#American home lawn care | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chainmail-butch · 5 months

Text

A Speech For the Colonist.

It is my opinion that communist movements within the US fail because they refuse to address decolonization.

It is my further opinion that the contradiction between colonizer and colonized supercedes the contradiction of class. The Native American Nations are colonized, Black people are colonized, Hispanic people are colonized. Colonization is the key to white supremacy and white supremacy is the key to class within the United States and Canada.

If you talk to most white communists about decolonization within the United States you'll get things like, "Well, decolonization will come with the revolution because we'll give the people the autonomy and resources they need to care for their communities." This is the exact same rhetoric that alienated black revolutionaries from the American Communist Party in the 60s. "Under communism every worker will have what he needs and be able to give according to his means, so we don't need to worry about race."

Comrade, we do. We do need to worry about race. We cannot simply wish a reality away because in our minds Everyone Will Be White in a communist society.

We need to acknowledge the fact that every single White Person within the United States, and the rest of the Americas for that matter, is a colonist. Our institutions are colonial. Our industry is colonial. Our cities are colonial. Our infrastructure is colonial. Our lawns are colonial. Every single aspect of our lives has its roots in colonization.

We still plunder the earth like we're sending silver and timber back to England and Spain.

By pretending that we are not colonists we make it impossible to address the ways in which we colonize. By ignoring the ways in which we colonize we fail to address the ways in which we are imperialist. By failing to address our imperialism we fail address capitalism.

We are colonists. Pretending that this isn't the case doesn't make it any less reality.

You'll acknowledge the fact that we live on stolen land but would you hand Seattle back to the Duwamish? Would you cede Delaware back to the Lenape? Would you take up arms, and then lay them down to a nation of people that are unlike you? Would you take up arms and lay them down again for a nation of people that you might not agree with politically? Have you confronted your fear that they would treat you just like we treat them?

For that matter, how have you addressed your conception of Black Nationalism? Any white communist will tell you that Nationalism as a concept is counter-revolutionary but how do you address the fact that there is an entire race of people who were ripped from their homes and forced to colonize another land? The solution certainly isn't Liberia, which is itself a colonial exercise.

How do you address the fact that any black person will tell you that a nation created for and by black americans would be a pretty good deal in their book? How do address the fact that our colonial nation isn't their nation and they know it? What do you do? Do you call them reactionary? Do you tell them that their desire for a home of their own is because we orphaned their ancestors and that they need to get over it?

Comrade, these are the questions you need to answer. You need to listen to the people we have colonized and you need to really observe our material conditions.

We live with the unique situation that, as a result of a vicious and often ignored genocide, the colonizers are the majority ethnic group within the colonized land. White people make up 57% of this country. And unlike other colonized regions, there's no France for us to return to. There's no England, there's no Belgium, there's no Netherlands, there's no Spain. The working class white is stuck here. It's up to us to address our own reality and to understand that, ultimately, no way and no how can we be the face of revolution within the united states.

No white led communist movement will prosper because, even now, we still have too much to lose. Our people will never start the fight as we are now. Understand that.

#This isn't the completed speech #Which I am writing as homework for my Rhetoric class #but it encapsulates a lot of the ideas I want to address #Colonization #Decolonization #Communism

216 notes · View notes

thatscarletflycatcher · 1 month

Text

Now that North and South Weekly has reached chapter 10, I think it is time to highlight this interesting contrast:

"When she had left the room, he [Mr. Lennox] began in his scrutinising way to look about him. The little drawing-room was looking its best in the streaming light of the morning sun. The middle window in the bow was opened, and clustering roses and the scarlet honeysuckle came peeping round the corner; the small lawn was gorgeous with verbenas and geraniums of all bright colours. But the very brightness outside made the colours within seem poor and faded. The carpet was far from new; the chintz had been often washed; the whole apartment was smaller and shabbier than he had expected, as back-ground and frame-work for Margaret, herself so queenly. He took up one of the books lying on the table; it was the Paradise of Dante, in the proper old Italian binding of white vellum and gold; by it lay a dictionary, and some words copied out in Margaret’s handwriting. They were a dull list of words, but somehow he liked looking at them. He put them down with a sigh. “The living is evidently as small as she said. It seems strange, for the Beresfords belong to a good family.”

(Chapter III)

"He [Mr. Thornton] was ushered into the little drawing-room, and kindly greeted by Mr. Hale, who led him up to his wife, whose pale face, and shawl-draped figure made a silent excuse for the cold languor of her greeting. Margaret was lighting the lamp when he entered, for the darkness was coming on. The lamp threw a pretty light into the centre of the dusky room, from which, with country habits, they did not exclude the night-skies, and the outer darkness of air. Somehow, that room contrasted itself with the one he had lately left; handsome, ponderous, with no sign of female habitation, except in the one spot where his mother sate, and no convenience for any other employment than eating and drinking. To be sure, it was a dining-room; his mother preferred to sit in it; and her will was a household law. But the drawing-room was not like this. It was twice—twenty times as fine; not one quarter as comfortable. Here were no mirrors, not even a scrap of glass to reflect the light, and answer the same purpose as water in a landscape; no gilding; a warm, sober breadth of colouring, well relieved by the dear old Helstone chintz-curtains and chair covers. An open davenport stood in the window opposite the door; in the other there was a stand, with a tall white china vase, from which drooped wreaths of English ivy, pale green birch, and copper-coloured beech-leaves. Pretty baskets of work stood about in different places: and books, not cared for on account of their binding solely, lay on one table, as if recently put down. Behind the door was another table decked out for tea, with a white table-cloth, on which flourished the cocoa-nut cakes, and a basket piled with oranges and ruddy American apples, heaped on leaves. It appeared to Mr. Thornton that all these graceful cares were habitual to the family; and especially of a piece with Margaret."

(Chapter X)

Something something the "gentleman" looks at a scene of beauty and can only think of money, status, and family connections. The "man in trade" is presented with a humbler version of the same scene, and thinks of warmth, home-likeness, and feminine care something something.

#Elizabeth gaskell #north and south #north and south weekly

50 notes · View notes

walmarttrashbag · 1 year

Text

Hurt - Mike Wheeler Tw: bitchy, rude Mike. It was an extremely hot day in the summer of '82, and you had just moved into Hawkins, Indiana. The day was full of unpacking and decoration, and you had made your bedroom just as you wanted.

Your mom had told you to try and explore the neighborhood and make friends, which you happily obliged.

You decided to go to your new neighbor's house, and you politely knocked on the door, expecting an adult, but your expectations were too low, because what opened the door rocked your world even with just a look.

It was an extremely cute boy, with fluffy-seeming dark, burgundy-like hair, and his brown eyes stared into yours with some kind of emotion you couldn't read.

"Who are you?" The cute boy asked almost coldly.

You smiled innocently and sweetly "My name is Y/n! I'm your new neighbor! I live in that house, right there!" You pointed to your house that stood still.

The boy looked over and his eyebrows furrowed "I don't really care..." He replied, and shut the door.

That hit you like a book, but you wouldn't give up, not ever! For the last days of the summer, you decided to ask the boy to come play or to share his name while you'd ask to play, but all you got was a harsh "No" and a door slam.

But you weren't giving up at all, besides, he was just across the lawn!

It was now the start of 6th grade, and Mike was keeping a low go, in case you were in Hawkins Middle School, but his eyes widened at the fact of you walking into his classroom all giddy.

Mike's teacher smiled "Class, we have a new student joining us today. This is y/n l/n, and she will be sitting next to Mike Wheeler. Mike, could you raise your hand for us?" The teacher asked.

You quietly gasped in excitement "So that's what the cute boy's name is!" You thought happily. Mike hesitantly raised up his hand and you skipped along, sitting beside him.

During reading time, you noticed Mike was leaning far away from you, but just enough to keep balance on his chair, so you decided to rip a piece of paper and wrote down "Hi!" And slid it toward Mike, who glanced at it but ignored it, and throwing it away after class.

During lunch, you saw Mike hang out with three other boys, one with curly hair and tan skin, one with a bowl cut and pale complexion, and one boy who was African-American.

You smiled and walked over to the table with your lunch tray, but Mike quickly said "This table's full!", Making his friends looked at him confused, and you frown but nod. "I understand" You replied, deciding to go to a different table, but nobody would wanna sit by the weird new kid... So you had to sit alone, and that went on for the rest of the year.

Nobody liked to be near you. Usually, the teacher had to pair you up with someone because even the last kid wouldn't want to. You didn't get why no one liked you, but maybe it's because you were just still the new kid.

Your crush on Mike hadn't gone away, but in the second year you were there you finally made some friends, they were fun and cool to you.

By the time you got to middle school, Mike had straight up told you to leave him alone, but you were determined to make him love you, so you left cute little stuff in his locker like notes and gifts, but in the corner of your eye, you'd see Mike grumble angrily and throw it away.

You felt hurt, but nothing came close to what you were at the park. You hid behind a tree and listened to what Mike and his friends would say about you.

"She's fucking obsessed with me! She won't leave me alone!" Mike yelled angrily. "Have you told her to stop?" Will asked. Mike nodded and Lucas tilted his head "Well be more assertive" Dustin shook his head "She's gonna want you more, man. Just ignore her." Mike laughed "Yeah, nobody likes that freak anyways."

