelling other stems to move and to remove for centuries in succession, westwards and eastwards, in search of new and more or less permanent abodes. Races were mixing with races during those migrations, aborigines with immigrants, Aryans with Ural-Altayans; and it would have been no wonder if the social institutions which had kept them together in their mother countries had been totally wrecked during the stratification of races which took place in Europe and Asia. But they were not wrecked; they simply underwent the modification which was required by the new conditions of life.

The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others, when they first came in contact with the Romans, were in a transitional state of social organization. The clan unions, based upon a real or supposed common origin, had kept them together for many thousands of years in succession. But these unions could answer their purpose so long only as there were no separate families within the gens or clan itself. However, for causes already mentioned, the separate patriarchal family had slowly but steadily developed within the clans, and in the long run it evidently meant the individual accumulation of wealth and power, and the hereditary transmission of both. The frequent migrations of the barbarians and the ensuing wars only hastened the division of the gentes into separate families, while the dispersing of stems and their mingling with strangers offered singular facilities for the ultimate disintegration of those unions which were based upon kinship. The barbarians thus stood in a position of either seeing their clans dissolved into loose aggregations of families, of which the wealthiest, especially if combining sacerdotal functions or military repute with wealth, would have succeeded in imposing their authority upon the others; or of finding out some new form of organization based upon some new principle.

Many stems had no force to resist disintegration: they broke up and were lost for history. But the more vigorous ones did not disintegrate. They came out of the ordeal with a new organization — the village community — which kept them together for the next fifteen centuries or more. The conception of a common territory, appropriated or protected by common efforts, was elaborated, and it took the place of the vanishing conceptions of common descent. The common gods gradually lost their character of ancestors and were endowed with a local territorial character. They became the gods or saints of a given locality; “the land” was identified with its inhabitants. Territorial unions grew up instead of the consanguine unions of old, and this new organization evidently offered many advantages under the given circumstances. It recognized the independence of the family and even emphasized it, the village community disclaiming all rights of interference in what was going on within the family enclosure; it gave much more freedom to personal initiative; it was not hostile in principle to union between men of different descent, and it maintained at the same time the necessary cohesion of action and thought, while it was strong enough to oppose the dominative tendencies of the minorities of wizards, priests, and professional or distinguished warriors. Consequently it became the primary cell of future organization, and with many nations the village community has retained this character until now.

It is now known, and scarcely contested, that the village community was not a specific feature of the Slavonians, nor even of the ancient Teutons. It prevailed in England during both the Saxon and Norman times, and partially survived till the last century;[116] it was at the bottom of the social organization of old Scotland, old Ireland, and old Wales. In France, the communal possession and the communal allotment of arable land by the village folkmote persisted from the first centuries of our era till the times of Turgot, who found the folkmotes “too noisy” and therefore abolished them. It survived Roman rule in Italy, and revived after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the rule with the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, the Finns (in the pittäyä, as also, probably, the kihla-kunta), the Coures, and the Lives. The village community in India — past and present, Aryan and non-Aryan — is well known through the epoch-making works of Sir Henry Maine; and Elphinstone has described it among the Afghans. We also find it in the Mongolian oulous, the Kabyle thaddart, the Javanese dessa, the Malayan kota or tofa, and under a variety of names in Abyssinia, the Soudan, in the interior of Africa, with natives of both Americas, with all the small and large tribes of the Pacific archipelagoes. In short, we do not know one single human race or one single nation which has not had its period of village communities. This fact alone disposes of the theory according to which the village community in Europe would have been a servile growth. It is anterior to serfdom, and even servile submission was powerless to break it. It was a universal phase of evolution, a natural outcome of the clan organization, with all those stems, at least, which have played, or play still, some part in history.[117]

It was a natural growth, and an absolute uniformity in its structure was therefore not possible. As a rule, it was a union between families considered as of common descent and owning a certain territory in common. But with some stems, and under certain circumstances, the families used to grow very numerous before they threw off new buds in the shape of new families; five, six, or seven generations continued to live under the same roof, or within the same enclosure, owning their joint household and cattle in common, and taking their meals at the common hearth. They kept in such case to what ethnology knows as the “joint family,” or the “undivided household,” which we still see all over China, in India, in the South Slavonian zadruga, and occasionally find in Africa, in America, in Denmark, in North Russia, and West France.[118] With other stems, or in other circumstances, not yet well specified, the families did not attain the same proportions; the grandsons, and occasionally the sons, left the household as soon as they were married, and each of them started a new cell of his own. But, joint or not, clustered together or scattered in the woods, the families remained united into village communities; several villages were grouped into tribes; and the tribes joined into confederations. Such was the social organization which developed among the so-called “barbarians,” when they began to settle more or less permanently in Europe.

A very long evolution was required before the gentes, or clans, recognized the separate existence of a patriarchal family in a separate hut; but even after that had been recognized, the clan, as a rule, knew no personal inheritance of property. The few things which might have belonged personally to the individual were either destroyed on his grave or buried with him. The village community, on the contrary, fully recognized the private accumulation of wealth within the family and its hereditary transmission. But wealth was conceived exclusively in the shape of movable property, including cattle, implements, arms, and the dwelling house which — “like all things that can be destroyed by fire” — belonged to the same category.[119] As to private property in land, the village community did not, and could not, recognize anything of the kind, and, as a rule, it does not recognize it now. The land was the common property of the tribe, or of the whole stem, and the village community itself owned its part of the tribal territory so long only as the tribe did not claim a re-distribution of the village allotments. The clearing of the woods and the breaking of the prairies being mostly done by the communities or, at least, by the joint work of several families — always with the consent of the community — the cleared plots were held by each family for a term of four, twelve, or twenty years, after which term they were treated as parts of the arable land owned in common. Private property, or possession “for ever”, was as incompatible with the very principles and the religious conceptions of the village community as it was with the principles of the gens; so that a long influence of the Roman law and the Christian Church, which soon accepted the Roman principles, were required to accustom the barbarians to the idea of private property in land being possible.[120] And yet, even when such property, or possession for an unlimited time, was recognized, the owner of a separate estate remained a co-proprietor in the waste lands, forests, and grazing-grounds. Moreover, we continually see, especially in the history of Russia, that when a few families, acting separately, had taken possession of some land belonging to tribes which were treated as strangers, they very soon united together, and constituted a village community which in the third or fourth generation began to profess a community of origin.

A whole series of institutions, partly inherited from the clan period, have developed from that basis of common ownership of land during the long succession of centuries which was required to bring the barbarians under the dominion of States organized upon the Roman or Byzantine pattern. The village community was not only a union for guaranteeing to each one his fair share in the common land, but also a union for common culture, for mutual support in all possible forms, for protection from violence, and for a further development of knowledge, national bonds, and moral conceptions; and every change in the judicial, military, educational, or economical manners had to be decided at the folkmotes of the village, the tribe, or the confederation. The community being a continuation of the gens, it inherited all its functions. It was the universitas, the mir — a world in itself.

