#the article writer liked ecological growing

[norsesuggestions]

Your average swedish garden soil: so bad not even the most stubborn swedish 18th century farmer would attempt to grow crops there

So i was reading up on gardening outdoors in sweden, and found an amusing popular science article that explained that the absolute majority of swedish homes are built on the land that literal swedish 18th century farmers deemed impossible to grow crops on.

(This is no considence, sweden has very little land that can grow crops. Therefore it has been avoided at all cost to place houses on land that could grow crops. Even farmers would do this when they placed their homes.)

Anyway, the article therefore dryly points out that trying to grow some carrots in your average swedish villa garden, can therefore be almost impossible if one just plant them in the existing soil.

It had this little helpful diagram in how to transplant better soil, and then make that soil be able to support crops for many years to come

(This was a diagram over year one. The potatoes are there as a part of making the soil be able to next year support other crops. But one can also eat the potatoes, as the article writer points out haha)

Link to article

[songoftrillium]

Meet The Writing Team

Hello Kinfolks! These last two months have been quiet for y'all in terms of updates, but BUSY in terms of the work being done by the sept of contributors to this project!

At the start of October I put out the call for help, saying that this project cannot succeed without the help and support of the Werewolf fandom. I'm happy to report that you as a fandom have responded phenomenally, and production on this series is now underway! These last few months have been dedicated to recruiting team members, and researching our book framework. We've about filled in the main core of the team, but are always looking for more help.

October through November has been dedicated entirely to research, both putting together a collection of citations we'll be using in this first book, and passing out initial writing assignments. This list is sure to grow in time, but for now we have plenty of work to do!

With that all said, I'd like to introduce you to the team that are showcasing the Gaians. Look under the cut to meet them!

Amy Waller (she/her)

Bluesky Page

Ms. Waller is a freelance writer and massage therapist based in not-quite Northern Virginia, and is a contributor to D.W.A.R.V.S. . Werewolf the Apocalypse was her first RPG, and she loves the themes of shapechanging as self-actualization and of trying to balance instinct and wisdom.

Amy has joined the team to depict the journals of Cryptobiologist Esme "Leaping Ghost".

Bek Andrew Evans (He/They)

Linktree Page

Mx. Evans is a freelance writer and illustrator from Jackson, Mississippi. He explores themes of mental illness, disability, abuse, poverty, queer themes and the intersection of these statuses. He uses body and psychological horror, meticulous attention to medical details, and deep character dives as some of his favorite methods to achieve those goals.

Bek has been indispensible in book research, and will be taking his experience with M20 Sorcerer and writing for the Hearthbound, and fictitious news article citations.

Excelgarou (She/Her)

Carrd Page

She's been described as a Werewolf: The Apocalypse academic, and wears this title proudly. She labors at all hours on resources for Werewolf fans - particularly as regards aggregating otherwise obscure information - such as the Build-a-Veteran tool or (especially) the Werewolf Index Project.

Excelgarou is our lead researcher, ensuring our book citations and narrative voices remain consistent through all editions. She has also been conscripted to write the introductory passage on the World of Darkness, and to redraft the Children of Gaia.

James "Jim" E. Deeley (He/Him)

Linktree Page

Jim has been playing, running, and writing for tabletop roleplaying games since he was first introduced to them over twenty years ago. Jim has presented on the subject of writing for games since 2010, and has been contracted to write mechanics and to do character design by the likes of High Level Games, Lostlorn Games, and Renegade Game Studios, but is equally skilled at writing lore and narrative, skills honed over two decades of running roleplaying games and medieval studies, lending a deep historical context to his writings.

Jim will write the Western Concordat, showcasing the Silver Fangs, Fianna, Get of Fenris, and Glass Walkers.

Mórag (it/its)

Mòrag is a writer and botanist from Te Wai Pounamu. It writes both botanical articles and horror stories, the former to raise awareness of ecological issues and the latter to explore what it means to be human, represent trans and autistic experiences, and addiction. It's horror writing is best recognized for its use of visceral first-person perspectives, body horror, and the grotesque. It is influenced heavily by works such as the Hellraiser films and the philosophies of Georges Bataille.

It has joined our team to write the story portions of the Song of Trillium, showcasing the legend of Tawatuy.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Audubon:

The night of June 10 was warm, but not too much so. After days of rain, Concord, Massachusetts, wrung itself dry. The moon edged toward fullness. Rarely in need of an excuse to wander, Henry David Thoreau took it anyway. He followed Concord’s train tracks out of town and into a moonlit meadow. There, he encountered an iconic bird of the United States: the Eastern Whip-poor-will.

With their cryptic plumage and nocturnal habits, Eastern Whip-poor-wills are rarely seen, but the male’s loud, rhythmic songis hard to miss. Thoreau heard them that evening—five or six at once. A few nights later, when the moon was full, he encountered a dozen or more. “Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will’s Moon,” he wrote in his journal in 1851.

Into the early 20th century, whip-poor-wills were sheer magic to those who inhabited their breeding range and awaited the species’ return each April and May. An important seasonal sign, the first whip-poor-will’s call signaled an end to frosts and marked the moment to plant sensitive crops, like corns and beans. Farmers let cattle out to pasture. Children knew they could play outside barefoot.

Quirkier and more personal rituals developed around their appearance. One could make a wish on his song, roll on the ground three times for a year without backpain, or shake a pocket full of coins for a year of financial success. Some people believed the repetitions of his name, which he can sing for many hours, predicted how many years they would live or, if they were unmarried, how many until they’d wed. In an article that circulated widely in 1941 and 1942, the United Press reported that an Alabama man—known to friends and family as “Uncle Rip”—waited to have one of his two annual haircuts until whip-poor-wills returned.

The whip-poor-wills’ tune was also part of the nation’s emotional landscape. To 19th century poets, whip-poor-wills might sound mournful, plaintive, and grieving. To John James Audubon, the “cheering voice” of the whip-poor-will was his “only companion” on nights alone in the woods. Others heard the sound of loneliness. When Hank Williams wanted to convey that emotion, he sang of a whip-poor-will who “sounds too blue to fly” in his often-covered 1949 classic, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

Yet in the decades since Williams belted those classic opening lines, much has changed for the whip-poor-will—and for our own relationship with the species.

While many kinds of birds are experiencing population declines, whip-poor-wills are especially vulnerable to habitat loss, pesticide use, loss of prey, car strikes, and predation. Ornithologists estimate that the Eastern Whip-poor-will population decreased by nearly 70 percent between 1970 and 2014. But their decline may have begun sooner. After World War II, agricultural and suburban development swallowed great swaths of woodlands. As early as the 1950s, writers like Knoxville News-Sentinel’s Lucy Templeton, whose “A Country Calendar” often included reports and lore about whip-poor-wills, worried over their disappearance from local landscapes.

We’ve changed, too. Many people moved away from the rural towns where they grew up amid birdsong. In the suburbs that replaced bird habitats, we homogenized landscapes with decorative plants unwelcoming to whip-poor-wills. If whip-poor-wills seemed to abandon our world, we also abandoned theirs.

To describe the human consequences of species decline, the lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle coined the term “extinction of experience,” an ecological insight gained through his own moments of loss. 

[headspace-hotel]

Every Eurocentric ass-backwards publication about humans relationship to the ecosystem has this "noble savage stereotype" straw man they want to beat down.

I have been reading a lot of indigenous authors lately, and this is what it has made me think: The "indigenous" point of view is not about having some sort of special, unusual, enlightened primal connection to the ways of nature. It is simply the ecological knowledge and ways of belonging to the ecosystem and taking care of it in a sustainable manner that knowledge holders have built up and iterated upon over millennia

As someone who comes from a colonizer culture, my level of disconnection from my ecosystem is deeply aberrant and weird, and when people from colonizer cultures write their silly little articles about how Humans Are Cancer And Kill Everything With Their Inherent Destructiveness, THEY should remember that their perspective is deeply aberrant and weird, that they are descendants of colonizers and live in a colonized land. This means the ecosystem was taken away from its caretakers that actually understood it were part of it, so it could be stripped and plundered of "resources."

A colonizing entity seeks to use up the ecosystem, to extract and extract and extract to make money come out. The ecosystems of the U.S.A. have been so brutally abused since Europeans came here that it's almost impossible to imagine what has been lost, but here's a small hint: Many of the tree species of the Eastern USA reached 4-6 feet thick, with the larger species having trunks of up to 10-15 feet thick. The largest White Oak ever cut was 13 feet thick for instance. Those trees were virtually all cut down in the East and nowadays we're squeezing monoculture pine plantations for all they're worth, cutting trees that hardly get one foot thick.

Our topsoil has been almost obliterated by the land getting denuded and then plowed and plowed and plowed until it can't hardly support a crop—it takes a century to make a single inch of topsoil, and we've lost hundreds of tons' worth every year for longer than a century. Just about every large animal and bird was nearly hunted out of existence (even deer, which were almost extirpated from New England before Independence!) and if that wasn't enough we started sawing the tops off our mountains—no, literally, mountaintop removal literally removes the mountain top—to get at the coal underneath, which as it turns out, makes the rivers and air toxic and puts radioactive waste and all kinds of cancer causing gunk everywhere.

If this was the normal, typical way of the human species to treat our ecosystem, we'd all have been dead back in Neanderthal times. Not just cause we would have destroyed our food sources, but because we would have been too indifferent and incurious towards potential food sources to take advantage of them.

You know, just like European settlers were—we have dozens of nutritious, abundant, easy to grow food plants in North America that we don't even use because we haven't cared to learn.

Indigenous peoples have been practicing their ways of life for tens of thousands of years learning more and more about the ecosystem, but sure, let's hand the mic to the folks who made a new super violent system of exploiting the Earth 400 years ago, almost destroyed all life wherever they established power, and now they think they invented a thing called "ecology" 100 years ago and a thing called "sustainability" not even 50.

I mean...the fact that we have a word for sustainability tells you everything. "Maybe our way of life should allow for our continued existence." "Woahhhhh!!!"

sorry for the rant, I am just really impatient with euro-centric texts and writers about the environment, everybody needs to understand that the colonizer perspective isn't the default

Its good that people are talking about the “noble savage” stereotype and how it is harmful and at the same time I keep seeing climate doomers claim that anything related to indigenous environmentalism or traditional ecological technology is just a product of that stereotype and it makes me want to scream.