You felt tears in your eyes, and you ran home, your loving heart shattered. Once at home, you fell on your bed "I didn't know he hated me like that..." You whispered, you felt horrible.

Seventh grade rolled around and you had completely given up. You felt destroyed and you didn't talk to anyone. You didn't start wearing black or slitting your wrists, you weren't like that, you were just quiet now.

Mike noticed that his locker was always empty beside his backpack. There were no happy notes or small gifts you had slipped inside. There was nothing to throw away.

Mike also noticed that you'd sit by yourself and do your projects alone, which he thought was weird. At least you weren't bothering him anymore.

During lunch, Mike would watch you walk passed him with tired, sad eyes, and he'd watch you eat all alone. It was like you didn't even care anymore... But you did. Mike never knew how many sleepless nights you've cried over him.

Dustin, Lucas, and Will saw, too, but they didn't address it to Mike, who watched you eat while talking to his friends every day at lunch.

You were no longer your happy, loving self, you were just a depressed girl trying to get over a heartbreaking crush. You sometimes never even went to school because you were just too tired to get up.

Mike would sometimes wait behind the front door, waiting for you to ring his doorbell, waiting for you to ask him to play, but that you didn't exist anymore... And Mike felt sad that you wouldn't bother to ask anymore.

Eventually, Mike went against every fiber of his being and got outside, walked across the lawn, and knocked on your door. You opened up with tear-strained eyes.

"What do you want, Wheeler?" You asked Mike coldly, and that kind of shocked him.

"Hey, Y/n! My friends and I are gonna play this cool fantasy game called Dungeons and Dragons and I just wanna ask if you would like to play with us." Mike said, cracking a fake smile that you could see right through. "I don't wanna play with you, Mike. Just go away." You scoffed, trying to shut the door on Mike. Mike kept the door open and whined "Come on! It'll be fun! It's a game about-"

You groaned "I said I don't wanna play with you, Michael Wheeler! Leave me alone!" And you shut the door on Mike's face.

Mike felt Hurt but he wasn't gonna give up, as his crush on you has only just begun.

#mike wheeler #finn wolfhard #finn wolfhard x reader #finn wolfhard x y/n #mike wheeler x reader #mike x reader #mike wheeler x fem!reader #mike wheeler x y/n #mike wheeler x you

108 notes · View notes

shelbgrey · 1 year

Text

4th of July Headcanons with my favorite boys:

Characters included: Lance Sweets, Seeley Booth, Jack Hodgins, Dean winchester, Castile, Derek shepherd, Mark Sloan, Owen hunt, Carlisle Cullen, Emmett Cullen, Eleazar Denali, George Weasley, Fred Weasley, Draco malfoy.

A/n: I am working on your guys request that was in my inbox but it being 4th of July weekend not much is gonna be posted or worked on till the end of the week just know I'm working on them.

BONES:

Lance Sweets:

I don't even know if Fireworks are legal in DC, but if they are you guys pretty much go all out.

Suprisenly, Lance likes anything loud so you guys go through a lot of firecrackers and bottle rockets.

If your not lighting up those your probably watching your friends' children and lighting the kiddy stuff with them.

He likes smoke bombs too, he'll light them in Booth's direction so all the colorful smoke blows on him.

He probably got you guys matching outfits for the day, but it's not like the cringy type of stuff some couples do. He'll just have red, white, and blue plaid shorts and a plane white shirt and you'd have the feminine version of his shorts with a cute American flag tank top.

Then to end the night you'll be cuddled up together on a blanket watching the night time fireworks.

Seeley Booth:

Seeley is a military man, so fourth of July is kinda his thing. The flags, cook outs, the fireworks, everything.

He likes anything loud or over the top, but nothing thst could harm you or Parker.

He still likes to spoil you guys with any type of firework or snack you want.

Your kinda the mother of your group of friends so you and Seeley are in charge of the grill. You guys have fun grilling a bunch of hamburgers and hot dogs while jamming out to music.

He'd invite his brother and some of his old army buddies, so you'd probably end up meeting them.

You and Parker have a lot of fun lighting up Roman candles.

You guys are in charge of all the big night time fireworks.

Jack Hodgins:

Homemade fireworks for days, you guys probably spend the week before experimenting and creating different things.

Cam quickly got tired of all the explosions and smoke coming out of your guys lab.

“it worked! We definitely got to make more of those”

You guys are pyromaniacs, but that doesn't mean you guys aren't responsibl. Jack would never handle or light anything recklessly that could harm you.

The home made smoke bombs are a big hit at get-together with your friends. Parker and Christine were very much impressed.

Sharing a lawn chair while the night fireworks are going off.

Supernatural:

Dean Winchester:

It's a normal, all-American day so Dean just wants to celebrate it with his family. It doesn't matter what your doing as long as it's not fighting God or hunting.

Just to mess with Sam you guys will wake him up early on the 4th by lighting a bunch of firecrackers in a pot next to his bed.

He'll grill up the best burgers in the world for the occasion.

If you guys dont want to leave the bunker that day you'd spend the whole day playing board games.

Later that night you and Dean would sneak away and lay on the hood of the Impala to watch the fireworks everyone eles is shooting up into the sky.

Sam Winchester:

Sam could really care less about the celebration, he really doesn't care about any holidays if were being honest, but if you want to have some fun he'll do it just he can see you smile.

He has fun just watching you, Dean, and Jack have fun. He'll just set there and laugh as you Chace Dean around with a sparkler.

Let's just say Dean found a lake and you guys spend most of they day fishing and swimming.

Even if he's around gunshots every day I think the artillery stuff will get old for him, so he'll go into the bunker and let you and the others have fun.

After Dean and Castile get tired and stop blowing stuff up he'll come out and rost marshmallows with you.

Castiel:

He just doesn't understand the fascination, so it's yours and Dean's job to show just how fun the day is.

Get ready to always pull him away before something explodes in his face, he'll light it and not back away.

Even if something exploding in his hand won't hurt it still freaks you out.

You get excited to show him all your favorite fireworks you use to get when you were a kid.

Even if he still doesn't get the fascination, he still loves having fun with you.

Grey's anatomy:

Derek Shepherd:

So there would probably be a big cliche BBQ with all your doctor buddies at the Shepherd home.

You guys are literally praying that you won't get called into the hospital because someone blew their fingers off.

You and Derek cooking up a big feast on the grill for all your buddies while the kids run around with Snappers and sparklers.

You mostly just make sure the kids don't hurt themselves and just lounge around with your female friends.

You and Derek will light a few things like smoke bombs or bottle rockets, but only if someone asks you to join in on the fun.

You guys just look forward to the night time fireworks. You guys usually spend a unreasonable amount a money on artillery, but it's worth it when night time comes and you put on the show.

Mark Sloan:

Let's be honest, he's spending most of the day making sure you or Sophia don't hurt yourself. He'd wrap you guys in bubble wrap if you guys would let him.

Anyway, like Derek you guys are hoping you don't get called into the hospital. Trauma and Plastic surgeons are automatically put on speed dial.

You spend most of your day helping Sophia light all the kiddy stuff and making sure she doesn't get hurt.

After you make sure she's safe you held Jackson 'terrorize' Mark with Snappers.

Owen Hunt:

So you guys would probably be running the grill most of the time, it doesn't bother you guys because you love cooking together.

Like the other two, your just praying the hospital doesn't call you, you guys are both trauma surgeons. But if the fireworks get too much for him he'll be relived to go for a bit.

Speaking of which if were talking about early Owen hunt the fireworks and booms might bother him, if so you'd guys will just go home and watch your favorite movies.

But later seasons Owen will have a lot of fun jut watching night time fireworks with you, laying on a blanket cuddle up with each other and watching all the pretty lights.

Twilight:

Carlisle Cullen:

He spends most of the holiday at the hospital, Charlie keeps sending drunk teens with burned hands and blowing up fingers to the hospital.

You don't mind, it's his job and he can't help the stupidy of the teens at Forks.

Emmett and Jasper keep you entertained.

So if your human he's watching you like a hawk. After the the acadents he seen at the hospital evolving fireworks he's scared your gonna get hurt.

This is just an anxiety filled day for him. He doesn't really calm down till night time when the whole family is on the porch watching fireworks.

Emmett Cullen:

You guys are just an unstoppable force of nature and you can't be trusted with fire.

Since your both vampires your not very safe when to comes to explosives.

Your having the time of your lives though.

He'll hold lit smoke bombs in his hands and chace Jasper and Alice around.

You guys have water gun wars too.

Your day is full of laughter and fun, you guys are being so childish and it's so much fun.

Eleazar Denali:

You live in Alaska so your blowing up a snowman with Garrett no matter what anyone says.

He's very much a serious person so he's not gonna do much unless you drag him with you to have fun.

After you crack his shel he's having a lot a fun with you.

If your not spending your holiday in Alaska, your spending it at the Cullen's.

After he humors you with a couple of firecrackers he'll set down and watch you have fun with the Denali sisters.

At night he'll love to just hold you in his arms and watch the fireworks in the sky.

Harry Potter: - I understand the UK doesn't celebrate the 4th of July but this is just for fun

George Weasley:

Big firework sale at the shop and you guys get to test out every new product(it's the best part).

You love flying around on your brooms throwing fireworks around.

Big cook out at the burrow with the whole family and all your hogwarts friends.

