I would love to do the Threadable - that sounds awesome! But I don't have an Apple phone and the one I have is so small and unwieldy that it's probably a dealbreaker for something like this. If there's ever a version for PC computer I'll definitely consider.
Speaking of No Trespassing, I just came across a new book called Squatting and The State (O'Mahoney and Roarke, Cambridge Press) that looks kind of cool - maybe more law-centric than you're looking for but it discusses squatting as a form of soft resistance and some of the narratives that have come up around that. Haven't read it though.
Someone else emailed me to point out the current Apply-only nature of Threadable, which I hadn't realized. I'm kind of bummed because I want as many people to have access to it as possible, though I understand they're still developing an Android version, so if this goes okay maybe they'll let me do another in the future.
In the meantime, I was thinking there's no reason I can't share the same selections here. Some of them are book excerpts but some of them are original source material that are available online. And the book excerpts I could at least quote relevant passages from. Could do a kind of discussion-prompt around each selection? And Threadable encourages wider sharing of some of the commentary; I am willing to bet I can find a way to feed some comments back and forth between the two ecosystems, but at the very least have discussions on here if people would like to participate. I really do like discourse and dialogue in whatever form, and would hate to miss out on your thoughts in particular!
That's a terrific idea! I would totally be down for that, but please don't do it just for me (especially if it would lead to some confusion or coordination issues with the other venue, or create too much work for you). Especially since sometimes I post a little late, or may have to skip some readings. But it sounds like a great solution on its face if others would benefit also. It might even be a neat opportunity to get creative about a two-tiered "dialogue between dialogues": seeing how the conversations evolve differently in the Threadable context vs. here on the blog (I assume Threadable will have a huge edge).
Thanks for considering, and no problem if you decide it's not worth the hassle.
No, I think it would be fun! And, you know, aside from providing some value for subscribers here -- or hoping to -- it provides value for me, too. I think it would be really interesting to do it in parallel. It's hard to tell what would have an "edge" -- while the whole point of Threadable is that you can read and comment within the text, there are maybe ways in which just having normal comment discussions are a little more accessible.
When Threadable approached me about doing this, the attraction for me was very much being able to make my thought process during research more open to people, and being able to hear their own ideas about the text. It would play out differently on here, but the same idea applies. I think the thing that I like about either idea is that it's not just me telling people how I think about things -- it's a lot of people looking at the materials I'm looking at and pushing ideas from different directions. Since land ownership is something that I think is hugely important to understand, it's interesting for me to be able to do that with more people :)
I suppose this also goes back to the wish you expressed a month or two back that there could be more dialogue among your readers eventually. It's ironic that you feel as if you're mostly telling people how you think one-way, since if anything your style is unusually dialogical and I'm always impressed at your effort to respond thoughtfully to every single poster (lots of bloggers don't do that, especially once they get really big). I actually enjoy commenting on other readers' posts sometimes, but feel uncomfortable being the only one since it doesn't seem like the norm here.
So maybe that's a side benefit of the group reading idea: decentering your voice from being the focal text.
That's a great way to put it -- decentering my own perspective. I do like dialogue and discourse, and that's why on traditionally published pieces I always try to respond to comments (depending on moderation -- places like The Washington Post are just a mess, but somewhere like Aeon I find it very worthwhile because people have such interesting ideas). If this Substack ever got huge, responding to everyone might get more difficult, but it is still a time commitment that I build into how I approach the work here.
Anyway, it'll be something to experiment with and hopefully foster discussion around the subject, even if it it's only the materials that are out of copyright. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
"And I wonder with the bear spray in my purse and a mask against the smoke, where the balance is between preparing ourselves to walk in the world, and arming ourselves against the world."
Great line. I say pack the bear spray and take a walk. Regarding arms, where to begin...
And yes, I hope you can participate! Someone did email me to point out that the app is only available for Apple phones, which is a limitation. They're working on an Android version, so I hope I can do this or similar again when it's available for everyone. But I am kind of excited about it.
>>"how simple it is, how easy. Just to do the small thing that’s a slight restraint on yourself but spreads benefit in all directions, including ones you might not be thinking of."
Hope for the next generation, right there - tiny acts of kindness that don't even register as "I'm doing a kind thing for other people", they're just an unspoken "why would I do anything else? That would just be awful." When thoughtfulness and respectful decency aren't even remarked upon because they're so commonplace, that's a good step in the right direction - and I think ( or maybe just hope) the kids know it, and are prepared to get it done.
"tiny acts of kindness that don't even register as "I'm doing a kind thing for other people", they're just an unspoken "why would I do anything else?" That is it exactly, so well said! Just, why not do the thoughtful thing?!
I am excited about it! And the crossover readings should, I hope, be fun for people.
(It's his last for a while - he's taking a 6-month break to rest and recover, as he's written before about how much it's emotionally affected him, writing about these grim things.)
...and he talks about the profoundly destablizing effect of "a bedrock of individualism and inequality". I've been thinking about that all day. And thinking about how individualism - "you just need a hero, and I AM THAT HERO" thinking - is so deeply baked into all the stories we emotionally feed on for entertainment purposes.