[kabillieu]

(I found this post in my drafts. I’m not sure why I didn’t post it when I wrote it, so here it is. I did end up writing a poem about mussels, which my very famous poetry professor tore apart extremely methodically in workshop, but that’s fine, that’s why I’m in that workshop.)

I keep thinking about this big mussel Dominic found in the lake behind my grandparents’ home the last time we were there this past December. It was as big as a small hand, and I found it be incredibly normal and uninteresting, but my husband was fascinated by it. After my grandparents built their house, I swam in that lake every summer of my childhood. I feel sorry for people who don’t get to grow up with grandparents who live on a big, warm, freshwater lake. I don’t know how long it will take my dad to sell their house, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to go back there. And whoever buys the house will probably tear it down and build a much bigger and nicer house because the land is worth so much now, but my grandparents’ house is very ordinary, and it hasn’t been updated since they built it 30 years ago. 

Today when I looked up an article about mussels, I found one written by my old science teacher who survived brain cancer when I was in high school and still goes to my parents’ church and does all kinds of adventurous things in his late sixties (like mountain biking and kayaking) and knows so much about Alabama ecology. Two of the different kinds of mussels found in Alabama freshwater rivers and lakes are Fine-Lined Pocketbooks and Southern Pig Toes. What amazing names. I wish I was a good enough writer to do justice to that ordinary mussel my husband found. I’m sad that 30 years of swimming at my grandparents’ house has finally come and gone for good. 

[theadrogna]

Dream Show Challenge 2.0

@singledarkshade​ came up with the Dream Show challenge last year, where we had to give her a list of 7 TV shows or films and we were given a cast of 7 actors in return. This time we were given someone else’s cast and were allowed to recast one character (plus add some if we wished). This time I came up with:

Virtuality

Synopsis:

Good people die before their time and it happens every day. Eli Danzig is doing his best to change that. He invents a way to upload consciousness to an online server where the dead can live out a normal life in a virtual environment. He builds an entire world to keep his uploaded souls entertained, making it as lifelike as possible. Huge amounts of processing power are required so Eli must choose his clients carefully.

The electronic world is called Virtuality and the uploaded persons are known collectively as the digi-souls. Virtuality has a small but growing population, which is a continuing concern as it means more storage space is always needed. Eli funds his enterprise by playing the stock market using his AI Tallis to filter information and predict stock prices. Sometimes he sells patents for the things that the digi-souls invent, but more often they give their inventions away for free. However, money is always a worry because none of this is a stable source of income.

Cast:

Eli Danzig (Donald Glover) – Eli is a young computer programmer of genius level intellect. He came from a poor background, and was the first in his family to attend university. He is determined to make things better for people, by improving society. He believes that “only the good die young” is a real problem, and if he could keep the good people in the world for longer then maybe more good could be done. He invents a digital after-life for people to upload their consciousness to, but he must maintain it a secret to keep the unscrupulous from corrupting it or destroying it. He researches every person very carefully before inviting them to join Virtuality.

Ashura Hadid (Tala Ashe) – Ashura is a terminal cancer patient who becomes one of Eli’s digi-souls. She is a prize-winning journalist and novelist, known for taking on difficult stories about things that people would rather keep hidden. She’s recently been looking into CharterTech, owned by Maggie Charter as part of a series on corruption in tech companies, but most of her efforts are going into completing her final novel. Eli and Ashura have undeniable chemistry, but live in very different worlds. She is very driven and moral, always looking for new ways to expose corruption and wrong doing.

Oren Murphy (Jim Byrnes) – Oren was Eli’s professor at University. He made sure that Eli got the scholarship that he needed to attend, and then acted as his mentor. He suffered from high blood pressure and had multiple strokes. He agreed to be Eli’s test case for Virtuality and was the first digi-soul to be uploaded. He is a calming influence on Eli’s life, often being the one to counsel him out of a rash decision.

Shona Lennox (Sophia di Martino) – Eli’s technician, she has a background in medical devices and large-scale genetic information storage. She built the mainframe and worked out how to put into practice Eli’s ideas. She often finds herself in unusual situations now she is working for Eli, but likes her new job and the excitement it brings, even if she complains about it. She used to work for CharterTech but Eli doesn’t know that when he hires her. When she leaves CharterTech she decides to start self-defence classes and can definitely handle herself in a crisis.

Ryan Fournier (Joey Batey) – Ryan is an inventor who has been responsible for some of the world’s most important leaps forward in technology, including making ecological sources of power more viable, such as wind and solar power. He is a problem solver and a big ideas guy. Unfortunately, he was born with a genetic condition that meant he died young, but he is now one of Eli’s digi-souls and living on in the Virtuality. He loves nothing better than to sit down with a problem and work out a solution, but occasionally he realises what he’d missing out on in the real world and ends up depressed and unhappy.

Chie Ohta (Naoko Mori) – Chie is a medical researcher and entrepreneur, but she was unable to save herself from a rare blood disease, despite years of trying. In the process she brought many other useful pieces of medical technology to the market and helped save the lives of countless people with cures for diseases. She loved her work, but always knew she was on borrowed time. She left behind a husband and children, who have no idea of her new existence. She continues to check up on them, despite Oren’s suggestion that this isn’t a good idea.

Maggie Charter (Alison Janney) – Maggie is a self-made woman, in the way that all billionaires are self-made. She inherited a fortune from her politician father and invested in business. She had a technical background so she picked tech companies as an obvious interest. She now owns CharterTech, one of the largest technical manufacturing companies in the world. She once tried to recruit Eli and has never been pleased that he turned her down. She knows nothing about Virtuality but has heard rumours that someone was working on something like it.

Tallis (Arthur Darvill) – Tallis is the AI personality that maintains the Virtuality. He is often mistaken for one of the digi-souls by the newly uploaded as he is so lifelike. He is polite and caring, always available to listen. He is Eli’s friend and also occasional advisor. Tallis means “knowledge” and he has access to all of the world’s online resources.

Occam (Karen Gillan) - Is another AI, built by CharterTech. She is new and unruly, but very quick to follow her creator’s orders. Sparks fly between her and Tallis.

Episodes:

Episode 1: Virtually Home

Ashura Hadid, prize winning writer, is dying at the age of 38. It’s not fair, it’s not right and she is having none of it. She is being treated for an aggressive brain tumour, but decides to stop treatment when it becomes clear that it will impact her ability to write and finish her final novel. The novel is partly a work of fiction but is also based on real life events at a chemical factory in the city that she has been researching.

Eli Danzig introduces himself to her and explains that he can offer her a second chance at life, by uploading her mind to Virtuality. She explains that she has no money and Eli tells her how he finances the project. She will never have to pay to live there. Ashura questions Eli further about the procedure and Virtuality itself. Eli tells her that he chooses young people, like Ashura, who have died before their time and had great contributions to make to society. They live in a computer generated world where things are simple but they can continue to work and interact with each other. However, they cannot have contact with the outside world, because Virtuality is a secret. It isn’t ready to be opened up to the world, there isn’t enough storage space on Earth to facilitate it. He doesn’t want it to be something that only the rich have access to, so he has decided to choose who gets to go there.

Elsewhere, Maggie Charter discusses her heart condition with her doctor and hears that she may only have a few months to live. She is 61 years old and a tech mogul. For years she has been looking for a way to cure her heart disease. Her network of corporate spies have heard of a young man with an unusual portfolio of patents and a strange pattern of spending on digital storage. She finds out that it is Eli and decides to look into what he is doing more.

Over the course of their discussions, Eli and Ashura grow closer. Eli’s AI partner, Tallis, warns him that he cannot form emotional attachments to the Digi-souls. Ashura will die soon and then Eli will only be able to have limited interaction with her through the interface he has built. Ashura thinks over the proposal and decides to take the plunge. Episode 1 ends with her death. However, Ashura doesn’t die of brain cancer, she is found murdered in her apartment.

Episode 2: Extra Life

Eli must upload Ashura within 12 hours of her death to retain all of her memories, after that time degradation begins to take place. Eli races against time to reach Ashura in the morgue and take the brainwave recording that he needs. Shona Lennox, Eli’s technician, ends up breaking in while Eli creates a computer distraction. They are finally able to upload Ashura’s consciousness, but she has forgotten the days before her death, and they are unable to find out who killed her. She has also forgotten who Eli is.

Meanwhile in Virtuality, the digi-souls try to analyse Ashura’s work for the likely culprit and begin putting together a picture of who it might be. Someone at CharterTech seems a very strong candidate, but then they discover that Ashura was close to uncovering a chemical spill which derails their ideas.

Episode 3: Online Banking

Maggie is putting together more about Eli and his weird ability to make money from stock market trades and a portfolio of patents that seem to have little in common. She uncovers more about the shell companies that he trades through and puts more pieces together. Tallis flags up her interest and Eli works to cover his tracks. It’s the worst time for Ryan to make a major breakthrough in water purification that could save hundreds of lives, but only if they can get it to the right people. With Maggie watching everything that Eli and Shona are doing in the real world, perhaps only the virtual world can get the idea where it needs to be, especially as Ryan is feeling like his efforts don’t matter as he reads yet another news article on how climate change isn’t real.

Shona is contacted by her former boss at CharterTech who invites her to return, but Shona turns them down. The concerning part is that she’s being asked to work on an AI project called Occam. Ashura continues her investigations into CharterTech whilst rekindling her past relationship with Eli.

Episode 4: Occam’s Razor

Maggie has a heart attack, but survives, however she is becoming more and more concerned about her health. She brings online her own AI, Occam and begins to sift through all of the information that she can acquire on medical technology. Occam comes across Chie’s work when she was alive. No one else seems to have been quite as close to curing the heart issue that Maggie has. Occam notices that Eli’s shell company has patented some devices that were based on Chie’s work. In fact, Occam notices that this is something of a trend in Eli’s patent’s and brings together the other work that he has done to see something that Maggie has been unable to see up until this point. Eli may have some way of accessing the brains of the dead.

Episode 5: Reality Bytes

Ryan is bored and ends up creating a virtual ant colony that soon gets out of control, causing all sorts of trouble for Virtuality. Tallis is very much not amused at the replicating program that Ryan has introduced to the system. He and Oren are left to deal with it with only minimal input from Eli as he is being sued by CharterTech over one of his patents. It looks like a lawsuit brought specifically to waste his time, but there doesn’t seem to be anyway to circumvent it, especially with everyone else busy with the increasingly problematic (and storage sucking) ant farm.

Episode 6: Denial of Service

Someone tries to hack into Virtuality and it is up to Eli and the digi-souls to stop them. Chie finds out that her teenage daughter has a new boyfriend, and against Tallis’ advice she looks into him and discovers that he has a possible chromosomal abnormality which could lead to an early death. Chie tries to decide whether she should find a way to let her husband know.

Eli and the others successfully prevent the hack but are worried that someone now knows of the existence of Virtuality. Certainly someone is testing their defences. Shona finally tells Eli that she used to work for CharterTech and the fallout is unfortunate.

Episode 7: Second Life

Eli finds a possible new candidate for Virtuality and starts his due diligence. Usually Shona would be involved in this process but their recent falling out means that things are not running smoothly. The new prospect seems like the perfect candidate and Eli almost begins his usual approach, until Oren uncovers some anomalies that Eli had missed. They may not even exist at all. The question is, who knows enough about Virtuality to do something like this?

Tallis uncovers the existence of Occam, and there is a brief encounter where they size each other up. Occam is identified as the force that tried to hack Virtuality before.

Episode 8: Power Switch

City-wide power outages see Eli scrambling to ensure Virtuality doesn’t go down and lose all the digi-souls. Shona returns to help and the two resolve their differences whilst saving the world that they built together. The digi-souls come up with increasingly desperate plans to produce the power they need to survive, but save the day in the end. Ryan puts together new plans to ensure it never happens again.

Episode 9: Deleted

Ashura finally gets to the bottom of who murdered her and it was nothing to do with CharterTech or Maggie. Her exposé of a chemical company’s disregard for environmental law was the issue that caused her death. Shona uses some contacts to get the police involved and the digi-souls help Ashura gather enough evidence to get the culprit put away in jail for a long time.

Eli and Ashura address some of the issues with their relationship, but resolve to give it a go, despite the obvious barriers.

Episode 10: Boss Fight

Maggie and Occam finally uncover the existence of Virtuality and the digi-souls. The finale sees Maggie managing to force her way into the digital world, whilst Occam and Tallis fight it out. Eli and Shona do their best to help Tallis, but find their offices raided and their technology confiscated. Maggie gets time to get a foothold, but the strain is too much on her heart.

Just as Eli and Shona find their way back in, Maggie dies in the real world. Eli can either choose to kill her for good or keep her malevolent presence in Virtuality. Tallis isn’t too keen on sharing with Occam either.

[ao3gingerswag]

Characters! Sam and/or Mary and/or Claire

So I’m not gonna do Mary cause um confession time I have only seen SPN fully thru season 8 and like. Parts of the later seasons, with less and less as time went on….The writing just started to get too all over the place for me. So I know nothing about Mary really.

Sam:

How I feel about this character

Love Sam. Love him love him love him. He doesn’t get enough attention in this fandom he’s so angry and feral in early seasons and I LOVE him for that. I think the writers kinda….lost sight of what they were doing with him post season 5, and especially post season 8, and I think it’s connected to how they framed John and the narrative. Like a lot of Sam’s character in the early seasons is framed around this conflict he has with Dean about whether or not John is a piece of shit and whether they should just follow him blindly. And his complicated hero worship vs pity vs resentment relationship with Dean was a big part of his personality. And then post season 5 they kind of backed off that entire conflict? And so much of Sam’s personality was forgotten. But I still love him tho, he’s so valid, I love his anger in the early seasons at John and in defense of Dean and I think he’s the only reason Dean didn’t end up completely beaten down by his dad.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Eileen/Sam!!!! Eileen is the only one I reeeaaally ship with Sam. A lot of fics (esp before Eileen was introduced) had him with Jess (including mine), and that’s fine, but tbh we never actually got to know Jess soooo don’t have strong feelings. Then with Ruby, she was SUCH a fun character but like, ya know, evil. Like I do actually think she cared about Sam in her own fucked up way but like. They brought out the worst in each other lol. So I’ll pass.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Uhhh Dean obviously lol!!!! In my perfect SPN ending Dean Cas Sam Eileen Jack Claire and maybe their other friends too live together in the bunker forever. Found family baby!!! My asexual ass loves how much Dean and Sam mean to each other and how they seem to take for granted that they will always live together. If only the real world was more like that ;~; But yeah it’s kinda a pet peeve of mine when in Desitiel fics people either just ignore Sam or just kinda have him around but he’s not like. Really around. Like excuse me??? Sam and Dean are Bros 4 Life!!!!

My unpopular opinion about this character

Sam is more interesting than Dean. Like I love Dean and he’s my favorite but Sam is like soooo complicated and so interesting!!! Like this kid who grew up knowing that something was Wrong with him. His hunter upbringing vs society, his desire for normal vs the rest of his family, and then just the Knowledge deep down that something is really Wrong aka the demon blood. And then he has all this anger with nowhere to go, he can see clearer than Dean how fucked up their lives are and how awful John is but he can’t convince Dean bc Dean’s too brainwashed and ack!!! I feel like he has always felt so guilty for going to Stanford and felt so guilty then too bc he knew he was basically abandoning Dean to John, who would just continue to abuse and beat him down. But he Could Not convince Dean to wake up and smell the abuse so he left without him bc what else was he supposed to do??? But he’s still fucked up about it. He’s so interesting. All twisted up inside ;~; I love him!

On a less serious note, another unpopular opinion I guess is that Sam and Cas would def be friends but bc of the boring aspects of their personalities?? Like I’ve seen a lot of stuff about them being besties bc they both r crazy and they ARE but like. I see them bonding over ecological justice and academic articles about ancient Aramaic etymology lol. Like they’d go to the farmers market together!!! They would very earnestly consider together which plants would be best to plant in their garden to help the local bee population!!!! And like Dean is a dork and loves both of them but like. If the three of them got drunk together Sam and Cas would get caught up in a very passionate debate about the benefits/drawbacks of different kinds of green energy and Dean would fall asleep.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

He should have gotten to run John over with his car. Ok but no forreal, I wish he’d had his anger at John validated. This is connected to how I feel about Dean but I wish Dean had explicitly grown past his hero worship of John and understood that he was abusive, and I wish he’d apologized to Sam for defending John throughout their childhoods. That would have been so great for both of them ;~;

Claire:

How I feel about this character

Ohhhh my god ummmm. U know how I said I didn’t watch past season 8 and only saw parts of the later seasons? Yeah um the vast majority of those parts are scenes with Claire in them. Her character has been the thing that came closest to getting me to watch the later seasons. She is So Fucking Cool. Honestly even besides her character, as like a rule I just LOVE it when SPN forces the characters to Actually Confront The Results Of Their Actions for real. Like morally I guess but also just practically like one of my fave episodes is where they get trapped at the bank by the FBI in like season 3 bc like!!!!! Consequences!!! To murdering all over the country!!!! So back to Claire I already just love the idea of having the characters have to Deal With this girl who’s life they fucked up and then forgot about. But then she is SOOO COOOL gay and dramatic and angsty ugh I love how she’s like actually a teen, she acts like a teen, like she rolls her eyes and is overdramatic and shit. Fucking awesome u funky little lesbian.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Kaia/Claire. I don’t know a lot about Kaia but she’s very pretty and seems very sweet. I saw the scene where the two of them compare scars and it was so cute. In other news I have no idea if they’re canon or not I can’t tell lol.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I didn’t watch the later seasons but I love the Claire and Jack content being produced now!! But I also love her relationship with Dean Sam and Cas. They’re very cute with her! :) Love how she seems to reluctantly grow fond of them over time. <3

My unpopular opinion about this character

Unpopular opinion ummm…maybe this is more about Dean but I don’t think Dean would be like happy to help her be a hunter?? Like he hates kid hunters he says that a bunch of times. I think she was on her murder hunting thing when she was filled with rage but I think she could be nudged away from hunting once she stops hating Cas, and I think all the adults but esp Dean would be very pro convincing-Claire-not-to-be-a-hunter.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Ok this prompted me to google if Claire and Kaia were together and I’m still confused. Seems like if they were it wasn’t made that explicit?? So I wish she got to kiss Kaia on screen!!

[impossiblechaosluminary]

50 Best Ideas For Research Paper Topics

Creating an investigation paper may be a troublesome task, and its most irksome piece is to start out . Especially if your instructor hasn't apportioned any subject and you would like to think about musings for your undertaking isolated.

In this article, we'll provide you with some important direction on the foremost capable strategy to select a big subject for your school or optional school newspaper and outfit you with a once-over of interesting contemplations for examining in your making projects.

We've facilitated them into 11 arrangements that cover a good extent of subjects so you'll without a really remarkable stretch hunt the foremost fitting idea for your academic errand.

Looking for dazzling considerations for captivating investigation focuses? we've all that anybody could require!

Rundown of sections

1 How to devise Interesting assessment paper focuses?

2 The best strategy to select a few of captivating subjects to explore

How to consider Interesting assessment paper subjects?

1 Picking the proper point is crucial for the achievement of any insightful paper.

2 Regardless, the underlying advance is to understand the errand so once you catch on , don't stop briefly to advance toward the educator with inquiries if you experience any disorder.

3 Ask the boss for extra headings to possess an unquestionable perception of what you need to do this will allow you to focus in on other major pieces of the inventive cycle.

4 Recall that the topic of your paper should be appropriate to the course you're taking.

5 At the purpose once you start another course, it's more astute to seem out for an inconceivable subject which can interest you. Starting early, you'll have more energy for orchestrating and affiliation.

6 Conceptualizing is a fantastic methodology for creating great contemplations. It involves an arranged making meeting during which understudies record any watchwords and thoughts associated with their course that attend their minds.

7 It's more astute to try to it as a bulleted list.

8 By then they ought to study the summary, endeavoring to seek out a few of models and assembling different considerations for consistency.

9 Thusly, understudies can find contemplations which seem to justify pursuing and make a brief once-over of possible intriguing focuses to research .

10 Need a few of clues on the foremost capable strategy to select which thought makes the simplest choice?

We will reveal those!

Guidelines to settle on a few of intriguing subjects to look at

Right when understudies have an summary of a few of possible subjects, the simplest approach is to select the one that interests them most. they're going to be more impelled to try to to an escalated assessment and canopy the topic comprehensively. it is a broad endeavor, so understudies will undoubtedly perform better if they're eager about the topic of the paper.

Furthermore, you ought to consider your level of contribution. Consider a chance to select a conspicuous subject. The assessment association are going to be more straightforward if you unquestionably know something about the topic of your investigation.