Common hunting, common fishing, and common culture of the orchards or the plantations of fruit trees was the rule with the old gentes. Common agriculture became the rule in the barbarian village communities. True, that direct testimony to this effect is scarce, and in the literature of antiquity we only have the passages of Diodorus and Julius Caesar relating to the inhabitants of the Lipari Islands, one of the Celt-Iberian tribes, and the Sueves. But there is no lack of evidence to prove that common agriculture was practised among some Teuton tribes, the Franks, and the old Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.[121] As to the later survivals of the same practice, they simply are countless. Even in perfectly Romanized France, common culture was habitual some five and twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).[122] The old Welsh cyvar, or joint team, as well as the common culture of the land allotted to the use of the village sanctuary are quite common among the tribes of Caucasus the least touched by civilization,[123] and like facts are of daily occurrence among the Russian peasants. Moreover, it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely spread among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems, and so on.[124] In short, communal culture is so habitual with many Aryan, Ural-Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and Melanesian stems that we must consider it as a universal — though not as the only possible — form of primitive agriculture.[125]

Communal cultivation does not, however, imply by necessity communal consumption. Already under the clan organization we often see that when the boats laden with fruits or fish return to the village, the food they bring in is divided among the huts and the “long houses” inhabited by either several families or the youth, and is cooked separately at each separate hearth. The habit of taking meals in a narrower circle of relatives or associates thus prevails at an early period of clan life. It became the rule in the village community. Even the food grown in common was usually divided between the households after part of it had been laid in store for communal use. However, the tradition of communal meals was piously kept alive; every available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the religious festivals, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the marriages, and the funerals, being seized upon to bring the community to a common meal. Even now this habit, well known in this country as the “harvest supper,” is the last to disappear. On the other hand, even when the fields had long since ceased to be tilled and sown in common, a variety of agricultural work continued, and continues still, to be performed by the community. Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow — the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps — is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate households, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay from a neighbour’s stack without his permission; but the limitation of this last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the cuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows will soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right of taking from a neighbour’s stack the hay he wants for his cattle.[126] The old communal rights are thus re-asserted, as if to prove how contrary unbridled individualism is to human nature.

When the European traveller lands in some small island of the Pacific, and, seeing at a distance a grove of palm trees, walks in that direction, he is astonished to discover that the little villages are connected by roads paved with big stones, quite comfortable for the unshod natives, and very similar to the “old roads” of the Swiss mountains. Such roads were traced by the “barbarians” all over Europe, and one must have travelled in wild, thinly-peopled countries, far away from the chief lines of communication, to realize in full the immense work that must have been performed by the barbarian communities in order to conquer the woody and marshy wilderness which Europe was some two thousand years ago. Isolated families, having no tools, and weak as they were, could not have conquered it; the wilderness would have overpowered them. Village communities alone, working in common, could master the wild forests, the sinking marshes, and the endless steppes. The rough roads, the ferries, the wooden bridges taken away in the winter and rebuilt after the spring flood was over, the fences and the palisaded walls of the villages, the earthen forts and the small towers with which the territory was dotted — all these were the work of the barbarian communities. And when a community grew numerous it used to throw off a new bud. A new community arose at a distance, thus step by step bringing the woods and the steppes under the dominion of man. The whole making of European nations was such a budding of the village communities. Even now-a-days the Russian peasants, if they are not quite broken down by misery, migrate in communities, and they till the soil and build the houses in common when they settle on the banks of the Amur, or in Manitoba. And even the English, when they first began to colonize America, used to return to the old system; they grouped into village communities.[127]

The village community was the chief arm of the barbarians in their hard struggle against a hostile nature. It also was the bond they opposed to oppression by the cunningest and the strongest which so easily might have developed during those disturbed times. The imaginary barbarian — the man who fights and kills at his mere caprice — existed no more than the “bloodthirsty” savage. The real barbarian was living, on the contrary, under a wide series of institutions, imbued with considerations as to what may be useful or noxious to his tribe or confederation, and these institutions were piously handed down from generation to generation in verses and songs, in proverbs or triads, in sentences and instructions. The more we study them the more we recognize the narrow bonds which united men in their villages. Every quarrel arising between two individuals was treated as a communal affair — even the offensive words that might have been uttered during a quarrel being considered as an offence to the community and its ancestors. They had to be repaired by amends made both to the individual and the community;[128] and if a quarrel ended in a fight and wounds, the man who stood by and did not interpose was treated as if he himself had inflicted the wounds.[129] The judicial procedure was imbued with the same spirit. Every dispute was brought first before mediators or arbiters, and it mostly ended with them, the arbiters playing a very important part in barbarian society. But if the case was too grave to be settled in this way, it came before the folkmote, which was bound “to find the sentence,” and pronounced it in a conditional form; that is, “such compensation was due, if the wrong be proved,” and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members of the community. Moreover, there was no other authority to enforce the decisions of the folkmote besides its own moral authority. The only possible menace was that the community might declare the rebel an outlaw, but even this menace was reciprocal. A man discontented with the folkmote could declare that he would abandon the tribe and go over to another tribe — a most dreadful menace, as it was sure to bring all kinds of misfortunes upon a tribe that might have been unfair to one of its members.[130] A rebellion against a right decision of the customary law was simply “inconceivable,” as Henry Maine has so well said, because “law, morality, and fact” could not be separated from each other in those times.[131] The moral authority of the commune was so great that even at a much later epoch, when the village communities fell into submission to the feudal lord, they maintained their judicial powers; they only permitted the lord, or his deputy, to “find” the above conditional sentence in accordance with the customary law he had sworn to follow, and to levy for himself the fine (the fred) due to the commune. But for a long time, the lord himself, if he remained a co-proprietor in the waste land of the commune, submitted in communal affairs to its decisions. Noble or ecclesiastic, he had to submit to the folkmote — Wer daselbst Wasser und Weid genusst, muss gehorsam sein — “Who enjoys here the right of water and pasture must obey” — was the old saying. Even when the peasants became serfs under the lord, he was bound to appear before the folkmote when they summoned him.[132]

In their conceptions of justice the barbarians evidently did not much differ from the savages. They also maintained the idea that a murder must be followed by putting the murderer to death; that wounds had to be punished by equal wounds, and that the wronged family was bound to fulfil the sentence of the customary law. This was a holy duty, a duty towards the ancestors, which had to be accomplished in broad daylight, never in secrecy, and rendered widely known. Therefore the most inspired passages of the sagas and epic poetry altogether are those which glorify what was supposed to be justice. The gods themselves joined in aiding it. However, the predominant feature of barbarian justice is, on the one hand, to limit the numbers of persons who may be involved in a feud, and, on the other hand, to extirpate the brutal idea of blood for blood and wounds for wounds, by substituting for it the system of compensation. The barbarian codes which were collections of common law rules written down for the use of judges — “first permitted, then encouraged, and at last enforced,” compensation instead of revenge.[133] The compensation has, however, been totally misunderstood by those who represented it as a fine, and as a sort of carte blanche given to the rich man to do whatever he liked. The compensation money (wergeld), which was quite different from the fine or fred,[134] was habitually so high for all kinds of active offences that it certainly was no encouragement for such offences. In case of a murder it usually exceeded all the possible fortune of the murderer “Eighteen times eighteen cows” is the compensation with the Ossetes who do not know how to reckon above eighteen, while with the African tribes it attains 800 cows or 100 camels with their young, or 416 sheep in the poorer tribes.[135] In the great majority of cases, the compensation money could not be paid at all, so that the murderer had no issue but to induce the wronged family, by repentance, to adopt him. Even now, in the Caucasus, when feuds come to an end, the offender touches with his lips the breast of the oldest woman of the tribe, and becomes a “milk-brother” to all men of the wronged family.[136] With several African tribes he must give his daughter, or sister, in marriage to some one of the family; with other tribes he is bound to marry the woman whom he has made a widow; and in all cases he becomes a member of the family, whose opinion is taken in all important family matters.[137]

Far from acting with disregard to human life, the barbarians, moreover, knew nothing of the horrid punishments introduced at a later epoch by the laic and canonic laws under Roman and Byzantine influence. For, if the Saxon code admitted the death penalty rather freely even in cases of incendiarism and armed robbery, the other barbarian codes pronounced it exclusively in cases of betrayal of one’s kin, and sacrilege against the community’s gods, as the only means to appease the gods.

All this, as seen is very far from the supposed “moral dissoluteness” of the barbarians. On the contrary, we cannot but admire the deeply moral principles elaborated within the early village communities which found their expression in Welsh triads, in legends about King Arthur, in Brehon commentaries,[138] in old German legends and so on, or find still their expression in the sayings of the modern barbarians. In his introduction to The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the qualities of a Northman, as they appear in the sagas: —

To do what lay before him openly and like a man, without fear of either foes, fiends, or fate;... to be free and daring in all his deeds; to be gentle and generous to his friends and kinsmen; to be stern and grim to his foes [those who are under the lex talionis], but even towards them to fulfil all bounden duties.... To be no truce-breaker, nor tale-bearer, nor backbiter. To utter nothing against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To turn no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even though he were a foe.[139]

The same or still better principles permeate the Welsh epic poetry and triads. To act “according to the nature of mildness and the principles of equity,” without regard to the foes or to the friends, and “to repair the wrong,” are the highest duties of man; “evil is death, good is life,” exclaims the poet legislator.[140] “The World would be fool, if agreements made on lips were not honourable” — the Brehon law says. And the humble Shamanist Mordovian, after having praised the same qualities, will add, moreover, in his principles of customary law, that “among neighbours the cow and the milking-jar are in common.” that, “the cow must be milked for yourself and him who may ask milk;” that “the body of a child reddens from the stroke, but the face of him who strikes reddens from shame;“[141] and so on. Many pages might be filled with like principles expressed and followed by the “barbarians.”

One feature more of the old village communities deserves a special mention. It is the gradual extension of the circle of men embraced by the feelings of solidarity. Not only the tribes federated into stems, but the stems as well, even though of different origin, joined together in confederations. Some unions were so close that, for instance, the Vandals, after part of their confederation had left for the Rhine, and thence went over to Spain and Africa, respected for forty consecutive years the landmarks and the abandoned villages of their confederates, and did not take possession of them until they had ascertained through envoys that their confederates did not intend to return.

With other barbarians, the soil was cultivated by one part of the stem, while the other part fought on or beyond the frontiers of the common territory. As to the leagues between several stems, they were quite habitual. The Sicambers united with the Cherusques and the Sueves, the Quades with the Sarmates; the Sarmates with the Alans, the Carpes, and the Huns. Later on, we also see the conception of nations gradually developing in Europe, long before anything like a State had grown in any part of the continent occupied by the barbarians. These nations — for it is impossible to refuse the name of a nation to the Merovingian France, or to the Russia of the eleventh and twelfth century — were nevertheless kept together by nothing else but a community of language, and a tacit agreement of the small republics to take their dukes from none but one special family.

Wars were certainly unavoidable; migration means war; but Sir Henry Maine has already fully proved in his remarkable study of the tribal origin of International Law, that “Man has never been so ferocious or so stupid as to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of effort to prevent it,” and he has shown how exceedingly great is “the number of ancient institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the way of war, or to provide an alternative to it.”[142] In reality, man is so far from the warlike being he is supposed to be, that when the barbarians had once settled they so rapidly lost the very habits of warfare that very soon they were compelled to keep special dukes followed by special scholæ or bands of warriors, in order to protect them from possible intruders. They preferred peaceful toil to war, the very peacefulness of man being the cause of the specialization of the warrior’s trade, which specialization resulted later on in serfdom and in all the wars of the “States period” of human history.

History finds great difficulties in restoring to life the institutions of the barbarians. At every step the historian meets with some faint indication which he is unable to explain with the aid of his own documents only. But a broad light is thrown on the past as soon as we refer to the institutions of the very numerous tribes which are still living under a social organization almost identical with that of our barbarian ancestors. Here we simply have the difficulty of choice, because the islands of the Pacific, the steppes of Asia, and the tablelands of Africa are real historical museums containing specimens of all possible intermediate stages which mankind has lived through, when passing from the savage gentes up to the States’ organization. Let us, then, examine a few of those specimens.

If we take the village communities of the Mongol Buryates, especially those of the Kudinsk Steppe on the upper Lena which have better escaped Russian influence, we have fair representatives of barbarians in a transitional state, between cattle-breeding and agriculture.[143] These Buryates are still living in “joint families”; that is, although each son, when he is married, goes to live in a separate hut, the huts of at least three generations remain within the same enclosure, and the joint family work in common in their fields, and own in common their joint households and their cattle, as well as their “calves’ grounds” (small fenced patches of soil kept under soft grass for the rearing of calves). As a rule, the meals are taken separately in each hut; but when meat is roasted, all the twenty to sixty members of the joint household feast together. Several joint households which live in a cluster, as well as several smaller families settled in the same village — mostly débris of joint households accidentally broken up — make the oulous, or the village community; several oulouses make a tribe; and the, forty-six tribes, or clans, of the Kudinsk Steppe are united into one confederation. Smaller and closer confederations are entered into, as necessity arises for special wants, by several tribes. They know no private property in land — the land being held in common by the oulous, or rather by the confederation, and if it becomes necessary, the territory is re-allotted between the different oulouses at a folkmote of the tribe, and between the forty-six tribes at a folkmote of the confederation. It is worthy of note that the same organization prevails among all the 250,000 Buryates of East Siberia, although they have been for three centuries under Russian rule, and are well acquainted with Russian institutions.

With all that, inequalities of fortune rapidly develop among the Buryates, especially since the Russian Government is giving an exaggerated importance to their elected taishas (princes), whom it considers as responsible tax-collectors and representatives of the confederations in their administrative and even commercial relations with the Russians. The channels for the enrichment of the few are thus many, while the impoverishment of the great number goes hand in hand, through the appropriation of the Buryate lands by the Russians. But it is a habit with the Buryates, especially those of Kudinsk — and habit is more than law — that if a family has lost its cattle, the richer families give it some cows and horses that it may recover. As to the destitute man who has no family, he takes his meals in the huts of his congeners; he enters a hut, takes — by right, not for charity — his seat by the fire, and shares the meal which always is scrupulously divided into equal parts; he sleeps where he has taken his evening meal. Altogether, the Russian conquerors of Siberia were so much struck by the communistic practices of the Buryates, that they gave them the name of Bratskiye — “the Brotherly Ones” — and reported to Moscow. “With them everything is in common; whatever they have is shared in common.” Even now, when the Lena Buryates sell their wheat, or send some of their cattle to be sold to a Russian butcher, the families of the oulous, or the tribe, put their wheat and cattle together, and sell it as a whole. Each oulous has, moreover, its grain store for loans in case of need, its communal baking oven (the four banal of the old French communities), and its blacksmith, who, like the blacksmith of the Indian communities,[144] being a member of the community, is never paid for his work within the community. He must make it for nothing, and if he utilizes his spare time for fabricating the small plates of chiselled and silvered iron which are used in Buryate land for the decoration of dress, he may occasionally sell them to a woman from another clan, but to the women of his own clan the attire is presented as a gift. Selling and buying cannot take place within the community, and the rule is so severe that when a richer family hires a labourer the labourer must be taken from another clan or from among the Russians. This habit is evidently not specific to the Buryates; it is so widely spread among the modern barbarians, Aryan and Ural-Altayan, that it must have been universal among our ancestors.

The feeling of union within the confederation is kept alive by the common interests of the tribes, their folkmotes, and the festivities which are usually kept in connection with the folkmotes. The same feeling is, however, maintained by another institution, the aba, or common hunt, which is a reminiscence of a very remote past. Every autumn, the forty-six clans of Kudinsk come together for such a hunt, the produce of which is divided among all the families. Moreover, national abas, to assert the unity of the whole Buryate nation, are convoked from time to time. In such cases, all Buryate clans which are scattered for hundreds of miles west and east of Lake Baikal, are bound to send their delegate hunters. Thousands of men come together, each one bringing provisions for a whole month. Every one’s share must be equal to all the others, and therefore, before being put together, they are weighed by an elected elder (always “with the hand”: scales would be a profanation of the old custom). After that the hunters divide into bands of twenty, and the parties go hunting according to a well-settled plan. In such abas the entire Buryate nation revives its epic traditions of a time when it was united in a powerful league. Let me add that such communal hunts are quite usual with the Red Indians and the Chinese on the banks of the Usuri (the kada).[145]

With the Kabyles, whose manners of life have been so well described by two French explorers,[146] we have barbarians still more advanced in agriculture. Their fields, irrigated and manured, are well attended to, and in the hilly tracts every available plot of land is cultivated by the spade. The Kabyles have known many vicissitudes in their history; they have followed for sometime the Mussulman law of inheritance, but, being adverse to it, they have returned, 150 years ago, to the tribal customary law of old. Accordingly, their land-tenure is of a mixed character, and private property in land exists side by side with communal possession. Still, the basis of their present organization is the village community, the thaddart, which usually consists of several joint families (kharoubas), claiming a community of origin, as well as of smaller families of strangers. Several villages are grouped into clans or tribes (ârch); several tribes make the confederation (thak’ebilt); and several confederations may occasionally enter into a league, chiefly for purposes of armed defence.