So I think that's something I'd love to see more of in speculative fiction: the "us" rather than the "one". The group effort dynamics that drive the plot, where kindness isn't just seen as "the right thing to do" - it's also the only tool that gets the job done, where the job is "we're going to try to save everyone today". Because - that's certainly how the big problems facing us in the 'real world' are going to be fixed, right?
(How much of existing fiction features that kind of "community as hero" storytelling? What classics am I unaware of here?)
I haven’t read the piece yet but had it queued up! He’s done tremendous work throughout the pandemic, I’m really grateful to him.
(Had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday who’s finishing up a book that involved a lot of similar kinds of reporting, absorbing others’ trauma. Another friend told her that her book is “depressing” and then a day later talked about how much Ed Yong deserves a sabbatical after all he’s absorbed. My friend and I agreed that yes, he absolutely does; and yet it was a reflection of how automatically people still respond to fame when her other friend recognized what Ed is doing and what that does to him, but in my friend’s case could only see that the stories she was telling were depressing. If she were already famous, the friend would have a different response, was our conclusion. It was a little disheartening.)
You are absolutely right about the “us” rather “one,” especially in speculative and science fiction. I just gave up on Andy Weir’s book “Artemis,” though I was more than 2/3 done with it, because the libertarian bent started to annoy me. It was *not* totally individualism because the main character did put together a team of people she needed (I am guessing you’ve already read this!) but it was pushing the whole idea that government action is unecessary and people can run society just dandy without it. I don’t know, I haven’t fully thought it through and can be talked out of this but that’s how it came across to me.
I am pulling a blank on classics, but Waubgeshig’s “Moon of the Crusted Snow” comes to mind. Have you read that? I really loved it. And I guess it’s kind of the whole point of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Talents,” gathering a community together who can seed a better future. And Murderbot can be seen as a classic lone-hero story EXCEPT in the novel “Network Effect,” the whole power of that book is that SecUnit is floored by the fact that its humans and other humans and ART team up together to save it, instead of letting it save them and then abandoning it. It’s kind of an “us” story, or maybe more than kind of!
I’m going to sidestep the outdoor freezer part of this. I appreciate you wrestling with the very real challenges of living with nature in a community where not everyone is of that mindset. I’m so lucky I don’t have to worry really about any predator big enough to harm me on my walks. Occasionally I see people on our neighborhood FB page freaking out over an owl or a coyote with no understanding those animals aren’t going to hurt them. Their precious tiny dogs shouldn’t be running around outside in the dark anyway.
They really shouldn't be. It pains me to no end how many humans want and expect the world to bend around them/us and their/our needs and desires. But on a practical level, one of our other neighbors lost his miniature greyhound to a bald eagle a few years ago. He was broken-hearted but did not blame the eagle. His next adoptions were full-sized retired racing greyhounds, though.
At the same time, they love their little hummingbird feeders. Do they not get that if we wipe out all the natural areas around us they aren't going to see any hummers either? They don't seem to be able to make this connection sadly.
Yes, they are afraid of nature at a very high level. There was also much consternation and hand wringing about poisonous weeds in the park - way back from the paths and play areas where again no one really should be. There were people who wanted the whole thing sprayed into non existence because of a few weeds someone could get a rash for. Luckily the park service is working with the conservation department on maintaining that park, so they sprayed a few on the edge and left it at that.
It's not giant hogweed, is it? I am very honestly scared of that stuff! Someone I know slightly here wandered into a patch of it and got third-degree burns on parts of his legs and arms. What's annoying is that there's a native plant that has no such effect but looks exactly the same, just a little smaller.
Something like stinging nettles, though, don't really leave lasting harm.
No - I could see that one. It was much less worrisome than that. And it's growing on the edge of wetland/swamp so no one should be wandering into it. :)
I'm not sure the neighbor with the freezer is very interested in cohabitation, unfortunately. But it's a good reminder of all the organizations out there working to change that dynamic. I interviewed Blackfoot Challenge some years ago about their work with ranchers, really inspiring.
I'm glad you brought up the freezer, Nia, because I put all the blame worth measuring on that person, and anyone still practicing such careless living in your wild/settled interface. As soon as he got into that freezer that bear was dead, and it's the fault of the person who left it there. As for shooting it, if it was with anything more lethal than a spitball, that he didn't then pursue it makes me wonder how much other game he's left uncollected along the way to filling the freezer in the first place. What an asshole. A family newsletter like yours precludes me from detailing what I'd like to see done to that guy, but at the least he should get a ruinous fine.
It's possible I'm too crabby today to be reading of such outrages but damn, these people, I tell you....
I wondered about that, too. There are a lot of other animals that aren't bears who'd be interested. I've seen raccoons break into some complicated cooler latches.
I got squirrels. Turns out squirrels are very very very industrious at gnawing their way into hard plastic containers to get at the bird seed. (I should know this: reputedly they eat aluminium power lines, even hard armored power lines. Having tested this, the seed is indoors and hopefully the squirrels don't have a burglary kit to break in and get the seed.)
