i’ve talked a lot about catra being the scapegoat, but now i want to talk about adora being the golden child. it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, that’s for sure.
when adora was a child, shadow weaver told her that she was responsible for catra’s behavior, and by extension, her punishments. no, adora wouldn’t be punished for it, but catra would, and that was probably worse. this likely instilled the idea that, if catra got hurt because she “misbehaved” (read: did normal kid things), then it was actually adora’s fault–not catra’s (which it isn’t) nor shadow weaver’s (which it is). if catra suffered, then it was because adora wasn’t trying hard enough–to distract shadow weaver with her own accomplishments or convince catra to stay in line or whatever.
catra completely misinterpreted this, assuming that adora enjoyed this favoritism. is this the reaction of someone who enjoys being the golden child, or is this the reaction of someone who’s terrified?
a lot of people have assumed that adora’s behavior is arrogant, but i think it’s actually just…what she’s been told and taught–
–that she’s important, but not necessarily useful unless she’s doing everything the “right” way. sometimes, being important isn’t actually very comforting; it just gives you more power to make mistakes and let people down.
shadow weaver gave adora the illusion of control over more than her own behavior, and when that illusion crumbled, adora was left with…herself, and a sword. it’s no wonder that she clung to the sword as a source of validation and importance, a way for her to actually help people.
this also explains why she feels such strong guilt for anything bad that happens around her, which light hope recognizes and exploits. all adora wants to do is protect her friends (and, y’know, etheria–no pressure though), but what if she only hurts them? she’s convinced that she does have the power to save everyone, that she is important enough to do everything, and yet, she fails, again and again. even when she has the physical power to throw things around, she can’t heal plumeria’s tree or glimmer’s abilities, because she’s just not good enough.
being the golden child, being told that you’re special and amazing and perfect…a lot of people buckle under that pressure and end up paralyzed by fear that they can’t truly accomplish anything.
luckily, adora has found friends who truly do not blame her for not being able to save everyone, and she finds the strength to get up again and try.
Man I look forward to once these arrive and are planted and then taking my own photographs of these cuties/beauts in the spring…
One could argue that we didn’t order a lot, but if you consider the fact that nature is already making snow stick in the nooks of our property right now, tbh it’s plenty of bulbs as we’ll have limited time to plant them.
Wow first distinct rememberable dream in a while.. It felt like a dream I’ve had before, though maybe with some new details. of course I’ve already forgotten some parts but here are some key part;
A group of kids (me being one of the kids) are trapped in this weird place. Like it’s like a factory, or a mall (railings and double levels), it’s very modern and metal, but no windows to the outside, it feels like we’re very deep in it, like it’s a dungeon catacomb of modern factorial metal that just goes on forever, and the only way to get from one floor to another is through an elevator zip tunnel thing.
Each level is almost always empty save for a few human-like androids that run their own village-like shops in the malls, and feels somewhat ordinary, but each level as they try to ascend out through the elevator, each level this air of crazy or “something’s not right” keeps getting stronger. Like there’s an all-powerful AI or force or something that’s controlling the factory, trying to keep us kids from leaving. It does not want us to leave even if it means at the cost of our sanity/lives.
Part of the way up we pick up another kid (a girl/woman? it wasn’t very clear for age tbh in the dream) from a level that’s particularly full of android-people, though outside of the higher numbers it didn’t seem that strange or sinister.
At one point nearer the end of the dream, a voice (like basic mall lady announcer voice) says that the elevator will be blasted with a controlled electric shock (the panic from the group seemed to imply it was not one that someone could just shrug off if we allowed ourselves to get shock), and the elevator starts collapsing/crushing itself, from the lower levels upwards to us. We all run into our own mechas (yeah idk where the mechas came from looking back at the dream, it almost made it seem like they had always been in this elevator despite the fact I doubt they were capable of being piloted into the floors/levels outside the elevator) using the mechs as a way to flee up the elevator faster, and protect us from the electric shock/wave that was going to come. Unfortunately for the girl/woman we picked up the way up this adventure her mech despite it’s auto-movements, could not escape as the elevator trapped it and started to crush it with the rest of the elevator’s lower levels. The girl/woman wasn’t in the mech but she was the only one now exposed in the elevator.