Scrutinize general establishment information, for instance , articles from online reference books (Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana) which provides a far reaching framework of the themes you're considering and find how it relates to smaller , more broad, and related issues. If a topic is problematic, believe an extent of issues and viewpoints to think about . Make a once-over of the usually used expressions which will assist you with exploring the topic thoroughly. Assignment writer.

The two reference books have important interfaces with paper, magazine, and journal articles, where you'll find additional information with regard to the matter. Guarantee that you simply can find enough disseminated materials (books, keen and paper articles) that cover your subject.

Be versatile. likelihood is that you ought to change your basic idea. it'll depend on the proportion of data you'll find. you'll got to grow or restrict your focus to form the topic reasonable.

Use the watchwords you've got amassed to research in lists, article informational collections. Do additional scrutinizing to portray a connected with investigation question. Make a robust hypothesis clarification as a reaction to the investigation question. Recollect that your recommendation should be express.

Finally, you ought to review the standards of your assignment to make sure that the topic you've got picked meets the necessities. you'll similarly ask your instructor for thoughts and guarantee he/she supports your choice.

Take a gander at this summary of creating thoughts, which may assist you with devising your own brilliant idea.

Fascinating assessment topics for auxiliary school understudies

1 How is it possible that way would of life penchants sway by and enormous prosperity? 

2 Is there a shortfall of haziness within the electronic age?

3 Impact of promotions on youngsters' direct.

4 Meaning of non-verbal correspondence in human correspondence.

5 Are bilingual people (or the people that know different obscure lingos) more splendid?

Interesting investigation paper focuses for understudies

1 Differentiation openings for web learning and blended learning.

2 What measures are often taken to hinder cyberbullying in schools?

3 Part of ladies' freedom in contemporary society.

4 Key reasons anxiety may be a huge issue among children .

5 Differentiations among male and feminine positions models in contemporary society.

Interesting history research paper subjects

1 The Salem Witch Trials: conditions and final products.

2 Part of the ladies tribute improvement during the entire presence of the USA.

3 African genealogical culture, its beginning stage, and headway.

4 Human compensations within the domain of old Maya.

5 Improvement of the good Wall of China.

Fascinating science research focuses

1 Would people have the choice to measure in space and on various planets?

2 Why is "faint matter" critical?

3 Will mankind suffer if the world would be struck by an incredible meteor?

4 How old is that the Universe?

5 Could sub-nuclear science offer keys to getting harmful development?

Captivating mind science research subjects assignment writer

1 How perilous are dietary issues?

2 Post-terrible pressing factor problem.

3 Could music treatment help within the treatment of mental issues?

4What causes horror?

5 How should we foster certainty?

Charming science research focuses

1 Reasons why some animal rest.

2 Counterfeit regular tissues and their properties.

3 Progression of normal species.

4 Effects of diet on the developing cycle.

5 What is the natural clock?

Captivating political hypothesis research topics

1 Part of VIPs in political missions.

2 Post-politically-endorsed racial isolation society in South Africa .

3Intercultural correspondence in European countries.

4 Unlawful abuse and essential freedoms.

5 Globalization and government retirement helper.

Entrancing clinical assessment topics. Assignment writer

1 Do we require counterfeit treatment?

2 Can lacking cell treatment help us live more and better?

3 How is it possible that microelectronics would help people with continuous infections?

4 What causes chest danger?

5 Some portion of vaccination in discarding and preventing diseases.

Entrancing nursing research topics

1 Will pet treatment help intellectually lopsided adolescents?

2 Prosperity needs of elderly people.

3 Impact of outside dynamic work on the enthusiastic health of patients with clinical despairing.

4 Impact of whole grain diet on the countering of cardiovascular diseases.

5Treatment of dietary issues.

Interesting science research subjects

1 Is it possible to encourage environmental considerably arranged plastics?

2 How should we use carbon dioxide?

3 What are the foremost un-frightful fertilizers?

4 Are food colors safe?

5 How pernicious are pesticides?

Interesting antagonistic assessment focuses

1 Are women or men better at cooperating and settling?

2 Dogmatism issues and various sorts of isolation within the bleeding edge world.

3 Effect of sexting on the adolescents' lead.

4 How ensured is inferior quality sustenance?

5 Would supportability have the choice to assist prevent ecological change?

6 Feel free to use these charming investigation focuses to make your own auxiliary school and faculty projects or as inspiration for extra assessment.

7 No inspiration for your investigation paper? What could be said about you choose any point from the overview and that we wrap up… Get a top notch paper at the last possible second with no fight!

Assignment writer.

[shinelikethunder]

“Too many worry about what AI will do to us. Too few people worry what power will do with AI.”

This is the only Twitter thread I've ever bookmarked because it keeps being so intensely relevant that I need to link people to it. Zeynep Tufekci on the true, 100% real, happening-right-now, overlooked danger of AI:

ohai a machine learning system that can identify ~69% of protesters who are wearing caps AND scarfs to cover their face. The authors claim the system works about half the time even when people wear glasses. And this is just the beginning; first paper. And this is maybe the third or fourth most worrying ML paper I've seen recently re: AI and emergent authoritarianism. Historical crossroads. Yes, we can & should nitpick this and all papers but the trend is clear. Ever-increasing new capability that will serve authoritarians well.

And here's the thing. These new capabilities are not like old capabilities. 1984 and old novels and metaphors are misleading us.

Combine this with gait analysis, and protesters will be unavoidably identifiable within a decade or so

Yes! You can be identified from your walk. Whatever else one may think of anonymity as a tactic—this is the reality. Crucial discussion if we are to preserve the better parts of liberal democracy and—per chance—even move forward.

There are things to be said about academics doing this research, but the center of gravity here is outside academia—may be even outside US. Historically, nation-states have LONG figured out how to turn anonymity against protesters—informants, misinformation etc. Clear record but the problem is different even if one understands how & why anonymity in protests almost always backfires and easily manipulated by states.

With machine learning, we have classifiers/categorizers in the hands of power that work well enough to suss out what you did NOT disclose. Big big deal. And ML is the worst combo: High enough validity to be hard to resist use; high false & positive negatives and hard to tell which is which. I should go back to food tweets before I start babbling about Leni Riefenstahl? 😱 If you are in AI/tech, you have to pick a historical side.

Let me say: too many worry about what AI—as if some independent entity—will do to us. Too few people worry what power will do with AI.

That's why so many articles about chess and AI etc. Intellectual/political lack of imagination partly due to the narrow slice of writers. And that is why we must broaden the thinkers & political people in this space. I love my geek tribe and my academic tribe—but so so limited. Intellectually, we need more historians & humanists who ALSO get the tech; politically, we need people who grok what state-power means."

A few of her follow-up tweets:

"For a dissent ecology to exist, people need a basic right to privacy, dignity and autonomy. AI in the hands of power threatens all that."

"Back to this: Too many worry about what AI—as if some independent entity—will do to us. Too few people worry what power will do with AI. Worry not about chess or conscious toasters. Threat is AI at the hands of power: gov'ts, corporations."

"People who hope "OPSEC" will work for a growing movement=ppl who've never been in a growing movement facing a state."

"Tech world should learn from nurses and librarians. They define and take their ethical responsibilities seriously."

[antiquatedfuture]

Zine Care Packages (Antiquated Future Spring Newsletter)

What a challenging time. Things have felt pretty bleak and I debated about whether to send this spring newsletter a lot, but friends convinced me we're all in need of good news. If nothing else, I want to say two things: 1) We'll still be shipping orders (with plenty of hand-washing and sanitizing) several times a week. 2) While we always appreciate and need your financial support, we'd also like to offer the resources we have to any of you who are having a hard time. 

In short: We're offering free zines (and tapes and books) to anyone who's currently struggling financially, mentally, or physically right now. No need to tell us details, just email and say "I'd like a package," and we'll send one your way. Let it be a surprise or make a list of what you'd like and we'll send you what we can. Feel free to spread the word to your friends and community through our Facebook or Twitter posts. It's not much, admittedly, but hopefully it's something.

In more general distro news: we have a few more calendars & planners in stock (and very very on sale), we’ve been restocking things as much as we can, and we accidentally left up our temporary store-wide cassette sale (that also includes a decent handful of LPs and CDs) as well as our zine sale on select titles. We also just posted a newsletter from the record label side of Antiquated Future. We're currently lending some small financial assistance to Portland writer Martha Grover as she recovers from a brain surgery by selling a fundraiser pack of her Somnambulist zine. And if you're in the Portland area, we're helping do porch deliveries of food, baby supplies, and various resources. Please reach out if you'd like one or you know someone in need.

NEW ZINES Antonia- A rare, almost-sublime zine about place, memory, and lost history. About the ways things change and stay the same. About how the place you're from shapes who you become. About growing up in a small Midwestern town without a zip code, a place not on most maps. ($5) Behind the Zines #9: A Zine About Zines- The latest issue of newest best zine about zines around. Within: the evolution of DIY comics culture, zine-fest history, imagined zines, One Punk's Guide to collaborative zines, a history of that one Crimethinc poster, The Most Unwanted Zine, confessions of a sex-zine zinester. Contributions from our own Gina Sarti, as well as John Porcellino and so many others. ($3) Brainscan #34: A Dabbler's Week of DIY Witchery- In the wake of the controversy surrounding a recent viral article about spending a week "becoming a witch," Alex considers what her guide to a witchcraft practice would look like. The results are a day-by-day guide to trying out her particular variety of secular witchcraft (that she lovingly refers to as "DIY witchery"). ($4)

Caboose #12: Jury Duty- A personal story of serving as a juror on a medical malpractice suit. As usual, Liz Mason's playful, endlessly curious take on the world makes this a ride worth taking. A peek into the court system through the eyes of this long-running zine-star. ($4) Clock Tower Nine #15- One of our favorite Seattle zines is back with tales from the record store counter, long walks in various locales, dangerous doppelgängers, and 8-track tapes. As Clock Tower Nine ringleader Danny Noonan describes it in the introduction: "This fanzine is like a bunch of people sitting around a fire in late fall, all taking turns telling a story." ($3) Cometbus #59: Post-Mortem- How does Cometbus, after 38 years as a zine, just get better and better? It's a mystery, but it does. Issue 59 is a deep dive into both death and longevity in the underground. In short: what does sustainability look like in counterculture? This question takes Aaron on a journey from the Epitaph Records and Thrasher magazine offices to hanging out at a punk-owned vegan donut shop and a tamale stand at the farmer's market with Allison Wolfe (of Bratmobile). ($5)

