Please enjoy this page from Valancy’s scrapbook! She’s got her string of pearls from Barney laying across the page, a liniment similar to Redferns’, a 1926 car ad to remind her of when the automobile ran out of gas…There’s also a copy of her favorite naturalist’s work, a snapshot Roaring Abel took of her and Barney coming in from canoeing, and two magazine covers reminding her of Mistawis days :) oh and if you want to read The Blue Castle and haven’t here’s the free link from project gutenberg.
What we’ve gotta understand is that “the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults” and “the modern Internet is abolishing space for children” are compatible phenomena. Neither group is being favoured: the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults (i.e., because grown-up topics aren’t advertiser friendly) and the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for children (i.e., because online communities which consist principally of people who have no money are hard to sell things to). The Internet that contemporary corporate interests are trying to build isn’t a space for anyone – it’s the digital equivalent of an Ikea showroom.
Like, when I say that the greater part of contemporary social media is fundamentally hostile to human life, I’m not indulging in hyperbole or constructing an ironic metaphor. I mean that 100% literally.
Hey, listen. I know the world’s on fire. But listen.
I’ll tell you a thing.
On the day after the election, when everything was worst and all I could do was go numb or cry hysterically, do you know what gave me the most comfort?
It wasn’t the words of Lincoln or Gandhi or Maya Angelou, it wasn’t Psalms or poetry, it wasn’t my grandmother, it wasn’t contemplating the long arc of history. It wasn’t even hugging the dog.
It was the Twitter account @ConanSalaryman.
This is a joke account. It’s somebody who narrates as if Conan was working in an office. Tweets usually sound like “By Crom!” roared Conan. “You jackals cannot schedule a mere interview without gathering in a pack and cackling?!” or “Conan slammed his sword through his desk. Papers and blood rained through the office. Monday was slain.”
I followed it awhile back and have found it funny. (I’m not a huge Robert Howard fan inherently, but whoever is writing these does the schtick well.) But if it had not posted once that day, no one would have noticed at all.
Instead, Conan the Salaryman posted something inspirational. And then replied to dozens of people replying to him, for hours, in character, telling them that by Crom! it was only defeat if we did not stand up again, that the greatest act of strength was to keep walking in the face of hopelessness, that the gods have given the smallest of us strength to enact change, that we must all keep going as long as Crom gave us breath, and tyrants frightened Conan not, but we must look to those unable to fend for themselves. (“Though by Crom! We must hammer ourselves into a support network, not an army!”)
I have no idea who is behind that account. But it was the most bizarrely comforting thing I saw all day, in a day that had very little comfort in it. There was this weight of story behind it. It helped me. I think it helped a lot of people. If only a tiny bit–well, tiny bits help.
I have been thinking a lot lately about Bluebell from Watership Down.
There’s absolutely no reason you should remember Bluebell, unless, to take an example completely and totally at random, you read it eleven thousand times until your copy fell apart because you were sort of a weird little proto-furry kid who loved talking animals more than breath and wrote fan fic and there weren’t any other talking animal books and you now have large swaths memorized as a result. Ahem.
Bluebell is a minor character. He’s Captain Holly’s friend and jester. When the old warren is destroyed, Captain Holly and Bluebell are the last two standing and they stagger across the fields after the main characters. By the end, Holly is raving, hallucinating, and screaming “O zorn!” meaning “all is destroyed” and about to bring predators down on them. And Bluebell is telling stupid jokes.
And they make it the whole way because of Bluebell’s jokes. “Jokes one end, hraka the other,” he says. “I’d roll a joke along the ground and we’d both follow it.” When Holly can’t move, Bluebell tells him jokes that would make Dad jokes look brilliant and Holly is able to move again. When Hazel, the protagonist, tries to shush him, Holly says no, that “we wouldn’t be here without his blue-tit’s chatter.”
I tell you, the last few days, thinking of this, I really start to identify with Bluebell.
I am not a fighter, not an organizer, certainly not a prophet. Throw something at me and I squawk and cover my head. I write very small stories with wombats and hamsters and a cast of single digits. I am not the sort of comforting soul who sits and listens and offers you tea. (What seems like a thousand years ago, when I had the Great Nervous Breakdown of ‘07, I remember saying something to the effect that I had realized that if I had myself as a friend, I would have been screwed, because I was useless at that kind of thing. And a buddy of mine from my college days, who was often depressed, wrote me to say that no, I wasn’t that kind of person, but when we were together I always made her laugh hysterically and that was worth a lot too. I treasured that comment more than I am entirely comfortable admitting.)
But I can roll a joke along the ground until the end of the world if I have to. And increasingly, I think that’s what I’m for in this life. Things are bad and people have died already and I am heartsick and tired and the news is a gibbering horror–but I actually do know why a raven is like a writing desk.
“What we are seeing is that all barriers: discrimination that people with disabilities experience before the lockdown and Covid has been exacerbated.“…
Inclusion London, a group supporting deaf and disability organisations across the capital, found that 60 per cent of disabled people questioned in a survey struggled to access food, medicine and basic necessities during lockdown.
Internationally, a United Nations report revealed that disabled people lack access to essential services and goods, and are ‘the hardest hit in this crisis in terms of fatalities.’…
Emina Ćerimović believes not including disability rights organisations in the conversation has further marginalised people with disabilities…
“Unfortunately what we are seeing is that organisations for people with disabilities are not consulted, and their needs and rights are not taken into account.
“Measures that are being taken at the government level, do not respond to the rights and needs of people with disabilities.
“It’s rather a patronising approach where people without disabilities know what’s better for people with disabilities…
“Governments are overwhelmed, other organisations who are trying to provide support are also overwhelmed.
“And for some reason it is always people with disabilities who come last and who are being left behind.
Arm up because people like this piece of shit are finding that they’re encountering very little resistance
For context:
Stedfast Baptist Church is in Texas, which is a state that has recently refused to ban the Gay/Trans Panic Defense
The Panic Defense is when an anti-LGBTQIA+ murderer tries to get away with their hate crime by trying to declare a temporary state of insanity triggered by the murdered victim’s sexuality and/or gender identity
It is a legal defense strategy that has been successfully used to turn traditional murder charges (including hate crime charges) into reduced or more lenient charges and punishments
His call for genocide in addition to the LGBTQIA+ panic defense not being banned WILL result in a huge uptick in hate crimes and murders with very little legal consequences or punishments.
This just happened this past weekend (June 5, 2022).
This is something still being called for, openly, in America, to a willing and listening audience, in 2022.