The Kabyles know no authority whatever besides that of the djemmâa, or folkmote of the village community. All men of age take part in it, in the open air, or in a special building provided with stone seats, and the decisions of the djemmâa are evidently taken at unanimity: that is, the discussions continue until all present agree to accept, or to submit to, some decision. There being no authority in a village community to impose a decision, this system has been practised by mankind wherever there have been village communities, and it is practised still wherever they continue to exist, i.e. by several hundred million men all over the world. The djemmâa nominates its executive — the elder, the scribe, and the treasurer; it assesses its own taxes; and it manages the repartition of the common lands, as well as all kinds of works of public utility. A great deal of work is done in common: the roads, the mosques, the fountains, the irrigation canals, the towers erected for protection from robbers, the fences, and so on, are built by the village community; while the high-roads, the larger mosques, and the great market-places are the work of the tribe. Many traces of common culture continue to exist, and the houses continue to be built by, or with the aid of, all men and women of the village. Altogether, the “aids” are of daily occurrence, and are continually called in for the cultivation of the fields, for harvesting, and so on. As to the skilled work, each community has its blacksmith, who enjoys his part of the communal land, and works for the community; when the tilling season approaches he visits every house, and repairs the tools and the ploughs, without expecting any pay, while the making of new ploughs is considered as a pious work which can by no means be recompensed in money, or by any other form of salary.

As the Kabyles already have private property, they evidently have both rich and poor among them. But like all people who closely live together, and know how poverty begins, they consider it as an accident which may visit every one. “Don’t say that you will never wear the beggar’s bag, nor go to prison,” is a proverb of the Russian peasants; the Kabyles practise it, and no difference can be detected in the external behaviour between rich and poor; when the poor convokes an “aid,” the rich man works in his field, just as the poor man does it reciprocally in his turn.[147] Moreover, the djemmâas set aside certain gardens and fields, sometimes cultivated in common, for the use of the poorest members. Many like customs continue to exist. As the poorer families would not be able to buy meat, meat is regularly bought with the money of the fines, or the gifts to the djemmâa, or the payments for the use of the communal olive-oil basins, and it is distributed in equal parts among those who cannot afford buying meat themselves. And when a sheep or a bullock is killed by a family for its own use on a day which is not a market day, the fact is announced in the streets by the village crier, in order that sick people and pregnant women may take of it what they want. Mutual support permeates the life of the Kabyles, and if one of them, during a journey abroad, meets with another Kabyle in need, he is bound to come to his aid, even at the risk of his own fortune and life; if this has not been done, the djemmâa of the man who has suffered from such neglect may lodge a complaint, and the djemmâa of the selfish man will at once make good the loss. We thus come across a custom which is familiar to the students of the mediaeval merchant guilds. Every stranger who enters a Kabyle village has right to housing in the winter, and his horses can always graze on the communal lands for twenty-four hours. But in case of need he can reckon upon an almost unlimited support. Thus, during the famine of 1867–68, the Kabyles received and fed every one who sought refuge in their villages, without distinction of origin. In the district of Dellys, no less than 12,000 people who came from all parts of Algeria, and even from Morocco, were fed in this way. While people died from starvation all over Algeria, there was not one single case of death due to this cause on Kabylian soil. The djemmâas, depriving themselves of necessaries, organized relief, without ever asking any aid from the Government, or uttering the slightest complaint; they considered it as a natural duty. And while among the European settlers all kind of police measures were taken to prevent thefts and disorder resulting from such an influx of strangers, nothing of the kind was required on the Kabyles’ territory: the djemmâas needed neither aid nor protection from without.[148]

I can only cursorily mention two other most interesting features of Kabyle life; namely, the anaya, or protection granted to wells, canals, mosques, marketplaces, some roads, and so on, in case of war, and the çofs. In the anaya we have a series of institutions both for diminishing the evils of war and for preventing conflicts. Thus the market-place is anaya, especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market town. The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain also is anaya in case of war; and so on. As to the çof it is a widely spread form of association, having some characters of the mediaeval Bürgschaften or Gegilden, as well as of societies both for mutual protection and for various purposes — intellectual, political, and emotional — which cannot be satisfied by the territorial organization of the village, the clan, and the confederation. The çof knows no territorial limits; it recruits its members in various villages, even among strangers; and it protects them in all possible eventualities of life. Altogether, it is an attempt at supplementing the territorial grouping by an extra-territorial grouping intended to give an expression to mutual affinities of all kinds across the frontiers. The free international association of individual tastes and ideas, which we consider as one of the best features of our own life, has thus its origin in barbarian antiquity.

The mountaineers of Caucasia offer another extremely instructive field for illustrations of the same kind. In studying the present customs of the Ossetes — their joint families and communes and their judiciary conceptions — Professor Kovalevsky, in a remarkable work on Modern Custom and Ancient Law was enabled step by step to trace the similar dispositions of the old barbarian codes and even to study the origins of feudalism. With other Caucasian stems we occasionally catch a glimpse into the origin of the village community in those cases where it was not tribal but originated from a voluntary union between families of distinct origin. Such was recently the case with some Khevsoure villages, the inhabitants of which took the oath of “community and fraternity.”[149] In another part of Caucasus, Daghestan, we see the growth of feudal relations between two tribes, both maintaining at the same time their village communities (and even traces of the gentile “classes”), and thus giving a living illustration of the forms taken by the conquest of Italy and Gaul by the barbarians. The victorious race, the Lezghines, who have conquered several Georgian and Tartar villages in the Zakataly district, did not bring them under the dominion of separate families; they constituted a feudal clan which now includes 12,000 households in three villages, and owns in common no less than twenty Georgian and Tartar villages. The conquerors divided their own land among their clans, and the clans divided it in equal parts among the families; but they did not interfere with the djemmâas of their tributaries which still practise the habit mentioned by Julius Caesar; namely, the djemmâa decides each year which part of the communal territory must be cultivated, and this land is divided into as many parts as there are families, and the parts are distributed by lot. It is worthy of note that although proletarians are of common occurrence among the Lezghines (who live under a system of private property in land, and common ownership of serfs[150]) they are rare among their Georgian serfs, who continue to hold their land in common. As to the customary law of the Caucasian mountaineers, it is much the same as that of the Longobards or Salic Franks, and several of its dispositions explain a good deal the judicial procedure of the barbarians of old. Being of a very impressionable character, they do their best to prevent quarrels from taking a fatal issue; so, with the Khevsoures, the swords are very soon drawn when a quarrel breaks out; but if a woman rushes out and throws among them the piece of linen which she wears on her head, the swords are at once returned to their sheaths, and the quarrel is appeased. The head-dress of the women is anaya. If a quarrel has not been stopped in time and has ended in murder, the compensation money is so considerable that the aggressor is entirely ruined for his life, unless he is adopted by the wronged family; and if he has resorted to his sword in a trifling quarrel and has inflicted wounds, he loses for ever the consideration of his kin. In all disputes, mediators take the matter in hand; they select from among the members of the clan the judges — six in smaller affairs, and from ten to fifteen in more serious matters — and Russian observers testify to the absolute incorruptibility of the judges. An oath has such a significance that men enjoying general esteem are dispensed from taking it: a simple affirmation is quite sufficient, the more so as in grave affairs the Khevsoure never hesitates to recognize his guilt (I mean, of course, the Khevsoure untouched yet by civilization). The oath is chiefly reserved for such cases, like disputes about property, which require some sort of appreciation in addition to a simple statement of facts; and in such cases the men whose affirmation will decide in the dispute, act with the greatest circumspection. Altogether it is certainly not a want of honesty or of respect to the rights of the congeners which characterizes the barbarian societies of Caucasus.