I'd not sure what would stop a hungry bear that smelled meat, even with a locked top-opening freezer.
(We had a bull ('George') once (don't ask), and we had one of those goofy trailers someone would make out of a junked trunk. (Cut the frame at the junction of the cab and the bed, and then weld a yoke to the front of the amputated bed - voilá! It's dinky little trailer.) So this trailer just sat there, yoke on the ground and George decided he really really liked spinning this trailer around. And he kept spinning it around, all day long until the rut was so deep, the trailer was down to the axle. Then he stopped. No idea why he did that, but he seemed to enjoy it.)
elm
then there was the raccoon that came in through the cat door in the basement window to eat the dry cat food
That bull story is just wild. I have never heard of anything like it.
Also, how did you know about the basement cat door we had in our old house that we had to close up because a raccoon was coming in to eat the dry cat food?! For ages I thought our cats were just going through mountains of it ...
I should clarify that slightly: George spun the trailer around and around every day. For months. Until it could spin no more. (It was his toy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) He also had a fondness for rubbing on the barn until it moved, and he would say 'hello' by walking over and head-butting uhhh your butt. (The bigger he got, the more dangerous that got, although he meant no harm.) George was weird.
"Also, how did you know about the basement cat door we had in our old house that we had to close up because a raccoon was coming in to eat the dry cat food?!"
I was down in the basement to check on the laundry and the cat food, and damned if the bastard raccoon wasn't sitting there, cat food in paws, glaring at me because I turned the light. So I got a broom. (He kept coming back until I locked the cat indoors and parked a car battery in front of the door. Jerk.)
"As soon as he got into that freezer that bear was dead, and it's the fault of the person who left it there." Yup. It's so frustrating. People keep saying, well, we've had chickens or the freezer or whatever for years and it's never been a problem. Okay, but it is now and we all have to take responsibility. The neighbor told me what the shot was but I can't remember, only that it couldn't have done anything more than irritate the bear, so no wonder it ran off to the next house.
I hadn't really thought of this as a family newsletter but I guess I do keep it pretty clean 😂
Gardiner is having a similar reckoning -- there's a grizzly that's been all over town, and last time I opened the cursed FB to check local news, there was a big discussion going on about chickens and fruit trees in grizzly country.
Also, the shot must have been Ten Commandment propaganda, no surprise since it kinda IS the Flathead up there. No wonder the bear wanted to terrorize a child afterward.
"Was he being too chill about it, or was the neighbor who shot at it too reactive?"
The neighbour was too reactive. A bear usually comes down from the national park during the driest parts of the summer (not this very rainy year) and raids the trashcans. People freak out some. My main issue is not managing to catch a picture of him (he knows the drill and he moves fast), and the fact that the little dog will watch to chase him off. (Said dog will happily chase off deer, cats, raccoons, ground hogs or anything else you can name, even if, like the deer, the thing outweighs him by 2-300 pounds.)
"So at what point does my safety, and the safety of my family, overrule what I think are lifestyle changes necessary for a livable future? "
'Art is whatever you can get away with.' Is the kid not old enough for a bike, and how well can the kid run? That really ought to decide the question.
"And I wonder with the bear spray in my purse and a mask against the smoke, where the balance is between preparing ourselves to walk in the world, and arming ourselves against the world." but also: "Who knows what kinds of circumstances would make me seek out the equivalent of these talismanic forms of protection that you have control over, whether a gun or a supplement.”"
(All though Pizzagate was a fusion of Jade Helm (which was mix of panic about the Oakland exercise, black helicopters, oh, and the North American Superhighway), and underlying Satanic Panic theory, which the usuals then changed up to make a rebranded version with QAnon which, in turn, is the Satanic Panic in an anti-elite form ... and now they're bringing back the old school version.)
As long as you're around houses, I wouldn't worry too much about the bear. People are always more of a problem than just about any wildlife.
"For something lighter, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ September issue is all about the high-tech surveillance state."
'We don't want that here'. I appreciate the article (will read), but we're the ones who invented the damn thing, and it turned on all over the US, just not in any official, accountable way.
"And if you ever played Sim City, you might have fun attempting to play Sim Nimby, where every time you try to build something, it just says, “No.”"
I owe you a response to the previous response on the previous post. 😁
elm
the lawn, something with the lawn, and something something with that war
A lot of food for thought here. And you're right, biking is totally an option. We just tend not to because I don't like biking, so that's on me!
Conspirituality has been doing a 10-part deep-dive series on the original Satanic Panic and its roots in the book "Michelle Remembers" structured around some YouTube wellness influencer I've never heard of. I am absolutely riveted by it and I don't even know why; I don't even remember the Satanic Panic, though I asked some same-age friends here and they do. They are referencing the podcast Your Wrong About quite a bit, which I guess also did a deep dive into all of this. It's insane. What really got me was how many people in the 1990s actually went to jail for a long time on the basis of these outlandish accusations. So many lives ruined.
Playing catchup after a procedure. Very annoying and disappointing summer, plus the usual nuts are hanging around.
