I think I’m literally never gonna be sick of this masterpiece. I think watching it on a loop for eight hours could fix me. Dancing’s what clears my soul. Dancing’s what makes me whole.
in this terrifying world you continuously have the power to offer someone else a little relief . why would you withhold that. do you remember what a little relief feels like? it feels like a lot
In my freshman year, my great grandma passed away. She never threw out or sold anything worth keeping if she could help it, having grown up in the Depression, so when she passed, my grandma suddenly inherited a lifetime’s worth of treasured items. She distributed most of them to her kids and grandkids, saved some sentimental items, and donated most of the clothing and trinkets to charity. I got back the stuffed leopard I’d given great-grandma in the hospital; the fur was still as soft as it’d been when I bought it. One of the biggest things she had to sort through was jewelry. For a year after my great-grandma died, my grandma was setting out organized rows of costume jewelry on basement tables and chivvying her granddaughters to take what they wanted.
And then, after all the choosing, she snuck me into her room while my cousins picked through wristwatches. On her bed were two small jewelry boxes: an old wooden one, and a cushioned one in white pleather.
“I brought you in here because if I gave these to your cousins, they’d sell it. I don’t want these sold. Do you understand?”
I understood.
This is the story of the biggest lie my grandma ever told her mom.
Great-grandma’s birthstone was garnet, and she loved the look of the stones, but could never justify paying for some. Her husband worked constantly, and so did she, and new clothes for the kids was more important than jewelry at the time. When my grandma was 16, she saved her first paychecks to buy her mom a garnet ring for Mother’s Day; that’s what was in the wooden box. The original receipt, handwritten, was crammed into the lid. Great-grandpa saw that ring and teared up; he’d always wanted to get his wife something nice like that, but hadn’t ever had enough money for it. Determined, he vowed to change that. He set aside money for years, slowly, hiding it away in a box in the attic, vowing to buy his wife something she could always wear with her ring.
Time passed, and inflation happened, and he slowly squirreled money away in the hopes that jewelry might get cheaper again sometime. Time passed again, and age had little mercy on him. He got older, typed up a note, and placed in in the box, describing what the money was for; he knew his time was near. Under no circumstances was the money to be spent on anything other than giving his wife a nice gift. The letter read, “One day, my dear Ruth, you’ll have garnet earrings to match that ring.” It’s what great-grandma had always mourned missing; she had such a nice ring, and no good earrings to go with it.
Well, men don’t live forever, and when great-grandpa passed away, my grandma cleaned out her mom’s attic as she prepared to move somewhere smaller. Going through boxes of polaroids and paper clips, she stumbled on the box of earrings money, note and all. She stashed it with her coat, and after that day of cleaning, went to the jeweler before her mom could try and spend the money on something too sensible. She came back with the white pleather box; sure enough, still nestled inside that box were two clip-on garnet earrings.
”Mom never got her ears pierced, you know. That’s why it took so long to find a good pair.”
Once she’d gotten the earrings, grandma presented them to her mom, along with the note. The paper was obviously old and warped by moisture, but it was legible. My great grandma cried happy tears and treasured those earrings more than any other jewelry; the last gift her husband could give her. Decades after the fact, I’d seen her wear them to Christmas parties and worry over them, checking that they stayed on her earlobes.
There was never any note from great-grandpa. Never any box. Never any earring money. My great-grandpa had spent his saved money keeping himself and his wife confortable throughout retirement. To set aside hundreds of dollars, even a bit at a time, for garnet earrings, was never a thought that crossed his mind. My grandma had seen her mom, exhausted, wracked with grief, and lied through her teeth about where she’d gotten the money for those earrings. She faked the note and everything, making sure her mom wouldn’t wonder where the money came from, and never winced at the pinch in her own pockets. And she never told a soul, not even my mom, until great-grandma was safely and thoroughly buried herself.
To myself, raised in an environment that glorified and romanticized restriction and suffering:
There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.
There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.
There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.
There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.
There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.
There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.
You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.
It’s okay to live abundantly. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to indulge. This paralysis of self-punishment, self-restriction, self-loathing is not healthy or good for you.
most damaging idea of the 21st century: the conviction of vast numbers of people that human history will end within our lifetimes
climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”
yet so many people have jumped already to “it’s over, the world is going to end, we can do nothing about it” and are just paralyzingly cynical. How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it
you know the thing where trauma can cause you to just. not expect to live much longer so when you get to 30 you don’t know what to do because you thought you’d be dead by 25
That is happening to all of us right now on a society-wide scale
A lot of people are like. REALLY angry at me for suggesting that “be depressed and do nothing” isn’t necessarily the only response to climate change.
this, this, this, this, this, this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature
BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???
I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”
People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????
If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?
I don’t know how to explain to you that people need socks during the apocalypse
Important.
Literally even in the most severe, cynical, and immediate predictions made by scientists rapid climate change is far away from now. If it does happen it’ll take effect over the span of a decade or so, no a day.
And there’s still hope! Did you know the hole in the ozone layer is closing? It was actually caused by one specific chemical that’s been banned. A lot of endangered wildlife populations are growing because of so many efforts to protect them. Many mining companies are being prevented from mining in our remaining clean waters and forests. We have all the technology we need to reverse this crisis, it’s just a matter of implementing it.
It will be ok. Things are improving. People are getting on board. Don’t lose hope while we still have a chance to use it.
My mom was just reminding me earlier about Copper Hill, Tennessee, which I encourage y'all to look up
In the 1980’s, the area was absolutely devastated by copper mining, to the point that the land had a “Martian” appearance. It was utterly devoid of vegetation and wildlife. No trees, no grass, no frogs, nothing.