From there the dream cuts off so we don’t know if she got picked up by the other kids/mechas or if she tried to flee from the falling elevator or if she ends up getting crush, but the dream pans to a memory of the girl/woman which we the other kids/children don’t see (basically it was like a scenic flashback thing);
BTW WARNING FROM HERE THE DREAM GETS A BIT DARKER AND WE SEE WHAT’S BEHIND THAT “these floors are a lil crazy” FEELING WE GOT BEFORE. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GOREYISH
The girl/woman was the only human on that level which we had originally found her, and she had been there for some time. In her first time on that level, the androids were in a insanity-induced frenzy; in a riotful mass they were running through this level going crazy as only a tiny tiny few (one may have been the “Village Floor Leader”) were trying to calm the masses. Some were just in a panic while others were in murderous run. The girl in this flashback gets buried/overwhelmed by the waves of frenzied androids, getting hurt herself and being utterly scarred mentally and physically from this entire wild spectacle. The androids despite being androids with metal interiors, could feel pain and bleed red blood, some of the ones going mad were screaming how much in pain they were as they bled as they thrashed and crashed into other androids and the girl.
I don’t think the girl wanted to be trapped down there, nor did she want to have that as her last of her memories as the elevator was collapsing up.
I’m too tired to rewrite this from a conversation where I blew off, so just gonna copypasted it in its fiery short sentenced mess (it goes to better mood under readmore I assure you).
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calling it [drawing for years for fun] a useless skill is beyond BS
at face value? yeah but so many other things one does as a kid or a person with a hobby, could be considered a totally useless skill
handwriting, its dead
crotchetting, machines can make the shapes for you instead
gardening, it’s just slapping colours together
and basically it was said handwriting was IMPORTANT but as everyone got older businesses/society was more and more like “no. it’s useless” by the logic of useless kids playing is useless
it wont’ get you a job it won’t get you PHD in whogives a fuck cause youre gonna be at MCdonalds anyways I’ll tell you what these things are useful for mental stimulation, fun, is for stimulation and growth, even if perhaps its not used in later years, and sometimes, it CAN come back in the later years I may be barely even able to draw fucking stick figures now but I’ll tell you those times of drawing on my own in highschool were not useless they were not pointless they had value even if the Capitalistic World believes that oh hey you can’t be our slave for that, too bad, it’s shit cause those words from such a world are lies, slander minds are a branching system they grow and expand in differrring fields, ideas, hobbies some end, some grow further on the ones that ended were not for naught, they were an experience, learning what can and cannot
just you drawing is not useless those times doing it for time are not useless not pointless that is nihilism that I will not stand for the world has enough shitty enough things, it is neither right for you or I to say that our positive experiences were shit
Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots?
These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a goddamn weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves – they taste almost exactly like spinach.
This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard.
once I was working on a farm with this french guy who was going to school for Complicated Computer Stuff and he decided he wanted to go on a Big Adventure so he and I both ended up on this farm.
And one day we were moving fire wood from a big pile into neat little stacks for the winter and we came across a big wasp nest. Well, actually, we just kept coming across individual, very angry wasps, telling TALES of a nearby nest in the wood.
So the farmers hosting us shoo’d us away and told us we Were Not to go near the firewood again until they took care of the wasps bc they didn’t want any harm to befall us.
So I was happy for the break. I mean, we got plenty of breaks, but I never passed up the opportunity to drop where I stood and take a grass-nap.
But the French boy Could Not Abide wasps keeping him from his Duty.
SO he went back to the pile and started slowly moving logs one by one while I sat up and told him to, uh, Not Do That.
But he was determined. And when he finally found the Big Wasp Nest, and I was on my feet, he said “get ready to run.”
And let me tell you, when a Frenchmen lifts a log over his head, looking Wasps and Death Itself in the eye and tells ya that, you’re on your toes.
And he just fucking. Used a log to smash the nest. He just obliterated it and the wasps went Wild and we RAN.
But after about 15 minutes the wasps moved on, and we could get back to work.
Our hosts were HORRIFIED, and we promised we’d never do anything That Dumb again.
Which of course meant it became standard protocol for the next 10 times we found nests.
But honestly that really changed me. The dude didn’t just squash the wasps. he squashed my fear. Since that day, I have known none. I will SMASH any obstacles life gives me, even if it means running for my life and laying low for 15 mins for things to cool down.
also now this is usually how I always get rid of wasp nests but Do Not Do This
I’m out in the woods for work today and we found a hornet nest on our equipment and I said “it’s okay everyone just get ready to move” ad picked up a huge rock and I took care of it and they said “you are a wild girl Mallaidh Anne” and I like looked into the distance dramatically and thought of the one brave man who brought me here today
Hardly a few days ago I attended the funeral of my late Aunt Joyce. It’s still somewhat a trip to fully awknowledge that she is now gone from this world.Especially in my younger years she was a large influence to part of who I am today. Outside of the usual monetary/candy gifts I more distinctly remember her gifting, if not passing down some of her old encyclopedic gardening/plant books (which I still have), at the time when I was book devourer I absorbed what I could like a sponge, she enabled the interest to the point I grew to seek it more and more.
