The Middens of History

And then I went to the USAmerican Midwest

Rains frequently, but the worst is like standing under a bathroom shower. Genuinely inhospitable rainstorms are uncommon.

Along the coast, it's pretty easy in most areas to walk to at least one store, or else there's usually a bus or shuttle available. There are sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere.

It's a temperate boreal rainforest, so while there are many freshwater lakes and rivers, they're usually pretty cold. The biggest danger is typically getting caught in a strong current, and the most dangerous animals in swimming distance are on land.

Earthquakes happen almost every day, but the vast majority go unnoticed. Buildings are designed to withstand bigger seismic activity, so unless it's a 5 or higher it just kind of feels like having low blood sugar for a second. There are no tornados

Rural Illinois, USA:

One minute it's sunny, then ten minutes later that distant smudge on the horizon has swallowed the entire sky in black clouds and the water is coming down like waterfall and you literally CANNOT SEE. Then there's a crash like cymbals and you need to get indoors because the thunder and lightening are on TOP of you

No sidewalks until you are in the smack dab center of town, which is a three hour walk or twenty minute drive from wherever you are.

There aren't many natural bodies of water other than small ponds and creeks, and because the environment is so much warmer, those are filled with snapping turtles that can grow bigger than a nine year old child and water snakes that are incredibly venomous. These are paired with leeches and mosquitos for that sweet umami flavor.

He took me up into the Laurel Highlands, past where stupid old British General Braddock got himself shot in the back and where George Washington built and surrendered his first fort to the French and their Indian allies (though the enemy never got his cannon because George hid them).  We got to the end of the track our family had always taken up into the mountains, and Pa gave me a panic button if I wanted to quit.  He’d come and get me then, but he’d give up on me, too.  That was another thing we knew without saying.

Long story short, I was coming down a hill my second day, worn out because I’d gotten little sleep in the cold, and upset because I hadn’t seen or heard any birds or animals let alone an eagle (I wasn’t what you would call an observant kid) when I tripped and fell.  Down I went, and tumbled.  I stopped on the bank of a stream,

I had my first aid badger from Girl Scouts, and supplies in my back pack, so I soaked my sprained ankle in the icy creek, then bound it up.  By the time I found a branch long and strong enough to lean on, it was coming on sunset.  I had two more days before Pa started to track me.  I wanted at least to be partway back before he found me. 

I had given up on that eagle.  He’d have to wait for my sisters Kim and Dani to get big enough.  They’d find theirs; they were better in the woods than me already.  I was just a daydreamer, someone who never had any sense.  Put me to shelling peas or doing dishes and I’d take twice as long as anyone else, because I’d be telling myself stories.  That’s what I did that night, to keep my mind off my pain.  I told myself stories of brave girls who found their eagles and went off to be soldiers (girls weren’t allowed to be in the Army then) or joined the FBI (we weren’t allowed to be agents, either).  If the owls who hooted or the deer who drank at the stream liked the story, that was good, too.

I must have dozed off sometime before dawn.  When I woke, a golden eagle stood by my hand.  Not a bald eagle, like all those in my family, or like my friends’ parents had, or like people had on TV.  A golden eagle, a big fellow with a trout in his beak.  He dropped it on my knee.

At first I couldn’t breathe.  When I could talk, I said, “Thanks, but I have jerky, and peanut butter, and celery, and … things.  You eat it.”  And he did.

When Pa saw me limping on the track three days from where he’d dropped me, dirty and crazy-looking with twigs in my hair and no eagle on my shoulder, he stopped and looked at me, his weathered face like stone.  Then Anthony Wayne, his eagle, began to raise hell on his shoulder as Tecumseh glided down from his tree top.  We’d found it was easier for him to fly ahead and wait for me than for him to ride on my shoulder, at least while I had one bum foot.  This time, though, for the purposes of meeting family, he settled on my shoulder.

I describe things all the time, but I can never describe the look on my Pa’s face.  I only know that he reached a hand out to Tecumseh, who stretched out and touched his fingers with his beak.  Finally Pa said, “It’s been right in front of me all along.  I’ve been trying to make you a strong member of the family, and you are strong, but you’re also a medicine woman.  A dreamer.  And this is a dreamer’s eagle.”

“His name’s Tecumseh,” I said.

Tecumseh fluffed himself up with pride.

I have a freaking gryphon.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my darling Goldeneye to bits, but seriously, growing up was hell.

First of all, even though she was small when she came to me during my eagle ceremony, “small” for a gryphon is not actually small.  I live in the suburbs, and public high school was a nightmare.  I was pretty much an outcast, called a freak basically every day.  Because, of course, everyone else had eagles perching on their shoulders and looking cool, and here’s little ol’ me, running along late for class with a huge lion-bodied animal tromping along, trying to get into my bag for fish.