Molly always shouting at you to be careful, if you get hurt or maybe slightly burned George will stop everything and make sure your okay.

Even if it's not the safest of smartest thing in the world you and the twins are chancing each other with sparklers.

You and the twins put on the biggest firework show, it was even bigger than the one they put on when they left hogwarts.

Fred Weasley:

You guys are pretty similar to George expect 10 times worse. You guys can be flat out dangerous and it gives molly gray hairs.

Of corse you spend most of the week around the holiday selling fireworks at the shop, but at night you'll close up shop early and watch a firework show neair by.

He'll create a firework especially for you and it'll be the biggest one he's ever made.

Colors, sound, and size are very important to you guys when your making or buying fireworks.

Like George if you get hurt he'll stop everything to make sure your okay, he'd probably make you set down for a bit and drink water just to be sure.

Night fireworks are the best part and you guys never disappoint your audience.

Draco Malfoy:

This man just doesn't see the fascination, nor dose your families. If you want to have fun you have to drag him to a party your friends are putting on.

Even then he'll just sit somewhere and watch you have fun with your friends.

He doesn't mind though, it makes his day to hear you laugh and see you smile.

I don't think he'd like all the loud noises though, especially after the battle of Hogwarts, so if it gets too bad you guys will go inside listen to music till he calms down.

Dispite the loud noises he loves watching the night fireworks, he loves the colors and the lights. To quite the noise he'll either wear ear plugs or press his ear to your chest while your laying in the grass.

85 notes · View notes

footprintsinthesxnd · 1 year

Text

Young Love and Old Money

Summary: this series follows the story of Lewis Nixon and Josephine Wills and their trials, tribulation and love throughout WW2, including stories of their friends in between. Warnings: swearing, mentions of war, class prejudices Moodboards Masterlist

Meeting the Americans - Aldbourne, October 1943

The spokes of the wheels were a blur, individually working as one as they spun erratically. The chain rattled with each turn as the metal frame flew down the misted country lanes. The front wheel coasted to the right and bit at the soft mud that lay across the tarmac road, as it always did after some rain, but its rider barely noticed, hurtling around the winding bends. Josephine, until recently, hadn’t cycled these lanes for many years and yet the path was embroidered inside her mind like a well-worn, well-loved map. She knew just where she was going, as her legs pushed the bike forward, speed increasing with each turn. Josephine couldn’t remember the last time she had cycled towards her old home, it seemed strange calling it old for it was still her home and yet it was not at the same time.

The rooftop of Littlecote House could be seen from the road, its large pointed chimneys casting a dark shadow against the early October skyline. Josephine felt her grip on the handlebars tighten slightly at the sight of her home as she rode into the gravel driveway. Although she knew they would be there, it still caused her heart to ache as she watched groups of American soldiers pour into and out of her childhood home. Boxes of paperwork, ratios, and furniture were all being carted to and fro. Three large Deuce and a half trucks were parked on the once pristine, green lawn and several more jeeps lined the driveway. Josephine could see the shadowy figures of officers through the upstairs windows, busy with their days and ignorant of the lives they had destroyed for their new headquarters. She never knew why she did it. Why did she cycle here every morning to inspect her home? It’s not as if they would care what she thought of them or not. The Yanks were here and for now, they were here to stay whether the residents of Aldbourne and Ramsbury approved or not.

Josephine’s bike screeched to a halt, kicking up the gravel as she swerved to avoid two officers standing in the gateway. Both looked up, a little surprised at the woman before them whose cheeks were growing ever redder under their gaze.

“Can we help you, Miss?” The first one asked, his tall, slender frame towering over Josephine in a non-threatening but still authoritative way, while the other officer looked on with an amused smirk gracing his lips.

“No, I am fine… thank you,” Josephine replied, begrudgingly remembering her manners. The officer nodded, stepping back a few steps, a kind smile gracing his lips. His friend on the other hand seemed intrigued.

“Then tell me, Miss…” he paused waiting for her name, which Josephine knew she would not willingly give away to an American, Officer or not.

“What is your business here? This is the regimental headquarters and unless I’m mistaken you are not part of the 506.” The corner of his lips twitched upwards and his eyes seemed to shine at this victory. Josephine could only just resist the urge to slap his ridiculously attractive face, American or not she had to admit he was handsome. The Officer seemed to sense this dislike and his smile only grew wider, as if he knew he was getting under her skin.

“No your observations are correct, I am not part of the 50… whatever it is but…”

“The 506, ma’am. We are officers of the 101st Airborne Division, 506 PIR.”

Josephine could feel her fingernails digging into her palm in frustration, sweat beginning to trickle down her neck in an unladylike fashion. She swallowed, “Yes I am quite aware of who has stolen my house. Thank you very much,” she snapped, not meaning to sound as harsh as she did. The taller officer of the two, the one with the kind smile, seemed a little taken aback. His cheeks grew to match the colour of the hair on his head and he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. The second officer too seemed a little shocked but soon regained his composure.

“Oh, so you must be part of the Wills family and as far as I know they only have one daughter so you must be Josephine. It's lovely to meet you, Josephine.” He bowed elaborately, waving his arm above his head.

“How do you…?” She began, looking even more flustered and hating the effect this man seemed to have upon her.

“I’m Lieutenant Lewis Nixon, ma’am. I’m the Intelligence Officer, it’s my job to know everything.”

Josephine bit back the growl that had been building in the back of her throat, swallowing any composure she had left she picked her bike up, stomping over to Lewis Nixon. “Well you can unlearn my name for a start Mr. Intelligence Officer because you won’t be needing it.” Josephine knew she should have stopped there. She shouldn’t have even gone there to begin with but she was so infuriated not only at these two American Officers but at everything, her family's situation, the war, having to come home from Oxford. Despite none of this being their fault Josephine continued, “You know no one wants you here. No one is Ramsbury or Aldbourne, hell I doubt anyone in England wants you over here. Do you realise that we have already been in this war for 2 years. 2 years and where the hell were you Yanks then, huh?” The red-headed officer straightened up, clearly finding the situation even more awkward than before. He opened his mouth to speak and Josephine already knew he was the type of man who was going to try and smooth over the situation but his friend was not.

“Oh yeah and what does a rich little girl know about war and suffering, I bet you’ve never worked a day in your life. You’ve grown up in a mansion in the English countryside, everything has been handed to you on a plate. I bet Daddy even bought you a pony. So yes, we Americans might be late in joining the war but at least we’re fucking fighting in it! What’s your contribution to the war effort? Oh yes, your stately home, boohoo.”

By the end of his outburst, Lewis Nixon's face was red and his chest heaving, whilst Josephine could feel tears beginning to sting her eyes. She knew both men could see them glistening in the early morning light but she was not about to let them see her cry.

“Good day gentlemen,” she carefully climbed back onto her back, pushing with her feet to move herself off the gravel driveway and began the slow but steady climb back up the hill away from her house with only the images of Lewis Nixon plaguing her mind.

The cottage was empty when Josie arrived home. She dragged her bike up the small cobbled pathway, avoiding the rose bushes that lined the edge of the path. The cottage was set back from the road, nestled amongst a small grove of trees. Josie considered it small in relation to Littlecote, it had small rooms, small pokey windows, and a small front and back garden. In fact, everything just seemed miniature compared to her old home. The cottage had been in her family for years, often rented out to the gamekeeper of the estate but after he’d signed up to the Army there had been no gamekeeper to inhabit it. Josie sighed loudly, slamming the door aggressively causing the frail windows to shake in their frames. She stormed up the steps to her room, the antiquated curtains shielding the room from any sunlight and casting a gloomy shadow over her. The floorboards groaned beneath her feet, aching under the weight of the years of use. She kicked off her shoes, discarding them in the corner and falling dramatically onto the measly single bed. How dare he speak to her in such a way? Who did he think he was? Lewis Nixon. His name seemed to run through her mind, haunting her for the remainder of the day.

Josie’s parents were currently in London on a business trip and so she had the house to herself. Normally Josie would have delighted in time without her parents' constant nagging and endless questions regarding her whereabouts. Since she left for university at Oxford each visit home seemed more tedious than the last and the rift only seemed to grow between them. Tonight, however, she wished they were there, even if it was just to distract her from the extremely rude yet dashingly handsome paratrooper that despite his mannerisms she couldn't stop thinking about. She could imagine him pressing her harshly against the wall, kissing her harshly, his stubble grazing her…

A sharp knock at the front door pulled Josie from her thoughts and she realised that she must have drifted off into a daydream. Darkness had consumed the room, an ivory glow peeked through a small crack between the curtains from the moon. Josie groaned, pushing herself off the bed as the sharp knocking sound came again. As Josie hurried barefoot down the neat, square steps, taking three at a time, she wondered if it was Jess or Jules, although neither of them would normally call this late at night. Jessica and Julian had been Josie’s best friends since they were in their early teens. They had spent nearly every day of their young lives together until Julian and his family emigrated to New England in the States. He constantly remarked that New England was never as good as ‘Old England’ and he insisted that he would not identify as an American, despite his normally Welsh accent sometimes slipping into an American twang. Jess on the other hand had grown up in a small cottage in Aldbourne where she lived with her parents next door to their small veterinary practice. She was always taking in some stray animal or another which is how Josie’s family had ended up with multiple dogs over the years. Josie had always admired Jess for her strong sense of justice and a need to help others which is probably how when the war broke out she trained to become a nurse with the Army Nursing Corps which is also how she came to meet Eugene, Easy Company’s medic. He was the only American Josie had ever warmed to. With his thick southern accent and shy demeanour, Josie had thought he fitted perfectly into their little group, not that she was allowed to tell him how Jess felt towards him but he did sometimes tag along to the local pub, The Crown which was generally considered the officer's pub but they managed to smuggle Eugene in any way.

