#New Mexico I

[fandomsandfeminism]

Yall wanna hear a kinda funny, kinda sad story about my grandmother and hetero-normativity?

Ok, so... when my grandmother was in her 50s (I was an infant), she met a woman at the Unitarian Church. And, as can happen when you meet your soul mate, this event made it impossible for her to deny parts of herself that she had fiercely hidden her whole life.

All the drama- their affair being found out, the divorce with my grandfather, the court battle over who got the house, happened while I was a baby. Even in my earliest memories, it's just Mama Jo and Oma, and my grandfather lived elsewhere (first his own apartment, then a nursing home, then with us.)

But here's the thing- no one ever explained any of this to me. No one ever sat down and was like "hey, Rosie, so do you know what a lesbian is?" It was the 90s. It was Texas. I think my mom was still kinda processing all this, and just assumed that like... I was gonna figure it out. Don't mention it, let it just be normal. Like I think my mom thought that if she explained the situation, she would be making it weird? I dunno.

But like. In the 90s, in all the movies I had seen and books I had read, do you know how many same sex couples I had seen? Like. 0. Do you know how many "platonic best friend/roommates" I had seen? A lot. I had no context, is what I'm saying.

I literally thought this was a Golden Girls, roommates, besties situation until I was like...I dunno, 11? 12?

It was actually their parrot, an African Grey named Spike, imitating my grandmothers voice saying "Johanna, honey, it's getting late", that triggered the MIND BLOWN moment as I realized that *there's only one master bedroom and it only has 1 waterbed* when all the pieces finally clicked.

Anyway. I think it's a real important thing for kids to know queer people exist, for a lot of reasons, but also because kids can be clueless and it's embarrassing to have your grandmother be outted by a parrot because everyone just thought you'd figure it out on your own.

Anyway, here is my grandma and her wife, my Oma, after they moved to Albuquerque to be artsy gay cowboys and live their best life. They helped run a "Lesbian Dude Ranch" out there (basically just with funding and financial support. As Oma has explained "traditionally, most lesbians don't have a lot of money" so they wrote the checks and let the younger ladies actually run the ranch.)

[eldritch-ace]

I love this trend and I’ve been seeing some regional Mikus, so take a New Mexican birthday girl in honor of Zozobra and hatch chile season. 🌵🫔⛰️

[bunnygirllover45]

Happy Friday the 13th here's my slasher oc. silly guy.

[llovelymoonn]

my favourite faye wei wei paintings

little blue bird from the pillow flew (2020) \\ first i must clean the keys of the piano with milk (2022) \\ the black bells of a distant new mexico (2023) \\ an echo trapped forever (2023) \\ sweet velvet flower there is no time/ I ask to go back I wish you were mine (2021) \\ two butterfly lovers (2021) \\ untitled (2022) \\ nectar for honey (2021) \\ red i (2022) \\ fountain lies the sun (2017)

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[forbescaroline]

235 FAVORITE SHIPS OF ALL TIME (ranked by my followers) 65. michael guerin and alex manes - roswell new mexico

[alethiometry]

i'm sorry but coach ben going from packing 5,000,000 condoms for a weekend in seattle to getting his leg chopped off by a 17-year-old girl to getting yelled at by another 17-year-old devout christian who thinks she can fly a plane from like the 1940s to getting poisoned/drugged TWICE by the first 17-year-old because he does not reciprocate her romantic feelings for him to getting completely overruled by the soccer team he assistant coaches when they ice out the team captain to absolutely fucking hating his life when they chow down on team captain's half-cremated body is actually comedy GOLD

[luridcomixofthenuit]

immediately preceding the divorce arc

[swagsmeister]

okay last one for tonight Yayyyyyyy petekey moment

[crippled-peeper]

I have so many pictures of fall leaves does anyone want to see ???

[fizzytoo]

the next location on the sibling-bonding roadtrip takes us to an airbnb campsite in plumbite cove, copperdale!

[decolonize-the-everything]

Housing insecurity is racist & violent

"Seventy-five national, state, territorial, and local domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking organizations filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) urging it to support the rights of people who are homeless, including unhoused survivors, in City of Grants Pass, Ore. v. Johnson. This case is one of the most important SCOTUS cases regarding homelessness in the past 40 years. The amicus brief, authored by the National Housing Law Project and Sexual Violence Law Center, argues that housing is extremely limited for gender-based violence survivors, often forcing them to make impossible choices between sleeping outside or suffering continued violence. Criminalizing survivors will only increase their and their families’ risk of violence, trauma, and housing insecurity."

Article from July 29:

Housing advocates across Indian Country say Native Americans and Alaska Natives likely will feel the full weight of a June 28 Supreme Court ruling that has cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on unsheltered people sleeping outside in public places. Native Americans experience homelessness at a disparate rate. Advocates say the housing crisis is a reflection of our society’s unwillingness to address systemic issues.