OK, as I um, *implied* previously, I grew up partly in the 70's so, there was the usual ordinary neglectful parenting going (along some unusual ordinary neglectful parenting). So when I was learning to ride the bike I had gotten good that I wanted to try and ride to school, even if my mother said no. Problem was, is that I lived on the other side of the airport from the elementary school, so one day I made a play for it. I made to the other side of the four-lane boulevard, got up on the sidewalk and decided that was a wee bit scary. Back to riding in the car. 😣
Now normal residential streets, even with bear, with modern, distinctly more protective parenting - depends on the age, I'd think. (My sensibilities might be borked. Or the modern world's might be - hard to say.)
Went to jail in the 90's? Oh, from my perspective that had burned out itself out in the late 80's, early 90's and the usual local (Texas) suspects had moved on to freaking out about black helicopters, caching their guns, and trying to destroy the Clintonian cocaine & sex mob network that was murdering all those people.
Sigh. Man, there's a Village Voice story from ... 89? 90? That condensed everything down that had happened up to that point (including the angle of the guys who were retailing 'educational information' to the cops) and I can't find it.
(The dungeon master thing turns into/fuses with the Satanic panic!)
For your really archaic stuff, here's an debunking style article that was, in fact, circulating on the BBSes at the time (1992): https://christian.net/resources/the-hard-facts-about-satanic-ritual-abuse/ (As far as I can tell it's reasonably accurate on the facts, even if the suppositions are more editorial than anything.)
At any rate, the general drive to crack down on everything that started in 1980, kept on rolling on through the 90's, shifting onto new targets every couple of months or years, but then along came 9/11, which produced a different sort of crackdown.
elm
gotta get that north korea-style loudspeaker into every home, and no it's not called alexa, why would you think that?
There are things I miss about those neglectful parenting days. Small-town Montana in the 1980s definitely qualified. My father walked me to my very first day of kindergarten because starting school was such a huge deal in his family, which valued education above almost everything else, but after that I was on my own. There was a large abandoned house in town that had been used as a hospital at one point and the kids made up all sorts of ghastly stories about what was inside. Listening to all this Satanic Panic stuff, I'm almost surprised that house never became the focus of such stories.
Yes, the effects of the satanic panic rolled out for awhile, but the main public panic had died down, so it was all underground. However, panicking about day cares, panicking about abuse, panicking about everything, including the supposed poisoned candy given out at Halloween rolled on with a new topic. The Satanic part of the Panic had gotten way too over the top, so they just modified the PR and the Satanic part got dropped. (QAnon was essentially its resurrection.) There's always some 'good Christian' dude pimping outlandish theories and the like: there's a conspiracy theory element, but a great deal of it is recycling half-understood bits of Revelations, and it always seems to have a political angle, which is how you know the people pushing things have some idea of what they're doing. (Or they're so brain-damaged they manage to convince themselves of what ever lunacy they're on about.)
For my money, most of this stuff you can see on twitter about whatever the nuts are on about, basically involves the same old nuts, but now they have a lot more reach, so it seems like they're nuttier (they're not), and it seems like a lot more people are taken in by this crap (I believe so).
"There are things I miss about those neglectful parenting days. Small-town Montana in the 1980s definitely qualified."
As I was thinking: give the kid a bike and let them rip. At whatever age that is appropriate - in helicopter land, 23 and a half, I think.
elm
right, i will get to last week this week before it turns into next week
Ah, yes, I think I see what you're saying re the parenting. My kids are definitely old enough to get to school on their own. One of them has for years. The issue for this one is loneliness. It really took the pandemic and quarantines to prove to me that being lonely is just as horrible for her as *not* being alone is for me. So, although I often regret the loss of productive morning work time, I've come to value this half-hour walk together. It makes her day exponentially better, and I'm sure it's something I'll never regret doing 😌
I would love to do the Threadable - that sounds awesome! But I don't have an Apple phone and the one I have is so small and unwieldy that it's probably a dealbreaker for something like this. If there's ever a version for PC computer I'll definitely consider.
Speaking of No Trespassing, I just came across a new book called Squatting and The State (O'Mahoney and Roarke, Cambridge Press) that looks kind of cool - maybe more law-centric than you're looking for but it discusses squatting as a form of soft resistance and some of the narratives that have come up around that. Haven't read it though.
That book sounds right up my alley, thank you!
Someone else emailed me to point out the current Apply-only nature of Threadable, which I hadn't realized. I'm kind of bummed because I want as many people to have access to it as possible, though I understand they're still developing an Android version, so if this goes okay maybe they'll let me do another in the future.
In the meantime, I was thinking there's no reason I can't share the same selections here. Some of them are book excerpts but some of them are original source material that are available online. And the book excerpts I could at least quote relevant passages from. Could do a kind of discussion-prompt around each selection? And Threadable encourages wider sharing of some of the commentary; I am willing to bet I can find a way to feed some comments back and forth between the two ecosystems, but at the very least have discussions on here if people would like to participate. I really do like discourse and dialogue in whatever form, and would hate to miss out on your thoughts in particular!
