Where was humanity?

Where were the governments and organizations? Where are you? You who watch and grieve for a few minutes, then pass the image along like an advertisement. You who have food, medicine, and even the internet to cry out... but you remain silent.

Why are my children in Gaza dying of starvation? Not because the world is powerless, but because it chose not to see.

What is happening is an indictment of a world that has made humanity a choice, not an innate quality. An indictment of everyone who remained silent, everyone who saw and remained silent, everyone who liked the image without moving.

We don't need images that shake us... we need hearts that don't remain silent. Please share our post, my friends, maybe you can change this bitter reality and donate to us what you can. Your donation will save us from the famine that is ravaging the bodies of my young children who are now suffering from malnutrition. Believe me, I am writing to you now with a trembling heart, eyes filled with tears, and a wish that my children will survive this deadly famine. I am completely helpless and you are the ones who can save us. Thank you all and I am very sorry for bothering you.

Your friend,

Hossam Al-Qazzaz

vetted by @gazavetters , and (#287) on their list of verified campaigns.

vetted by @gazavetters , and (#287) on their list of verified campaigns.

I AM THE TAX SALAMANDER

HERE TO COLLECT THE TAX

Uh oh! He sounds pretty serious, better donate some money to Mahmoud here:

Well, we gotta start by saying that these concepts of race were made by people that are labeled as "white". So I can't just slap a label on everybody and it be The Way. But it really depends on where you are and how the culture of that place will treat you. For example, there's a lot of Black people in the Dominican Republic that really despise the idea of being Black and do not claim it, but if you put us right next to each other... It's like... 😐 Well...

That said, I've always considered Melanesians to be Black. They look just like me. There was a video of a guy from Fiji and when I say he could have been my cousin? Like I could not have told you that some of them couldn't be from down the street, and if they came to me and said they were Black, I'd be delighted to include them. Like I said in the first paragraph, if they were to come to the US, they'd get tossed in with us real quick.

My name is Tawfiq Al-Tatri. I am 40 years old, a father of five, and a survivor—but survival here in Gaza is not truly living. My children and I have lost everything. Our home, our safety, our community—gone.

We now live in a refugee camp, crammed inside a fragile tent, shivering through the freezing nights, unsure where we will be tomorrow. We have been displaced over and over again, fleeing destruction, heartbreak, and loss. My home was bombed with my family inside. By some miracle, we survived—but so many of our neighbors and relatives did not.

As a father, my only mission now is to protect my children, to give them a future beyond war and suffering. I dream of getting them to safety, away from the fear that haunts their every step. But I cannot do it alone.

That is why I am reaching out, with hope in my heart, asking for your kindness. Your support can help us cover the costs of leaving Gaza for Egypt—giving my children a chance at life, at healing, at simply being children again.

Please, if you can, stand with us. Help me save my children from the trauma of war. Every donation, every share, every prayer brings us closer to safety

Thank you from the depths of my heart.

I have been in the stacks at the library, reading a lot of magazine and journal articles, selecting those that are from over fifty years ago.

I do this because I want to see how people thought and the tools they had to come up with their ideas, and see if I can get perspective on the thoughts and ideas of nowadays

I've been looking at the journals and magazines about nature, gardening, plants, and wildlife, focusing on those from 1950-1970 or thereabouts. These are some unstructured observations.

The discourse about spraying poisons on everything in your garden/lawn has been virtually unchanged for the past 70 years; the main thing that's changed is the specific chemicals used, which in the past were chemicals now known to be horribly dangerous and toxic. In many cases, just as today, the people who opposed the poisons were considered as whackos overreacting to something mostly safe with a few risks that could be easily minimized. In short, history is not on the pesticides' side.

Compared with 50-70 years ago, today the "wilderness" areas of the USA are doing much better nowadays, but it actually appears that the areas with lots of human habitation are doing much worse nowadays.

I am especially stricken by references to wildflowers. There has definitely been a MASSIVE disappearance of flowers in the Eastern United States. I can tell this because of what flowers the old magazines reference as common or familiar wildflowers. Many of them are flowers that seem rare to me, which I have only seen in designated preserves.

There are a lot more lepidopterans (butterflies and moths) presumed to be familiar to the reader. And birds.

Yes, land ownership in the USA originated with colonization, but it appears that the preoccupation with who owns every little piece of land on a very nitpicking level has emerged more recently? In the magazines there is a sense of natural places as an unacknowledged commons. It is assumed that a person has access to "The creek," "The woods," "The field," "The pond" for simple rambling or enjoyment without personally owning property or directly asking permission to go onto another person's property.

There is very little talk of hiking and backpacking. I don't think I saw anything in the magazines about hiking or going on hikes, which is strange because nowadays hiking is the main outdoor activity people think of. Nature lovers 50-70 years ago described many more activities that were not very physically active, simply watching the birds or tending to one's garden or going on a nice walk. I feel this HAS to do with the immediately above point.

Gardening seems like it was more common, like in general. The discussion is about gardening without poisons or unsustainable practices, instead of trying to convince people to garden at all.

Overall, the range of animals and plants culturally considered to be common or familiar "backyard" creatures has narrowed significantly, even as the overall conservation status of animals and plants has improved.

This, to me, suggests two things that each may be possible: first, that the soils and environments of our suburbs and houses have sustained such a high level of cumulative damage that the life forms they once supported are no longer able to live, or second, that our way of managing our yards and inhabited areas has become steadily more destructive. Perhaps it may be the case that the minimum "acceptable" standard of lawn management has become more fastidious.

In conclusion, I feel that our relationship with nature has become more distant, even as the number of people who abstractly support the preservation of "wilderness" has increased. In the past, these wilderness preservation initiatives were a harder sell, but somehow, more people were in more direct contact with the more mundane parts of nature like flowers and birds, and had a personal relationship with those things.

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This little family is growing up on the steps of a currently unoccupied house in my neighborhood. Their mom ‘belongs’ to someone in the neighborhood, and he has given me permission to take as many of the kittens as I’d like when they’re older…….Tough decisions. I’m going away in a few weeks for a work trip, and I’m not comfortable asking my partner to take care of all of our pets + 4 babies without any help, and it looks like everyone’s going to need immediate, costly vet care. I’d like to help them out, especially knowing the other option is watching them grow up outdoors (and get hit by cars/get attacked by dogs, as I’ve seen many times in my neighborhood), but I have to think on whether or not that’s something my family can reasonably handle at this time. We did drop off food and water to help Mama Cat, who isn’t being fed or cared for as she should be, and I’ll be back tomorrow to treat the kittens & clean their eyes. <3