Second, I am tiny.  I scrape 5′3″ with my arms up.  I jump to fool the doctors into thinking I’m 5′5″.  My half-eagle picks me up regularly to groom me and I’m stuck there between her paws until she decides she has had enough.  She’s honestly got the worst personality traits of both cats and birds and it’s insane.

But, to be honest, flying is awesome.  And nobody tries to beat me or my friends up anymore.

Most kids in my class ended up with red-tailed hawks–that’s what the summoning ceremonies were geared toward. I skipped a grade so I wasn’t old enough when my class did the big ceremony out on the football field, but my girl scout camp held its own ceremony over the summer, and that’s where I got Persephone, my turkey buzzard.

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

On one hand: FAR fewer fireworks parties this year!

- Only nine to last year's thirteen - three of them had the good sense to be firing their recreational explosives out over the local reservoir - That's far from foolproof - and really bad for the fish - also y'all are RIGHT NEXT to where the Bald Eagles are nesting - but congratulations on at least attempting some risk mitigation!

On the other hand.

um it’s really not considering that jews make up less than 2% of the global population at less than 16 million

Judaism is a foundational religion. There are fourteen offshoots, including but not limited to Islam, Christianity, Baha'i, Druze, and Rastafarian. Very literally half the world is Christian or Muslim. Islam is just over 25% and Christianity is almost 29%.

It's a form of supercessionism.

Also I regret to tell you we're not 2% of the population. We're 2% of the American population.

I think what a lot of people underestimate is just how much road there is in your city. And just how many directions the crew gets pulled.

For our city of around 50k people there are 8 of us.

Also, crack sealing is a wholly temporary measure, meant to slow the break-up of the roads, it’s not a permanent fix.

Roads tend to get closed for months on end because we have to tear the whole thing up, then, depending on the class of road, we either have to hammer-drill into concrete to lay rebar and the pour concrete, or we can get straight to paving. If it’s a road requiring concrete we’re required to wait at least 24 hours for it to set.

So after 2 days we’re finally able to pave. But the city allocates one (two if we’re lucky) 5 ton truck to transport material.

A relatively short paving job requires at a minimum of 60 tons. So that’s 12 trips to the asphalt factory and back. Each ton is around $80.

TL;DR

ok so first of all lets start with the t rex. her very first moment is the goat leg ending up on the car, but we can see in the next shot that she is very capable of swallowing the goat whole. so how did that leg get there? given evidence that t. rexes were likely social creatures, i like to imagine that the leg on the car was more “here you go have part of my meal because you’re small” for the humans

next is her communication. i want to look at one specific thing, which was actually the thing that prompted the post

to me, that certainly looks like eye pinning. eye pinning is a behavior in birds that signals high stimulation. here’s what it looks like in a bird

it can be positive or negative, but in this case it’s probably not negative, because there’s nothing forcing the rex to stay there. if she wanted to leave the situation she could hit the bricks

the continual roaring also sort of suggests play behavior to me. there’s not really any sense in making a shitload of noise at your prey (unless you’re trying to scare them out of cover, but we know she doesn’t need to do that because we see she’s strong enough to just break into the car) so, especially because they keep screaming, that reads way more like “im making noises and they’re making noises back ^w^” then it does as trying to intimidate prey for some reason

play behavior also makes sense because we know, canonically, she’s crazy understimulated. alan grant says as much when he mentions that they aren’t feeding her in a way that promotes hunting behavior. the way she noses at the jeep and spins it really just looks more like curious interaction than anything, as well as all the chasing people she does

next, the raptors. their really famous scene is the kitchen, but first let’s establish some facts about them. we know from muldoon and what we’re shown that:

- they’re smart enough to use one of their own as a distraction for flanking maneuvers

- they’re good at problem solving enough to wait until the electric fences are turned off to systematically test them for vulnerabilities

- they’re absurdly fast. “60 mph on open ground” fast

- they are absolutely not in a big enough enclosure

- they’re not fed in a way that promotes hunting behavior either

so when you put all this information together and then look at the kitchen scene, i don’t believe for even one second that the “hide behind the counter” routine is fooling those two raptors for any time at all. that entire sequence of loudly scrambling around the kitchen while something that can keep pace with a cheetah pretends it can’t catch you? yeah that makes WAY more sense as play behavior than it does hunting, especially since we see numerous times that there are many things on the island easier to catch and eat than a bunch of skinny humans (this goes for the rex, too!)

the bit with the noises is also true here. more true, if anything. muldoon tells us the raptors are ambush predators, so why on earth would they get into a hunting ground and then risk scaring their prey off with the loud barking calls? “hi we’re here come out and play” is a much more sensible use of a call loud enough to hurt a human’s ears from across a room in that situation

They take him home. They give him the Hebrew name Kal-El and the American name Clark so he will fit in. They know what it is to be different. There is no Hebrew school in Smallville so they teach him at home, and study Torah together. When he shows special abilities, they wonder to each other if he is the Moshiach. Not for the strength of his body, but for the strength of his kindness. He always seems to be helping others, delivering them from harm, as he was delivered to them. They never tell him this, but they teach him about the obligations without measure. He's a natural.