Doris #23- A back-issue fave from one of the best zines ever. Long personal stories that look both outward and inward in surprising ways. ($2) Doris #26- Shy-punk-girl comics, social ecology, the cynical hour, a grandpa who built malls, hammer and nail history, and more. ($2) Eulalia #3- Two issues of the art zine Eulalia in one. Grief and romance, hand-in-hand. Gorgeously designed! Letterpress-printed covers. Each issue is bound with a special do-si-do binding, so each half can be read separately. ($10) Fluke Fanzine #17- Since 1991, Fluke has been creating great variety zines covering all realms of punk and underground culture. Graphic novelist Nate Powell, skateboard magazine historians, Maximum Rocknroll, R.E.M., '90s women-led punk, the Soophie Nun Squad family tree, more. ($3)

Forever & Everything #5- Comics on parenting, depression, coffee, therapy, alcohol, Willie Nelson, Charlie Brown, and living in New Orleans. ($5) Good Days Gone Cold Days- A photography zine/art zine made while living and working in "a house without heat, without doorknobs, and without much insulation or electricity to speak of" for a late fall in western Pennsylvania. Comes with homemade bookmark, building permit, and banjo tab. ($12) Keep Loving, Keep Fighting #8- A reprint of this 2008 issue of Keep Loving, Keep Fighting. Forty pages of feeling at home in New Orleans, communication between friends, death, visiting Montreal, and moving away. ($5)

Learning Good Consent- An essential compilation zine about consent. From personal stories to worksheets, approaches, definitions, resources, and beyond, Learning Good Consent is here to help us all feel more comfortable and be more respectful. ($4)

Little Leagues #1- The companion comics scrapbook to Simon Moreton's epic Minor Leagues series. Prose, comics and photos about being in Japan, making chutney, experiencing autumn. ($3) Little Leagues #2- Comics about being in the snow. Drawings and photos of spring. A fold-out cover with facts about lesser-spotted dogfish. ($3) Our Lady of Near Death Experiences- Jodi Darby writes about becoming a cross-country truck driver as a 23-year-old woman in the mid 1990s. A mini-memoir told in vignettes, Our Lady is a twisted love song to the road in all its complexities. A gorgeous reprint of this zine classic from 1998. (And we have the last few copies before it goes out of print!) ($10)

The Paruretic #1: The Story of a Guy Who's Pee Shy- The first issue of one of our favorite new zine series. The Paruretic tells what the intricacies and complexities of life with parusesis, the social phobia of being pee shy. Illuminating, accessible, and worth reading every issue. ($2)

The Paruretic #2: The Story of a Guy Who's Pee Shy (College)- In this issue, Mark recalls figuring out the debilitating effects of his bladder issues when he goes to college and, for the first time, navigates living in dorms, drinking at college-town bars, and hooking-up. ($3)

The Paruretic #3: The Story of a Guy Who's Pee Shy (Vacation)- In this issue: searching out acceptable bathrooms while on the road, not urinating for ten hours while in the air, and a bathroom-by-bathroom diary of experiences. ($3) The Paruretic #4: The Story of a Guy Who's Pee Shy (The Search for Help)- In this issue, Mark reaches out, looking for help, and is met with a less-than-sympathetic medical system. Within: clueless medical professionals, almost losing a job over a urinalysis, and finally finding someone who understands. ($3) The Paruretic #5: The Story of a Guy Who's Pee Shy (Dating)- The dating issue covers how Mark handled (or avoided handling) dating in high school and college. It's a chronicle of, as Mark says, "how my shy bladder has driven every part of my love life." ($3)

Somnambulist Zine Pack Fundraiser- For the past 17 years, Portland memoirist and illustrator Martha Grover has been publishing Somnambulist zine, an expansive and playful look at the world at large (and easily one of the best zines running today). This pack includes all nine in-print issues of Somnambulist (a $40 value for $25!). All proceeds go straight to Martha's brain surgery recovery fund. Help a great writer, get nine amazing zines. ($25) Somnambulist #33: How to Survive the Portland Winter- A fun how-to guide from Portland-born writer Martha Grover. Within: dealing with all the rain, taking care of your mental health, venturing out, staying in, eating soup (with recipes!), and the truth about umbrellas. Illustrated by Liz Yerby. ($5)

Somnambulist #34: The Starfish- A single, long-form essay about Martha's journey through Cushing's disease and Addison's disease, and the lingering tumor she's chosen to not demonize or see as something separate. The Starfish is a surprising and exciting meditation on what it means to be in a body. ($3) Surely, They'll Tear it Down- A short zine letter about gender, race, identity, and not-knowing from the author of Fixer Eraser and We, the Drowned. ($2) Tattoo Punk Fanzine, Issue 3- A jam-packed new issue of Tattoo Punk, the fanzine about tattoos, punks, and tattooed punks. Edited by Ben Trogdon of everyone's favorite artsy punk paper, Nuts! ($15) Valentines Every Day- Weirdo anytime-valentines from zine-seller extraordinaire, Julie Wade. Funny, bizarre, off-kilter, occasionally unsettling. The perfect gift for that especially-odd someone. ($6) What Happened- A dreamy comic from UK artist Simon Moreton. Set in a '90s boyhood of meadows, sci-fi VHS tapes, MTV, crushes, first kisses. ($5) 

NEW BOOKS & MISCELLANY The Collected Plays by Portland Preschoolers- In short: One of our favorite little books around! A modern classic, even. Five years of collected plays written by Portland, Oregon preschoolers. Hilarious, invariably bizarre, oddly brilliant, sometimes surprisingly profound. Perfect for putting out on the coffee table, reading aloud to friends, impromptu group performances. ($10) Four-Year Depression- A book about figuring out how to love your family in the Trump era. From Billy McCall of Proof I Exist and Behind the Zines. ($10) Zine Game- A long-time favorite in the zine community, now in a fancy, professionally-made version accessible to all game lovers. Playing like a cross between canasta and Magic: The Gathering, Zine Game is all about building your own zines. A really fun time with tons of possibilities. ($16)

NEW MUSIC & SPOKEN WORD Alice Notley "Live in Seattle"- An LP of one of the most adored living poets. Alice Notley pushes boundaries, and it's an absolute joy to hear her reading her work. (LP + digital download) ($16.95) Annelyse Gelman & Jason Grier "About Repulsion"- A collaboration between poet Annelyse Gelman and sound artist Jason Grier. About Repulsion mixes songs, sampled poems, textural walls, beats, noise, to create this EP of one-of-a-kind soundscapes. (LP + digital download) ($16.95) Eileen Myles "Aloha / Irish Trees"- The legendary poet Eileen Myles, on vinyl for the first time. Aloha/Irish Trees features nearly an hour of Myles live in the studio, reading past and present poems. Intimate, playful, raw. (LP + digital download) ($16.95)

Harmony Holiday "The Black Saint and the Sinnerman"- Harmony Holiday's record of poems and sound collage. Adventurous and accessible, twisting cultural images into something surprising, political, socially aware. In conversation with Charles Mingus’ classic 1963 album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. (LP + digital download) ($16.95) Rae Armantrout "Conflation"- Fifty-four surprising and gloriously unique poems from Rae Armantrout, a Pulitzer-winning poet of great gifts. (LP + digital download) ($16.95) Susan Howe & Nathaniel Mackey  "Stray: A Graphic Tone"- Made in collaboration with Shannon Ebner, Stray: A Graphic Tone juxtaposes historic and recent material from poets Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey. An adventurous LP of spoken word delights. (LP + digital download) ($16.95)

Stay well, take care of each other as much as possible. Xo, Antiquated Future

[fatehbaz]

”Contemporary Dust Bowl literature [...] frames the disaster [...] narrowly as a [...] natural event, void of social content. [...] Prevailing perspectives therefore make invisible the colonial and racial-domination aspects of the [ecological] crisis and lead to the whitewashing of Dust Bowl narratives“: Today, debates over solutions to global ecological crises like climate change proceed too often as if we have no historical evidence to help us understand what works and what doesn’t work. The case of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which I show was one dramatic regional manifestation of a global social and ecological crisis generated by the realities of settler colonialism and imperialism, illustrates the enormous consequences of relying on imperial “politics as usual” to attempt a change in “business as usual.” [...] The Dust Bowl did not arise because there was a lack of awareness of the issue or the technical means to address it.  --- [Environmental historian Hannah Holleman, in an interview from October 2016.]

---

In contrast to predominant academic, official and popular depictions, the reinterpretation offered here re-embeds the Dust Bowl on the US Southern Plains within its broader historical and social context. In so doing, it becomes clear that the disaster was one dramatic regional manifestation of a global socio-ecological crisis of soil erosion generated by the conditions of economic expansion via the ‘new imperialism’ beginning in the 1870s and lasting through the early decades of the twentieth century. These include policies and practices, such as the accelerated seizure of indigenous lands, legitimated and spurred by a ‘culture of conquest’ rooted in white supremacy, ‘the essential ideology of colonial projects’ (Dunbar-Ortiz 2014.). Such conditions were outgrowths of the driving logic of capitalist development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [...]

By the 1930s there was a well-established body of scholarly literature, government reports, conference proceedings and periodical articles discussing the growing problem of soil erosion across the colonial world. These sources not only provide documentation of the scale of the issue in the absence of consistent data, they also show how this phenomenon was understood by many at the time as linked to white territorial and resource acquisition. The problem of soil erosion, and the international recognition of it, constituted what one historian referred to in passing as the ‘first global environmental problem’, described in the 1930s as another ‘white man’s burden’ on a world scale (Anderson 1984.); Jacks and Whyte 1939). The common experiences across colonial contexts allowed writers at the time, including journalists, scientists, policy-makers and conservationists, to make sense of the Dust Bowl in these broader terms, which should be foregrounded once again in contemporary analyses. [...]

Globalizing the ecological rift involved the racialized division of nature and labor on a planetary scale as a precondition for the development of the first global agricultural market and food regime. All of this shaped farming practices worldwide, including on the US Southern Plains, as areas were subject to an intensifying ecological imperialism and brought into the global market under conditions of unequal ecological exchange. Integrating work across these areas reveals the embeddedness of events in the US, including the dramatic apogee of the soil erosion crisis in the dust storms of the 1930s, within a broader pattern of ecological and social destruction. [...]