The stems of Africa offer such an immense variety of extremely interesting societies standing at all intermediate stages from the early village community to the despotic barbarian monarchies that I must abandon the idea of giving here even the chief results of a comparative study of their institutions.[151] Suffice it to say, that, even under the most horrid despotism of kings, the folkmotes of the village communities and their customary law remain sovereign in a wide circle of affairs. The law of the State allows the king to take any one’s life for a simple caprice, or even for simply satisfying his gluttony; but the customary law of the people continues to maintain the same network of institutions for mutual support which exist among other barbarians or have existed among our ancestors. And with some better-favoured stems (in Bornu, Uganda, Abyssinia), and especially the Bogos, some of the dispositions of the customary law are inspired with really graceful and delicate feelings.

The village communities of the natives of both Americas have the same character. The Tupi of Brazil were found living in “long houses” occupied by whole clans which used to cultivate their corn and manioc fields in common. The Arani, much more advanced in civilization, used to cultivate their fields in common; so also the Oucagas, who had learned under their system of primitive communism and “long houses” to build good roads and to carry on a variety of domestic industries,[152] not inferior to those of the early medieval times in Europe. All of them were also living under the same customary law of which we have given specimens on the preceding pages. At another extremity of the world we find the Malayan feudalism, but this feudalism has been powerless to unroot the negaria, or village community, with its common ownership of at least part of the land, and the redistribution of land among the several negarias of the tribe.[153] With the Alfurus of Minahasa we find the communal rotation of the crops; with the Indian stem of the Wyandots we have the periodical redistribution of land within the tribe, and the clan-culture of the soil; and in all those parts of Sumatra where Moslem institutions have not yet totally destroyed the old organization we find the joint family (suka) and the village community (kota) which maintains its right upon the land, even if part of it has been cleared without its authorization.[154] But to say this, is to say that all customs for mutual protection and prevention of feuds and wars, which have been briefly indicated in the preceding pages as characteristic of the village community, exist as well. More than that: the more fully the communal possession of land has been maintained, the better and the gentler are the habits. De Stuers positively affirms that wherever the institution of the village community has been less encroached upon by the conquerors, the inequalities of fortunes are smaller, and the very prescriptions of the lex talionis are less cruel; while, on the contrary, wherever the village community has been totally broken up, “the inhabitants suffer the most unbearable oppression from their despotic rulers.”[155] This is quite natural. And when Waitz made the remark that those stems which have maintained their tribal confederations stand on a higher level of development and have a richer literature than those stems which have forfeited the old bonds of union, he only pointed out what might have been foretold in advance.

More illustrations would simply involve me in tedious repetitions — so strikingly similar are the barbarian societies under all climates and amidst all races. The same process of evolution has been going on in mankind with a wonderful similarity. When the clan organization, assailed as it was from within by the separate family, and from without by the dismemberment of the migrating clans and the necessity of taking in strangers of different descent — the village community, based upon a territorial conception, came into existence. This new institution, which had naturally grown out of the preceding one — the clan — permitted the barbarians to pass through a most disturbed period of history without being broken into isolated families which would have succumbed in the struggle for life. New forms of culture developed under the new organization; agriculture attained the stage which it hardly has surpassed until now with the great number; the domestic industries reached a high degree of perfection. The wilderness was conquered, it was intersected by roads, dotted with swarms thrown off by the mother-communities. Markets and fortified centres, as well as places of public worship, were erected. The conceptions of a wider union, extended to whole stems and to several stems of various origin, were slowly elaborated. The old conceptions of justice which were conceptions of mere revenge, slowly underwent a deep modification — the idea of amends for the wrong done taking the place of revenge. The customary law which still makes the law of the daily life for two-thirds or more of mankind, was elaborated under that organization, as well as a system of habits intended to prevent the oppression of the masses by the minorities whose powers grew in proportion to the growing facilities for private accumulation of wealth. This was the new form taken by the tendencies of the masses for mutual support. And the progress — economical, intellectual, and moral — which mankind accomplished under this new popular form of organization, was so great that the States, when they were called later on into existence, simply took possession, in the interest of the minorities, of all the judicial, economical, and administrative functions which the village community already had exercised in the interest of all.

[echologname]

🥧Thanksgiving🌽

✝️Bible verses 🙌

Giving thanks to God is such a joy! Whether it's for something good or bad, trusting that He works it all for good gives me peace in my heart. So, let the breaking bread together as family and friends remind us of all we have to be thankful for because gratitude is such a powerful thing and it makes Jesus happy when we thank Him and praise Him for all He's done for us.

Be thankful in everything, in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever (1 Chronicles 16:34)

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15)

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. (Colossians 3:16)

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. (Isaiah 25:1)

Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. (Psalms 63:3-4)

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. (Psalms 100:4)

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD. (Psalms 150:6)

Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens (Psalms 68:19)

[studiousbotanist]

BIRTHDAY OUTFIT !!!!!! have not busted this button up out in a minute !! (he/him)

[rtheott]

Inovaire Chronicles: Smoke Rises Yet Again...

Disclaimer: I am tired as I edited this so blah. Also, I do plan on making this into a comic some time. This is a rough draft of the first story. Let me know how I could improve!

      Ms. Desiree dons her press hat on her head, grabs her coat, and leaves the abandoned building that she converted into her own newspaper manufacturing area and ventures into the city to hopefully find her daily scoop. The best place to look for news is the Harbour, so she heads that direction. The city around her grows dirtier and slum-like as she nears the docks. Desiree lived in the Harbour section of the island city known as Inovaire. Inovaire has three sections of cities, separated by class. These sections are known as the Harbour, the dirtiest and most crime ridden section; the Factory, the most commercial and crowded section; and the Plaza, the ritziest section where the most exclusive and powerful families live. The Harbour was where Desiree felt most comfortable in, due to her upbringing. She lived in the Harbour section until the age of 20 when she had finally scraped up enough money to purchase a printing press and an unused building in the Factory. Though, that took years to build up as her mother and her had to work hard in order to even be able to afford a full meal. She hopes that offering well paying jobs only to people from the Harbour would help them be able to avoid most if not all the hardships that she had experienced. Desiree nears the ocean where the city opens up revealing docks that constantly bring in goods, food, and visitors. These docks that border the entire island are why this section of the city is called the Harbour. After a bit of walking on the docks, her train of thought is disrupted as she smells a mix of smoke, smoldering wood, and melted bronze. Her eyes land on smoke that slowly billows out from the now almost fully incinerated Yuress Warehouse before they land on several soot-covered people sitting on a nearby dock. The Yuress Warehouses are where most of the city's imports of building supplies come from. This is what caused the Yuress family to reach such a high status and become one of the select families who have the most power in Inovaire. She approaches the dock, preparing to interview the workers as she readies her trusty notebook and pencil. As she reaches the group of workers, she hears one of them, a bear, talking. The bear’s voice has a deep baritone dripping with a thick accent that accompanies his stocky frame and large belly.

“-tried tuh stop da fire, but it spread too fast tuh completely stop it. ‘S almost like dey knew where tuh throw dose fire bombs for it tuh get outta control.” The bear was telling the other workers. Desiree jots down in her notebook the word arson. She waits for the bear to finish his retelling and asks him if he would be okay with an interview. He nods at her and they both leave the group of other workers. “So, mister…” She starts, hinting for him to tell her his name. “Shirjay Ritley, but jus call me Shirjay.” He answers. 