At school, he is side-eyed for being different. When he displays eccentricities, the villagers shrug and say "maybe it's a Jewish thing." The Kents make sure he values his education, and is always home for Shabbas dinner.

His is bar-mitzva'd at the nearest shul, a few towns over. They didn't know his birthday, so they chose one near Parshat Shemot. Now they worry that was too on-the-nose, but he gives a moving d'var about the obligation to speak truth to power.

As he comes into his own and tries to be a hero, he hides his identity from the public, not out of shame, but to keep his adopted parents safe. They've been persecuted enough.

When he moves to the big city for a job at a newspaper, Pa is so proud he cries. Clark uses his journalistic skills to expose corruption, give voice to the neglected and oppressed, and research his own origins. When he learns the truth about Krypton and his birth parents' desperate bid to send him to safety, Ma and Pa are not at all surprised that they were right.

When Clark brings Lois home, he assures his parents she is a nice Jewish girl, but they're just glad she's a mensch. They step on a glass to remember the destruction of Krypton, and stand under a chuppah quilted by Ma.

A white billionaire spews lies about him, trying to spread fear of the stranger in their midst. He comes out in public and says "There's nothing more American than being an immigrant."

When the government turns against immigrants, he stands on the side of the protestors and protects. Tear gass does nothing to him. He makes himself a shield. He writes article after article in the Daily Planet, making sure the public knows what their government is doing, that immigrants know their rights, that the powerful are put on notice. When they start rounding people up, he says "Never again."

They were! Superman was created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish boys, sons of immigrants.

Endurance runners

My first filet crochet piece! Its boarders aren't as neat as i'd like but i hid them under the frame lol. This was my first time working with thin string and i love how far a little ball takes you

he's anidala's permanent third wheel. literally attached at the hip with anakin, full force dyad going on, their bond is so intense and lifelong and unbreakable and yet incredibly platonic. the twins have a whole additional parent who a) did not sign up for this and b) is not now nor has ever been romantically involved with their actual parents, and yet is decidedly part of the throuple somehow

jedi master obi-wan kenobi did not volunteer to be a platonic addition to the amidala-skywalker family, yet somehow "family outings" always include him? he's taking shifts in the night when the twins are young - temporarily, obviously, as an act of compassion and friendship - but then he somehow ends up with a permanent room in the amidala-skywalker household and everyone just... rolls with that? he has a whole separate life going on at the jedi temple, so why is he on the chore chart? and doing the chores? and getting mad when the space dishwasher is suboptimally packed? and he's ended up on the rotation of people the twins cry for??? they've got 'mama', 'dada', and 'o-bba'???? and that's him??!??!?

obi-wan is adopted into the family in much the way of a feral cat: he has no intention of joining them and is actively hostile to the idea, only to look around a year later and realise he's become a key and foundational member. despite, and this is critical, having no romantic involvement whatsoever in the married-with-kids scenario

I posted this poll because my spouse thinks the above arrangement is reasonable and their prerogative. They feel that what is theirs is theirs, and they don't have to share it with their spouse, and wouldn't expect me to share what's mine with them if the tables were turned. I deliberately avoided using language in the poll that made any of the responses leading, because I didn't want to influence the results. When my spouse and I have arguments about how few of my basic needs they meet, and how vulnerable I feel, they tend to dig their heels in and insist that defining what a partnership looks like is up to the individuals and it's ok to deviate from the norm (which I agree with in principle, but only if both parties agree to the arrangements and can do so freely, not through coercion), and sometimes I genuinely feel like I'm crazy for thinking that there's a basic standard we get to expect from each other mutually, not in this one-sided way, and that my partner is being being both neglectful and controlling at the same time. I posted this poll because even when my spouse makes me feel like I'm being unreasonable, I know in my gut I'm not (not least of all because we very much did talk about our expectations of each other in both the best and worst potential situations, and what they promised me is not what I'm living now).

To see how many people have responded by straightforwardly calling this financial abuse, and to see how few people see this as normal, is validating to say the least. I've begun the process of building myself a life raft out of this situation, and I think I needed to see this feedback - so many strangers responding to what I hope is as neutral a summary of the situation as I intended it to be, and still calling it like I see it.

