Kay Potter

Apologies... this is about a month and a half late (and tumblr won't let me reply to the asks directly or add links 🙃) but here is my list of tomarry/harrymort fic recs! It's quite long so click to read >>

And by then it wouldn’t even be Purple Corn anymore, it would be a purple color variant that tastes and otherwise is much like the generic Sturdy Corn For Walmart.

Some of these are specialized for popcorn, some for corn meal, they all have different purposes. Maize is really remarkable.

They also authored my favourite listing for bean seeds in the world:

Like, can you fucking imagine what a loss it would be if just a single person stopped doing this? If that singular company simply no longer makes the barrel. If those sporadic soy makers moved on or lost their business. Can you even begin to imagine? You can't. There is an entire taste that you have never experienced for yourself because it is dying. And one day it will die and you will never taste it and neither will anyone else ever again.

Saffron crocuses are dying because of climate change. Because of the rising temperatures and drier climates in Iran, the crocuses aren't growing as well, and of course by harvesting the saffron stamens, that prevents the crocuses from being able to go to seed. The balance of this incredibly important historic ingredient is being undone out of circumstances beyond the crocus farmers' control. One day there is a very real chance that a staple ingredient in food across the entirety of the Middle East will no longer exist. No more shirini keshmeshi; no more yakhni pulao; no more mandi djaj. An entire taste will be erased from the world, and all these foods, all these proofs of humanity, of the connections we have with our past and our ancestors, it will be severed as simply as if by a cutting knife.

How can I even begin to cope with the depths of that grief? How do you live with the knowledge that these things could very likely die in your lifetime? That you could witness the atrophying of entire swathes of history and culture happen in realtime, because of greed, because of callous uncaring for others?

How can I explain to anyone why every time I cook with saffron it feels as if I am saying goodbye to someone I love, for the ones who will come after me? Where do I begin to describe to the children who come next the food that our ancestors have eaten for countless generations will never exist for them in the way they were intended to be?

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

If you have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, you’ll owe the hospital a lot of money. (I got into a car wreck and broke my ankle and my arm. My hospital bill was around $20,000)

You’ll also owe the ambulance provider, if you need one. (My ambulance bill was about $800)

You may get separate bills from the anesthesiologist or surgeon. (My anesthesiologist bill was $1,700)

You may need follow-up appointments. (My orthopedic surgeon billed me for the appointments and his surgery together and it was about $1,000)

You’ve also got to pay for medical equipment you need afterward, like crutches or a walking boot. (Mine cost about $75)

Altogether, I ended up with almost $24,000 in medical debt from one car accident. That’s a really scary number for someone like me who makes $10/hr at a 12 hour a week job.

I got my debt down to $1075 by making some phone calls and submitting some paperwork.

The first thing I did was contact the hospital. They don’t make it easy to find, but many hospitals (perhaps most hospitals?) have financial assistance programs for people who can’t afford medical bills. I don’t make a lot of money, and I have bills to pay, so they were able to help me. I called the billing department and asked if they had any assistance programs for low income people who can’t pay their bills. I had to call multiple times, and I got transferred in circles by people who didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I got an appointment with someone in “Eligibility Services” (I don’t know what other hospitals call it, if it’s something different). I had to bring my pay stubs and copies of all of my bills. When I got to the hospital for the appointment, nobody knew what I was talking about so I had to wander a little to find where I needed to go. I spoke with the guy in Eligibility Services, and I waited for a decision on how much of the bill they would forgive. A month later, I got a call telling me it was totally forgiven.

I did the same thing for my ambulance bill and my anesthesiologist, but the process was a LOT easier. I just had to mail some paperwork and it was totally forgiven.

I didn’t bother with the medical equipment suppliers, since the bills came from separate companies and I didn’t feel like going through the process twice for $75. I was assured at the hospital that they had similar programs for debt forgiveness, so I could have probably avoided paying that too.

The only thing I couldn’t get taken care of was the surgeon/follow-up appointment cost, but they were able to put me on a no-interest payment plan.

So I don’t understand why motherfuckers be driving recklessly without any regard for human life?

“Recently, a friend of mine told me that she felt guilty that she hadn’t accomplished more during the last year of the pandemic. Now, I’ve heard that a few times. And I have a feeling we’re gonna be hearing that more and more.”

Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!

It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.

Like, it’s literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.

We’ve listened to Snoop, Lil Wayne, Kendrick, Eminem, and too many others to name rap about how long their dicks are and how good they supposedly fuck for YEARS.

This👏🏿is👏🏿how👏🏿representation👏🏿works👏🏿.

Maybe you can’t identify with it so it doesn’t resonate with the same but somebody is hearing it and feeling seen in a world/genre that regularly ignores them.