Half-past Chaffinch

All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”

And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.

Appalachian Beekeeping Collective is headquartered at an old camp that was once owned and operated by coal mining companies that saw thousands of kids of coal miners go through the camp from different mining states.

“These people are so tied to this place. When I was there over the summer, at least twice a week somebody would drive by and say, ‘I went to camp here 50 years ago. This place means so much to me’ so it’s a really special spot,” said Delaney. “There’s so much rich history there.”

Because the people are tied to the land and invested in the history of the area, Delaney said that it made sense to get them involved in beekeeping.

“They’re native and they’ve been there for generations and they know every mountain, every hill has a name even though it might not be on a map. Because they’re so tied to the land, this operation had to be something that was sustainable and that was also very connected to the environment and beekeeping is definitely both of those things,” said Delaney.

The area also has a rich history of beekeeping as Delaney said she would find antique beekeeping equipment at area flea markets.

“Everybody’s grandfather had bees. It’s because it’s all hardwood forests there, which all produce nectar and pollen and so it’s a really good area for beekeeping, really high quality forage. I think both of those things make it ideal,” said Delaney.

The plan is for those beekeepers to keep their own apiaries but get bees raised by the Appalachian Bee Keeping Collective.

“We’re trying to raise a strain of Appalachian honey bee that is mite resistant and that’s a big piece of what Debbie is doing,” said Asquith. “She’s really skilled with natural beekeeping methods and has been a really big help for us.”

You are used to seeing wealth on a spectrum, and can see people who are richer than you by a factor of ten and poorer by a factor of ten in the same city. That makes you feel - perhaps rightly - that you are middle class in that you sit in between two starkly different poles. Except really, you aren’t.

What you’re not understanding is the experience of wealth by distribution. The people who live above you are, by income, .01% of the population. The people that live below you? 98%. We may be in “the middle” by how much we have, but we are in the top 2% of Americans by having that much.

Your false conception of being middle class has been shaped by design. The more we understand the “average” (i.e., “middle”) American to be wealthy, the easier it to vilify the poor as “lazy” to justify tax policy that favors the wealthy.

What’re you gonna do with this information? Here are some good ideas:

- Start referring to yourself as part of the 1%, owning it makes shifting your perspective easier.

- Use your economic status to fight politically for higher wages, unions, and wage parity along gender and race.

- Donate more of your income to services that provide for lower income households.

- Show support for tax increases in your tax bracket amongst your peers.

Meanwhile, it is snowing!  

Inktober day 30, fandom edition:  The Blind Banker.

a last one before the road…

pentel pocket brush, pigma micron 005 and 08, uniball signo white gel pen in my toned tan strathmore sketchbook

My art tag

I repeated the experiment later, wearing the boots but otherwise my usual clothing and mimicking the expression I thought I’d had at that moment. People parted like I was Charlton Heston.

I now wear that style of boots whenever possible. I recently had a man do a double-take as I walked by and ask me, politely, where I had served because I “looked like a soldier.” I’m not current or former military. I was wearing a flowy purple peasant top and looked as un-soldierlike as possible.

Without using any words at all, Sherlock’s clearly communicates a shift from disappointment and irritation to shock, then comprehension, and finally apology and regret.