woodland wanderer

-The best way to learn is on the job

-Snakes kept in ethanol for 50 years have a very specific smell

-it’s like greasy vodka

-I’ve found where all the queers go in science and it’s museums, I’ve found my people

-A right of passage includes getting a tattoo of your preferred genus 

-The 60 year old entomologist who is apparently a celebrity in the beetle circles has a huge back-spanning tattoo of a scarab, and my co-worker only discovered this when she saw said entomologist at a rock concert

-You have to keep those stained skeleton specimens in jars of glycerin because it’s only in glycerin that light goes through the specimens tissue to reveal the blue/red/green skeleton otherwise they’re an opaque white

-Glycerin leeches through glass

-You will be skinning an animal for a few hours and be staring at the bare flesh and viscera and be suddenly intensely hungry. That’s normal.

-You’ll find a “problem specimen” in a jar with no number tag and you’ll ask the collection manager what to do about it, she’ll turn around pick a book from a huge shelf of identical books and ask for the place and date on the jar and then she’ll flip to a page, check that, and then check the online database before saying “it’s this one, make a new tag”. And you’ll spend the rest of the day mystified at the incredible record-keeping that’s been happening for 130 years.

-Vegans haven’t discovered museum collections yet and everyone hopes it stays that way lest we have to constantly defend another vital aspect of scientific progress

- “Our collection isn’t haunted because animals don’t hold that kind of grudge, everything in the herpetology section murdered for their dinner everyday, but the anthropology collection on the other hand…”

very obvious special interests in things like animals or hair were ignored as normal girl interests

noise sensitivity was me being an uptight bitch

meltdowns extending into teenage years were seen as typical for dramatic teenage girls

love of colorful, sparkly, visually-stimulating things?? GIRL

vestibular stimming only landed me in cheerleading and gymnastics

severe social anxiety = shy girl!!!

always saying “what”? can’t be her ears bc she has great hearing, must just be another ditzy blonde girl

only eats specific foods/plain food? girls are sooo picky

self-harming? red flag but still typical of girls who are “looking for attention”

awkward laughing at everything because I don’t know what to FUCKING SAY?? giggly girl, very normal and cute (not)

doesn’t go out a lot? the perfect daughter!

not to mention all of the symptoms that WEREN’T obvious because I worked so hard to hide them.

I think what a lot of people underestimate is just how much road there is in your city. And just how many directions the crew gets pulled.

For our city of around 50k people there are 8 of us.

Also, crack sealing is a wholly temporary measure, meant to slow the break-up of the roads, it’s not a permanent fix.

Roads tend to get closed for months on end because we have to tear the whole thing up, then, depending on the class of road, we either have to hammer-drill into concrete to lay rebar and the pour concrete, or we can get straight to paving. If it’s a road requiring concrete we’re required to wait at least 24 hours for it to set.

So after 2 days we’re finally able to pave. But the city allocates one (two if we’re lucky) 5 ton truck to transport material.

A relatively short paving job requires at a minimum of 60 tons. So that’s 12 trips to the asphalt factory and back. Each ton is around $80.

TL;DR

two years ago i wore baggy sweatpants and flip flops every day because i was depressed but then decided eh to hell with it and bought some black edgy emo clothes bc thats how i always wanted to dress but never got a chance to and it was only then that i realized that the sweatpants flip flops look was just keeping me in my depression funk. i didnt like the way i looked and i didnt identify with the clothes i was wearing and it only made me feel worse.

i then went through my entire wardrobe and got rid of everything that made me feel that way.

now i have multiple outfit possibilities requiring different levels of effort but on days where putting on clothes just seems like a project i just have to put on black jeans and a band t-shirt and i can still feel good about the way i look which is a really good way to start off my day.

Mio, Illustrations.

Who doesn’t like witches or mysterious happenings?  Artist Mio transcribes both to paper perfectly.

If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.

But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:

If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.

You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.

And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.

And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.

You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time. 

They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded. 

Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure. 

It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.

When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.

After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.