#Oregon Fires 2020

[troutreznor]

Elegy for 2020 / Bryan David Griffith, 2021

Burned wood, stone, ash, charred leaves.

In August and September 2020, massive, fast-moving wildfires destroyed thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands of people across Oregon, Washington, and California. This installation serves as a memorial for those who lost their lives, a tribute to those who worked tirelessly to prevent a much larger loss of life, and a testament to all who suffered through the flames and emerged on the other side. Each charred leaf commemorates a lost life.

photo captured and accompanying caption transcribed from "Rethinking Fire" exhibit at the World Forestry Center in Portland, OR

[stupittmoran]

Shortly after Covid started, in July of 2020, my father died.

Before I ended the call with my stepmom, who called me when my my father collapsed, my girlfriend already had the car packed.

She knew what to do, and I didn’t need to say anything.

By the time I hung up the phone, he was gone.

We immediately drove up to Washington.

Not for the funeral, but for whatever it was that we did during Covid when a loved one died.

I got to say goodbye to him in an empty room full of empty chairs, with one occupied casket.

It was unfitting for how good of a Man my father was.

And poof,

just like that,

He was gone, and then we drove home.

It never really hits you until later, and it’s usually when you’re not expecting it.

But that’s another story for another time.

One of the more memorable things from our trip was stopping to get gas on our way through Oregon.

Forgetting that you’re not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon, I began to get out of the car.

With half of my body hanging out the door, the attendant quickly ran up to me and asked what I was doing.

At that point, I said sorry, I forgot you’re not allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon, all while trying to force through a smile, not realizing he’s angry.

From beneath his annoyed masked face, he asked me “Oh, so you’re not from Oregon, why are you traveling out of state during a Global pandemic?”, with his liberal Oregon condescending accent.

He continued to demand I get back in my car, but not before taking my credit card, after being face-to-face with me, and no further than 2 1/2 feet away.

Covid brought the authoritarian out of so many people.

He wasn’t scared of Covid. He wanted to assert some sort of dominance.

Here we are at a gas station in Eugene Oregon, and the gas station attendant feels he has the authority to question where I’m traveling, why I’m doing it, and demands I get back in the car.

He didn’t do this out of fear. If he was scared, he wouldn’t have approached me at all.

He would’ve been very careful to keep his distance.

He did this because he was given the smallest amount of authority, and it made him cruel. This is how people behaved before vaccines became available.

This is how people behaved before they were calling for doctors, nurses, and hospital staff to be fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

This is how they behaved before they were calling for forced COVID-19 vaccinations within the military.

This is how they behaved before the president of the United States of America tried to take the livelihood of every American that refused the COVID-19 vaccine, that worked for a company with 100 employees or more.

It was never about science, it was never about your health, it was never about your safety.

IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT YOUR COMPLIANCE.

We can never forget how people behaved during Covid.

But more importantly, we can never let people forget how they behaved during Covid, or they will do it again.

I am here to remind everyone, and I will continue telling my story.

You should tell your story too.

People would love to hear it.

I know I would.

Thanks for reading.

Shared from Santa Cruz Mountain Goat @SCMountainGoat On Twitter/X

Photo by Mike Oxford Sr. (My Father) Bob Weir and The Grateful Dead Shoreline Amphitheater Mountain View, Ca May of 1991

[novembarskojutro]

lightanddwell.com 

...

[lhazaar]

hey. i'm turning my chair around and sitting in it backwards now because i want to speak specifically to people with ocd. this is a targeted post and is not meant to apply to the userbase of this website at large or to serve as a policy decision.

hi. do you know what scrupulosity means? it is a strong, intense, often painful concern about morality or religion. it's very common for religious people with ocd, actually—the fear that you've sinned, that you will sin, that your thoughts themselves are sinful. you're afraid of being an evil person. every thought and feeling you have is scrutinized to exhaustion in case it's proof that you're evil. this also happens for non-religious people with ocd, it's just that ours will look different; it's often a preoccupation with social justice issues. you care a lot about being a good person, right! most people do. you want to be a good person, you want to be kind to others and to dismantle oppressive systems where you can. i'm making some assumptions here, but they're based on my specific audience base.

so, there's this thing that happens online, especially on tumblr and twitter—not because bluh bluh platforms bad, but because of the ways in which information is propagated on here. people used to tag for these posts sporadically but don't do so as much anymore. you know posts that exhort you, the reader, specifically, to take action? they tell you not to look away, not to bury your head in the sand. they tell you to give and to agitate and to donate time, money, resources.

those posts used to make me intensely, deeply anxious. i don't mean mild agitation, i mean life-ruining, day-occupying panic that seizes your entire body, and thoughts that don't leave your brain. guilt that paralzyes you because you, personally, cannot go kill the politicians responsible. you don't have enough money to do more than donate a few dollars, and sometimes you don't even have that. but because of where you live, because of the fact that you have internet access and you're literate enough to read these posts, you know that you have a level of privilege that most people never will. you're aware of that privilege because you're reasonably in-tune with social justice movements and you've probably spent some time dissecting your own privilege to examine your biases. (that's not a bad thing; i'm not here to condemn that. stay with me, if you can.)