Josie’s fingers enveloped the brass handle, tugging sharply at the door and allowing it to swing back on its hinges with a small scream. Had Josie been of an anxious or faint-hearted disposition she may have screamed also as she came face to face with the person on the other side. A rather bedraggled Lewis Nixon stood, shivering as the rain began to soak through his uniform and despite the weather being rather warm for October there was a fierce breeze tonight. Josie stopped dead in the doorway, her red painted fingernails digging into the oak frame, her mouth hung open like a fish and her eyes bulged in an unladylike manner. Lewis Nixon however didn’t seem to notice, his eyes never moving away from her face. Guilt was written all over his face and his bottom lip seemed to quiver, whether that was from the cold or his uncertainty she wasn’t quite sure.

“Hi,” he spoke slowly, his expression reminding her of the stray spaniel puppy that she had helped Jess raise when they were teenagers.

“Umm… hello,” was all Josie could muster, the confusion must have been evident on her face because Lewis quickly responded.

“I… I ummm came to talk. Could I come in?” Josie nodded, pushing the door wider and allowing the very soggy paratrooper inside, following the wet footsteps he’d left on the oak floor into the open kitchen. Josie shuffled past him, filling the aluminium kettle and placing it onto the hob before pulling two mugs from the cupboard.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Please,” Lewis replied, his teeth chattering a little less than before. Whilst the kettle was boiling, Josie started the fire in the kitchen and ushered Lewis towards it, placing a blanket around his saturated shoulders.

“So, what was it that you wanted to talk about?” Josie asked, trying to keep her voice neutral, although the anger still boiled inside her from their previous encounter.

Lewis reached forward, taking her hand carefully between his much larger ones, rubbing his calloused fingers over her soft knuckles and tracing the veins that ran over the dorsal side. His dark eyes looked up to meet hers, his expression almost loving and Josie could feel her heart fluttering against her rib cage.

“Well…” Lewis began as the piercing scream from the boiling kettle rang out. Josie quickly excused herself, hurrying to take the kettle off the boil. She rushed to make the drinks, spilling some hot water on the side as she did, her mind already wondering what could be so urgent. Why would an officer come all this way in the dark and pouring rain to discuss something with her? When she returned Lewis was wafting his hands by the fire, his shoulders no longer shaking and his ebony hair was losing the last of its damp droplets. He smiled at her gratefully, excepting the cup and saucer and placing it on the small oak table beside him.

“I came to talk to you… well to apologise to you.” He took her hands once more in his, squeezing them reassuringly. “The way I spoke to you before was completely uncalled for and I have no idea why I acted in such a way. I brought shame upon my unit and I only hope that you will not look harshly upon all of the 101st due to my behaviour.”

Josie was once again left speechless, her lips poised around the rim of her cup as she froze. Was he really apologising to her? Never once had a man apologised for his actions before, somehow it always came down to being her fault despite that rarely being true.

Lewis Nixon looked at her expectantly, his gorgeous, rich, brown eyes shining in the light of the fire.

“Well, I am sorry too,” Josie couldn't quite believe she was saying this but her lips seemed to move despite her brain's complaints. “My behaviour early was atrocious and completely unlike me.” She knew this wasn’t necessarily true, she had always been known for her fiery temper but she had never quite so publicly humiliated herself as she had done that morning. “I am afraid I must be ailing for something and I sincerely hope you will accept my apology.”

The corners of Lewis’ lips twitched into an amused smile. “Well Ma’am, I fear I cannot accept your apology for you have nothing to be sorry for. Your actions were just and completely fair in this situation. I only hope I can make amends to you.” Josie blushed furiously, feeling the heat growing from her bosom up to her round cheeks.

“Well… I… umm.”

“How about dinner? Tomorrow night? I can pick you up,” Lewis asked, his normal confident facade returning quickly and the dazzle reappeared in his eyes, bright and exuberant compared to the guilty look he portrayed earlier.

“Well, I can’t see any reason why not…” Josie began, as Lewis jumped enthusiastically from his chair.

“Excellent. I’ll see you at 6.” Without letting Josie confirm the time, he barreled towards the door joyfully with Josie in hot pursuit. He flung it open wide, allowing the rain to batter its way inside and soak the drab hallway carpet.

“Oh and Miss Josephine,” he swivelled on the heels of his dark leather jump boots.

“Yes,” Josie replied, hating how pathetic and weak her voice sounded.

“Wear something red. I think it would be becoming for your complexion and it’s my favourite colour.”

And just like that Lewis Nixon disappeared into the night leaving Josie rather hot under the collar. How did this man have such an effect on her? She had barely known him 24 hours and yet her heart fluttered more for him than it had for any of the men that came before. Josie shut the door carefully, shutting out the night and returned to the kitchen for her cup of tea, images of Lewis Nixon appearing before her eyes as she sighed deeply. She only hoped that she would not dream of him too.

Tags: @georgieluz @iceman-kazansky @yeahcurrahhe-e @lieutenant-speirs @sharpshootershifty @liberteuniteegalite @msmercury84 @hbowardaily @doc-eugene-roe @blvestxr @dustyjumpwjngs @theflyingfin @jump-wings @kafka-ohdear @kmc1989 @merriell-allesandro-shelton @liptonwashere

Please let me know if you’d like to be add or removed from this series taglist.

#band of brothers #band of brothers oc #101stairbornedivision #101st airborne #easy company #hbo war #Lewis Nixon x oc #Lewis Nixon

43 notes · View notes

elipheleh · 1 year

Text

David Wojnarowicz - Photo

Continuing my series of learning about things referenced in the book, I'm looking at things Alex references when he talks about engaging with queer history. These are all tagged #a series of learning about things that are referenced in the book, if you want to block the tag.

This post will cover the AIDS pandemic, which means there will be discussion of an incredibly large number of deaths, as well as government neglect of AIDS patients due to homophobia. There will be talk of the grief from the queer community & the ways it was weaponised to protest in an attempt for fundamental change. This is not a light topic, please take appropriate care when reading. As this post is going to have a few different topics in, so I decided to actually start with a read more, rather than arbitrarily place it partway down, I'd do a list of what is covered in this post & then have it all behind the cut.

So, in order, this post covers: David Wojnarowicz; AIDS; ACT-UP. In the additional reading section is a section subtitled "NAMES AIDS Memorial Quilt". This is worth looking into if you aren't already aware.

David Wojnarowicz is the man in the photo shown above, and referenced by Alex in the book. He was an AIDS activist, artist, writer, and filmmaker - among other things. He drew on his personal experiences with AIDS for his art & his political activism. In 1988, Wojnarowicz wore the leather jacket pictured above, with a pink triangle underneath text reading "if i die of aids - forget burial - just drop my body on the steps of the f.d.a." This jacket, and his similar sentiment from his book Close to the Knives, inspired David Robinson who - in 1991 - dumped the ashes of his deceased partner on the grounds of the White House in protest. These protests came to be known as "Ashes Action". Wojnarowicz died in his Manhattan home on July 22, 1992, aged 37, from what his boyfriend, Tom Rauffenbart, confirmed was AIDS. His ashes were scattered on the White House lawn in 1996.

-----

The AIDS epidemic in the US dates back to around 1970, but it wasn't until 1981 that cases started to come to light. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) published a report about 5 gay men becoming infected with a type of pneumonia only seen in people with compromised immune systems. As these men were healthy, this was unexpected. A year after, the New York Times published an article about a new immune system disorder, affecting over 300 people and killing over 100. Officials coined it GRID, gay-related immune deficiency, as it appeared to only be affecting gay men. It became officially known as AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) by August 1982, but was referred to as "gay plague" and many other derogatory terms for many years. Ninety-five and a half per cent of those diagnosed with AIDS between 1981 and 1987 died.

At the time, Ronald Reagan was president. He has been widely criticised for his reaction to the epidemic, for good reason. He didn't mention the word "AIDS" in public until 1985, by which time there had been 5636 deaths due to AIDS in the US. His first speech about the disease was delivered to the College of Physicians in Philadelphia in 1987, by which point there were more than 36,000 Americans living with AIDS & more than 20,000 had died. In the documentary When AIDS Was Funny (linked at the bottom), audios from press conferences in the early 1980s show how little the Reagan administration cared. Not only do they refer to AIDS as "gay plague", but joke around about it. It shows just how much the epidemic was derided - the people in charge of the country were so flippant about something so devastating, reflecting the general opinion of AIDS. Reagan's public support came overwhelmingly from the 'religious right', with Rev. Jerry Falwell using his political action group (the Moral Majority) to encourage homophobia aimed at gay men, especially those diagnosed with AIDS. Pat Buchanan, the White House Communications Director from 1985 to 1987, described the crisis as nature “exacting an awful retribution against gay men” in 1983.

