Midwest! FUCK YEAH!

For years I’ve wanted to adopt a dog, but I always made excuses. “Oh, I won’t have time.” “I’ll choose the wrong one.” “Maybe next year.” On a cold day in January, though, I was going through my routine of looking at Animal Humane Society’s website, and I saw her face. Her name: Sassy, a 7-year-old Chihuahua/Dachsund mix. I fell in love instantly and went to the St. Paul location after work.

She immediately took to me, and I to her. I had concerns about her weight (she came in obese), her age and health, so I put money down and slept on it. The next day I brought her home.

Of all the decisions I’ve made in my life, adopting Sassy is the best thing I’ve ever done. She is obsessed with me, but I’m just as obsessed with her. She is ridiculously happy all the time. She lives for fetch and is excellent at returning the ball. Her weight and age concerned me about just how active she would be able to be. I am an active person, and while Sassy isn’t a runner, she LOVES to walk. We go on walks in the morning and in the evening, and she enjoys exploring South Minneapolis and Minnehaha Falls. 

Sassy is an absolute delight, my best friend, the light of my life. I think about her all the time.

Sassy is a reminder not to dismiss someone outright because of initial appearances. Yes, she was a bigger girl when I got her, but she’s so active and spunky that the pounds are just coming off! She’s nimble, quick, smart and adorable. Older dogs are often overlooked for their younger counterparts, but I would caution folks to give every dog a chance. Had I dismissed Sassy because of her age and weight, I would have missed out on the best part of my life. I’m glad I chose her, and I’m thankful to have her.

let me share a memory with y’all. it’s from i guess 1978 or thereabouts. it’s high summer. i don’t remember where my mom was driving me, in our avocado green chevette, i just know there was a traffic jam that turned 35w northbound into a parking lot from horizon to horizon.

picture it – wait, you don’t have to use your imagination, this happened all the damn time back then.

every one of those damn cars was burning leaded gasoline. there were no emissions regulations. there were no safety regulations. there were just thousands and thousands of detroit steel shoeboxes belching visible smoke as they idled, engines loud and hot, here and there a radiator giving up in the heat, a cloud of burning oil rising.

i, a smeet of five or six, was choking on toxic smog.

i reckon it was about a half hour into the traffic jam that i first threw up. i remember a blinding headache, i remember being confused, i remember dry heaving with my arms and head hanging out the window, the green metal of the car burning my hands and my chin. i don’t remember passing out, but i’m told i lost consciousness before mom was able to get to an off-ramp, because there were no emergency lanes on the highways back then.

i lived. and life went on. what were we going to do, complain? if i’d died, the cause of death probably would’ve been recorded as heatstroke, not carbon monoxide poisoning.

i know i’m probably preaching to the choir here on tumblr. but i really wish i could tell that story to the people who think deregulation is no big deal. i wish they’d put themselves in my mom’s shoes.

or even just look at some old pictures, then look out the window.

ever notice how cityscapes used to have that orange tint and hazy aura? yeah, that’s poison gas.

remember how the mississippi river used to be a stinking soup of baby-shit yellow sludge covered with disturbingly stiff rafts of light orange foam?

i can’t even find pictures of the sludge and foam, i guess they didn’t end up on the internet. the smell was indescribable. that oily shimmer. the reek of dead things. people didn’t boat on the river for pleasure; it smelled too bad, it was too ugly, and you could get super super sick if you touched the water.

and now look at it.

i still wouldn’t want to drink it, but if i fell in i wouldn’t bolt for the shower in a panic, you know?

if the thieving billionaires get their way, we can kiss those sailboats goodbye, and learn the smell of toxic foam once more. the ultra-rich won’t even feel the extra money, they’ve already got more than they could ever touch, they just stash it in offshore accounts to rot, but the rest of us will return to a time of neverending nausea and weird cancers. a time when every elementary school class had at least one kind who’d been born with no fingers or their heart outside their body, and this was just… the way things were.

When I was learning my trade, when my classmates and I were having a chuckle over the “well duh” level of specificity written into the Code of Federal Regulations (try “no hazardous material shall be stored in crew berthing” on for size), I will never forget the silence that followed when our instructor spoke these words:

“Your regulations are written in blood.”

These regulations were not written on a whim. They were written because someone thought they could cut costs by storing however many more pounds of a radioactive, toxic, carcinogenic, or whatever else material in the same rooms where the human beings they paid to transport those materials slept, and then did that, because no one was telling them not to. 

They were written because people died. Horrifically. Because unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering. 

Can I say it again, for those not paying attention? 

