GentlemanPenguin

http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/a-plan-to-turn-hiawatha-golf-course-into-minneapolis-first-food-forest/416059773

Imagine a forest filled with edible plants, berries, hazelnuts, and maple trees, bordered by hiking trails. A place where you can learn to forage and harvest while enjoying a beautiful lake and natural wetlands.

Now imagine that the forest is located on the edge of Minneapolis.

This is what Ryan Seibold and Russ Henry are trying to create near Lake Hiawatha.

Parts of the nearby Hiawatha Golf Course have been closed since a 2014 flood, and are expected to reopen this spring. This spurred the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board to explore options for rebuilding the course to make it more flood resistant.

Yet these plans stalled when it was discovered that the board was pumping more groundwater from the course – and into the already-polluted Lake Hiawatha – than allowed by the state. The city was left to decide whether to keep pumping or let the former wetland reclaim its territory.

Henry, a landscape designer who is running for a Park Board seat, says replacing the course with a food forest would turn a big problem into a big benefit.

The restored wetland would act as a natural filter, blocking major pollutants from storm water sewers and bringing back animals and plants displaced by the course, he says.

Put simply, a food forest is a woodland that uses native trees, shrubs, and plants that are both edible and medicinal. The city would plant everything from raspberries and blackberries to maple trees and hazelnut trees, as well as shoreline plants like katniss (also known as duck potato) and medicinal herbs like echinacea.

Intended to be low-maintenance and self-maintaining once established, the plants are designed to not only build soil but to attract pollinators. (Plants like milkweed are especially beneficial for bees and monarch butterflies.)

According to Seibold, the plants would be available for people to forage and harvest as needed. The idea is to teach people to understand the connection between plants and animals, as well as learn when to harvest sustainably.

“You’re growing the food, but you’re also growing the community around the food,” Seibold says.

There would have to be some sort of foraging training to ensure the plants are available for everyone, Henry adds.

When he got his first job in a nursery 20 years ago, Henry says plants were just green things he couldn’t begin to tell apart. Since then, nature has opened up to him, and he would love for the kids of Minneapolis to have the same opportunity.

By learning more about what they’re able to take from nature, Henry says that people might feel more empowered to grow food in their own yards, to embrace nature and sustainable development, and to encourage friends and neighbors to do the same.

Seibold and Henry say they’ve been getting positive feedback. The park board has until July to decide what to do with the land, but Henry says it may have already decided to reconstruct the golf course.

Either way, the men will continue their work.

Heads up pet keepers: zebra mussels have been spotted in Petco Betta Buddy brand moss balls.

If you don't know what zebra mussels are, they're an invasive aquatic species that reproduces incredibly quickly, to the point where it can damage power plant equipment and pipes, and also is a major threat to native mussels as it rapidly outcompetes them. They are a scourge on lakes across the midwest and spread easily on boats or other watercraft thats been exposed to them.

Finding one in a chain pet store item is BAD NEWS. These items are sold across the entire country and this has the potential to be a major spreader event. If you spot a zebra mussel on marimo or on any other aquarium plant please make a report to the relevant wildlife officials so they can be controlled. Do not dispose of any aquarium animal or plant in a waterway.

“The plan was to grow our money so we could feel financially secure enough to have a baby.”

This is a couple that’s already worth three million dollars. They own their own home. They have a passive monthly income of $12.5k without lifting a single finger, and he can make $30k/mo working for 60 hours. To put that in normal 40-hour weeks, this means that he works until mid-May, takes the rest of the year off, and makes five hundred and sixty thousand dollars for his trouble, on top of the three million they already have and any income she might have.

tl;dr: That’s a lot of fucking money for very little effort.

And these people are scared. They think that thisisn’t enough money for them to raise a child

To any kids out there: I know that quarantine is stressful and we’re all depressed and lonely bu please please please don’t give out your information to strangers on the internet, and if you do there are dozens of safer options than just giving everything to everyone and just hoping for the best

1. Use an alias (don’t have to but doesn’t hurt, especially when you have a unique name)

2. NEVER give your last name! (E.g. if you’re Jessica, aint no way they gonna be able to find you without your last name. Don’t risk it)

3. NEVER give your address (things like country is still vague enough. But if you tell anyone your street or something super identifiable)

4. You don’t have to post photos of yourself! (You can if you want to but remember to be careful! Street names and addresses should not be visible in these photos!)

5. Block creeps. Anyone that ya getting bad vibes from, just block em. Don’t be scared about being “mean”. Protect yourself.

Where do I fucking start?

So, Thatcher was the bane of the working classes, and much of what she did still has repercussions to this day. So, in no particular order, just in the order I remember them, here are some things she did that pissed us off - 

•In 1989 she introduced this thing called the “Community Charge” but which everyone calls the “Poll Tax” which replaced an older system in which your tax payment was based on the rental value of your home. This new tax meant that people living in one bedroom flats would pay the same as a billionaire living in a mansion. Obviously, the rich loved it, everyone else… not so much. So there were riots (video of news about the riots) - There were lots of riots in the Thatcher years, and they were all notable for the extreme levels of police brutality.