Larry Kramer, when recalling the attempts to get help from public officials said:

You learn very fast that you’re a faggot, and it doesn’t make any difference that you went to Yale and were assistant to presidents of a couple of film companies, and that you had money. [source]

-----

On the 13th August, 1998, the Bay Area Reporter paper published a headline "No obits". For the first time in 17 years, there was finally a week without any deaths due to AIDS in the area covered by the paper - they are clear that there were deaths elsewhere, and they may have belated obituaries the following week, but for now this was a positive change. They had previously had up to 30 obituaries at points. Derek Gordon was quoted in the article as saying:

"I remember my grandfather said he knew he was getting near death because he used to scan the obits," he told the B.A.R. "I used to think how tragic because I was doing the same thing at 30."

-----

Wojnarowicz's jacket features a pink triangle on it. This was being used as a signal, as the pink triangle had been reclaimed by gay activists - originally in early 1970s Germany - to be used as a memorial to past victims & to protest continuing discrimination following its use by the Nazi Party to identify queer men in concentration camps. ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) adopted this icon, and turned it the other way up (so the point was at the top) and continue to use it to this day.

ACT-UP was formed in 1987, in New York City, and is now an international political group. It is working to end the AIDS pandemic using direct action, medical research & treatment, and trying to influence legislation. They debuted in October 1987, at the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, not only by participating in the march but also with civil disobedience the day after. In the following October, ACT-UP shut down the F.D.A. (Food & Drug Administration) for a day in a demonstration against their drug approval process. The image of Wojnarowicz was taken that day, by William Dobbs. Activists shut down the F.D.A. by blocking the doors & walkways that would allow staff to get into the building. Some lay on the floor with faux-headstones, reading “DEAD FROM LACK OF DRUGS” and “VICTIM OF F.D.A. RED TAPE”. They attached a banner to the front of the building with ACT-UP's slogan - SILENCE = DEATH, bracketed by two pink triangles.

ACT-UP utilised different tactics from other groups - not only did they carry out (entirely non-violent) civil disobedience actions, but they also had the knowledge to be able to argue their demands successfully. The demonstration at the F.D.A. and their precise demands led to the F.D.A. listening to them and including them in decision making - and a year later their demands had started to come to fruition, with easier access to experimental drugs for those living with AIDS.

One 'Action' ACT-UP coordinated, was coined 'Ashes Action', as mentioned above. In 1992, ACT-UP marched to the White House fence to scatter the ashes of loved ones who had died due to AIDS onto the lawn of the White House. Inspired by Wojnarowicz's memoir, ashes were poured over the fence, demonstrating to the government explicitly the physical result of the AIDS policies. 'They had drums play a funeral cadence. They chanted—Bringing our dead to your door / We won't take it anymore and Out of the quilt and into the streets / Join us, join us. Unlike other protests, the Ashes Actions were not only meant to shock an uninterested public into empathy—they were meant as releases of grief for the activists themselves. "There was lots of room to scream and yell," Butler said, "but it wasn't always conducive to the work of mourning. I knew none of the people whose ashes we were carrying, but I remember when the ashes went over the fence of the White House. I just don't remember convulsive grief like the grief I felt in that moment."' [source]

sixteen, ashes of your forerunners rest on the lawn of the White House because SIXTEEN, THEY HAVE ALWAYS WATCHED US DIE. -SpondeeSoliloquy - Seventeen things (alternate link)

-----

I had to cut down a lot of the information here, so I would really appreciate it if you took the time to have a look through the additional reading below, there was a lot of things I would have added if I had the space.

-----

Sources: Wikipedia - David Wojnarowicz Guardian - David Wojnarowicz: still fighting prejudice 24 years after his death NY Times AIDS Timeline 1980-1987 History.com - History of AIDS Wikipedia - History of HIV/AIDS vox.com - The Reagan administration's unbelievable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic US Studies Online The AIDS Crisis and the US Presidency SFGate - Reagan's AIDS Legacy / Silence equals death Washington Post - Pat Buchanan's Greatest Hits Wikipedia - Moral Majority Bay Area Reporter - No Obits Wikipedia - Pink Triangle Wikipedia - ACT UP New Yorker - How ACT UP Changed America Vice - Why the Ashes of People With AIDS on the White House Lawn Matter Pioneer Works - The Jacket

Additional Reading: When AIDS Was Funny - Documentary Film (cw for images of very unwell aids patients) LA Times - Police Arrest AIDS Protesters Blocking Access to FDA Offices Youtube - ACT UP Ashes Action 1992 Washington Post - AIDS ACTIVISTS THROW ASHES AT WHITE HOUSE Wikipedia - How to Survive a Plague Wikipedia - The Normal Heart (originally a play), 2014 film BBC - The drama that raged against Reagan’s America Wikipedia - Silence=Death Project Brooklyn Museum - Silence = Death Wikipedia - And The Band Played On - Randy Shilts NPR - How To Demand A Medical Breakthrough: Lessons From The AIDS Fight ACT-UP oral histories ClassicFM - Sobering black-and-white image of a gay men’s choir reminds of loss of life during AIDS epidemic Snopes - Does a Poignant Photo of Gay Men's Choir Show Devastating Impact of HIV/AIDS? Why We Fight - Vito Russo NAMES AIDS Memorial Quilt Wikipedia - NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt national aids memorial - quilt history Cleve Jones interview (specifically: How he came up with the idea for the AIDS Quilt) View the NAMES AIDS memorial quilt online

#rwrb #rwrb movie #red white and royal blue #a series of learning about things that are referenced in the book #long post #alt text added #elio's #elio's meta #meta

49 notes · View notes

ink-and-dagger · 2 years

Text

Once again shocked at the sheer audacity of some members of the Ghost fandom. It’s mainly Twitter to be fair, but people are really behaving like pissy little toddlers.

Def Leppard collab - people bitch about no tour dates.

US tour dates - people bitch that it’s not the correct continent.

Now just to clarify, this is not directed at people expressing mild disappointment or upset. That’s totally valid and understandable. I’m talking to the ‘ghesties’ who are cussing out Tobias. Who are claiming that he doesn’t care about his non-American fans. That he’s sold out and become a US centric band. I’ve even seen some people threatening to boycott ghost, and saying they regret ever having gotten into them?!

Have any of you ever been to one of those restaurants that brings out dishes as they’re ready? Doesn’t mean that nobody else gets to eat.

A US tour doesn’t mean they aren’t going to tour elsewhere too. Given that their management is US based of course it’s gonna be the first part that’s ready for announcement.

Tobias has explicitly said that he wants to bring Copia to every continent.

Let’s not forget that there is a literal war in Europe right now. That doesn’t only affect the countries engaged in conflict, it affects everything. Travel paths all over the continent are being rerouted. There is a major energy crisis because Russia has cut off resources to other countries. Hotels in every country are full of Ukrainian refugees. Missiles are landing across borders into neighbouring countries. It’s a shit show, and the fact that Ghost are even managing to play in Europe at all this year is already great.

And as for further afield such as Asia and Oceania. It’s literally that - they’re further afield. It’s gonna take way more time to organise than a tour closer to home. Again, just because it hasn’t been announced yet doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

I’d advise people go touch grass but honestly I think at this point some of you just need to rub your entire face in a nice juicy green lawn. Tiktok brainrot is real. Y’all are really upset that the entire universe isn’t on your personal algorithm.

Get a grip and untwist your knickers fam you look stupid.

#inky has spoken #Tobias forge #ghost band #ghost bc #the band ghost #love this fandom but my god there are some really dickish little pockets

100 notes · View notes

journey-to-balance · 1 month

Text

This Might Be Controversial But...

Over the past 25 years we've removed 90% of our lawn and here's what happened. Chaos. Beautiful chaos.

Why did we do it?

For us it was simple. Most gardeners try to maintain these clean and sterile environments that are the exact opposite of what wildlife wants. The more we can stop being tidy, the more wilderness we can bring into our gardens and landscapes, the better habitat we provide.

We are changing the planet so quickly that plants and animals can’t keep up. I'm sharing all this with you today with the hope to spread the word about the importance of rewilding!

The majority of lawns and yards these days are causing ecological damage turning once biodiverse spaces into "green graveyards."

Did you know grass is the most irrigated "crop" in America? Yup. Lawns, not food. The majority of non native grass lawns support little to no life and require an immense amount of water and what's it all for?

Lawns originated in 17th century England and France whereby landowners would cultivate lawns around their estates as a symbol of wealth and status. Later, a boom in the United States made it to where manicured lawns became a symbol of the American Dream.

Doused with toxic chemicals to keep up with appearances, these lawns and the products used in them are displacing and eroding life all the way down to the microscopic organisms in the soil.

Today, we pay to see botanical gardens yet there's that potential in our own backyards.

Well, I'm not a 17th century aristocrat trying to show off the status of my estate.

Personally, I don't care what anyone thinks of my status. I have too much real work to do to create pointless chores for myself.

But, I'm grateful to show you what we have, in fact, created.

The insect population has skyrocketed. Birds, spiders, garden snakes and other species have moved in signaling a growing, thriving ecosystem.

Improvement in the soil quality and organic matter as well as cooled areas from canopy and mindful planting continue to be a priority.

Today we're surrounded by the constant melody sounds of the thousands of beings that call my garden home.

It's been a long 25 years, an ever evolving learning curve, but this long observation period has revived an understanding of Earth's language and how we speak it, too.