At times I would hang out at Grandma’s where Joyce too resided, oftentimes they would both be tending to the closeby gardens if they weren’t just soaking up the outdoors on their chairs. It still awes me even now remembering their wrinkled frail hands unhesitantly working and tending to the roses, especially the oh-so-thornful Rugosas. Joyce one time even gifted me a break-off of beastly rugosas, which didn’t make it, but was what made me grow some interest to roses, especially rugosas back in my mind, despite the fact I had seen roses as nothing more than fickle brats to attend to in a garden setting, it was also what made me grow an obsession for Rugosas and their hybrids despite never growing any save for one Canadian Explorer Rose. I am sure out of the many flowers she loved, roses were definitely one of her most favourite. Other plants came from those gardens which I still have, particularly the Lily of the Valley, and Solomon’s Seal both of which still thrive in my own gardenbeds, almost overzealously so.
One plant that Grandma did not have that only Joyce had, and also introduced me to, was the Rose of Sharon. Rose in name only, she pruned them every spring, and gifted me some of many seedlings which naturally popped up from the cultivated soils. Until the barn fire of November I had a stately white rose of sharon for several years which was a child of her own, which charmed me to as how it charmed her.
I also remember how she would talk about how she and Elvey would use the old greenhouse on Grandma’s property to grow and sell Tomato plants. Even after those days the Greenhouse still prospered as a vacation spot for the large array of houseplants both Joyce and Grandma had. It’s funny to think that although I grow very different things from her, that I’m nonetheless still taking on a similarly Horticultural pursuit in my own life as a perennial/tree nursery grower with my own greenhouse.
She was an influence to many not just me. Nonetheless I will not forget what she had taught/gifted me. Rest in Peace Aunt Joyce, I am sure you would’ve been glad your funeral was on such a beautiful day with flowers blooming all around the churchyard and graveyard.
Together Rising Love Flash Mob. Organized by best-selling author and blogger Glennon Doyle through her non-profit organization, the fundraising effort will go to provide bilingual legal and advocacy assistance for 60 children, aged 12 months to 10 years, currently separated from their parents in an Arizona detention center. Their first priority will be to establish and maintain contact between children and their parents, with the ultimate goal of reunification and safety and rehabilitation for the children.
• The ACLU is litigating this policy in California.
• If you’re an immigration lawyer, the American Immigration Lawyers Association will be sending around a volunteer list for you to help represent the women and men with their asylum screening, bond hearings, ongoing asylum representation, etc. Please sign up.
• Al Otro Lado is a binational organization that works to offer legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S.
• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.
• Human Rights First is a national organization with roots in Houston that needs help from lawyers too.
• Kids in Need of Defense works to ensure that kids do not appear in immigration court without representation, and to lobby for policies that advocate for children’s legal interests. Donate here.
• The Legal Aid Justice Center is a Virginia-based center providing unaccompanied minors legal services and representation.
• Pueblo Sin Fronteras is an organization that provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S.
• RAICES is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas offering free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate here and sign up as a volunteer here.
• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”
• Together Rising is another Virginia-based organization that’s helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona.
This list isn’t comprehensive, so let us know what else is happening. And please call your elected officials, stay tuned for demonstrations, hug your children, and be grateful if you are not currently dependent on the basic humanity of U.S. policy.
This secretly taken photo comes from a Texas courtroom during mass trial where dozens of immigrants are chained and tried all at once. Here’s what’s happening:
· Lawyers Are Representing Dozens of People At Once (Literally)
What you see is somewhere between 20 and 40-something people, all triple-shackled, not to each other but individually, their hands in handcuffs chained to their waists, and their feet shackled. And they clunk and clang into court. I mean, there’s this clanging sound of chains. And they go through these mass processes in less than an hour, usually. And they often—they are instructed to answer in groups or answer en masse. So you’ll hear like 40 people being asked a question, and they’ll say, ”Sí,” all at once, or they’ll say, “No.” And it’s just—it’s really uncanny. It’s shocking. It doesn’t feel like due process. One after one after one after one after one, with only one lawyer, they plead guilty: ”Culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable.”