What I didn't put in the above poll is the even crazier stuff: A few years ago I ended contact with my abusive family, and my spouse promised to take care of me. Not long after they stopped giving me emotional support and asked me to seek it from my friends instead of them. When my computer, my main work tool, suddenly stopped working, they would only help me pay for a new one if I paid them back for it (they put me on a payment plan, but it was better than a bank loan because there was no interest and they let late payments slide). I also contracted a serious chronic illness because my partner was careless and ignored my existing health issues which made me vulnerable, and they failed to take care of me to the point I wasn't even eating properly while in bed with a fever, and for months after. Any support they gave was won at the cost of arguments I didn't have energy for, and reluctantly, but to friends and family my partner presented themselves as a caretaker.

I've struggled to work steadily and most of my limited income went to repaying the cost of my computer, so I depleted any savings I had left after the pandemic. As a result I sometimes couldn't even afford basics like toiletries or even clothes (I once showed up half an hour late to a doctor's appointment because the zipper on my only jeans broke and I had to wear a skirt in the freezing cold), and my partner, while expressing sympathy verbally, didn't take any action to offer tangible support, ie. buying me a new pair of jeans. I didn't have my family to rely on for safety and support. Anything I want or need, whether it's a necessity or something like a trip to visit family or friends who all live far away, I have to meet my partner's parameters since they're the one footing the bill. It took many arguments and detailed explanations of my difficulties and expectations before they would give me basic support like a one-off clothing purchase, and even more negotiation for it to be given in a way that allowed me autonomy in decision making (ie. they handed me a limited budget instead of going shopping with me or asking me to run purchases by them first).

I've given my partner a lot of leeway because they're struggling with several simultaneous neurodiversities and they tend to be passive observers in most situations, rather than active participants. I can see the ways in which they struggle to understand my experience because of their NDs. It has also been several years now since their diagnosis, and they use their ND as an excuse, but won't seek support for it. I have to do the emotional heavy lifting for us both, and if my expectations of them feel reasonable to me, it doesn't matter because if it's outside of their comfort zone, even the simplest things become contentious and they get the final say, since they're the only one in the relationship who have financial independence right now. I have no access to, nor do I get updated on, any of their bank accounts or savings (worrying in case of an emergency), except for a debit card which has a set amount on it at any given time and is only for groceries and recurring bills.

My spouse will give me information on their financial standing occasionally if I ask, but they are very hesitant and reluctant. I have a bank account of my own, and my spouse has asked to see my monthly earnings for the purpose of understanding my needs, but I'm hesitant to show them because of how much of my trust they've compromised, and how private they've always been about their financials (not to mention that it indicates they don't trust me to state my needs reasonably and reliably). I believe that everyone in a marriage should have at least one personal bank account, but our finances aren't shared at all, save for the one shared groceries/bills account. That account does, however, include medical costs, and as long as my spouse approves the spending, I can use it for things like amenities.

I never did show my spouse this poll, but what I did do was go to

A lawyer

A domestic abuse non-profit

A government agency

and had all three confirm that the situation was economic abuse. It took me several months but I scraped together enough to have a consultation with a divorce lawyer and learned what my options were. I wasn't expecting to get much - even though they'd have to either sell our home and give me half of what he got for it, or buy out my half, I didn't think they'd be willing to do the former or have the money for the latter, but I could at least get alimony and I could take care of my needs and my health problems better and get away from the stress of the marriage. So I asked my spouse for a divorce.

The divorce process itself was... illuminating. I found out that my spouse had several massive savings accounts they had conveniently forgotten to tell me about. And what was lucky for me, they didn't seem to understand that in a marriage all things are legally shared. They seemed to think that if something was only under their name, it was theirs exclusively - like putting a label in your clothes for summer camp. So they didn't secure any of their accounts, and most of them consisted of funds accumulated during the marriage. Not long after that came to light, they moved out (their ND includes being severely conflict averse and you can imagine things became... tense). It took a long time until I could start to relax and feel like I could be safe again.

In the end I walked away with enough to have a safety net. I bought an apartment that meets my disability needs, and have enough to live on for a few years while I get back on my feet (though hopefully it won't take that long). Moving, and doing all this on my own was really hard, but luckily I've had wonderful friends who've helped me and been incredibly supportive. I still feel like I'm putting myself back together and finding myself, but am doing worlds better.

Thank you to everyone who commented and reblogged and added tags - that massive and unapologetic naming of this situation as abuse was so so validating and meant the world to me. I was significantly luckier than most people facing a similiar situation and found a way out. I hope you'll consider donating to one of these domestic abuse non-profits if you're able to, to help others who are struggling:

Thanks, Anon!