[This] is in sharp contrast to the preponderance of contemporary Dust Bowl literature, which frames the disaster as a regionally particular fate, mostly involving white ranchers and farmers, whether tenants, laborers or owners. In this literature, the settler colonial context from which the Dust Bowl emerged is ignored and the experience on the US Southern Plains region extracted from broader historical developments. In some instances, including an influential paper written by prominent NASA scientists, the Dust Bowl is treated even more narrowly as a primarily meteorological or natural event, void of social content (Schubert et al. 2004.). Prevailing perspectives therefore make invisible the colonial and racial-domination aspects of the crisis and lead to the whitewashing of Dust Bowl narratives.

-

Hannah Holleman. De-naturalizing ecological disaster: colonialism, racism, and the global Dust Bowl of the 1930s (2017). [Emphasis mine.]

[lil-rosequartz-princess]

I decided to grab a couple articles on cultural appropriation of smudging as well as ethical issues. Please feel free to discuss your feelings on this if you are of a tribe that uses smudging.

Smudging

Smudging, or saging, has become a trendy wellness practice that some people use to cleanse "bad energy" from their homes or their space. Smudging is an important ritual for many indigenous people: An article by Indigenous Corporate Training, Inc., a Canadian organization that delivers anti-bias trainings, says that “Smudging is traditionally a ceremony for purifying or cleansing the soul of negative thoughts of a person or place,” and that it is a term mostly originating from indigenous tribes in North America. So when non-native people burn sage to "smudge" their homes or other spaces, it can minimize the cultural importance of this ritual, and have a negative impact on how the herbs are grown. Instead, advocates say non-native people can learn to cleanse their spaces in ways that are culturally and ecologically sensitive. There are lots of ways to achieve the benefits of smudging by using more ethical practices, terminology, and materials.

“It was illegal for Natives to practice their religion until 1978 in the U.S., and many were jailed and killed just for keeping our ways alive, including my great-great grandfather,” Ruth Hopkins, a Dakota/Lakota Sioux writer, tells Bustle. Smudging is part of those practices. It’s so important to certain indigenous cultures, that Native people are fighting to be able to perform it in hospitals. Smudging, therefore, is not to be taken lightly.

Because white sage is in such high demand, thanks to this recent trendiness, the Chumash people (of what is now called Southern California) are concerned that the plant is being overharvested. The United States Department of Agriculture says that white sage has important medical benefits — it is used to cure colds and aid postpartum healing — and it’s a crucial part of the surrounding ecosystem. But some brands continue to sell white sage, despite Native communities speaking out against it. Hopkins says that this behavior is unacceptable. “It’s exploitative and amounts to silencing Native voices and erasing our cultural heritage,” she says.

For Hopkins, the appropriation of sage is made worse because the plant is often not being harvested correctly. “When using medicinal plants, it’s important that the plant is used sustainably. When we pick sage, we always leave the root and say a prayer of thanks for our harvest. This is as much a part of smudging (or saging) as burning the plant is,” Hopkins says. To explain further, it’s important to leave the root, because that’s how the plant grows back. If someone is harvesting white sage and doesn’t know to leave the root, they’re preventing more plants from growing.

If you have used herbs to cleanse your space in the past and enjoy the ritual, you don't have to give it up in order to so in a culturally conscious way. Smudging refers to a specific healing cultural spiritual practice, but smoke cleansing can look a lot like smudging, but it’s just the simple act of burning herbs, wood, incense, or other safe-to-burn materials that possess unique cleansing properties. The smoke is then waved over the area you want to cleanse. You can smoke cleanse whatever you want, as much as you want. Some cultures may have spiritual practices connected to smoke cleansing, but the act of smoke cleansing is not inherently spiritual or specific to a certain culture, like smudging is.

Personally, I like to smoke cleanse with a cinnamon stick. It leaves me feeling spiritually focused and relaxed. And there are other materials, including lavender, pine, and cloves, that can be burned safely. Palo Santo ("holy wood” in Spanish) sticks have been getting more popular as an alternative to sage, but buying this Central and South American tree used by Amazonian tribes can also be harmful, in similar ways to sage. Palo Santo has been added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) list, because its overharvesting can lead to extinction, although the tree is not nearing extinction currently.

If smoke cleansing is something that makes you feel calm, then go for it! It's important, however, that in the process, you're respecting Indigenous cultures and the land's ecosystem. That may mean harvesting your own sage or other herbs sustainably, contacting brands to ask them to stop selling white sage without giving due to Native cultures, or using another material. Ultimately, being intentional about how you implement this practice in your life — and being mindful about its origins and significance — is helpful for everyone.

Source: https://www.bustle.com/p/is-burning-sage-cultural-appropriation-heres-how-to-smoke-cleanse-in-sensitive-ways-18208360

Sage

This year it was evident due to the social media reaction that people were expressing anger and concern over the increase in commercialization of white sage (Salvia apiana) and the cultural appropriation and offensive marketing that overlooks ethics and ecological, cultural awareness of a deeply sacred and spiritual plant.

The rumblings on social media in regards to those who claimed to wildcraft white sage, along with selling the wildcrafted material that was being gathered from public lands, were clues that the balance between respectful wildcrafting and the use of terms like “ethical wildcrafting and sustainable wildcrafting” for personal use versus commercial gain was being pushed to its limit.

In October of 2018, “Cleaning Space Kits” including white sage bundles appeared on the shelves of Anthropologie, and with the collective social media outcry they were removed from the stores almost immediately—thank you, Anthropologie. At this time white sage can be purchased on Amazon and Walmart websites and on the shelves of stores such as Urban Outfitters in pre-packaged new aged kits. This is a serious indicator of alarm for many who know and respect the ecological and cultural fragility of this plant.

One of the most active voices in the social media outcry is the IG @Meztliprojects. Meztli Projects is an Indigenous based arts and culture collaborative, based in Los Angeles. Meztli Projects brilliantly updated the Wikipedia page on white sage to provide information on the recent controversy, citing the illegal harvest arrests and current press on this issue over the last two years.

Commercial harvest of wild white sage populations is a concern held by many Native American groups, herbalists, and conservationists. In June 2018, four people were arrested for the illegal harvest of 400 pounds of white sage in North Etiwanda Preserve in California.

It is very difficult when companies make claims of sustainable harvest when we have no accountability within a very secretive trade. In some cases permits are given on public lands for commercial harvest of economically valued plants, but in the case of white sage no such permit exists. The only way this would be legal is if harvesting took place on private land with permission. What I learned when I was in California and visited the Etiwanda Preserve was that it is the epicenter of the current commercial harvest. The rangers that I spoke with described a very difficult situation in that it is mostly undocumented individuals that are desperate for the work, putting themselves in danger, sneaking into the Etiwanda Preserve to harvest. The residents living near the preserve, working with law enforcement to help coordinate efforts to address the issue were responsible for the recent arrest in June of 2018. This came about when four undocumented individuals were arrested with over 400 pounds of white sage harvested from the preserve.

The North Etiwanda Preserve is a unique Riversidean Alluvial Fan Sage Scrub plant community that provides protection for a number of sensitive plant and wildlife species, several of which are Federal or State listed threatened or endangered. Listed endangered species that may occur on the Preserve include the least Bell’s vireo, California gnatcatcher, the southwestern willow flycatcher, and San Bernardino Merriam’s kangaroo rat. Sensitive species include Los Angeles pocket mouse, San Diego black-tailed jackrabbit, American badger, coastal cactus wren, San Diego horned lizard, coastal western whiptail, Southern sagebrush lizard, San Bernardino ring-necked snake, coastal rosy boa, Coast patch-nosed snake, mountain yellow-legged frog, two-striped garter snake, Parry’s spineflower, and Plummer’s mariposa lily.

The Management Plan for the preserve acknowledges that the area is considered to be a sacred site by the Gabrielino-Shoshoni Nation and Serrano people and is currently being used for cultural purposes. It further states in the management plan their priority actions of conducting historical research, coordinating with tribes to facilitate access for ceremonies, and collection of white sage. When I spoke to a preserve manager, she confirmed the Preserve’s efforts to provide permits to tribal members for collection of sage for ceremonial use.

The San Bernardino associated governments along with multiple state agencies, federal/USFWS, local universities, and non-profits manage the preserve, which was first established in 1998 and expanded with highway mitigation funds in 2009. Working together the management plan establishes its principle goals.

Management Plan principal goals:

Preservation of Native Species, Habitats, and Ecosystem Processes;

Protection and preservation of Cultural Resources;

Monitoring Existing Habitats, Species, and Physical Conditions;

Restoration of Disturbed On-Site Habitats;

Develop and Maintain an Informational Database

What is important to stress is that this underground sage mafia is not ethical or sustainable wildcrafting as it is portrayed in hipster IG accounts and stores! The scale of white sage commercial trade on the Internet and demand in China is alarming. United Plant Savers is working with agents at the USFWS and at the State level to provide as much insight as possible into the trade so that law enforcement can be informed to protect the preserve. I was invited by the owner of a white sage company to meet at the Etiwanda Preserve in March of 2019; he wanted to show his sustainable harvesting methods. I quickly pulled out my phone to show him that it was against the law to do so, and that recent arrests had been made. He carried on as if that was not the case, and fortunately law enforcement arrived and I was able to get confirmation of the laws in regards to the preserve from the officer on the spot. His story quickly changed, and he claimed he no longer wildharvested but had a farm where he is now growing sage for his company. I tried to convey why the preserve did not allow commercial harvest permits and the level of community engagement that goes into ensuring safe haven for threatened and endangered species. Certainly he was proud to show off his harvesting technique and make claims to be a former student of Michael Moore, but he lacked ecological knowledge of the diversity of species in the habitat he claimed to sustainably harvest, not to mention basic laws surrounding wild harvest of plants on state and federal lands.

It can be frustrating when attempts to inform stores who sell sage bundles respond that they are getting their sage from those that claim sustainable harvesting techniques and have all the right verbiage on their social media and websites. Consumers and retailers need to understand laws in regards to wild plants because even if one’s techniques are sustainable, if it is not permitted, then it is illegal. A first step for a buyer or consumer is to ask to see a permit.

White sage is abundant in its local habitat as a keystone species of its plant community, but that habitat is under threat due to development and it is fragile, apparent by the many endangered and threatened species that rely on its habitat. Most important to note is that it can be grown, and if it is to be in any form of commercial trade and certainly on the scale it is now, the only sustainability claims should be that it is coming from a cultivated source, and a buyer should always visit the farm to verify the claim.