Earth said: “Let me breathe, allow me flourish, watch me grow, see my flowers in unexpected places, measure the success in hums of buzzing life, tend to my wild nature - carefully….remember the language that exists beyond words….the intuitive flow between all that exists. Remember your place within it all. "

And so we did, and we are.

We no longer have a sterile manicured lawn, we have a flourishing perennial pollinator ecological garden and we are not gardeners but stewards.

In many ways, the letting go of grass and allowing nature to go wild - is reflected in our own lives. Wanting to see what is real, what wants to come through, allowing for authentic-true expression to SHINE. And from that, beautiful things grow.

What are us humans here to do? What’s our purpose? And what does all of this mean?

Oh, and by the way, this isn’t a share demonizing the cutting of grass all together, or putting shade (no pun intended) on short grass lawns. Rather, posing the question ‘what is a lawn for’ & ‘can we find ways to create spaces that elevate our lives and the life around, simultaneously’?

As always, thank you for reading. I truly appreciate your time.

Maritza

Our Journey to Balance

#reflections #our journey to balance #awareness #gardening #garden #pollinators #ecosystem #mindset #flowers #soil #bees #butterflies

3 notes · View notes

yunhsuanhuang · 7 months

Text

LOVE SONGS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE | YH HUANG

With apologies to A.L.

When I'm seventeen, I put a picture of Loretta Lynn in the back of my clear phone case. With the same care my best friends take in decorating trading cards of Jungkook and Jisoo, I get a pair of tweezers and my most expensive stickers, and make an afternoon out of sticking little daisies all over a glossy black-and-white printout of Loretta in the 70's. In the picture she's leaning against a tree, her dark hair long and thick, smiling at the viewer with the same unshakable confidence she's always had.

The next day, I slap my phone face-down on the cafeteria table. My friends go oh-my-god and you-actually-did-it and wait-that's-kinda-cute. We propose swapping some of our cards–I get Minho, she gets Randy– until the conversation derails to exams and teachers and the presentation that's due on Wednesday but none of us have started.

Then it's two weeks later, and when I wake up, thirteen hours after Kentucky does, I read that Loretta Lynn has passed away. A clickbait news site uses the same picture for her obituary.

Sometimes I feel like everything I love is already gone and I just don't know it yet.

so why do you like country music, my friend Alex asks me once.

Alex is American, but the South is as alien a place to him as it is to me– he grew up in suburban New Hampshire, after all, in an impossibly huge house bursting with beach-themed paraphernalia. America, to him, is Dunkin' Donuts and perfectly manicured lawns and the pale foam of the Atlantic cutting itself open over and over again against the sharpness of the rocks.

I squint at my phone. It's late, and I'm probably supposed to be asleep by now, but I'm fifteen and the year is 2020 and time stopped mattering somewhere in the middle of March. It's not like I have school tomorrow, anyway.

I type and retype my message for a while. Then, because it sounds about as good a reason as any, I say, idk i just like the fiddles

It's true. I do like the fiddles, and the steel guitar and the autoharp and the banjos too– the joyful clatter of it, the melody so much like flight. During quarantine, I spend a lot of time lying on the bedroom floor with my headphones on, blaring bluegrass at ear-destroying volumes. Maybe if I play it loud enough, if I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough, I can transport myself into the real thing: a honky-tonk with wood-panelled walls, heat and whiskey in the air, some familiar rhythm reverberating through the floorboards. Sometimes I even imagine myself there in the crowd, singing along.

–

In 1957, a song called Geisha Girl by Hank Locklin topped the country and western charts. It's about this American guy who arrives in Japan, falls in love with the titular Japanese geisha, and leaves his American wife for her. Well-trodden ground, both in art and in reality– after World War 2 ended, tens of thousands of Japanese women married American men for love, for money or for everything in between. Locklin's Geisha Girl became so popular that a song was released in reply to it–Skeeter Davis' Lost to a Geisha Girl, in which Davis takes on the persona of the man’s lover back home, scorning her fickle-hearted husband. As is common in reply songs, lyrics from the original are changed to fit the new perspective:

Locklin sings, Have you ever heard a love song that you didn't understand / when you met her in a teahouse on the island of Japan?

Davis sings: Why a love song with no meaning makes you happy, I don't know / I've lost you to a geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow.

A song you don't understand. A song with no meaning. A song in a language you don't speak. What's the difference, anyway?

In post-war Japan, a whole plethora of country music bands sprung up around the country, playing American hits for homesick soldiers: Tennessee Waltz, Lovesick Blues, Your Cheatin’ Heart.. The closer they were to the originals, the better. They'd bill themselves as the Japanese Hank Williams or John Denver or Patsy Cline. The catch? Some of these singers barely spoke English. painstakingly memorising each lyric until their L's and R's sounded just right. Yet, every Friday night they'd get up on that stage and sing songs they didn't understand about a country they'd never been to.

Just a few years ago, America had been Japan's worst enemy. But here their sons and daughters were, singing American songs, working in American jobs, marrying American men. In the present day, you could almost argue that the tables’ve turned: middle-schoolers debate anime at the cafeteria table; red-blooded blue-collar workers drive Toyotas and ride Kawasakis.

One thing that's stayed the same, though– American boys, Japanese girls. Love songs in a foreign language. Kind of a funny thing.

–

For hundreds of years, the West has been fascinated by the geisha. In Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, fifteen-year-old Butterfly is making her living as one when she’s bought by an American soldier named Pinkerton. He marries her, knocks her up, then ditches her in Japan while he marries an American woman. The whole time, Butterfly’s left to pine for him, and when Pinkerton returns to Japan with his wife, Butterfly stabs herself so that her son will be able to live in America with his father.

(Pinkerton, as you can probably tell, is kind of an ass.)

I keep thinking about Butterfly in that lonely, empty house in Japan, waiting for someone who didn’t love her back. I keep thinking about Alex: Alex and his horrible stupid round glasses and his old embarrassing love of Panic! at the Disco and his stupid cringe emojis, Alex who’s still the smartest person I know, Alex who was the first guy to ever pay attention to me. When I’m sixteen, I think about him almost constantly, a constant hum of obsession in the back of my head. I know I’m in love with him because that’s how all the songs go: Randy Travis declares that it’s deeper than the holler / stronger than the river; Deana Carter says it’s bittersweet / green on the vine; Keith Whitley confesses that it’s what I hear when you don’t say a thing.

Alex asks me, so what do you like about country music? And I don't know what to say to him, so I say nothing at all.

–

They read it in the tea leaves and it's written in the sand

I found love by the heart-full in a foreign distant land

–

Alex likes Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, the outlaws and the jailhouses and the pistols at the hip. My classmates like the feminist murder ballads, where they think she did it but they just can't prove it, where afterwards the girls sell Tennessee ham and strawberry jam / and they don't lose any sleep at night. I personally have a fondness for the silly and unserious: Alan Jackson extolling the virtues of grape snow cones, George Strait selling me the Golden Gate.

In the end, though, what I end up listening to most are the old songs– the really old ones, all the way back to the dawn of recording, the Golden Age of the radio. These songs, collected in the 1920s and 30s, are impressively varied in lyrical content: you’ve got the ones that are basically a soap opera stuffed into three minutes flat (Lorena, My Heart’s Tonight In Texas); the religious ones (Anchored in Love, Will the Circle Be Unbroken); the relatable ones (Give Me Your Love); the unrelatable ones (The Dying Soldier, No Depression In Heaven). What I like about them, I guess, is the familiar hiss of the vinyl, the way the lyrics are both specific and universal at once, their ability to make a time and a place that you’ve never been to before feel, inexplicably, like home.

Alex and I aren't anywhere near poor– his parents are both surgeons, and I spend my evenings trying not to fall asleep in increasingly expensive private lessons. But then again, neither were the Japanese country singers of the fifties and sixties, mainly college kids from elite families who could afford custom-made cowboy hats and genuine guitars. Hell, even the prince of Japan was said to be a country music fan in his youth. None of us have worked in the fields or in the mines, none of our parents have had to tell us here's your one chance, Fancy, don't let me down. We're the people Garth was referring to when he sang about that black-tie affair, those social graces, the ivory tower.

What does it mean to understand a song? How do you sing something and really, truly mean it?

–

When I'm sixteen, my fun fact on the first day of school is that I listen to country music. When I go out with my friends, I wear ankle-length denim skirts and lacy blouses and tie my hair in twin ponytails. I beg and beg them to listen to Loretta, to Dolly, to Patsy. In response, they buy me a Cowboy of the Month calendar and save me in their phones as "the horse girl". In one inexplicable picture that we've since lost, I've got my face in my hands, trying to hide my laughter, as my friends gleefully blast a Fox News clip about Randy Travis' drunken escapades.

So maybe my taste in music is the most interesting thing about me. What else is there? I'm not very pretty, only sometimes funny, and, to my eternal embarrassment, not good at all at being Asian. If I was smarter– fine, if I was Alex, Alex with his books and essays and critical theory– I might say that I do everything I do because I don't want to be the whitest girl in a room full of Asians (lame, boring, suck-up) but the most interesting thing in a room full of white people (exotic, rare, unique). A geisha girl, dressed in Oriental style.

Even so, I don't like to think that that's all there is to it. You can shrink the world down to words on a page, map out the complicated intersections of nations and culture and war that make up the popular imagination of America, call it pentatonic scales, the mixolydian mode. Of course there's value in that, I know– but all that stuff's a foreign language to me. You can try to explain why music sounds the way it does, but in the end you just have to hear it for yourself.