That's a terrific idea! I would totally be down for that, but please don't do it just for me (especially if it would lead to some confusion or coordination issues with the other venue, or create too much work for you). Especially since sometimes I post a little late, or may have to skip some readings. But it sounds like a great solution on its face if others would benefit also. It might even be a neat opportunity to get creative about a two-tiered "dialogue between dialogues": seeing how the conversations evolve differently in the Threadable context vs. here on the blog (I assume Threadable will have a huge edge).
Thanks for considering, and no problem if you decide it's not worth the hassle.
No, I think it would be fun! And, you know, aside from providing some value for subscribers here -- or hoping to -- it provides value for me, too. I think it would be really interesting to do it in parallel. It's hard to tell what would have an "edge" -- while the whole point of Threadable is that you can read and comment within the text, there are maybe ways in which just having normal comment discussions are a little more accessible.
When Threadable approached me about doing this, the attraction for me was very much being able to make my thought process during research more open to people, and being able to hear their own ideas about the text. It would play out differently on here, but the same idea applies. I think the thing that I like about either idea is that it's not just me telling people how I think about things -- it's a lot of people looking at the materials I'm looking at and pushing ideas from different directions. Since land ownership is something that I think is hugely important to understand, it's interesting for me to be able to do that with more people :)
I suppose this also goes back to the wish you expressed a month or two back that there could be more dialogue among your readers eventually. It's ironic that you feel as if you're mostly telling people how you think one-way, since if anything your style is unusually dialogical and I'm always impressed at your effort to respond thoughtfully to every single poster (lots of bloggers don't do that, especially once they get really big). I actually enjoy commenting on other readers' posts sometimes, but feel uncomfortable being the only one since it doesn't seem like the norm here.
So maybe that's a side benefit of the group reading idea: decentering your voice from being the focal text.
That's a great way to put it -- decentering my own perspective. I do like dialogue and discourse, and that's why on traditionally published pieces I always try to respond to comments (depending on moderation -- places like The Washington Post are just a mess, but somewhere like Aeon I find it very worthwhile because people have such interesting ideas). If this Substack ever got huge, responding to everyone might get more difficult, but it is still a time commitment that I build into how I approach the work here.
Anyway, it'll be something to experiment with and hopefully foster discussion around the subject, even if it it's only the materials that are out of copyright. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I suppose the world has always been complicated, but still... Glad you're all safe.
"And I wonder with the bear spray in my purse and a mask against the smoke, where the balance is between preparing ourselves to walk in the world, and arming ourselves against the world."
Great line. I say pack the bear spray and take a walk. Regarding arms, where to begin...
Packed the bear spray, took a walk 😉🧡
It's wonderful and sweet and sad and good what your daughter did, Nia. Perhaps there's a frisson of hope in this world.
I look forward to reading together!
Perhaps there is 🧡
And yes, I hope you can participate! Someone did email me to point out that the app is only available for Apple phones, which is a limitation. They're working on an Android version, so I hope I can do this or similar again when it's available for everyone. But I am kind of excited about it.
I'm very excited! I have an Apple phone and downloaded the app this evening. I look forward to it!
I'm really excited you'll be part of it!
>>"how simple it is, how easy. Just to do the small thing that’s a slight restraint on yourself but spreads benefit in all directions, including ones you might not be thinking of."
Hope for the next generation, right there - tiny acts of kindness that don't even register as "I'm doing a kind thing for other people", they're just an unspoken "why would I do anything else? That would just be awful." When thoughtfulness and respectful decency aren't even remarked upon because they're so commonplace, that's a good step in the right direction - and I think ( or maybe just hope) the kids know it, and are prepared to get it done.
Re. Threadable:
I.
Absolutely.
Cannot.
Wait.
"tiny acts of kindness that don't even register as "I'm doing a kind thing for other people", they're just an unspoken "why would I do anything else?" That is it exactly, so well said! Just, why not do the thoughtful thing?!
I am excited about it! And the crossover readings should, I hope, be fun for people.
Ed Yong just wrote this terrific piece for The Atlantic on where we are in the pandemic...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/covid-pandemic-exposes-americas-failing-systems-future-epidemics/671608/
(It's his last for a while - he's taking a 6-month break to rest and recover, as he's written before about how much it's emotionally affected him, writing about these grim things.)
...and he talks about the profoundly destablizing effect of "a bedrock of individualism and inequality". I've been thinking about that all day. And thinking about how individualism - "you just need a hero, and I AM THAT HERO" thinking - is so deeply baked into all the stories we emotionally feed on for entertainment purposes.
So I think that's something I'd love to see more of in speculative fiction: the "us" rather than the "one". The group effort dynamics that drive the plot, where kindness isn't just seen as "the right thing to do" - it's also the only tool that gets the job done, where the job is "we're going to try to save everyone today". Because - that's certainly how the big problems facing us in the 'real world' are going to be fixed, right?
(How much of existing fiction features that kind of "community as hero" storytelling? What classics am I unaware of here?)
I haven’t read the piece yet but had it queued up! He’s done tremendous work throughout the pandemic, I’m really grateful to him.
(Had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday who’s finishing up a book that involved a lot of similar kinds of reporting, absorbing others’ trauma. Another friend told her that her book is “depressing” and then a day later talked about how much Ed Yong deserves a sabbatical after all he’s absorbed. My friend and I agreed that yes, he absolutely does; and yet it was a reflection of how automatically people still respond to fame when her other friend recognized what Ed is doing and what that does to him, but in my friend’s case could only see that the stories she was telling were depressing. If she were already famous, the friend would have a different response, was our conclusion. It was a little disheartening.)
You are absolutely right about the “us” rather “one,” especially in speculative and science fiction. I just gave up on Andy Weir’s book “Artemis,” though I was more than 2/3 done with it, because the libertarian bent started to annoy me. It was *not* totally individualism because the main character did put together a team of people she needed (I am guessing you’ve already read this!) but it was pushing the whole idea that government action is unecessary and people can run society just dandy without it. I don’t know, I haven’t fully thought it through and can be talked out of this but that’s how it came across to me.
I am pulling a blank on classics, but Waubgeshig’s “Moon of the Crusted Snow” comes to mind. Have you read that? I really loved it. And I guess it’s kind of the whole point of Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Talents,” gathering a community together who can seed a better future. And Murderbot can be seen as a classic lone-hero story EXCEPT in the novel “Network Effect,” the whole power of that book is that SecUnit is floored by the fact that its humans and other humans and ART team up together to save it, instead of letting it save them and then abandoning it. It’s kind of an “us” story, or maybe more than kind of!
I’m going to sidestep the outdoor freezer part of this. I appreciate you wrestling with the very real challenges of living with nature in a community where not everyone is of that mindset. I’m so lucky I don’t have to worry really about any predator big enough to harm me on my walks. Occasionally I see people on our neighborhood FB page freaking out over an owl or a coyote with no understanding those animals aren’t going to hurt them. Their precious tiny dogs shouldn’t be running around outside in the dark anyway.
They really shouldn't be. It pains me to no end how many humans want and expect the world to bend around them/us and their/our needs and desires. But on a practical level, one of our other neighbors lost his miniature greyhound to a bald eagle a few years ago. He was broken-hearted but did not blame the eagle. His next adoptions were full-sized retired racing greyhounds, though.
At the same time, they love their little hummingbird feeders. Do they not get that if we wipe out all the natural areas around us they aren't going to see any hummers either? They don't seem to be able to make this connection sadly.
Yes, they are afraid of nature at a very high level. There was also much consternation and hand wringing about poisonous weeds in the park - way back from the paths and play areas where again no one really should be. There were people who wanted the whole thing sprayed into non existence because of a few weeds someone could get a rash for. Luckily the park service is working with the conservation department on maintaining that park, so they sprayed a few on the edge and left it at that.
It's not giant hogweed, is it? I am very honestly scared of that stuff! Someone I know slightly here wandered into a patch of it and got third-degree burns on parts of his legs and arms. What's annoying is that there's a native plant that has no such effect but looks exactly the same, just a little smaller.
Something like stinging nettles, though, don't really leave lasting harm.
No - I could see that one. It was much less worrisome than that. And it's growing on the edge of wetland/swamp so no one should be wandering into it. :)
Ugh, no, they shouldn't. Which brings me back, as often happens, to what is people's problem with dandelions ...
Yeah, and around here don't even talk about having a natural lawn. :(
I'm sure you know of the Swan Valley Connections; they are a great resource for preventing human/bear conflict.
https://www.swanvalleyconnections.org/swan-valley-bear-resources
Obviously, your neighbor with the freezer could learn something from them.
Also, Edmund Burke was a huge tool. Just saying!
Ha! Yes, he kinda was.
I'm not sure the neighbor with the freezer is very interested in cohabitation, unfortunately. But it's a good reminder of all the organizations out there working to change that dynamic. I interviewed Blackfoot Challenge some years ago about their work with ranchers, really inspiring.
I'm glad you brought up the freezer, Nia, because I put all the blame worth measuring on that person, and anyone still practicing such careless living in your wild/settled interface. As soon as he got into that freezer that bear was dead, and it's the fault of the person who left it there. As for shooting it, if it was with anything more lethal than a spitball, that he didn't then pursue it makes me wonder how much other game he's left uncollected along the way to filling the freezer in the first place. What an asshole. A family newsletter like yours precludes me from detailing what I'd like to see done to that guy, but at the least he should get a ruinous fine.
It's possible I'm too crabby today to be reading of such outrages but damn, these people, I tell you....
You'd think he (it's a HE!) would want to hang on to the meat. Put it in the garage (if he has one).
elm
*something*, not necessarily a bear, is going to want to open that thing up
I wondered about that, too. There are a lot of other animals that aren't bears who'd be interested. I've seen raccoons break into some complicated cooler latches.
I got squirrels. Turns out squirrels are very very very industrious at gnawing their way into hard plastic containers to get at the bird seed. (I should know this: reputedly they eat aluminium power lines, even hard armored power lines. Having tested this, the seed is indoors and hopefully the squirrels don't have a burglary kit to break in and get the seed.)