Traveling throughout California to understand the state of sage habitats and the cultural teachings of white sage, I came across the recently published book Kumeyaay Ethnobotany at the Anza Borrego Visitors Center. The photograph by Rose Ramirez caught my attention and through a Google search I was able to locate her and ask permission to use the image for the cover of this year’s journal.

We then began a dialogue on the issues and concerns over its recent popularity and I asked if she would provide me a quote to share from the perspective of an indigenous elder. Here is the quote she provided me.

“We do not sell white sage. If you need it as a medicine and we have it, we’re going to give it to you. We discourage selling medicine plants, spiritual plants, because we don’t know if the person collected them in a good way, with a good heart. But if you have white sage growing in your own back yard, you would know because you would be taking care of it.” – Barbara Drake, Tongva Elder

I found the quote she shared from Barbara Drake that speaks to why they discourage selling of spiritual plants on a commercial scale because one does not know if the person who is collecting them is doing so in a good way, with a good heart as very profound. Wildharvesting can be detrimental to the plant and/or the species that relies on the plant, but often it is most harmful to those who are harvesting, when they are forced into doing so for very little because they are in a desperate situation. This is why programs like fair wild are important because they address the fair treatment of those communities of harvesters and the plants, and this is important. If we the consumers want to be healed by the plants, then should we not want those who are harvesting to be treated fairly? Conversely harvesting wild plants when regulated and when harvesters are treated fairly can result in beneficial relationships, for both consumer and harvester, and the harvester and the plants, as well as for the plants and their habitat. It seemed serendipitous that my year would be filled with two impactful sage encounters, when I learned about the wild sage native to Albania facing overharvesting in the wild due to unregulated trade and the herbal companies working towards a solution by transitioning to cultivated sage and support to small scale farmers. The Ethnobotany Project is a collaboration among Rose Ramirez, Deborah Small, and the Malki Baliena Press, working together to document southern California and northern Baja California’s Native people’s contemporary uses of native plants. The primary goal is to create a resource for Native people in this region to share and learn traditional knowledge about native plant uses and gathering practices. The project began in 2007. Two publications have resulted so far: a 2010 large-scale calendar and a book in 2015. The Malki Museum, founded in 1965 by Native Americans (Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel and Jane Penn) on a California Indian Reservation, is the oldest non-profit museum and has been the inspiration for several other museums. My journey to understand the complexity of white sage has been a learning journey to the many state and federal recognized tribes and the diverse projects and museums working hard to revive and celebrate cultural and ecological diversity that is more beautiful and powerful. I would encourage those who are drawn to white sage to spend time researching the cultures that have tended its habitat and choose a smudge that you build a personal relationship with and question the idea of ethical wild crafting, considering the habitat, the harvester, the laws, the cultures, and the medicinal teachings. Source: https://unitedplantsavers.org/what-is-going-on-with-white-sage/

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from an essay published in the journal Foreign Policy. The article starts out by restating the predictions and proposals included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Then the writers criticize as unrealistic some of the proposals to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as unrealistic, if not impossible. The essay ends with an analysis of one of the proposals that the writers assert is most realistic, yet that proposal itself collides with one of the fundamental precepts of capitalism. So........read on.

Excerpt:

Last week’s special report includes an exciting new scenario that—for the first time—does not rely on speculative technology. Developed by an international team of scientists, it projects that we can reduce emissions fast enough to keep under 1.5 degrees but only if we’re willing to fundamentally change the logic of our economy. Instead of growing industrial output at all costs, it proposes a simple alternative: that we start to consume less.

The new IPCC model calls for us to scale down global material consumption by 20 percent, with rich countries leading the way. What does that look like? It means moving away from disposable products toward goods that last. It means repairing our existing things rather than buying new ones. It means designing things so that they can be repaired (modular devices such as Fairphones rather than proprietary devices such as iPhones). It means investing in public goods and finding ways to share stuff—from cars to lawn mowers—shifting from an ethic of ownership to an ethic of usership.

Reducing our industrial output will slash our need for energy, making it much easier to decarbonize the economy in time to avert climate breakdown. What’s more, scientists say it’s also our best hope of reversing other aspects of ecosystem collapse. And because this scenario doesn’t require giving land over to BECCS, it leaves lots of room for reforestation, ending poverty and hunger, and improving biodiversity.

How do we get there? This isn’t just about tweaking individual behavior. It requires system-level change. The first step would be to impose caps on resource consumption. We could also roll out laws against planned obsolescence and encourage long-lasting design and recyclability by having businesses take back defunct products. We might even think about getting rid of public advertising, as São Paulo has done, liberating people from the psychological pressure to consume unnecessary stuff. There are dozens of ideas we could consider.

There’s just one catch. This approach requires evolving beyond the rigid constraints of capitalism. Whatever else capitalism might be, it is ultimately a system that is dependent on perpetual growth, which places immense pressure on our living planet. Such a system might have seemed reasonable enough when it first emerged in the 1800s, but in an era of ecological breakdown, it just won’t do.

[zacharyleishmanfilmstudent]

Contexts of Practice - Creative Activism: Lecture Notes/Thoughts:

Following on from last sessions, discussions and explorations of fictional utopias we were told that we explored these utopias/dystopias as a means of exploring the commentary present in the writers of the time about the real world.

Examples of this could be from the 1950s when giant monster movies were written to advertise and commentate on fears of the results of nuclear war, or even in the 1960s when stories about alien invaders were written to discuss fears regarding communism and immigration. It became incredibly clear to us that the writings of these multiple authors were often not done as a means of entertainment but to subtly voice issues and controversies of the era that could not be voiced as publicly as these writers and directors might have hoped.

We however though live in an era where creative activism remains a celebrated and acceptable means of voicing our complaints with society and its machinations through art to a listening public, as long as it can be proven to be done safely.

From this therefore we were tasked with creating a campaign to raise social awareness on a topical issue of our choosing, using our own artistic skills to produce a format to voice and present the issue we were discussing to the viewing public. Whilst a presentation on the making of the product and a report on the research gone into it was set to follow, we were for this session tasked with in groups devising what our issue might be and how we would devise a means to explore it through art.

We were told though before deciding upon our issue to consider three very important things when devising the structure of our campaign. The first of these was for us to consider what the root cause of our issue is.

Namely: "Would X be a problem if..."

An example of this could be would factory farming be a problem if people were more willing to consider the benefits of free-range farming and aware of the many negative aspects behind factory farming. The idea behind this was to be able to assess a key solution to our problem at hand. We would not be able to draw awareness to the issue being created and potentially offer a solution to it, if we could not identify the cause of said controversy directly. This proved beneficial as it allows for us to be able to add legitimacy to an issue if a perpetrator can be attached to the issue and if the origin of said issue can be found, it seems likely a solution to said origin can be found quicker too.

Secondly and thirdly we were reminded of the direct benefits and beneficiaries behind our issue. This meant that upon choosing our issue we would have to learn whom would benefit from tackling the issue at hand and what exact benefits could be drawn from it. An example of this could be offering solar panels to decrease global warming. The beneficiates would be those seeking to retrieve an ecologically friendly energy source, with the benefits being that they would be doing so likely cheaply and gaining a quiet and easy to use product. The importance of a target audience was thus presented to us as we would need to identify whom our campaign would identify with most to gain publicity and potential research from them.

After being told the importance of these three points to consider when building the campaign and the particulars of the presentation for the campaign we would have to build, we were simply left to devise our idea. My group at this time remains undecided on the topic of our campaign but we decided to tackle a modern and controversial issue that people can relate to and that we can get resources build a campaign around. We at this time have limited it to three potential ideas:

1. Justified Opposition to Anti-Vaccination

2. Article 13 and the growing threat of net neutrality to the world wide web

3. The growing issue of plastic waste and the potential replacements/solutions

An eventual topic will be chosen by my group once it has been agreed upon which topic, we feel we could tackle best and the subsequent campaign we produce to do just that, will be featured on this blog.

[damagedfictionhead-blog]

Contexts of Practice - Creative Activism: Lecture Notes/Thoughts:

Following on from last sessions, discussions and explorations of fictional utopias we were told that we explored these utopias/dystopias as a means of exploring the commentary present in the writers of the time about the real world. Examples of this could be from the 1950s when giant monster movies were written to advertise and commentate on fears of the results of nuclear war, or even in the 1960s when stories about alien invaders were written to discuss fears regarding communism and immigration. It became incredibly clear to us that the writings of these multiple authors were often not done as a means of entertaintment but to subtly voice issues and controversies of the era that could not be voiced as publicly as these writers and directors might have hoped. We however though live in an era where creative activism remains a celebrated and acceptable means of voicing our complaints with society and its machinations through art to a listening public, as long as it can be proven to be done safely. From this therefore we were tasked with creating a campaign to raise social awareness on a topical issue of our chosing, using our own artistic skills to produce a format to voice and present the issue we were discussing to the viewing public. Whilst a presentation on the making of the product and a report on the research gone into it was set to follow, we were for this session tasked with in groups devising what our issue might be and how we would devise a means to explore it through art. We were told though before deciding upon our issue to consider three very important things when devising the structure of our campaign. The first of these was for us to consider what the root cause of our issue is. Namely: "Would X be a problem if..." An example of this could be would factory farming be a problem if people were more willing to consider the benefits of free range farming and aware of the many negative aspects behind factory farming. The idea behind this was to be able to assess a key solution to our problem at hand. We would not be able to draw awareness to the issue being created and potentially offer a solution to it, if we could not identify the cause of said controversy directly. This proved beneficial as it allows for us to be able to add legitimacy to an issue if a perpetrator can be attached to the issue and if the origin of said issue can be found, it seems likely a solution to said origin can be found quicker too. Secondly and thirdly we were reminded of the direct benefits and benificiaries behind our issue. This meant that upon choosing our issue we would have to learn whom would benefit from tackling the issue at hand and what exact benefits could be drawn from it. An example of this could be offering solar panels to decrease global warming. The beneficients would be those seeking to retrieve an ecologically friendly energy source, with the benefits being that they would be doing so likely cheaply and gaining a quiet and easy to use product. The importance of a target audience was thus presented to us as we would need to identify whom our campaign would identify with most to gain publicity and potential research from them.. After being told the importance of these three points to consider when building the campaign and the particulars of the presentation for the campaign we would have to build, we were simply left to devise our idea. My group at this time remains undecided on the topic of our campaign but we decided to tackle a modern and controversial issue that people can relate to and that we can get resources build a campaign around. We at this time have limited it to three potential ideas: 1. Justified Opposition to Anti-Vaccination 2. Article 13 and the growing threat of net neutrality to the world wide web 3. The growing issue of plastic waste and the potential replacements/solutions An eventual topic will be chosen by my group once it has been agreed upon which topic we feel we could tackle best and the subsequent campaign we produce to do just that will be featured on this blog.