They’re getting somewhere between seven and 10 minutes of counsel right before the proceedings.
…
There were 60 defendants, and they were split into 20—into three groups of 20. And so, each group of 20 had a lawyer. And I interviewed one lawyer who told me that, of his 20, not one of them had been separated from a child, and not one of them had an asylum claim or a credible fear claim. So, then, in the third group, I was able to interview the attorney, who spoke Spanish, unlike the first one, and seemed very concerned about the immigration issues. And he told me that, of the 20 that I saw him representing, 10 of them had been separated from a total of 15 children, including one woman who was separated from three children. And, you know, he obtained that information by just really speaking with these people.
· International Law is Being Broken
Denying people the right to request asylum:
Traditionally, you go to the port of entry, and you—which is this big building at the bottom, you know, in Brownsville. It’s the big curved bridge. You go to the bottom of the bridge to the U.S. side, to the port of entry, and you tell the agents that want to request asylum. And that is your legal right. You’re in the United States at that point, and you request asylum.
So, what’s been happening up and down the border is—and this has been going on probably for at least a year and a half, that I’m aware of, anyway—is that they’re putting agents up at the top of the bridge, because, you know, there’s sort of an invisible line, which is often marked with a plaque, but there’s a line dividing the United States and Mexico. So, they want—what the government wants at this point is for people not to be able to step into the United States at that invisible line, because then they can’t apply for asylum. And so they’ve got these agents at the top of the bridge, and they’re standing there. And they’re asking everybody who they’re suspicious about—you know, and suspicious of not—you know, of maybe they’re going to apply for asylum, but asking people for their documents. And then they won’t let people go into the United States. So, I mean, it’s almost like they’re not even in Mexico. Technically, they’re in Mexico, but they’re like six inches from the United States. And that’s illegal. I mean, that’s against American law, and it’s against international law. But that’s what’s happening up and down the border.
Separating families:
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the U.S. government’s separating children from their parents as they seek asylum is “a flagrant violation of their human rights. Doing so in order to push asylum seekers back into dangerous situations where they may face persecution is also a violation of U.S. obligations under refugee law.”
· Border Patrol is Lying About Violence
Multiplying the number of assaults:
CBP claimed that there were 454 assaults on agents nationwide in 2016, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2017, according to CBP, there were 786 assaults, a 73 percent spike from the previous year. But The Intercept obtained data from CBP showing that the agency was using an unconventional method to count assaults.
I started investigating the claims the Border Patrol has been making for about, oh, the past several months, that it’s a very dangerous job and that their assault statistics were way, way up from last year. And I got data from the Border Patrol which showed that, in fact, assaults were down and injuries are down, but they were using this accounting method—they were counting in this very strange, unconventional way.
And, for example, what I was told from law enforcement people is that, you know, police and law enforcement officials usually—like, if somebody is assaulted, that’s considered one assault. I mean, somebody could throw seven rocks at you, and that would be—and you’re one agent, so that’s counted as one assault. But the Border Patrol was—or still is, I guess—multiplying the number of agents assaulted—and, by the way, an assault doesn’t necessarily cause an injury, and in most cases with the Border Patrol it doesn’t—but multiplying the number of agents assaulted by the number of perpetrators and the number of weapons.
So, the example that they gave me was six agents assaulted by seven perpetrators who used a water bottle, a rock and a tree branch. So, when you multiply and multiply and multiply, you get 126 assaults. Conventionally, that would be counted as six assaults.
Immigrants who are tried and acquitted for assault are also included in these inflated statistics:
A recent trial in south Texas provides a good case in point. In November, Border Patrol agent Steven Yackanin chased Eliseo Luis García, a young Guatemalan migrant, through a field near the Rio Grande. The area was only about a mile from where Claudia Patricia Gómez González would later be shot to death.
After Luis was apprehended and taken to lockup, another immigrant there noticed that Luis had blood coming out of his ear. Luis explained that he had been trying to escape and that, as a result, Yackanin and some other agents beat him up.
Yackanin claimed it was he who was assaulted by Luis, and he filled out a Department of Labor form to authorize medical care. He was diagnosed with an elbow sprain and a bruise.
Luis was charged with assault and went to trial. His public defender attorney introduced into evidence photographs of the immigrant and the Border Patrol agent, each standing next to a door with markings. The markings suggest that the Guatemalan immigrant stood about 5 feet tall and weighed perhaps 100 pounds. Yackanin was a full head taller and appeared 60 pounds heavier. The jury apparently believed Luis. He was acquitted.