–

For a genre obsessed with authenticity, modern country music's chock-full of performers: Toby Keith singing We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way, Hardy singing My small town is smaller than yours, Jason Aldean singing, I sit back and think about them good ol' days / The way we were raised and our southern ways.

A geisha's a performer, too, in a way. She trains her whole life to sing, to dance, to entertain. In yet another adaptation of Madama Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, a Communist actor seduces a French man by pretending to be a woman for years. When the actor's finally caught, he's asked how he got away with it. He responds: Because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that she was, in fact, a woman.

Don't tell this to anyone else, but when I curl my hair and put on lip-gloss and toddle around in heels, wondering if Alex would like what he sees, I feel like I'm a walking caricature in the shape of a girl. When I’m online with him I simper, I preen, I ask stupid questions just to keep him talking to me– and he likes it, or at least I really hope he does. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wonder what'll happen if I stop performing. I wonder if there’s anything left of me below the performance.

I used to worry that I fell in love with something that doesn't exist: the myth of America, the barbeques and the cornfields and the porches, the honky-tonk and the church social and the choir all singing, the cowboys on their vast, empty ranches. A place that's already gone, or else never existed at all– but what does that matter? An unreal place for an unreal girl. If everyone's performing, then no one is.

–

How much of this is true, then?

It's true as backroads and cold beer and pickup trucks. True as private jets and cowboy hats and exaggerated drawls. True as Nashville and Wallen and the CMAs. Which is to say, it's as true a story as you want it to be.

–

Tell the home folks that I'm happy, with someone that's true I know

I love a pretty geisha girl where the ocean breezes blow

–

In the months around my eighteenth birthday, my parents start screaming at each other. Suffice to say, they never really stop. I take up temporary residence in the school library instead, and spend my afternoons staring at maths textbooks while regretting every decision I’ve ever made. My exams are drawing closer. I’m sure I’ll fail them. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing does. I can’t bring myself to look at my future, I can’t, and yet like the long black train / coming down the line I know what’s going to happen when it hits me, and I know, I know– it’s not gonna be good. I start learning how to fall asleep to the background noise of things getting thrown. When my friends come over to study, they call the house beautiful. I guess it is.

On the way back from school, pressed into a corner of a sardine-packed bus, I put one earphone in and watch the sunset fall over the expressway, the heat turning the sky a gorgeous, deadly pink. Loretta Lynn sings: Well, I look out the window and what do I see? / The breeze is a-blowing the leaves from the trees / Everything is free, everything but me. The Chicks sing: She needs wide open spaces / Room to make her big mistakes. John Prine sings: Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery / make me a poster of an old rodeo / Just give me one thing that I can hold on to / To believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.

Meanwhile, in my headphones, a thousand different stories unfold, familiar missives from some far-off place: a son buries his parents. A wife kills her husband. Two childhood friends fall in love. A girl convinces her father to let her marry her boyfriend. A woman pins a runaway to a motel wall. Somebody calls his ex, even though he shouldn’t. A mother sells her daughter to an older man. A traveller gets on a train. The unfamiliar place names rush past. Amarillo, Charleston, Jackson, Cheyenne, Chattahoochee: evidence of an existence outside of calculus and grammar and pushing my desk against my door to block it. In my head I picture as if through a window some wide, sprawling prairie, some open starry sky, and think of Mary Oliver – so this is the world. I’m not in it. It’s beautiful.

–

(Meanwhile, online: it’s a different story.)

–

If it was a breakup, would it have been better? There's no shortage of breakup songs in country music, after all. Like, What right does she have to take you away / when for so long, you were mine? Like, I'm crazy for loving you / Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you Like, Nothing much for us to say / One last goodbye and you drove away.

Instead, it’s the stupidest, most mundane of reasons: we just stop talking. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. For me, I’m wrapped up in exams, family stuff, a clown car full of childhood friends crashing their way back into my life without warning; for him, he’s busy at Harvard, busy with his new friends and new projects and new–

Okay. Fine. His new girlfriend.

I can’t blame him. I don’t have any right to. I still don’t know whether I actually loved him or I was just sixteen, lonely and looking to write myself into a song. Still, after I learn that he’s dating her, I fall into a haze of social-media stalking: I scroll through their Instagrams, their Twitters, anything that’ll tell me more about who he was, who they are. She’s cute, I’ll give her that, and they’re cute together, the kind of forever and ever, amen couple whose profiles are full of heart-shaped chocolates, of candid kisses and in-jokes I’ll never get to hear.

(A love song with no meaning. A language you don't speak.)

For weeks and weeks on end I dream of him, but the really funny thing is that even in these dreams he’s nothing but a spectre: texting me, calling me, writing long-winded letters in the mail. The closest I ever get is this dream where I’m walking through his hometown, the one I looked up in Google Earth in a fit of desperation. It’s just like I thought it would be, every house gorgeous and stately and ancient, the trees barren but still grand. My hometown’s always been warm. It’s the one thing I have in common with the people in the songs, that overwhelmingly oppressive heat, the kind that sucks all the energy out of your bones. Even though Alex lives at the edge of America, Stephen King and sweaters country, in the dream it’s not cold at all– Georgia hot, hometown hot. As I run from house to house, ringing every doorbell, the roads seem to stretch out beneath my feet until the next door seems oceans and continents away. Nobody’s home. Nobody’s there. In the dream, I’m not surprised.

Sometimes I worry that everything I love is already gone, but I guess I knew that already. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love it.

–

When I'm eighteen, my parents spend a small fortune on a family holiday to America, some last-ditch effort at holding the household together. I miss most of it, however, because the moment I step off the plane I come down with the worst cold I've ever had in my life. Thankfully, during the last couple of days I begin to feel a little bit more like a human being and not just a collection of symptoms, so I manage to go down with my family to the shore.

Maybe it's the ghost of the fever coming back to haunt me, or maybe it's just December, but the beach is bitingly cold, the evening light only just poking through the clouds. Standing there, I find myself thinking– predictably– of Alex. We haven't talked in months, at this point: the last thing I texted him was im in the us lol to which he responded Haha enjoy, and that's about it.

On some other shore, so far away we might still be in different countries, Alex is at Harvard writing essays about America– learning how to understand it, how to shape it, how to make it somewhere he can love without reservation. But I'm not him. I know, now, that I know nothing at all about America: not the blue and far-off one in my songs. but the real place, full of contradictions, land of guns and welfare and Walmart and the Free.

I keep going back to what Alex asked me when I was fifteen, when we barely knew each other: so why do you like country music? And it's only here, now, freezing in a down jacket on the California coast, that I finally have an answer for him.

I think: because every good country song is a love song in its own way.

I think: because country music is the only thing I've ever known how to love.

I think: I have stood and watched the sun rise from the waters of the sea / and I've wondered how much beauty in this cruel world can there be / My dreams are all worth dreaming and it makes my life worthwhile / to see my pretty geisha girl dressed in oriental style.

I think: does there really need to be a reason, A?

From somewhere behind me, I hear someone call my name. I turn. It's my mother yelling: “Come back to the car! It's getting cold!”

“Coming!” I yell back, and run to her.

–

Before I have to go back home, I manage to get my hands on a Shania Twain t-shirt, which honestly makes the entire trip worth it.

#just posting for archive purposes #hi william if youre reading this #writing

8 notes · View notes

aggiepython · 4 months

Text

a piece i did for a class on native american history, inspired by Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon (more info under cut)

“She bounded down two concrete stairs and stepped out on to the green grass of the campus mall, surrounded on either side by thick stately oaks. She could tell each one had been strategically planted along the winding sidewalks between the red brick buildings. Even with groups of students sitting on the grass, leaning against their trunks, the trees seemed lonely. Nothing like the oaks along the river that grew where they wanted to grow and leaned in and touched each other with their middle branches, whose voices sang through their leaves like the hum of electric wires running alongside the country roads.” From Murder on the Red River

This piece is inspired by Murder on the Red River, a mystery novel by Marcie Rendon. It’s about Cash Blackbear, a young Ojibwe woman who investigates the murder of a Native man. Cash was taken from her mother and siblings as a young child and lived in a series of foster homes, most of which were abusive. About a third of Native American children were taken from their parents and placed in foster homes, even when they could have been placed with relatives instead of being separated from their community members and culture. Native American boarding schools, which also separated children from their families and culture, had mostly all been shut down by the 1970s (Katherine Beane), when Murder on the Red River takes place. But the removal of children to foster homes was just another way that the government tried to force Native Americans to assimilate into white culture. The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978. It set requirements to keep Native children with relatives when safe and possible, and to work with the tribe and family of children. This act has made progress, though Native children are still adopted or placed in foster care at a higher rate than non-Native children (NICWA). In my illustration, there are four trees, representing Cash, her mother, and her two siblings. In the image on the right, the trees are growing as they do in their natural forest habitat, winding together. In the image on the left, the trees have been planted on the neat lawn of the college campus, a place where white culture is dominant. The trees are apart from each other, separated as Cash’s family were torn apart. They were forced to assimilate as many Native Americans were. The trees are bur oaks, aka Quercus macrocarpa, a species native to North Dakota where the book takes place. Their range encompasses much of the U.S. and parts of Canada (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center). The grass on the right image is Kentucky Bluegrass, aka Poa pratensis. It is invasive to North America. It was introduced in the 17th century from Europe, and is now found all over North America. It is commonly used for lawns and pasture, and can outcompete native prairie plants (North Dakota State Library). The Red River borders North Dakota and Minnesota. The Ojibwe have lived in Minnesota since before the 17th century, after migrating from Northeastern North America over hundreds of years (Minnesota Historical Society). The shape of the Red River traces through the image, weaving and intermingling through the branches of the trees, showing Cash’s deep connection with the land she is from.