I picked Grace from the bunch and named her. From day 1 she only felt comfy around me and only wanted to be near me and no one else in the family.

We developed this amazingly good bond. She can sense when Im sad/panicked/triggered and comes cuddle with me when I do. Whenever I relapsed into selfharm, she would lay on my bandaged up arm to make me feel better and to protect the wounds. She would purr and fall asleep on my arm.

She sleeps in my room and in my bed/lap/neck. She makes me feel good and safe and I love her to bits.

Now I dont live in the best household, so for my mental health i have to move out asap. This could still take a while though. Unfortunately my dad forbid me to Grace with me when I move.

Eventhough she is so important to me, he is convinced she is his becauae he paid for her. (Even though she is fucking terrified of my dad, she wont go near him)

So i proposed a challenge, if this post got 10000 notes, I could take Gracey with me when i move out. That would mean that I have my biggedt support with me in my new safe environment.

Minneapolis Public Schools Trivia

In the next month, schools everywhere are back in session. While some students are less than excited, did they know that some students had school for 11 months in 1840s Minneapolis? Celebrate the upcoming school year with some more trivia about Minneapolis Public Schools!

19th Century

The first elementary (and boarding schools) in Minneapolis were created in 1834 near Lake Harriet. These schools educated both Native and white children. Students woke up at 5 A.M. and followed a strict schedule each day:

sleeping: 8.5 hours 

eating:  3 hours

working: 4 hours

studying: 6 hours

playing: 2.5 hours

Minneapolis first graders were expected to learn how to spell 150 words.

Seventh graders all learned German.

Students were expected to do calisthenic exercises every hour of the school day.

The first Minneapolis private school was opened in St. Anthony in 1849. 

Central Union High was Minneapolis’ first high school. It opened in 1857 and closed in 1863 after a fire.

The first Minneapolis public school system was created in 1860 with $78.65 in its treasury, roughly $2,132.65 in today’s currency.

Some schools ran for 48 weeks a year, the equivalent of 11 months.

20th Century 

By 1939, Minneapolis schools ran for 37 weeks a year, the equivalent of 8.5 months. 

In 1917, vocational training was commonplace in Minneapolis public schools. Girls learned printing, office work, telegraphy (the science of sending and receiving textual and symbolic messages, like the telegram), needlework, and commercial cooking. Boys were enrolled in shop courses run by the Dunwoody Institute. 

In 1923, physical education became mandatory in the state of Minnesota.

Citizenship courses were important in elementary schools. Student councils were common and included 1st-6th graders. In 1952, Pierce Elementary School even allowed its 4th-6th graders to campaign for office before the elections.

Some Minneapolis schools even had “Kindergarten Citizenship Training.” The kindergarteners learned basic skills like sharing, cooperation, and teamwork. But one North Minneapolis school even formed its own “Kindergarten City Council.” Each morning the class “Mayor” and “City Council President” would run meetings. In social studies, the kids would then learn about the real Minneapolis City Council.

Radio workshops were popular in the early 1940s for high school students. Minneapolis had the highest numbers of students in radio courses than any other major U.S. city.

These facts and more are just some of the many that we discovered in the Minneapolis Public Schools Collection. Above photos from the Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection. Click the photos for captions. 

Staff in the Minneapolis History Collection are in the process of completing metadata for over 6500 photographs from the Minneapolis Public Schools. These photos will eventually be available online in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections. Until then, check out many school photos in the Minneapolis Newspaper Photo Collection.

“The fire is still there – we just need a reason why,” she said.

I first met Trish “DeviEight” through roller derby, where she volunteers as a medical staff member to keep us safe during all the collisions and chaos of the sport. A 40-something Minnesota native and a nurse at a local children’s hospital in the Twin Cities, she is the most cynical optimist I’ve ever met, with a dark humor and a bright, genuine laugh. 

When not working long night shifts, Devi, as she’s affectionately known in the roller derby community, volunteers at the Trans Health Coalition shot clinic and speaks about queer issues anywhere and everywhere she can.

Sean Spicer Just Claimed That Hitler Never Used Chemical Weapons

When another reporter asked him to clarify the comment, Spicer fumbled through an explanation and defense.

“I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Spicer said.

“But in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns and dropped them down to innocent into the middle of towns…I appreciate the clarification, that was not the intent,” he said.

Then, after the briefing, he released a statement saying he was not “trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust.”

Then he sent out a clarification to that clarification, changing “innocent people” to “population centers.:

He then clarified the clarification to the clarification, saying "any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”

Northeast, Minneapolis.