Even so, the Border Patrol will likely fold the charges against Luis into its fiscal year 2018 assault statistics. Likewise for Claudia Patricia Gómez González, the young Guatemalan woman shot last week. Her death will probably be analyzed as the outcome of a purported assault against a Border Patrol agent.
· Parents and Children are Being Separated
Public defenders unable to find their defendant’s children:
One woman who spoke about her children in open court was from Honduras. “Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?” she asked Morgan.
“Your Honor,” interjected Jeff Wilde, director of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Brownsville, “both she and the man next to her have their children with them. They had a credible fear claim [for asylum]. … Their children have been separated from them, and I’ve been unable to figure out where their children are at this point.”
A young father then said he’d been separated from his 6-year-old and was very worried.
Threats and taking children away:
Another parent who appeared in Morgan’s court was from a Central American country that provides no meaningful protection to women and children who are victims of homicidal domestic violence. She asked for her identity to be concealed, because she fears retaliation by the U.S. government. We will call her Delia. Before fleeing her country, she was for years beaten up, cut, assaulted with guns, and threatened with death by her partner. He also threatened to kill their young child. When she hid in another city, he found her and dragged her home.
Delia said she fled her country weeks ago and went on the road to Mexico, eventually crossing the Rio Grande with her child on an inner tube. She saw three Border Patrol agents watching her and floated in their direction, so she could turn herself in.
Delia said that when she arrived later that night at the hielera — the Border Patrol processing office — she told the officers that she and her child needed asylum. She described the beatings and assaults and death threats. “Oh, come on!” she said the officers snickered. “You and everyone else with that old story!”
“You’re going to be deported,” she remembers them telling her. “And your child will stay here.” The next morning, the child was taken. Delia fell on her knees during the removal, wailing and begging not to be separated. Officials looked on indifferently, she said, as her child screamed incessantly.
Uncertainty of policy:
In Brownsville, Judge Morgan also started alluding to biblical matters. It was Thursday, the fourth day of “zero tolerance” in his court, and defendants were telling their stories. The judge had just asked Holly D’Andrea, the assistant U.S. attorney handling illegal entry prosecutions that day, if it were true that families were being reunited in detention. D’Andrea sounded uncertain, but answered that she thought it was true.
“Tell you what,” the judge said slowly, with a hard edge in his voice, “if it’s not, then there are a lot of folks that have some answering to do.
Dad probably wonders why I get so buckwild whenever he’s out mowing the lawn every time but like???? How can I NOT where do I even start on the oldest memories of losing plants to him. In the past he has (not in chronological order);
– Weedwacked several potted Rose of Sharon seedlings that were HIGH UP ON CHAIRS. The pots were ripped apart as much as the seedlings.
– Nearly mowed our only official female ginkgo tree sapling which was MARKED (and by nearly I mean “definitely drove close to it that he would’ve only realized he was by the fact the mower blades were hitting wood”)
– The time he almost set the ENTIRE QUARTER OF THE ORCHARD ON FIRE DESPITE US TELLING/SCOLDING HIM TO FUCKING STOP BURNING STUFF THERE. The ashpit it left in the grass/lawn for that area is still there despite it being over a year or two cause of how severe it fucking was.
– The fact said fire(s) have lead to HIS OWN spruce sapling to become halfway dead due to the severe heat/fire damage, and he IS CONFUSED AS TO WHY WE WANT TO REMOVE IT WHEN ITS SO SEVERELY DAMAGED AND AT THE FRONT OF THE PROPERTY.
– FUCKING DROVE OVER A GINKGO TREE TALLER THAN DAD HIMSELF WITH THE FUCKING TRAILER. WHEN THERE IS PLENTY OF FUCKING DRIVEWAY SPACE RIGHT BESIDE TO MISS EVEN IF YOU WERE DRIVING LIKE A DUMBASS.
And those are just the things I remember. There is probably a fair bit more my brain has catered to making me utterly completely forget (thank you for once brain).
So when I hear lawnmower and him in the same sentence when I not only have all my potted birch trees outside the greenhouse (they needed to be out of the greenhouse environment to give the pests a harder time) PLUS my potted Tangutica clematis in the morning before breakfast or even before I’m awake OF COURSE IM GONNA EXPLODE IN A RAGE-FILLED ANXIETY. I kill plants enough without having assistance with the ones that actually do ok for me!!!
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 