I'd not sure what would stop a hungry bear that smelled meat, even with a locked top-opening freezer.
(We had a bull ('George') once (don't ask), and we had one of those goofy trailers someone would make out of a junked trunk. (Cut the frame at the junction of the cab and the bed, and then weld a yoke to the front of the amputated bed - voilá! It's dinky little trailer.) So this trailer just sat there, yoke on the ground and George decided he really really liked spinning this trailer around. And he kept spinning it around, all day long until the rut was so deep, the trailer was down to the axle. Then he stopped. No idea why he did that, but he seemed to enjoy it.)
elm
then there was the raccoon that came in through the cat door in the basement window to eat the dry cat food
That bull story is just wild. I have never heard of anything like it.
Also, how did you know about the basement cat door we had in our old house that we had to close up because a raccoon was coming in to eat the dry cat food?! For ages I thought our cats were just going through mountains of it ...
I should clarify that slightly: George spun the trailer around and around every day. For months. Until it could spin no more. (It was his toy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) He also had a fondness for rubbing on the barn until it moved, and he would say 'hello' by walking over and head-butting uhhh your butt. (The bigger he got, the more dangerous that got, although he meant no harm.) George was weird.
"Also, how did you know about the basement cat door we had in our old house that we had to close up because a raccoon was coming in to eat the dry cat food?!"
I was down in the basement to check on the laundry and the cat food, and damned if the bastard raccoon wasn't sitting there, cat food in paws, glaring at me because I turned the light. So I got a broom. (He kept coming back until I locked the cat indoors and parked a car battery in front of the door. Jerk.)
elm
well, this is a month
Yeah, we actually had to board up the cat door! This raccoon was getting pretty brazen and I'm sure would shortly have been in the kitchen.
"As soon as he got into that freezer that bear was dead, and it's the fault of the person who left it there." Yup. It's so frustrating. People keep saying, well, we've had chickens or the freezer or whatever for years and it's never been a problem. Okay, but it is now and we all have to take responsibility. The neighbor told me what the shot was but I can't remember, only that it couldn't have done anything more than irritate the bear, so no wonder it ran off to the next house.
I hadn't really thought of this as a family newsletter but I guess I do keep it pretty clean 😂
Gardiner is having a similar reckoning -- there's a grizzly that's been all over town, and last time I opened the cursed FB to check local news, there was a big discussion going on about chickens and fruit trees in grizzly country.
Oof, yes, we get that on NextDoor -- on which, for better or most likely worse, I agreed to be a moderator and I do not recommend!
Also, the shot must have been Ten Commandment propaganda, no surprise since it kinda IS the Flathead up there. No wonder the bear wanted to terrorize a child afterward.
If that is Ten Commandment propaganda, there has been a LOT of that up here recently. Which, yeah, it kinda is the Flathead up here 😬😩
Fuckin’ A you do.
🙀🤦🏻♀️😂
"Was he being too chill about it, or was the neighbor who shot at it too reactive?"
The neighbour was too reactive. A bear usually comes down from the national park during the driest parts of the summer (not this very rainy year) and raids the trashcans. People freak out some. My main issue is not managing to catch a picture of him (he knows the drill and he moves fast), and the fact that the little dog will watch to chase him off. (Said dog will happily chase off deer, cats, raccoons, ground hogs or anything else you can name, even if, like the deer, the thing outweighs him by 2-300 pounds.)
"So at what point does my safety, and the safety of my family, overrule what I think are lifestyle changes necessary for a livable future? "
'Art is whatever you can get away with.' Is the kid not old enough for a bike, and how well can the kid run? That really ought to decide the question.
"And I wonder with the bear spray in my purse and a mask against the smoke, where the balance is between preparing ourselves to walk in the world, and arming ourselves against the world." but also: "Who knows what kinds of circumstances would make me seek out the equivalent of these talismanic forms of protection that you have control over, whether a gun or a supplement.”"
The usual suspects are cranking up the Satanic Panic again: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/satanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795
(All though Pizzagate was a fusion of Jade Helm (which was mix of panic about the Oakland exercise, black helicopters, oh, and the North American Superhighway), and underlying Satanic Panic theory, which the usuals then changed up to make a rebranded version with QAnon which, in turn, is the Satanic Panic in an anti-elite form ... and now they're bringing back the old school version.)
As long as you're around houses, I wouldn't worry too much about the bear. People are always more of a problem than just about any wildlife.
"For something lighter, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ September issue is all about the high-tech surveillance state."
'We don't want that here'. I appreciate the article (will read), but we're the ones who invented the damn thing, and it turned on all over the US, just not in any official, accountable way.
"And if you ever played Sim City, you might have fun attempting to play Sim Nimby, where every time you try to build something, it just says, “No.”"
I owe you a response to the previous response on the previous post. 😁
elm
the lawn, something with the lawn, and something something with that war
The lawn and the war, something something!
A lot of food for thought here. And you're right, biking is totally an option. We just tend not to because I don't like biking, so that's on me!