[revlyncox]

Deeds That Beckon

This sermon was drastically revised from a previous version to fold in a discussion about how individualism and paternalism -- two hallmarks of white supremacy culture -- affect the way we understand our religious history. We must unpack that history in order to repair the damage that is our heritage and claim the positive mission of justice and kindness that is also our heritage. Delivered to the UU Church of Silver Spring, November 25, 2018, by the Rev. Lyn Cox.

As Unitarian Universalists, we need stories that help us, on an emotional and metaphorical level, understand who we are and how to live in the world. Our history provides those myths. Stories about admirable Unitarian Universalists are grown from seeds of historical accuracy, yet they are family stories. When we study our prophetic ancestors and take up the path of service in our own generation, we are becoming part of that mythic story.

The seminary I attended invited us into one such story. My school was named after Thomas Starr King, a minister who served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations in the 1840s through the 1860s. He got a lot done. Thomas Starr King was about five feet tall. One of his famous quotes is, “though I weigh only 120 pounds, when I am mad I weigh a ton.”

As a nature writer, he persuaded people of the importance of preserving places like the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Yosemite Valley in the West. His accounts were published in the Boston Evening Transcript. He has two mountains named after him, one in New Hampshire and one in California’s Sierra Nevada.

He helped the Unitarian church in San Francisco grow into their mission as a vital congregation involved in the life of the city. Starr King was a vocal abolitionist. When the Civil War broke out, he traveled up and down California, speaking to everyone from miners to legislators about joining the Union instead of the Confederacy or trying to become a separate country.

When I lived in California and walked the hills of San Francisco, sometimes I would think, “If Thomas Starr King could hike up the mountains, I can, too.”  Visiting Yosemite, I could see his point about the landscape being the scenic equivalent of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Acts of service are like moveable temples, places where we can go to greet the spirits of our beloved ancestors, both blood ancestors and chosen ancestors.

Individualism and White Supremacy Culture

The story of Thomas Starr King can function as a UU religious story, bringing connection and inspiration, and a way to enter the story through acts of service. Even so, it’s worthwhile to go back and take another look at the stories that are important to us through the lens of white supremacy culture.

White supremacy culture is a system of oppression that uses everything from social norms to cultural narratives to corporate policy to federal law to maintain the privilege of one group over all other groups. White supremacy functions even in the absence of people who self-identify as racists. By design, the power and operating rules of white supremacy are unnoticed by most of the people who benefit from it.

Even when we have a story about someone like Thomas Starr King, who dedicated his life to causes like ecological preservation and abolition of slavery, we have to ask ourselves about what ways the form of the story we are telling upholds white supremacy culture. Sometimes oppression is baked in from the beginning, with our admired ancestors working against justice in certain facets while making progress in other facets. Sometimes the white supremacy culture is in our retelling, in the details we emphasize or the details we forget.

Tema Okun from the organization dRworks has published a guide to recognizing fifteen characteristics of white supremacy culture. Okun focuses on the unspoken norms that maintain the status quo, even in organizations devoted to justice. There is a lot to unpack in it, so I’d like to focus on one characteristic now and one a little later in the sermon. https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/White_Supremacy_Culture_Okun.pdf

One of the characteristics of white supremacy culture that Okun describes is individualism. Organizations that are under the influence of individualism have difficulties with working in teams. Individuals believe they are responsible for solving the problems of the organization alone. There is an emphasis on individual recognition and credit, leading to isolation and competition. Few resources are devoted to developing skills in how to cooperate.

The way we UU’s typically tell the story of Thomas Starr King is steeped in individualism. He did do important things, but a lot of his impact was through organizing and teamwork, and those are the strategies that are hard to replicate based on the mythology that we carry on in his memory. He didn’t just go around preaching on street corners, he traveled to speak with and work with coherent groups of people from different social classes and walks of life. He made a difference because of the way he was able to get outside his comfort zone and work with teams, not by his preaching skills alone.

The way history is taught and discussed in general is susceptible to this pitfall, and the way we talk about Unitarian Universalist history in particular is vulnerable to individualism. Sometimes our quick introductions focus on famous Unitarian Universalists, trying to make our religious movement more familiar by reminding people of its famous adherents.

One of the most famous UU’s is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote an essay called “Self-Reliance” in 1841. In his memory, I worry that Unitarian Universalism has taken individualism to a place that limits our mutual accountability and our responsibilities to the most vulnerable among us. I appreciate Emerson’s healthy skepticism toward the way things have always been done. Emerson’s suggestion that sometimes social expectations are not the most important value is important for our anti-racism work, because you have to push back on politeness at least a little bit if you are challenging white supremacy. And. It is important not to let our admiration for Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” prevent us from being in covenant with each other, being loving in our truth-telling, and opening ourselves up to learning new ways of cooperation.    

Contrast the image of Emerson as a poet who stands apart, an individualist hero, with what we know about another writer, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Harper was born into a family of free Black educators in Baltimore in 1825. She joined the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia in 1870, and also maintained her membership in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Like Emerson, Williams wrote poems, essays, and lectures. She also wrote short stories and novels. Like Emerson, she wrote about personal development and used her writing to promote social causes. Unlike Emerson, Harper also wrote about responsibility to the community, and she practiced it in concrete ways. In her 1855 article, “A Factor in Human Progress,” she spoke of “the science of a true life of joy and trust in God, of God-like forgiveness and divine self-surrender.” Harper worked in her community feeding the poor and mentoring youth. She was part of several groups who moved toward progress together, for women’s suffrage and for Black suffrage, against lynching, for peace. We learn from her legacy that a writer can be a literary voice and also be a leader who encourages cooperation, solidarity, and true relationship with the people who are most impacted by oppression.

Individualism has its good points, yet there is more to Unitarian Universalist history and more to our current character and potential than we can access through that doorway alone. Hyper-individualism maintains white supremacy culture when it prevents us from getting outside ourselves and building relationships with interfaith partner and community partner organizations. Hyper-individualism privileges the lone dissenter to the point where it is hard to put personal preferences aside so that congregations can work one one thing together. Hyper-individualism leads us to celebrate only the heroic faces of social justice, forgetting to gather in those who are called to work behind the scenes. There is a place in this congregation, this faith, and in the movement for people with many different talents and ways of being. As we study the past, may we celebrate the groups and movements as well as the superstars, knowing that progress is a team effort.

Deeds That Beckon Us To Be Transformed

In addition to individualism, another characteristic of white supremacy culture we can explore in our UU history is paternalism. Paternalism is a cultural norm in which “those with power think they are capable of making decisions for and in the interests of those without power” (Okun). This characteristic is tricky, because paternalism can feel like compassion, yet there are times when paternalism got in the way of true progress. Impact is more important than intention.

If we want a positive example of accountable, grounded, not-paternalistic leadership in our UU history, consider Fannie Barrier Williams. She was an organizer, lecturer, journalist, artist, and musician. She was born in 1855 to one of the few Black families in Brockport, New York. She is most famous for her work in Chicago, where she belonged to All Souls Unitarian Church. Williams made strides in integration through the establishment of the Provident Hospital, joining the Chicago Woman’s Club, and serving on the Board of the Chicago Public Library. She also worked within the African American community. She helped start the National Association of Colored Women, which, through their 200 local clubs, provided child care centers, classes, employment bureaus, and savings banks. There are models among our UU ancestors that disrupt paternalism, if we seek them out.

The compassion that gets mixed up with paternalism might be a good impulse that gets misdirected. So let’s start with what’s good. Being true to compassion means meeting challenges and growing from them, allowing our minds and hearts to be transformed.

Dorothea Dix found that out when she entered the East Cambridge Jail as a teacher in 1841. Dix was horrified by what she saw. The jail was unheated. All of the residents were housed together: people who had been convicted of crimes, people with mental illness, children with developmental disabilities, all mixed together in unfurnished, unsanitary quarters. The only thing the residents had in common was that society had given up on them.

Using her contacts in Boston, Dix got a court order for heat and other improvements at the jail. She then set about a systemic investigation of jails and almshouses in Massachusetts, making personal visits to document conditions. She said, “what I assert in fact, I must see for myself.”  She read about mental illness and treatment and interviewed physicians. She gave her data to a politically connected friend who presented her findings to the Massachusetts legislature. After some attempts at denial and misdirection, funding came through to modernize the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. Dix followed the same pattern in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Hospitals sprung up in her wake.

OK, so all of that is great; however, in our continuing efforts at health care reform and mental health care and accessibility, we would need to do things differently today. Dorothea Dix did try to understand the experience of the people who were most impacted by incarceration, but she did not hold that all people have equal inherent worth. For instance, she did not think that slavery was wrong, she thought that white people were actually superior to Black people. She also harbored prejudice against Roman Catholics, and she regarded people with mental illness as helpless. Compassion is good. Deciding that you and people like you have to take leadership in compassionate change because you are better than the people you want to help is problematic.

Today, trying to undo the legacy of paternalism, we are called support the leadership and voices of the people who are most impacted. We can work with coalitions led by people who are formerly incarcerated and their families. We can support organizations like ADAPT, led by people with disabilities; the organization is even now fighting for the right of people with disabilities to live in the community rather than in institutions. The legacy of paternalism gives a heroic glow to our ancestors who struggled for others, but it is time for us to learn new skills of struggling alongside neighboring communities, learning how to accept the leadership of people who know the most about the issues they are facing.

   The path of service spurs us to many kinds of transformation. We meet challenges and build skills we didn’t have before. We gain awareness of a timeless spiritual truth, which is our oneness. Reflecting on history and our own experience, taking in the lessons of dismantling individualism and paternalism, the transformation that compassion brings becomes a spiritual as well as an ethical reality.

Conclusion

Collective kindness is a tradition worth growing. Role models from UU history and from our own congregation help us to place ourselves on a path with a past, yet a path where we have a choice going into the future. The practice of compassion is a tradition we receive, nurture, and share with the next generation. May we find our place in the mythic story of UUism. May we be transformed. May we come to new understandings of our past and our future. So be it. Blessed be. Amen.