Good News: Developed A Personality

When I moved, I’m certain they understood I was leaving because I had all my stuff and gave them lots of food and compliments.

But, they chased down my friend who lived in the next burrough over. They had recognised that friend with me several times and followed them to their house when they couldn’t find me.

They adopted my friend and it was now my friend’s job to bring them snacks and receive the presents.

This was maybe 6-7 years ago.

I visited London last year. Went to see my friend. The crows all not only recognised me, they tracked me down. We got into my friend’s flat and not twenty minutes later there was chaos on the balcony.

We open the curtains, the entire fucking murder is there shouting because they wanted to see me.

then who's going to make us straight

This is not metaphorical. I mean actual, literal pieces of paper/plastic/metal/whatever explicitly erected to inform the public.

“How did you know this was the right trail?” I read the sign.

“Wow, how did you know what that flower is?” There’s a SIGN.

“How did you know we needed to use the side door?” THERE IS A SIGN POSTED ON THE FRONT DOOR.

Just…why are we having such different experiences of the world? People can read. I KNOW they can read. There’s nothing wrong with their vision.

Just. READ. THE. GOD. DAMN. SIGN.

This also applies to:

Syllabi

I had two conversations at about the same time: 1. I was remarking that a woman at the next self-checkout was dismayed at having to use card, she wanted to use cash -- at a machine that says "CARD ONLY" two places on the machine in addition to having to be tapped through on the starting screen. And a friend commented that she understood how the lady missed the signs: Why should she read text that she wasn't looking for, when 99% of unsolicited writing in the wild is an advertisement?

And I wouldn't have even been able to fathom the how of this except 2. I'd been complaining to my brother about people being very bad at reading out loud. Hesitating, mangling phrases and emphasis by not knowing how the structure was, etc, in a text that they were presumably at least a little familiar with (bible reading in a church). And he said, "Addie, you and me are freaks. Reading is our first language. When we look at English text, it's read before we even know we're reading it. Even if we don't want to read it. But other people, reading isn't their first language. They have to actually put effort into it and interpret it, like if you were reading in German, or if I was going over notes I took in shorthand."

The Brittish goverment was unwilling to do anything for two reasons. First was the laissez-faire capitalistic ideology, that put the rights of property owners to make profits above human lives. Rent freeze was unthinkable and they even were unwilling to do proper relief efforts as free food would lower the cost of food. The second reason was distain for the Irish, and the thought that they were “breeding too much” and the famine was a natural way to trim down the population, aka genocidal reasoning.

This is why it’s important to stress it was not a potato famine. The potato blinght was all over Europe but only in Ireland there was a famine. The reasons behind it had nothing to do with potatos and everything to do with the Brittish.

Apparently what made Choctaw want to offer relief to Irish was the news about the Doolough Tragedy. Hundreds of starving people were gathered for inspection to verify they were entitled to recieve relief. The officials would for *some reason* not do that and instead left to a hunting lodge 19 kilometers away to spend the night and said to the starvqing people they would have to walk there by morning to be inspected. The weather conditions were terrible and many of them died completely needlessly during the walk thoroung day and night.

This apparently reminded the Choctaw of their own very recent (and much more explicit and bigger scale) experiences of ethnic clensing, where they were forcibly relocated. It was basically a death march and thousands of Choctaw died from the terrible conditions also completely needlessly.

In 2015 a memorial named Kindred Spirits was installed in Southern Ireland to commemorate the Chactow donation.

Then in 2020: