Ruth

I got multiple asks about this and I want each and every one of you to know that I love you madly. Mwah mwah mwah.

Former Washington State Fish Commissioner Leslie Darwin (1875-1955) was an absolute shitheel of a man.

The year is 1915. Salmon populations are plummeting at unpredecented and alarming rates. President Roosevelt has threatened to federalize fishery management (and fishery income) if Washington State can't do something about it. You (a former journalist and newspaper owner known as "the radio howler"; refused to pay employees back wages; arrested for blackmailing advertisers of your newspaper; temporarily convicted of criminal libel) have been appointed the new State Fish Commissioner.

You believe there are three main culprits: the dams, the canneries, and the Indians.

So, first you tackle the dams. If the dams are in places that would obstruct salmon migration, they're legally required to build fishways to allow salmon to travel past the dams to their spawning grounds. However, many dams don't. Obviously, you enforce the—

Uh, I mean, make backroom deals with the dams to install fish hatcheries so that you can... collect salmon eggs in an attempt to brute-force repopulate them. (The science does not support this pet project.) (All seven hatcheries built this way will later be abandoned, because they don't work.) (This is extremely illegal, but luckily the governor will persuade the legislature to change the law so you don't face malfeasance charges.)

Well, okay, at least you tried something, right? What's next—the canneries. Perfect. You actually ran a series of aggressively anti-cannery articles in your newspaper before it was bought out and closed by said canneries. Of course you can crack down on the—

Uh, I mean, sell them hundreds of thousands of pounds of salmon taken from the fish hatcheries after spawning at under-market prices? Sure, that'll show them?

Now that you've taken care of those two major threats to fishing, what's left? That's right—the Indians, a threat to conservation in Washington State on par with every dam and cannery out there. After all, the Yakama tribe eats as much fish in a year as one of the state's 31 canneries processes in a day! (Hang on a second.) At least you can—

... bring charges in the Superior Court against 71-year-old elder of the Yakama tribe, Alex Towessnute, for... fishing at Top Tut Prosser Dam. After all, you argue, "the only reason the Indians wanted to fish at this particular place was because the fish were stopped here by the dam, and the Indians were enabled to wade into the water and make a wholesale slaughter of them." And, when the judge dismisses the charges (because he was fishing in a traditional manner in a traditional fishing ground, according to the rights laid out in the Yakama treaty, and the potential ecological danger posed by Indian fishing does not even come close to justifying the state's intervention over a federal treaty), you appeal the case to the Washington State Supreme Court.

The majority, written by a man who made his name legislating against workman's comp, will reject the premise of “Indian sovereignty,” arguing that settlers never viewed the Yakama as “anything other than mere... and incompetent occupants of the soil," refer to the Yakama as “a dangerous child... to be both protected and restrained," argue (in flagrant violation of federal jurisprudence) that Indigenous rights are not absolute and inherent, to be respected by the state, but should be viewed as gifts given by a benevolent state to the “savage tribes, whom it was generally tempting and always easy to destroy," and agree with you that conservation laws are necessary to restrain the Yakama from “squander[ing] vast areas of fertile land before our eyes” and ought to be applied to the tribes as equally as to the profiteering canneries and the hydroelectric dams. (Well, hopefully nobody will look too closely at what laws are being applied to the canneries and dams!)

So that's settled. And the Yakama have agreed to respect the state's laws, as long as they can have one final fishing festival at Top Tut Prosser Dam, which you agreed to, so that's all right. Even though everyone else in the state agrees with them, and thousands of people have gathered at their fish festival, once they're finished, you can put all this behind—

In 2017, twenty-one tribes brought Washington State before the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to replace highway culverts that prevented salmon from passing through streams. Bob Ferguson argued for the state.

14 years ago when I had recently moved to Alaska, I went hiking with an Aleut friend, and she pointed to a feather lying on the ground and said "hey that's a bald eagle tail feather, you should grab it!" and I was like "uhh I'm very white and that's very illegal" and she went "they're fuckin everywhere up here man. I have 20." so she grabs it off the ground and hands it to me and says "there, now it's a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person."

and I'm like, okay, cool, I guess this is how we do things in Alaska. nice.

so I keep this bald eagle tail feather around for years. display it in my home among other cherished memorabilia from places I've lived and visited, etc.

on a whim, I have just now looked it up. there is no exemption to that law for a ceremonial gift from an indigenous person. the last 7 years I lived in the US, I was technically a bald eagle poacher.

the law against 'picking feathers up off the ground' means that you can't go shoot an eagle then sell the feathers on etsy by saying you 'just found them'. you can't own them no matter where they came from, which makes sure that they're not going to come from any birds killed and then secretly disposed of.

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

Enter "How to Eat Well for Adults With ADHD" by Rebecca King.

I am about to sound like a sponsored ad, but this book is absolutely incredible. It's written by a nutritionist with ADHD, and does include some recipes, but they only make up a part of the third section of the book. The rest of it is focused on practical, broadly applicable advice for neurodivergent folks (and frankly, other disabled people) on unlearning internalized ableism around food, how to best organize your kitchen and meal plan (and what to do when meal plans fail), the connections between food and dopamine and how best to use food for stimulation in a healthy way, how hyperfocus and time blindness can get in the way of eating well, how to make sure you're eating enough while on stimulants, the fact that many ADHD people also have ARFID (and the book even emphasizes that ARFID is an eating disorder, not just "picky eating"!!), and takes the strong stance that we should do away with the idea of "picky eaters" altogether in favor of a more compassionate stance on people's complicated relationships with food and eating.

It is strongly anti-diet culture while still emphasizing that good nutrition is important. It has extremely specific tips that make my ADHD heart sing a little, like how best to store specific vegetables so they last the maximum amount of time in your fridge (since we are all very good at forgetting they are there) and what tools can make doing the dishes more manageable. And perhaps most importantly, as someone with severe sensory sensitivities and some very real trauma from having them ignored as a kid and being shamed for them, it made me cry a little bit with how understanding and compassionate it is.

Anyway. I am going to buy a copy of my own immediately, and I cannot recommend it enough. If you, like me, are trying to unfuck your eating habits and neat someone to hold your hand a little in the process -- while still making you feel like an adult, and still offering actionable tips along the way -- this book could be a lifesaver.

Polish folks LARPing as Americans, some photographs of (by Maciej Margielski)

More phots here.