Conspirituality has been doing a 10-part deep-dive series on the original Satanic Panic and its roots in the book "Michelle Remembers" structured around some YouTube wellness influencer I've never heard of. I am absolutely riveted by it and I don't even know why; I don't even remember the Satanic Panic, though I asked some same-age friends here and they do. They are referencing the podcast Your Wrong About quite a bit, which I guess also did a deep dive into all of this. It's insane. What really got me was how many people in the 1990s actually went to jail for a long time on the basis of these outlandish accusations. So many lives ruined.
"The lawn and the war, something something!"
Playing catchup after a procedure. Very annoying and disappointing summer, plus the usual nuts are hanging around.
OK, as I um, *implied* previously, I grew up partly in the 70's so, there was the usual ordinary neglectful parenting going (along some unusual ordinary neglectful parenting). So when I was learning to ride the bike I had gotten good that I wanted to try and ride to school, even if my mother said no. Problem was, is that I lived on the other side of the airport from the elementary school, so one day I made a play for it. I made to the other side of the four-lane boulevard, got up on the sidewalk and decided that was a wee bit scary. Back to riding in the car. 😣
Now normal residential streets, even with bear, with modern, distinctly more protective parenting - depends on the age, I'd think. (My sensibilities might be borked. Or the modern world's might be - hard to say.)
Went to jail in the 90's? Oh, from my perspective that had burned out itself out in the late 80's, early 90's and the usual local (Texas) suspects had moved on to freaking out about black helicopters, caching their guns, and trying to destroy the Clintonian cocaine & sex mob network that was murdering all those people.
Sigh. Man, there's a Village Voice story from ... 89? 90? That condensed everything down that had happened up to that point (including the angle of the guys who were retailing 'educational information' to the cops) and I can't find it.
But here: https://boingboing.net/2014/11/11/the-truth-about-the-dungeon-ma.html
(The dungeon master thing turns into/fuses with the Satanic panic!)
For your really archaic stuff, here's an debunking style article that was, in fact, circulating on the BBSes at the time (1992): https://christian.net/resources/the-hard-facts-about-satanic-ritual-abuse/ (As far as I can tell it's reasonably accurate on the facts, even if the suppositions are more editorial than anything.)
At any rate, the general drive to crack down on everything that started in 1980, kept on rolling on through the 90's, shifting onto new targets every couple of months or years, but then along came 9/11, which produced a different sort of crackdown.
elm
gotta get that north korea-style loudspeaker into every home, and no it's not called alexa, why would you think that?
I was honestly surprised at the early 1990s stuff, too. My vague associations of the Satanic Panic are all early- to mid-1980s. But there were a few early-90s high-profile cases, like this one from 1991 where the couple spent 21 years in prison before their convictions were overturned: https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2017/08/24/dan-fran-keller-to-get-34-million-in-satanic-day-care-case/986910007/
There are things I miss about those neglectful parenting days. Small-town Montana in the 1980s definitely qualified. My father walked me to my very first day of kindergarten because starting school was such a huge deal in his family, which valued education above almost everything else, but after that I was on my own. There was a large abandoned house in town that had been used as a hospital at one point and the kids made up all sorts of ghastly stories about what was inside. Listening to all this Satanic Panic stuff, I'm almost surprised that house never became the focus of such stories.
Yes, the effects of the satanic panic rolled out for awhile, but the main public panic had died down, so it was all underground. However, panicking about day cares, panicking about abuse, panicking about everything, including the supposed poisoned candy given out at Halloween rolled on with a new topic. The Satanic part of the Panic had gotten way too over the top, so they just modified the PR and the Satanic part got dropped. (QAnon was essentially its resurrection.) There's always some 'good Christian' dude pimping outlandish theories and the like: there's a conspiracy theory element, but a great deal of it is recycling half-understood bits of Revelations, and it always seems to have a political angle, which is how you know the people pushing things have some idea of what they're doing. (Or they're so brain-damaged they manage to convince themselves of what ever lunacy they're on about.)
For my money, most of this stuff you can see on twitter about whatever the nuts are on about, basically involves the same old nuts, but now they have a lot more reach, so it seems like they're nuttier (they're not), and it seems like a lot more people are taken in by this crap (I believe so).
"There are things I miss about those neglectful parenting days. Small-town Montana in the 1980s definitely qualified."
As I was thinking: give the kid a bike and let them rip. At whatever age that is appropriate - in helicopter land, 23 and a half, I think.
elm
right, i will get to last week this week before it turns into next week
Ah, yes, I think I see what you're saying re the parenting. My kids are definitely old enough to get to school on their own. One of them has for years. The issue for this one is loneliness. It really took the pandemic and quarantines to prove to me that being lonely is just as horrible for her as *not* being alone is for me. So, although I often regret the loss of productive morning work time, I've come to value this half-hour walk together. It makes her day exponentially better, and I'm sure it's something I'll never regret doing 😌
I did not know or had forgotten that the walk was the plan. (Or now, I vaguely recall something about that, but its been awhile.)
Apologies for being chatty cathy, I've been tired, and prone to running off at the mouth.
elm
time to complete the medical hurdles