“So, Shirjay. You mentioned that someone threw fire bombs. Did you manage to see who threw it?” She asks. “Well, uhm… All dat I wuz able tuh see was a gas mask. It coulda been dat gang… uhhh. What were dey called again?” He asks. “The Firebrands.” Desiree quickly answers, writing down the name in her notebook and underlining it with one loud scratch of her pencil. “Thank you for your time Shirjay. I’ll make sure to have this in the paper as soon as I can. Try not tell anyone else about any more information. We don't want to spread any misinformation.” She tells Shirjay as she starts walking away. “Alright, miss…” The bear hesitates, “Wait! I nevah caught ya name!” He shouts. “Desiree!” She shouts back with a smile. “See ya ‘round, miss Desree!” He says with a wave as she disappears into the city. After a while of walking, she reaches the station and goes inside. She walks over to the desk of one of her workers, Veiryl Keeley, who had also been Desiree’s closest friend since childhood. Veiryl had a thin, yet sturdy physique and she could talk her way out of any situation. Desiree tore off the page about the fire from her notebook, making sure that she still had the page with the mention of the Firebrands in her possession. “V, start writing the paper for me please. Give it to Rayland and Pierre once you finish writing it, so they can print the papers. Tell them to hand all the papers to Barneby, once they have been printed. Barneby will know what to do.” She lists off to Veiryl. “A hello would be nice, D.” Veiryl said in her soft spoken voice. “Sorry V.” Desiree sincerely apologized as she practically ran to her own desk, conducting a search for pocket change so she could get lunch while she was out. Veiryl laughs before speaking, “You know I was just messing with you.” Desiree breathes a sigh of relief as she could never tell when Veiryl was joking or not. “But really, where are you going so quickly?” Veiryl asked. “I have a lead to follow.” Desiree answers as she successfully finds some money. Desiree runs to the front door again. “Alright, I’ll be back sometime after noon. So, I’ll see you all then!” She announces to the room just seconds before she closes the door behind her, leaving the station as fast as she had arrived. Desiree starts walking to a particular bar that she believes to be a common spot for some Firebrands before she stops dead in her tracks. She turns around, worrying that Veiryl might be mad at her. Desiree opens the door to the news station and pokes her head in. “Sorry again V!” She says from the door. “It’s alright D, now go! You are wasting daylight.” Veiryl assures her.

Desiree nods and leaves the station once more. The only thing on her mind now is to find out if her hunch about this bar is correct.

[theschizophrenicchristmasgoblin]

The Bin Chronicles

The first thing you need to know about me is that I will not be - in any sense of the word - a reliable narrator.

In fact, being an unreliable narrator is exactly what makes me so uncomfortably authentic. I’m a person who struggles with mental illness writing about having a mentally ill experience in multiple mental facilities with other mentally ill individuals.

If you resonate with what you’re about to hear, I’m deeply sorry and hope you’re getting the care and support you need. If you don’t resonate with my story and are simply reading for entertainment, welcome.

Disclaimer about the word bin*

In case you’re wondering what “bin” means in the title of the book, The Bin Chronicles, let me tell you. It is shorthand for the term “looney bin”. It’s an affectionate joking term that some people use to refer to the psych ward. If anyone asks, I made it up.

Chapter 1 - The Drive

Clutching my bleeding forearm to my chest, I tried to wade through my sandbag heavy thoughts. Were the handfuls of ibuprofen I downed ever going to kick in? Would I get charged extra if I bled out in the Uber I impulsively scheduled? Should I have texted all those friends to see if they were awake enough to convince me to go to the ER? Did I even deserve to go to the hospital for something like this?

The piercing headlights of the approaching white sedan broke through my worrying. It was decided. At 1:39 AM on August 20th, 2023, I was going to head to the Massachusetts General Hospital emergency room for severe self-harm.

I’d like to say something inspiring such as “getting in the backseat of that Uber was one of the bravest choices I’ve ever made”. But I’d be lying. It didn’t feel like a brave choice. I didn’t even really want to get help. I just knew that the voice in my head telling me that I needed to cut deep enough to require stitches needed to be taken seriously.

The only memory my increasingly painkiller sedated brain encoded was the irony of being in this particular car. Never in my life have I had a kinder driver. He went above and beyond and offered me a phone charger and water. That had never happened to me before. Meanwhile, I was having one of the worst nights of my life. His warmth made the hot tears roll down my cheeks even harder, as the juxtaposition of a stranger’s kindness compared to my own deadly self-hatred felt like too much to bear. It would have looked like a completely normal ride had I not been holding my injured arm to my chest.

Now that the anxiety of whether or not I should get into the Uber subsided, a new worry popped up. Was the cut deep enough? If not, would they turn me away? I was determined to finally go inpatient and in my deranged mind I thought the only way to get there was to have a medical emergency. As these thoughts multiplied, I remember trying to take in the city and its beautiful florescent lights. For a split second, I felt true serenity being one of the only cars on the highway. With my arm starting to throb and soak through the gauze, the tranquility didn’t last.

Suddenly, everything looked familiar. I had worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for a year as a research coordinator. I recognized Flour Bakery + Cafe, the little coffee shop with the best butter chicken sandwich around, and the old watering hole where we used to drink after work, Harvard Gardens. I got to retrace my daily commute on Staniford Street passing a Domino’s pizza that made me salivate (yes I like Domino’s, don’t turn your nose up at me!) and a sub shop I never got to try, turning right onto Cambridge Street where I could never resist the Whole Foods next to my work at lunch time. Streets usually jampacked and bustling with cars and pedestrians commuting to and from work were eerily empty. No babies crying, dogs barking, no full hands with lunches and coffee or music blaring while bicyclists rode past. As I finally reached the main entrance of Mass General, a feeling of dread set in. I knew that I wouldn’t be going home that night.

I got out of the car. Part of me thought about getting right back in. I guess in that moment I did two things: I fulfilled my mission of taking myself to the ER and I not only admitted I needed help but brought myself to the place that could keep me safe. Once inside, I talked with the woman at the front desk. Everyone there was incredibly calm and kind and I immediately felt a sense of relief. They asked me some basic demographic intake questions like my age, DOB, the nature of the visit, whether or not I had current suicidal thoughts. Unlike my previous ER visit earlier that week, the first thing they did when they saw me was stitch me up. I’ll never forget that the provider doing them said it was almost too superficial to require stitches. While many people might feel comforted by that fact, I felt discouraged. I felt like I hadn’t made the cut deep enough which in turn made me believe I didn’t deserve to be at the hospital. I didn’t see the psych triage team that morning, but I finally fell asleep in a recliner.

Before I explain any further, let me tell you how I put myself in this minacious situation.

…

The weeks leading up to Mass General and eventually McLean Hospital were not pretty. I had been going through a depressive episode for the past 6 months if not longer, but during those last two weeks things had gotten much worse. One of the things I struggle with when I’m depressed is hygiene. Usually that takes the form of not taking my prescribed pills or brushing my teeth. Graphic, I know. Sometimes it involves not brushing my hair or taking showers too infrequently. This time it was all of the above. I felt hopeless consistently and I stopped enjoying things that had otherwise brought me joy.

At that time, I really enjoyed smoking weed and drinking daily. I stopped them both cold turkey. Another source of enjoyment for me was watching TV with my partner every day. During this period, I stopped being able to pay attention to our shows. Instead, I spent most of my time watching myself from outside and above my body. I couldn’t watch TV or hold a conversation without dissociating. Dissociation is a break in how your mind processes information. Dissociation can cause feelings of disconnectedness from your thoughts, feelings, memories, or surroundings. It can also mess with identity and sense of time. It can be a natural response to trauma, a way to cope with stressful experiences, or a symptom of mental illnesses like PTSD, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder to name a few. Alternatively, it is sometimes a side effect of alcohol or taking or coming off of medications. For me, I either view myself from outside my body or stare blankly while being bombarded with anxious thoughts or none at all until someone snaps me out of it.

As soon as I lost interest in those aforementioned activities, I couldn’t bring myself to go back to them. I stopped eating. I struggle with a self-diagnosed weed-induced binge eating disorder where most of the time I restrict my food intake except for when I’m high. Once I stopped smoking, I lost my appetite completely. I wasn’t even restricting; I just had no energy to eat. I didn’t see the point in it anymore.