I own a historical fiction book, A Bird on Water Street, about how the area was restored. The astonishing thing about this place is that people were able to fix the damage.
In a lot of ways in the 80’s and 90’s, many species and environments were successfully saved from the brink of disaster.
Does anyone remember DDT? As the above poster said above, CFC’s contributing to the ozone hole? Do y'all remember how saturated the 1970’s were with lead and asbestos and all sorts of toxic shit? Getting specific chemicals banned or working to save specific species DOES HELP.
I’m begging everyone to research conservation projects going on near them, like, in or near their hometown. The state of Kentucky very successfully reintroduced elk to the mountains after they went extinct there. There are examples like this everywhere.
Things look bad and they’re scary but they would be a lot worse if the people before us hadn’t worked their asses off trying to preserve the world for us. People are out there working hard to save the world right now.
There is still time.
Conservation success stories of 2021. Last year, several species believed to be extinct were rediscovered, long-dead preserved specimens of endangered ferrets were cloned, and several species that nearly went extinct had population explosions.
How do I explain that the power to imagine a future is essential for creating it
The creator of the original, the animal reference tool, made their own human reference tool which allows you to search based on different body parts and poses!
Working in retail is really fun, and the times when major fuck-ups happen, they can be either anxiety-attack inducing, or make it possible to get through the rest of your god-awful shift with a smile depending on the customer. My all-time favorite absolute fuck-up is as follows:
This kind woman is just doing her thing. She scans her membership card from her keychain. The register beeps to acknowledge the scan. We continue as usual. Neither of us notice right away, but after I’ve scanned a few more items, I hear a very quiet, “Um,” from the lady, very polite. I look at her. She is looking at the screen of my register, blinking. I, too, look.
And lo and behold. There is a charge of over four-thousand dollars ($4,000) worth of garlic bread staring us in the face. There are no words for a minute. We’re just… in awe. How did this happen? How the hell did this happen?
She didn’t even have garlic bread in her cart.
I sputter a partial apology - I was incapable of forming actual sentences in the moment - and try to void the garlic bread. Since there was no garlic bread to scan, I try to manually remove $4,000-some from this transaction.
Well, the registers don’t like it when you try to void off more than five dollars ($5) from a transaction, so naturally it pings my manager for confirmation, but she’s not by her pager.
At this point, both myself and the lady are just… dumbfounded. She’s not even mad. I’m not even all that embarrassed. Both of us are just looking at the screen. There’s a bit of laughter, but it’s mostly just… confusion.
I have to call through the whole store for my manager on the intercom because she’s not answering. She shows up, ready to override and void it, when she too, sees what exactly is being voided.
“What… did you do?”
“I genuinely. Have literally. No. Idea.”
She voids it, and I go to finish the transaction and tell the woman her total (minus the garlic bread). My register pings. It tells me that she hasn’t scanned her membership card. Odd. I distinctly remember her doing that. The woman goes to scan her card again, and I notice that her library card is stuck to her membership card. I tell her gently, and she separates the two and scans her card.
My manager, hovering nearby still, sees this and says, “I think it mistook the barcode of her other card for garlic bread, and the remaining digits were read as the price.”
And that’s when the laughter really came over us. There were no hard feelings at all. In fact, the woman was incredibly glad that the receipt still showed the garlic bread and the voiding of. I will remember it until the end of time, my only regret in the entire situation being that I didn’t take a damn picture, because she has proof and I don’t. But I swear to God it happened.
TDLR; Library Card Charged $4,000 of Garlic Bread.
that’s just how valuable library cards are. each one is worth at least $4000 of garlic bread
A picture is worth a thousand words, a library card is worth $4000 worth of garlic bread, if we can figure out how many words the average library card can check out at once, we can probably work out a picture-to-garlic bread conversion here, too.
I figured out the secret life hack that the ableds don’t want you to know about.
My fellow chronic pain and limited mobility bitches, if you’re looking for ways stay active and get some exercise while working around your issues instead of against them, look up “[Thing you want to do] for seniors.”
Before i learned i have fight or flight bones i always said i had old people bones and yknow somehow i never thought of this
I’ve been trying to keep my core muscles toned enough to stop my skeleton from completely falling apart for years and I only figured this one out like yesterday
Bonus: the local YMCA often has gentle fitness courses designed for seniors to keep fit, and my experience is that if you are the one young person gamely showing up and being friendly, you will immediately be adopted and get to give advice on what the Youngs think even if you are like thirty two.
Plus water aerobics is literally the most fun physical exercise I’ve ever done and the coaches give you instructions tailored to your body’s actual abilities, not the abilities of some way more athletic kid, and no one gives a shit if you show up in wildly gender variant swim shit.
Going to a “gentle water exercise” course was a major part of my journey towards exercise that actually benefited me. I find that instructors who came from the “fitness” world and just added it as an additional class on their schedule were not nearly as useful as ones who came from the “rehab” world and were very aware of how exercises could injure people with different conditions.
The other early stepping stone for me was Restorative Yoga, in a studio that actively discouraged competition and pushing your body too far. It was a shock to go to Restorative classes elsewhere and be asked to do a headstand or back bridge with no alternatives. At the studio I learned the most at, sometimes I would just fall asleep during class, and the instructor would gently wake me up when it was time to go. She understood it wasn’t lack of respect, it was me giving my body what it needed.
I should absolutely sign up for gentle exercise courses
But this is also absolutely true for accommodation devices. Especially ones that don’t have a “name”
They will often have something to make things easier for you
Imagine what a disaster a pegasus would be. The creature would die if it flew a little too long, but if it landed a little funny it would immediately shatter every bone in its body
And surely a creature designed to run would have sturdy legs