“It’s criminalizing poverty,” said attorney Caroline LaPorte, who is an immediate descendant of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians. “We are much more comfortable with putting, and paying, for people to be incarcerated.” LaPorte is the director of the STTARS Indigenous Safe Housing Resource Center, a project of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, and she is the board chairman for the StrongHearts Native Helpline. STTARS focuses on the intersection of housing insecurity and gender-based violence. A lawyer, she said the Supreme Court’s decision was enraging. “Everybody belongs in our communities. They deserve to be safe, and it is our responsibility. We are required to make sure that those people have the things that they need,” LaPorte said.[...]

Announced on June 28 in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the court found that outdoor sleeping bans don’t violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

[castalianspring]

Malex + unhinged AO3 tags, pt 4

[thefearandnow]

So with Oppenheimer coming out tomorrow, I feel a certain level of responsibility to share some important resources for people to understand more about the context of the Manhattan Project. Because for my family, it’s not just a piece of history but an ongoing struggle that’s colonized and irradiated generations of New Mexicans’ lives and altered our identity forever. Not only has the legacy of the Manhattan Project continued to harm and displace Indigenous and Hispanic people but it’s only getting bigger: Biden recently tasked the Los Alamos National Lab facility to create 30 more plutonium pits (the core of a nuclear warhead) by 2026. So this is a list of articles, podcasts and books to check out to hear the real stories of the local people living with this unique legacy that’s often overlooked. 

This is simply the latest mainstream interest in the Oppenheimer story and it always ALWAYS silences the trauma of the brown people the US government took advantage of to make their death star. I might see the movie, I honestly might not. I’m not trying to judge anyone for seeing what I’m sure will be an entertaining piece of art. I just want y’all to leave the theater knowing that this story goes beyond what’s on the screen and touches real people’s lives: people whose whole families died of multiple cancers from radiation from the Trinity test, people who’s ancestral lands were poisoned, people who never came back from their job because of deadly work conditions. This is our story too.

The first and best place to learn more about this history and how to support those still resisting is to follow Tewa Women United. They’ve assembled an incredible list of resources from the people who’ve been fighting this fight the longest.

https://tewawomenunited.org/2023/07/oppenheimer-and-the-other-side-of-the-story

The writer Alicia Inez Guzman is currently writing a series about the nuclear industrial complex in New Mexico, its history and cultural impacts being felt today.

https://searchlightnm.org/my-nuclear-family/

https://searchlightnm.org/the-abcs-of-a-nuclear-education/

https://searchlightnm.org/plutonium-by-degrees/

Danielle Prokop at Source NM is an excellent reporter (and friend) who has been covering activists fighting for Downwinder status from the federal government. They’re hoping that the success of Oppenheimer will bring new attention to their cause.

https://sourcenm.com/2023/07/19/anger-hope-for-nm-downwinders/

https://sourcenm.com/2022/01/27/new-mexico-downwinders-demand-recognition-justice/

One often ignored side of the Manhattan Project story that’s personal for me is that the government illegally seized the land that the lab facilities eventually were built on. Before 1942, it was homesteading land for ranchers for more than 30 families (my grandpa’s side of the family was one). But when the location was decided, the government evicted the residents, bought their land for peanuts and used their cattle for target practice. Descendants of the homesteaders later sued and eventually did get compensated for their treatment (though many say it was far below what they were owed)

https://www.hcn.org/issues/175/5654

Myrriah Gomez is an incredible scholar in this field, working as a historian, cultural anthropologist and activist using a framework of “nuclear colonialism” to foreground the Manhattan Project. Her book Nuclear Nuevo Mexico is an amazing collection of oral stories and archival record that positions New Mexico’s era of nuclear colonialism in the context of its Spanish and American eras of colonialism. A must read for anyone who’s made it this far.

https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/nuclear-nuevo-mexico

There isn’t a ton of podcasts about this (yet 👀) but recently the Washington Post’s podcast Field Trip did an episode about White Sands National Monument. The story is a beautifully written and sound designed piece that spotlights the Downwinder activists and also a discovery of Indigenous living in the Trinity test area going back thousands of years. I was blown away by it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/field-trip/white-sands-national-park/

[bisexualalienss]

ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO ☆ 1.06 "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

[basketcasemp3]

television meme [6/8] women in sci-fi ∟liz ortecho: look, this kind of science, healing what others believe to be irreparable, is important to me. it's all I've ever wanted to do.

[forbescaroline]

235 FAVORITE SHIPS OF ALL TIME (ranked by my followers) 55. kyle valenti and isobel evans - roswell new mexico