 I couldn’t keep myself up past 8:30 at night. I’d blame it on the medications I was taking, but I can’t even do that because my psychiatrist and I took the one medication that was impacting my sleep, Abilify, out of the mix. Abilify is an antipsychotic that treats many different mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar I, autism spectrum disorder, and Tourette syndrome. What it does is balance the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain to help regulate moods, behaviors, and thoughts. We decided to stop the medication because I wasn’t feeling any positive or negative effects and I didn’t feel like it was contributing to our goal of getting me out of my depressed funk.

Now I had nothing to blame for my change in sleep but my depression. I would later learn from McLean how important it is to change the narrative from “my depression made me do this” to “my experience with depression made me feel this way”. It might sound like a small change, but what it does is stop you from making your illness your whole identity. Personifying depression can give it a life of its own, and it can be empowering to separate yourself from it by making these small linguistic changes. Now that I have that information, I can reframe the narrative to recognize that one of the symptoms of depression is sleep disturbance and that I was at the time experiencing that symptom rather than blame my depression as a whole for the situation.

I started moving slowly. I felt like I was wading through water any time I had to stand. My energy was at an all-time low. I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed on the weekends and went right to bed when I got home from work. My bones ached. I felt tired all the time. I felt worthless. I felt like my life had no meaning, like I was merely a husk of my former self. I didn’t feel like I had any value to offer or bring to the world anymore.

I stopped paying attention at work because I couldn’t focus. I cried constantly and isolated myself from the rest of my coworkers. I had to step away from meetings because I couldn’t stop crying.  I wasn’t able to keep up with my social life. I stopped calling my friends and didn’t return their calls when they reached to check in. This may sound like I’m beating a dead horse, and it most definitely is redundant, but I want to highlight what the signs of depression were for me. I hope this helps you to identify it in yourself or in someone else.[MOU1] 

I felt like there was no reason for me to live and I fantasized about ending my life. I thought about all the ways in which I could kill myself and how to make it as painless as possible  for my loved ones. I had recurring dreams about overdosing on painkillers. To make matters worse, I promised myself that I wouldn’t fail. I knew I didn’t want to end up fucking it up like I did the last time I attempted in 2020. I didn’t want to end up in the hospital or disfigured in some way. I just wanted it all to end. 

On August 16th I cut so deeply that I needed stitches. I was on the phone with my partner Beau as he was driving home from work, and I just started cutting and couldn’t stop. The cut was actually a few days old, and it was already relatively deep. I’ve started doing this new thing where I cut in the same spot over and over again. I’m not sure why I switched from hurting myself in multiple places to the same one, but I know that this change is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it deepens the cut which can lead to needing hospital-level care.

Completely on brand, I decided to reopen this old wound and make it deep enough to require stitches. I think the reason I did this was because the other day when I made the initial cut, I called my ex roommate who is studying to be a doctor and she said that it might need stitches. Upon further inspection, she said it should heal on its own. I absolutely hated that she was right, and I wanted to prove her wrong. Welcome to my fucked up brain.

So on August 16th I reopened the wound and slashed at it until my partner came home from work. I couldn’t feel anything while it was happening, and I dissociate[MOU2] d as I watched myself deepen the cut from above my body. Before my partner got home I started rehearsing my smile and my coyness. But as soon as he opened the door, I caved. My cut was bleeding through the gauze, and it was having trouble clotting which was unsurprisingly really hard to hide.

I told him I thought I needed to go to the hospital. So off we went to Newton Wellesley Hospital. It was a surreal experience driving to the emergency room. I wasn’t in an ambulance, just a regular car. And there was that damn irony again, we could have been going anywhere. [MOU3] [MOU4] There I was, bleeding in the passenger seat, but there was no indication to the rest of the world that there was an emergent situation. No one knew I was hurting, inside and out, or that there was a wound acute enough to require stitches.

When we got to the hospital, Beau had me get out of the car so he could park. Upon entering the hospital, I was dismayed at how long the line was. I went all the way to the back and tried not to listen to other people’s conversations. I could smell the hospital: the pungent soapy yet flat geriatric scent that stops you from wanting to take a full deep breath in, the eye-watering bleach that they had used for God knows what, and the stench of stale discomfort and worry. I finally reached the front of the line and it was my turn to tell them why I was there. I strained to get the words out. “I’m here for self-harm”.

Suddenly, I’m treated like VIP. I don’t have to go back to the waiting room like everybody else. I now get to stay at the front of the line, and someone comes to check on me every 5 minutes. Finally, I’m brought back to a different part of the hospital along with a middle aged man who drank too much and took a spill. He keeps insisting that he’s not an alcoholic, and it becomes clear to me why they put us on the same unit: we were both there in a special part of the ER for those who purposefully harmed ourselves in some way. Or maybe it was that we were all dangers to ourselves. [MOU5] I was put on a bed in the hallway but I wasn’t there for long because someone from the psych[MOU6]  team came to get me before offering me medical attention. The Psychiatry Triage team at Newton-Wellesley consists of independently licensed social workers. The way it works is people coming through the ER are first evaluated by the Emergency Department clinical team to ensure they are medically cleared. Then the social workers psychiatrically assess the patient to decide what the best level of care is for them. Looking back on this, it’s definitely weird that I wasn’t medically cleared first. Anyways, a nurse came to get me to help me put on scrubs. From there, the social worker and I went into an empty room and I was told to take any seat. I picked one and then was told to find another one, which to delirious me was the first sign that something wasn’t quite right.

The social worker sat far away from me and constantly had to lean in to hear me better. I told her what was going on, and that I wanted to do an outpatient program for Borderline Personality Disorder at McLean Hospital. This is a diagnosis I received in 2021. She laughed in my face and said it would take way too long to get off that waitlist. She asked me once if I wanted to go inpatient[MOU7] , but didn’t give me any information about the process. I declined, and she asked me why I had come to the hospital in the first place. I gestured toward my arm.

What is inpatient treatment you may ask? Here’s what I wish I knew when I was asked if I wanted to go…inpatient treatment is meant to be a short time in a psychiatric hospital to keep people safe during a mental health crisis. This is the most intensive treatment option for mental health, otherwise known as the highest level of care. What this term describes is different types of mental health treatment. This level of care includes hospitalization, whereas the lowest level of care refers to weekly or less often outpatient therapy sessions. Outpatient refers to a level of care in a non-residential setting where patients can live at home while participating in treatment. There are two main types of inpatient care: hospitalization and residential treatment. Hospitalizations are designed to be short term, often an overnight stay up to a few weeks long, and residential treatment often lasts 30 days or more. The focus of inpatient care is stabilization of the patient and developing a treatment plan for continuing their care once they are discharged. Hospitalizations are often thought of as a necessary safe place for those who are experiencing crisis, while residential treatment can help someone avoid a crisis before it escalates to that level. Inpatient can be voluntary which means you agree to seeking intensive care, or it can be involuntary which is referred to as involuntary or compulsory hospitalization where the person does not want to be at this level of care[MOU8] .

For context, inpatient units often look more like a college dorm than a hospital floor. There are both single and double rooms that often have their own bathroom that is shared with the adjacent room. There are also both group therapy and individual therapy rooms where you meet with psychiatrists, therapists, and group facilitators daily. There are common areas for eating, family visits, relaxing in places such as sensory rooms where there are comfortable chairs, fidget toys, and more, there’s always a nurses station where you take your meds, and there are offices for the staff and clinicians who you meet with on a weekly if not more frequent basis. This depends on if you are in a residential or hospital setting. These units are locked or secured environments, meaning that you cannot leave the unit without supervision. On the floor are a team of professionals including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, case workers, nurses, nutritionists, recreational therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health technicians to name a few.

After this awful interaction with the social worker, I was brought back to my hallway bed and was told to sit tight. A doctor came over and questioned if I even needed stitches, so I showed him my arm and he quickly covered it back up and agreed. To give you a visual, puffy fat [MOU9] was visible from my open wound[MOU10] . At first the deep groove filled up with dark red blood and you couldn’t see anything underneath. When they finally removed the rudimentary bandage I had made, that’s when you could see the true damage. According to my boyfriend the cut was about 3 inches long by an inch wide. While the left side of it was thinner, the right side of the wound was gaping. Yellow fat was visible almost in the shape of a bubble drawn flower and it was protruding a tiny bit past the wound. I could see a small black spot that I later learned was a vein. The fat looked bumpy and textured. No butterfly bandage could hold together what I had done to myself.