Works Cited “About IWCA” National Indian Child Welfare Association, https://www.nicwa.org/about-icwa/ Beane, Katherine, American Indians in Minnesota, 12 March 2024, Nicholson Hall, Minneapolis, MN. Lecture. “Kentucky Bluegrass”, North Dakota State Library. https://www.library.nd.gov/statedocs/AgDept/Kentuckybluegrass20070703.pdf Rendon, Marcie. Murder on the Red River. Soho Crime, 2017. “The Ojibwe People”, Minnesota Historical Society, https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/native-americans/ojibwe-people “Quercus macrocarpa”, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=QUMA2

#my art #murder on the red river #marcie rendon #bur oak #quercus macrocarpa

3 notes · View notes

allthecastlesonclouds · 5 months

Note

not to go crazy about these tags but you just simply must say more on the thistlesprings as italian i’m obsessed with that

I OF COURSE WILL I WILL PUT IT UNDER A CUT THO BC IT GOT LONG

i do mean italian american because that is what i know. and also slightly catholic italian american but. yeah.

alright so it did first strike me with the extended family. i do believe that the vision that the sphinx showed gorgug in the forest had some amount of truth to it– everyone else's did, and wilma and digby are very much the idea of "we don't need anybody but each other! :D"– and so, therefore, what's the reason the extended family isn't in wilma's and digby's lives? misguided kindness on both ends.

the thistlesprings (extended) have prejudice and boy howdy the italian grandparents i know. they try and they cook and they have their laws but also they have their beliefs. my (italian, catholic) grandmother called unitarian christianity a cult and tried to stop my (jewish) aunt from marrying my (catholic) uncle in front of a rabbi (that meme of "i consent" "i consent" "i don't!"). it's giving "all they know is wrong and they must change but you cannot change them without being hurt." We cannot accept people of other beliefs so you cannot let anything else in to prove us wrong, all under the paper-thin veil of wanting to protect.

and wilma and digby are such contradictions. they're so, so self-sacrificing, and yet they'll fight the whole world. they have a tank (wonder what happened to that lawn mower, actually...), for gods sake. they care so much about their boy but they also left their families at the drop of a hat? there simply must be more but also the self-sacrificing and yet horribly defensive... they are trying so hard because they know what they want and they are willing to do anything to get it but they would prefer to not fight extensively. but they do, because they over-corrected from their upbringing, and gorgug doesn't have the solidest of ground at home to rely on.

there's also just the gnomish/orcish culture mashup of focusing so much on food. i love food so much guys. you reach out and share those dishes with others– if you're having an event, you best bet you're getting up crack of dawn and making a multi-course meal that anyone and everyone can enjoy. the frosty fair folk festival being right up w+d's alley– of course it was, it was bonding. especially the as-homemade-as-we-can-get-it. never met an italian american who prefered canned sauce or preshredded cheese over homemade. that shit is as fresh as it gets.

there's also the dramatic family gatherings where everything goes wrong. why did gorgug see basically his entire extended family. i know that. the grandchildren are in the basement playing twister or some shit and the parents/grandparents/in-laws are Hashing Shit Out. there is a veil of politeness until 5 year old is gone and then it's a Shouting Match. gorgug saw "Digby and Wilma [are] having a fight with a lot of other gnomes. [He knows] that [he has] aunts and uncles and grandparents and stuff like that." that was Moonar Yulnear or some shit and stuff Went Down. Everyone was there. the cousins were in a tire swing or something but the extended family was there.

point 5b actually both sides of the family know each other. why do italian americans know either nobody or Everybody In Your Life and Their Life and The World Actually.

they just. they have so much (misguided) care and they mean so much to me. and do you think that any side has tried to reach out or has it just been years and years of blame game, of they'll never accept him and this is just how it is and how could they destroy themselves and how could they destroy something good. it all feels very italian american to me. homegrown experience gone sour because you want to thrive.

#questionnn!#bird :D #not maintagging this #but they're!! projection time baybeeeeee #i don't write the w+d all that often though because parents are Difficult To Write #but yeah! they're so. sitting u down and talking about generational trauma #sitting them down and handing them a book on breaking racial stereotypes and fleeing from the premises bc i don't wanna get fuckin SLAPPED #i do think this level of self defense is very italian american. we (as a fandom) don't touch on w+d's defensiveness much bc they've got-#-their lawnmower but they ARE still defensive they ARE CERTAINLY NOT ALWAYS HAPPY #and i do think it was a detriment to gorgug to not see them feel anything besides happy or Regulate Emotion #in some way i do think porter was good for him (showing emotion can be healthy– emotion does not have to be gentle to be good) even tho-#-i detest the man #anyway. sorry. 1am stream of consciousness #i hope this is coherent <3 #castles rambles

3 notes · View notes

myhauntedsalem · 8 months

Text

Bloomingdale Asylum

New York

Bloomingdale Asylum was built on land now occupied by Columbia University.

Originally it housed and treated anyone deemed ‘insane’ or ‘lunatic’, but later only took on those who could afford to pay… unfortunately money did not equate to good or humane treatment.

In June, 1771, the Society of the Hospital in the city of New York, in America was incorporated and by 1818 had purchased 26 acres of land in upper Manhattan in order to build an insane asylum. Bloomingdale Asylum began construction and was ready for patients in 1821. At the time it was the only hospital for the care of the mentally ill in the state until another asylum specifically for those mentally ill and ‘poor’ was built on what is now Roosevelt Island.

Bloomingdale then became an asylum for those whose families could afford to pay for the treatment and as such it was regarded as being a place for the best treatment with top of the line staff and facilities… or at least that is what was believed by those on the outside looking in.

The land itself amongst the buildings was beautiful with carefully manicured lawns and gardens. There were orchards, small parcels of farming land and even a few stables and pens as it was considered therapeutic for the patients to work outside in the fresh air.

However on the inside things were quite different. When the asylum was first built and took in patients to treat it probably had everyone’s best interests at heart and the treatment was said to be good but sometime between 1821 and 1872 things had changed and this change was only revealed when journalist Julius Chambers went undercover to investigate the goings on in this now very large institution.

Chambers with the help of some friends and work colleagues had himself committed to the asylum and spent ten days on the inside living as a patient before being released (American Horror Story: Asylum anyone?). In those ten days he uncovered many cases of patient abuse, sadistic nurses and handlers, poor conditions, overcrowding and poor nutrition.

He saw first hand many cases of patients being abused including one man who should be considered a hero. This patient would interfere any time a member of staff abused a patient, this happened so regularly that the staff ended up just tying this hero to a chair and eventually one of the ‘keepers’ took it upon themselves to break this heroes skull…

Patients were often strangled, kicked and punched and it was such abuses that Chambers believed led to many patient suicides.

Another violation saw him witness a woman being committed because she discovered her husband had had an affair. He only allowed her to be released when she promised not to ever bring it up again.

Chambers articles saw many changes come about in Bloomingdale and other asylums including the release of 12 patients who were not insane and a complete reorganization of the administration and staff.

Less than a decade later parts of the asylums land were being sold off as the surrounding city continued to expand and in the end it was Columbia University (then Columbia College) who purchased the majority and soon set to building their new campus. Over time buildings were converted to be later demolished until now there really is only one last building from the asylum days still standing – Macy Villa – now known as Buell Hall.

Macy Villa was the last building built for the asylum and its purpose was to house the richest of their male patients. It was designed so that they could live and be treated in ‘home-like’ surroundings. Although today the wooden verandah is now gone the outside of this building has changed very little.

Other parts of the asylum that still exist are located underground. Many of Columbia Universities buildings are connected by underground tunnels which carry pipes, cables and access ways. Some of these tunnels go right back to the asylum days and the tunnels would have been used for a similar purpose but there are some legends that state patients would be locked down there, chained up underground for misbehaving repeatedly.

It was in fact another legend that had me first start looking into this location a rather creepy legend at that!

In the late 1800s a young girl named Jane Bielawski received a doll as a gift which she named ‘Missy’. Jane lived in a New York Tenement and when some of her friends started die under suspicious circumstances and investigation was carried out. All leads led back to the young Jane Bielawski who seemed to be present at the times of the murders.

When the police attempted to interview the young girl she flew into a fit of terror, blaming the deaths on her doll Missy and even one time throwing it out of her fifth floor window. All questionings went the same way and the with the police certain of who the real culprit was, had Jane locked up in Bloomingdale Asylum.

Jane remained in the asylum system until her death in 1968. Even as an old lady she still maintained that Missy was the culprit of the murders and that she herself was innocent.

#Bloomingdale Asylum #Jane Bielawski #ghost and hauntings #paranormal #ghost and spirits #haunted locations #haunted salem #myhauntedsalem #haunted aslyum #paranormal phenomena #ghosts and spirits #ghosts #spirits

6 notes · View notes