(photo, poll tax protest in Trafalgar Square, 1990)

•Then there was her war on industry. There was a lot of inflation when she came to power, so she instituted anti-inflationary measures. All well and good… except not the way she did it. She closed many government controlled industries, most famously steel and coal. The amount spent on public industries dropped by 38% under Thatcher. The coal miners went on strike, for almost a year, but in the end, the pits were still closed, and 64,000 people lost their jobs. Unemployment rates soared in industrial areas, and inequality between these (generally northern or welsh) areas and the rest of the UK is still there. During the strike there were numerous violent clashes with the police at picket lines which were widely televised. As a memoir from one miner attests: “I saw a police officer with a fire extinguisher in his hand, bashing a lad in the back. I tried to get closer to note down the officer’s number but they were wearing black boilersuits with no numbers. The next thing I knew, a police officer struck me from behind. I was coming in and out of consciousness as I was dragged across the road into an alleyway. They blocked off the alley and beat another lad and me with sticks until I was unconscious.” (I can’t post the whole thing it’s too long, but read it in the Guardian) Images such as this swept the country, turning many people against Thatcher -

And after it was all over people felt Thatcher had lied, saying she wanted to close only 20 pits, when in the end, 75 were closed down.

• Inequality soared whilst she was prime minister. There is a thing called the gini coefficient, it is the most common method of measuring inequality. Under gini, a score of one would be a completely unequal society; zero would be completely equal. Britain’s gini score went up from 0.253 to 0.339 by the time Thatcher resigned.

•During her time as prime minister the notorious ‘Section 28′ was published. It stated: A local authority shall not (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. - Section 28 wasn’t repealed until 2003.

• She introduced the Right To Buy scheme, which allowed people to buy their council houses for a very low price, which, at first glance, seems like a great idea, allowing people who normally wouldn’t be able to afford their own home to have one - however, loads of people have entered the scheme and now we have far too little social housing, meaning there has been a sharp rise in homelessness.

• The Battle of the Beanfield was a clash between hippies and police near Stonehenge in 1985. 1300 police officers converged on a convoy of 600 new age travellers who were heading to Stonehenge to set up a free festival in violation of a high court order. Again, there was an insane amount of police brutality, and 16 travellers were hospitalised, 573 people were arrested (one of the biggest mass arrests in UK history) - “Pregnant women were clubbed with truncheons, as were those holding babies. The journalist Nick Davies, then working for The Observer, saw the violence. ‘They were like flies around rotten meat,’ he wrote, ‘and there was no question of trying to make a lawful arrest. They crawled all over, truncheons flailing, hitting anybody they could reach. It was extremely violent and very sickening.’” (source) - Once everyone was arrested, the empty vehicles, which were in many cases the only homes the travellers had “were then systematically smashed to pieces and several were set on fire. Seven healthy dogs belonging to the Travellers were put down by officers from the RSPCA.” (source same as above)

Most of the charges were dismissed in court after Lord Cardigan, who had tagged along with them to see what would happen, testified on behalf of the travellers against the police. 

•Her removal of Irish dissidents right to be placed in a category that essentially made them political prisoners instead of merely criminals led to a hunger strike that ended in 10 deaths, including that of Bobby Sands, who was elected from his prison cell, reflecting the immense national, and international support for Irish nationalists. Thatchers lack of sympathy, or even empathy led to her becoming even more of a hate figure.

• She presided over a rapid deregulation of the banks, which ultimately led to much of the problems during britains 2007-2012 financial crash many years later.

• She took free milk from school children, which, though not as serious as anything else listed here, directly affected every child in the UK and was very unpopular, leading her to get the nickname “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”, which is still used today.

• Oh… and she supported Apartheid and called Mandela a terrorist.

A feminist? Pah! She actually said, “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison.” (and if for some reason you don’t trust that article, just google that quote). She also said that “the battle for women’s rights has largely been won. I owe nothing to women’s lib”, and whilst being PM for 11 years, she only ever appointed one woman, Baroness Young. As this article says, she basically “refused to accept that the majority of women do not have the privilege she had, in other words a rich partner, and lots of childcare provision.” In terms of feminism, she hated any woman who wasn’t financially well off, able-bodied, cishet, white, neurotypical (as you can see in this article), and basically, like her. Great feminism.

She also played a huge part in making Rupert Murdoch the hugely powerful man he is today (and consequently, making the British press so unreliable, ridiculous, and downright dangerous), and it seems she also used this connection to help giver herself more “sunshine headlines” (read: favourable).

I could go on but I feel like I’ve been at this for a while. OP has done a great job in summarising most of the main reasons she’s so hated. I’ve added a number of other important ones here too, but to be honest, just look at any reasonably credible article about her. If it seems positive, then google the topics at hand, and I guarantee there will be the flip side, often explained with a more socially conscious approach.

“The witch is dead but the spell remains.”

Crowley presenting as female to be Warlock’s Nanny? The way this was filmed, acted, and written wasn’t made to be funny whatsoever. She was stunning, I loved the hat!

Pollution using they/them pronouns while the postman used the gender neutral honorific of sir for them? What’s there to make fun of? They’re royalty.

Archangel Michael, who has a traditionally male name, played by a female actress? Never questioned.

Lord Beelzebub’s androgyny? Only respect for the Lord of Hell.

Aziraphale sharing Madame Tracy’s body? Crowley recognized his angel and accepted it no problem. He was right about the dress too, it did suit him!

Crowley’s pure, unfiltered non-binary/gender-fluid energy in general? Fucking fabulous. Who could seriously make fun of this demon’s style? As someone once pointed out to me, you could swap him with Tilda Swinton and I’d see no difference. What an icon.

For our angels and demons, it was intensely liberating having male and female actors auditioning for the same roles, and just picking the ones who we felt nailed the characters best.

Also, can I just hear a wahoo for the wonderful Archangel Uriel, Gloria Obianyo?