Hospital staff came over with an EKG and then they finally put me in my own room where x ray came over to look at my arm. Then the doctor entered the room with a huge syringe. He squirted it into my open wound with no regard for my pain tolerance. Then he began sewing the skin on my upper arm back together. Oddly enough, he never asked if the numbing medicine had kicked in. I can’t quite describe the feeling of the needle, but it was strange, dull, and felt far away due to the numbness. It looked exactly like stitching clothing, a long needle with a thin piece of string except there was a hook for the stitch which entered my arm on either side of the wound. This created small holes that filled with blood too.  He told me not to look but I couldn’t help myself. I was grotesquely in awe. As he dabbed at the blood flowing from my open wound I thought I might be sick. When he was done, I had 7 blue stitches on my left arm. The doctor left as quickly as he came.

Then the nurse who had helped me undress and put on scrubs came back in. I told her that I had had an awful experience talking to the social worker. She said, “I’m sorry” and then walked out. Anothernurse overheard the conversation and said she could talk to the social worker for me. I almost let her advocate for me, but I was too scared that the social worker would come in and try to talk to me again, so I said no. She said she could look in the nurses station to see if another social worker was available. I thanked her. She came back with a list of crisis hotline numbers. I left disappointed with no aftercare plan in place. I texted my therapist about it, and she said that particular social worker was known to be a bitch. It’s still insane to me that the last thing I got that night was stitches when that’s all I went in for. It would be understandable to delay my stitches if they had properly gotten me set up with inpatient or outpatient care, but as you can tell that was not the case. I vowed to not go back to Newton Wellesley in the event of another mental health crisis.

…

When I returned home, my therapist made it clear that if I self-harmed again I needed to go directly to the hospital. Her and my psychiatrist both thought I needed to go back to the hospital regardless, but I didn’t want to leave work. I thought that leaving work for a medical emergency meant I wasn’t a good employee. That I wasn’t dedicated enough. To this day, I still feel that way.

Alas, I hung in there. For those of you who don’t go to therapy, therapists often use the phrase “hang in there” when the session is over and you’ve just unloaded five years’ worth of trauma into a fifty-five minute slot. I have always hated the phrase because I feel like it is minimizing. You’re contemplating ending your life? Just hang in there[MOU11] . Anyways, I “hung in there” for three more days.

I don’t remember what time it was on August 19th that I made my decision. In my head I suddenly had a plan. I would pretend for the rest of the day that everything was fine, that I was in a positive mood, and then at night I would cut to the degree of needing stitches again and take myself to the ER. I was actually really nice and generous that day. I bought my roommate and partner dinner and drinks. I kept up appearances. My partner commented on how good of a mood I was in and I cheerily agreed, suggesting that my depression must have finally gone away. On the inside, I was on a mission. All I wanted was for my boyfriend to go to sleep that night. I didn’t want him to take me to the ER because he had already helped me get to the ER for self-harm three days prior. It didn’t feel fair to have him take me for a second time in the matter of one week.

Somehow, I forced myself to watch part of a movie with him. As soon as he started to doze off, I got to work on my plan. I located my scissors. I went into the bathroom. I normally cut horizontally on my left arm. In perfect dissonance, I decided to cut vertically on my right arm. The pair of scissors I was using had gotten dull from years of use. I could barely cut my skin. It was also awkward because I’m a righty, so using my left hand to cut vertically was a challenge. I was listening to Call Your Mom by Noah Kahan [MOU12] on repeat. The pre chorus and chorus really haunt me.

“Stayed on the line with you the entire night

‘Til you let it out and let it in

Don’t let this darkness fool you

All lights turned off can be turned on

I’ll drive, I’ll drive all night

I’ll call your mom”

At the time I didn’t realize how much I was contemplating suicide. The idea of having someone on the phone with me who I could talk to about these feelings rather than acton them would have changed the course of my life. Having someone remind me that the darkness that I was feeling was temporary might have made me make a different decision. That night, I really needed someone to call my mom.

I took one earbud out of my ear so I could hear if my partner woke up. In the bathroom I felt too far away from my room, so I moved to the couch. I used my flashlight on my phone to see what I was doing. He stirred. I freaked out. He got up to use the bathroom and I quickly shut off the flashlight and put a blanket over the bloody scissors and blood-soaked napkins. Somehow he didn’t get suspicious and went back to bed. I started thinking about what I would take with me to the ER. Underwear is a must. Computer, computer charger. Piece of paper from work about FMLA resources. Phone charger. Scrub pants. Comfy clothes.

I got a plastic bag for my dirty supplies. While cutting didn’t hurt on the 16th, it hurt every second on the early morning of the 20th. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I packed my bag, took one last look at my room, and left my apartment. As soon as I got outside I started hyperventilating. In a very unlike me fashion, I proceeded to text a bunch of my friends to ask if they were up. 2 responded, 1 was busy. I called my friend from home and told her I needed to go to the hospital. She stayed on the phone with me until I got in the Uber.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Daily Light on the Daily Path

by Samuel Bagster

Daily Reading for June 1st

Matthew 1:23 "BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US."

2 Chronicles 6:18 "But will God indeed dwell with mankind on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house which I have built.

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 Timothy 3:16 By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.

Hebrews 1:2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

John 20:19,20,26-28 So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." • And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. • After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." • Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." • Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"

Isaiah 9:6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: the internet

How Facebook Screwed Us All (Mother Jones, 2019)

First, starting in the 2000s, came the giant migration of advertising dollars from publishers to Facebook and Google. Today, the two control an estimated 58 percent of the US digital ad market, with Amazon, Microsoft, and the like dividing up the rest and publishers representing barely a rounding error. In large part as a result, there are now roughly 24,000 journalists working in America’s daily print newsrooms, down from some 56,000 in the early 2000s. And more and more of them work for hedge-fund owners who milk what remains of newspapers’ profits—mostly through layoffs—while further degrading coverage. Here in the Bay Area, all the daily papers except the San Francisco Chronicle are owned by one of these hedge funds, Alden Global Capital. There were once more than 1,000 journalists working for these papers, including 440 at the San Jose-based Mercury News, then one of the nation’s strongest regional outlets. Today there are 145 left across more than two dozen publications, covering a region of 7.6 million people.

Tech’s Reckoning (Ed Zitron, 2023)

Raising capital — especially at the scale that Reddit has — always leads to the bill coming due. Every time that Reddit has had to raise money, it has had to express how it will grow its userbase, its headcount, and its revenue. Every time that Reddit has taken on hundreds of millions of dollars of equity funding, it has promised these investors that Reddit will, as a result of the cash injection, become bigger and more fiscally valuable, and each raise has been paired with more promises about how much more Reddit can be worth. And now Reddit has put itself in a corner, promising shadowy organizations like Tencent that their money was well-spent.

Elon Musk broke Twitter, and he's breaking research communities, too. (Paul Musgrave, 2023)

The awful thing, of course, is that in lighting his own money on fire Elon has also decided to knock away the good part of Twitter. Twitter has, over the past decade, come to provide invisible but load-bearing supports for researchers and academics. It’s been a great way for those of us at out-of-the-way institutions to bring visibility to our arguments and research profile (and if you think Amherst isn’t out-of-the-way, just ask someone who’s Boston or New York-based to come out—a drive that we would do without thinking is a major imposition for those in the metropole). We know that scholarly conferences spur connections and research productivity; Twitter has been the conference bar or the post-panel chatter available 24/7 and across (most) borders. It’s accelerated research dissemination and it’s brought me and others into contact with people we otherwise never would have met. And it also connected us to editors and publishers in ways that did more to enrich and diversify the discourse than any number of assistant vice provosts for JEDI initiatives.