Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.
“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.
And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.
Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.
“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.
Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.
“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”
Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.
By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.
“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.
The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.
“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.
The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.
But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.
The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.
When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.
Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.
Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.
“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.
But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.
The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.
The seals were untouched. Instead, the men had eaten each other.
I am sharing this with all you good people on the dash because I am so fucking mad it took so long for me to learn it and if I can spare one (1) person the agony it will be worth it.
So for like...oh, 8 or 9 months, I've been struggling with pain/inflammation/tendinitis in my left Achilles tendon. I don't know what caused it. It just started up (welcome to middle age, this shit happens). It wasn't severe enough to be debilitating, but it was annoying and limiting. It was also intermittent, in that some days it would be very painful and other days hardly at all. The kind of shoe I was wearing affected it a lot.
Now, I have bone spurs on both heels (it's just a thing that happens as you get older sometimes). I'm also aware that heel pain is usually the result of tight calf muscles that pull and irritate the tendon. I tried stretching that calf muscle. You know the stretch, this bitch right here:
I did it all the time. I also iced the ankle after walking for awhile, hoping to avoid inflammation. Results were...unsatisfying.
I went to:
A chiropractor
A podiatrist
A physical therapist
A bodywork coach
They all gave me some variation on the "strengthen your calf muscle, stretch your calf muscle" advice. I continued doing this without results.
I was getting frustrated, and a little afraid that this was just my life now. Finally, I thought...maybe some targeted massage might help. I asked for rec on a local FB site and was pointed to a woman who specializes in therapeutic massage including cupping, etc.
I went to her a week ago.
She spent over half our first session working on my left lower leg. Within about 10 minutes of making my eyes water, she uttered the sentence I did not know I had been waiting to hear:
"Oh, it's your soleus."
Excuse me, what?
"It's your soleus that's the culprit. It's all tied up and stiff." She started digging into it and I felt literal sparks run up my leg as she released adhesions and got the muscle moving a little. When she finally put the leg down, it felt like it was on fire with all the blood rushing into it.
She said, "You'll need to stretch your soleus. It'll clear up, but it'll take a bit of time - tendons take ages to heal."
But I HAVE been stretching.
"No, you haven't. The usual straight-leg calf stretch only stretches the gastrocnemius, that's the big belly muscle in your calf. That's not your problem. That stretch doesn't stretch the soleus. Don't worry, I'll show you how to stretch it."
My mind is spinning.
So here are the muscles in question:
The gastroc (as the pros call it) just attaches down the back but the soleus runs underneath it from the knee around the side to the heel. The lower part above the ankle is where it typically gets tight and forms adhesions.
To stretch it, you do the same calf thing where you put your foot back and press your heel to the ground, but you have to do it with your KNEE BENT:
The bent knee keeps the gastroc from engaging. It's one of those selfish muscles (like traps) - if you give it an inch, it'll just take over and prevent other muscles from working or stretching. There are other ways to stretch the soleus but this is the easiest and you can literally do it anywhere. I've been doing it while standing and waiting for things (the elevator to come, the toast to toast). You just put the heel back and bend the knee. It's kind of like curtseying.
The minute I did this stretch, I could FEEL where it was pulling on my tendon. I knew that THIS had been the problem.
The massage therapist also told me to stop icing my heel. She said icing is for an acute injury, but a more chronic aggravation needs heat, to increase blood flow for healing. She recommended elevation with heat every day (I've been doing it in bed during "phone before bed" time).
I have been doing the soleus stretch at least half a dozen times a day for almost a week, and the ankle is at least 70% better. It is still a little tight and tender, but the improvement is significant. I think a few more weeks will have it feeling normal.
I am...blown away by this. This massage therapist was able to pinpoint an issue in only a few minutes that eluded all the other professionals I saw. I can't wait to go back to her and have her solve all my other problems, tbh.
the epidemic of grown adults playing tiktoks at full volume in public is rampant why are you acting like a 7 year old with their first ipad you have a mortgage
hey it's me black mold. thanks for running your window air conditioner all summer. whatever you do, do not regularly clean the removable filter. that's not necessary
you should also never ever unplug the air conditioner and stick a flashlight in the vent that blows air to see if we're in there. it's very bad, that place should not be checked
and whatever you do, if you've already made the mistake of unplugging it, don't remove it from the window for cleaning if possible. and whether it's possible to remove the unit or not, don't carefully disassemble the front panel, document where the screws go and plastic bits go, and open up the vent more to be able to get into it easily
as black mold, i'm an expert on this. you should heed my warnings: now, if you've somehow made the mistake of doing all of the above, you should not use warm water and dish soap to CLEAN the inside of the vent thoroughly. DON'T ever use a bottle brush to get into the hard to reach places. and certainly don't rinse and dry the cleaned area before carefully putting it back together
there's nothing wrong with us, black mold. we don't cause or exacerbate breathing conditions like asthma or other illnesses. it's cool, we're cool
furthermore, if you're capable of removing the window unit, DONT take a hose with the same soapy water and wash the portion of the window unit that sits outside the window and is therefore weatherproofed.
whatever you do, don't allow the air conditioner to dry before plugging it back in and turning it on again
and if you have a central air conditioner, you will definitely never ever consult a manual or sources online to perform a similar cleaning procedure on the cooling unit outside.
lastly, if you're physically unable to do the things we (the black mold) warned you not to do above, you should never ever ask someone to help you or hire a service to do it.
26K notes ·
View notes
Statistics
We looked inside some of the posts by
akinith
and here's what we found interesting.
Average Info
Notes Per Post
1M
Likes Per Post
679K
Reblog Per Post
772K
Reply Per Post
791
Time Between Posts
1 day
Number of Posts By Type
Text
15
Photo
1
Video
1
Explore Tagged Posts
Fun Fact
Tumblr was named as a finalist in Lead411’s New York City Hot 125 in Aug 2010.