A Queer Crip Grows Stuff

But this may be the new normal.

Earlier this week, the CDIP 256 buoy — located in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana — clocked a record reading of 35.0 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit; the warmest detected sea-surface temperature in the history of CDIP.

View the data here:

I’ve been listening to several things on the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Ancient Egypt, which occurred as a result of droughts caused by Atlantic current disruptions that were less severe than is looking likely within the next 25 years. Disruption in food systems destroys civilisations.

I think a lot about Tolkien’s thoughts on despair and how it drains the ability to fight for the future. I am aware that, as a Northern European, I am very literally in a better place to survive this than people in the Global South, many of whom are already suffering the impacts of climate change.

About the best thing I can say, if you also live in the Global North, is to be galvanised by our responsibility to help people who need to flee uninhabitable areas however we can, whether that’s political or personal (or ofc both). We need to step up in building stronger communities *and* on putting pressure on the state to arrest and reverse their fascist leanings. And we need to be there for refugees and work on actively accepting and absorbing people into our communities, including old and poor and disabled people.

We need to *help*. And if we despair we won’t.

The way we survive as humans is by doing things for each other. And if we die, which we will eventually no matter what we do, we hopefully help there to be a world where there are still humans, and there are still other creatures we value too.

I’m thinking a lot about “Let this radicalise you rather than lead you to despair.” It’s the best thing that’s working for me so far about taking this in.

We can’t despair. There is work to be done.

Being a full time mobility aid user with chronic fatigue and sensory overload makes use of public transport nightmarish.

If *real* efforts were made to make every train and every station fully wheelchair-accessible, *without* having to rely on unreliable or downright abusive station staff to put ramps up and, down, it would be a fantastic *start*. On good days, I *might* be able to use it for certain kinds of journeys.

However, it still wouldn’t solve the issues with sensory overload, or the problems getting to train stations from my home due to severe chronic pain and chronic fatigue.

If overdo it when I’m out, I *crash*. I cannot expend all my resources getting places. I then cannot do anything when I am there, and am unable to get home safely.

This is not that uncommon a problem. My issues are due to hEDS, POTS and autism, but they are incredibly common symptoms of Long COVID and ME/CFS resulting from Long COVID. So, unsurprisingly, folk with these needs are becoming increasingly common as Covid continues to rampage through the population. *Some of us need transportation we have control over*, and we need environmentally sustainable options to do this.

While expanding the public rail network, making it completely affordable (or, realistically, free) and making it fully accessible for wheelchair and other mobility aid users, children travelling alone from about age 8, elderly people with limited eyesight and hearing and parents travelling with infants would be an *incredible* start and massively increase usage of public transport, there are those of us who will always need at least part-time access to vehicles which can come to our homes and that *we* have control over, that are just as affordable as public transport, and the environmental movement needs to acknowledge this, plan for it, and stop treating it as selfishness, laziness and all the other “fun” terms disabled folk face constantly just for trying to live, especially outside our homes.

She was a very very good girl when letting me get it off, but her fur is *super* thick. I can only imagine how difficult getting it off without bursting it would have been with tweezers.

Remember to always check yourself and your pets whenever you’ve been out in the long grass. No one needs bloodborne diseases.

Some recent pics from my rewilded front garden with the bird feeder and obelisk trellises I got for my 40th birthday.

The pond is an upcycled Belfast sink my friend Rhi found for me 💚

The fruit saplings are cherry, apple, pear and plum, a birthday present as little bare root babies from my lovely OH back in 2021.

Working on a mixed shrub and tree hedge, mostly from cuttings from my lovely folks’ garden and from some wild trees too.

Two digital animal sketches in Medibang with the Apple Pencil because I needed to do *something* briefly creative or I was going to explode. I’m getting so damn frustrated with searching for what I’m looking for in 17th and 18th century newspapers and pamphlets in databases

One corvid (I think rook?) pinching horsehair from a horse’s rump for her nest, and one baby possum pinching a drink from a doggo’s bowl on a porch, both using random photos from the internet as a reference.

Industrial farming is a fucking dystopian nightmare. Please do your best to help the survivors.