there's a thing that can happen if you've lived with ocd like this for a long time where you become kind of incapable of telling what's addressed to you personally and what isn't. everything feels like a personal exhortation. you have trouble saying no, or knowing when you're overextended, because other people have it worse. how dare you enjoy relative comfort when people are being bombed or drowning in a climate change -induced flood or being crushed to death in a crowd panic. how dare you not be aware of it at all times, always, constantly. how dare you look away. don't look away.

i want to tell you about something i went through, if that's okay. a lot of people who follow me will already know this, but i haven't talked about this aspect of it very much publicly. in 2020, while visiting my partner in southern oregon, we had to evacuate from wildfires twice in under 24 hours. that was a really, really bad fire season, caused and perpetuated by a combination of global climate change and colonialization practices that destroyed traditional indigenous fire management strategies across the west coast of north america. fires stretched from bc to california. we wound up fleeing south, and then had to flee back north again, hemmed in on three sides. i flew back home to bc shortly afterwards, and i have this vivid, awful memory of seeing my home mountain range, the cascades, choked out with smoke from the window of an airplane. the woman in front of me sobbed the entire time until we touched down.

i remember thinking at that time that it was insane the entire world wasn't stopping. what i was experiencing was apocalyptic in scale—the fire we ran from the first time was part of a complex that chewed up entire towns. it wasn't the first fire season, nor the worst for the continent, nor the world. but all i could think in the moment was why aren't we doing anything, this is going to be all of us in a decade, why are people looking away.

if i had gone online and posted that, it would not have been morally wrong of me. there's no ascribing morality to a reaction like that. i mean, if i'd gone to someone who suffered in the years prior in australia or california and told them that ours was So Much Worse, that would have made me an asshole, but i didn't do that. i made some upset facebook posts targeted at the trump voters in my family, but i had no way to express at the time the sort of clawing panic of WHY AREN'T PEOPLE DOING ANYTHING??

the answer to that, which you probably know, is: what would they have done? we were sheltered by friends we evacuated with, but what power did a mutual in new york or wales or singapore have to affect a wildfire in oregon?

so, come back to the present day with me again, if you will. i said above that posts worded like this used to make me really, really anxious. in the span of time after the fire, i developed ptsd, and my ocd ruined my life. i took an extra year to graduate after i'd finished all my coursework because i could not send in the forms required. i was too busy spending 10-16 hours a day rearranging furniture in my room, or lying in bed, full-body tense, until it felt like my teeth would crack from the pressure. i'm medicated now. i'm grateful for it. i have more tolerance for these posts because i've been there. i know the op isn't doing anything wrong, because they're not wrong. why isn't the world stopping to look at a natural disaster, or a genocide? the world should not be like this.

you are not the world. you are someone with a brain that will torture you to death given the chance. you know how learning to reckon with your privileges, whatever they may be, requires you to not try and escape them? you need to be able to hold in your head that yes, you benefit from something that isn't fair; yes, other people should have that benefit, and that they don't is unjust. but you need to, for example, not try and weasel your way out of being white because you're uncomfortable with the guilt that it produces. you need to not go online and say well not ALL americans because you can't sit with the idea of being complicit in american imperialism. if you have ocd, you need to apply that to your own brain, too. you need to apply it to every post that you see. you need to know that people are not speaking directly to you, they are crying out in pain and fear. they are not doing anything wrong. they are scared and hurting.

they do not benefit from you taking on all the guilt of that fear and pain. i am not saying this to absolve you of the guilt. i am saying that you need to be able to exist with that level of guilt without allowing it to paralyze and destroy you. if you can't do that right now, i'm not here to cast judgement on you. blacklist phrases. i had "wildfire" blacklisted for a long time. i'm sure i missed aid posts because of it. the alternative was me being nonfunctional. for a long time, i had donation posts blacklisted across the board, because the way my ocd worked meant that i was neurologically incapable of knowing where my own limits were, and i would give money i did not have. if you need to do that, this is me giving you permission. doing this does not make you evil. it does not make you morally bankrupt. it makes you someone whose brain is trying to fucking kill them, and the world needs you to not let that happen.

this is not a post about how you're exempt from caring about the world if you're mentally ill, it's about how you cannot apply that care to anything useful if you're having massive panic spirals every other day about the guilt that you feel. your guilt should not rule your life. if it does, i say this kindly, but you very likely need medication. i'm sorry if you don't have access to that right now. you cannot think your way out of ocd. you cannot think your way into stopping neural activity. you cannot guilt your way into being a good person; you have to be able to exist with the guilt and not let it rule you in order to do that. nobody benefits from your brain trying to martyr you in the name of solving the world's suffering.

you need to be able to function, free of crushing and paralyzing guilt, before you can help anyone. you are not an effective ally like this just because your brain tells you that it's necessary.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kate Briquelet at The Daily Beast:

MAGA pastor Sean Feucht and a band of Christian nationalists are glomming on to campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, leading “United for Israel” marches at Columbia and the University of Southern California while professing their belief that the conflict is a harbinger of the “End Times” predicted in the Bible. On Wednesday night, Feucht’s followers and far-right extremists rallied outside USC with the help of a police escort—an image that stands in stark contrast to the LAPD officers in riot gear who previously arrested activists from the school’s pro-Palestinian camp. The Christian Zionist parade kicked off with Feucht performing contemporary worship music (“Our God is an awesome God”) and anti-LGBTQ speakers like preachers Lou Engle and Ché Ahn, who once crowed at a “Stop the Steal” rally: “We’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Feucht, looking every bit the part of a Jesus rocker in a black jean jacket, fired up the crowd with a concert before the march. “Lord, we stand together against hatred, bigotry, anti-semitism, violence that’s taken over this campus and the streets of the city,” Feucht said between songs. “God, I just pray today that America would see a different story tonight.” “Where they’ve seen division, they would see unity and joy,” added the 40-year-old Sammy Hagar-coiffed pastor, who once prayed over former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey. Afterward, Fox News portrayed Feucht as a hero of sorts for the Jewish people. “We want Americans to see that we are fed up with this rot of anti-Semitism on the college campuses, and that we’re gathering together in unity, bringing prayer, bringing hope,” said Feucht, who’s risen to MAGA fame and riches after holding worship concerts flouting COVID rules in 2020.

The irony of divisive activists making up the “unity” flock didn’t seem to be lost on reporters and extremism researchers, including Kate Burns, Jeremy Lindenfeld, and Kelly Stuart, who documented the scene in real time. They estimated a few hundred participants showed up versus Feucht’s projection of “thousands.”

[...]

“There’s a veneer of interfaith, there’s a veneer of solidarity,” said Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies (ICJS). “I do interfaith dialogue for a living. These people are not doing interfaith dialogue. They’re doing Christian supremacy, but they’re cloaking it in the garb of interfaith solidarity.”

“If Sean Feucht is an enemy of anti-Semitism, why does he hang out with Proud Boys and QAnon supporters and conspiracy theorists at places that tolerate outright anti-Semitism like the ReAwaken America tour?” Taylor added. “Why does he invite far-right militia members to be security at his own events? Color me skeptical that Sean Feucht cares one whit about anti-Semitism.” (A Proud Boy and a Jan. 6 insurrectionist reportedly belonged to Feucht’s security team at his Oregon “Let Us Worship” event in 2021.) Feucht has also palled around with podcaster Elijah Schaffer, who has made anti-Semitic remarks along with his guest speakers like white supremacist Nick Fuentes. “Do you believe Jews disproportionately control the world institutions, banks, & are waging war on white, western society?” Schaffer asked in a 2023 Twitter poll.

[...] In New York, Feucht teamed up with conservative radio host Eric Metaxas, who, according to Media Matters, uses his platform to promote the belief that Christians should control the government, and once punched an anti-Trump protester in the face. A day before descending on the Big Apple, Feucht went live on Facebook and appeared almost giddy about the “end days.” “Yes, these are the end days,” Feucht said. “I know people say all the time, ‘Everyone’s saying it’s the end days.’ ‘Jesus said it was the end days 2000 years ago.’ Well, it is the end days, and we’re one day closer to the return of Jesus.” “And as that ramps up, we’re going to see a rise of evil, we’re going to see a rise of glory, and we’re gonna see a rise of hatred for the Jewish people.”

[...] Many evangelicals like Feucht believe in an End Times prophecy where Jews will return to Israel (and convert to Christianity) as part of Jesus’s Second Coming.

Far-right Christian nationalists such as Sean Feucht have traveled to various campuses where protests against the Gaza Genocide are happening to preach a right-wing pro-Israel Apartheid rally under the guise of an “interfaith rally.”

[yinlotus]

as far as i'm aware from reading US news (ny times) most of the smoke on the US east coast is from the canadian fires. also, the fires in canada are a lot lot lot worse than looks on the image you can see - hundreds of fires burning all across canada.

as a californian myself, i've also been kind of annoyed seeing all the news about like 'unprecedented smoke in nyc' like seriously? this isn't unprecedented, just for them specifically. I understand that seeing the orange skies was crazy but like...it's not new...I literally saw that myself during the fires of 2020 in Calif. i've had friends and family had to evacuate from nearby fires, i had to wear an n95 during the summer before covid because being outside in that air quality made me feel sick. my brother had school and sports cancelled because it was too dangerous to be outside breathing the air.

calif, oregon, washington, british columbia and all of the western US and canada (maybe mexico too, I don't know about impact of smoke/fires in central or latin america) have been dealing with this for years. australia and nz have been dealing with this too for years.

I'm sorry...I kind of just wanted to complain a bit...it was a bit jarring seeing all those headlines about it being new when it's really not, it's just only new for the US east coast which has the biggest & loudest mouthpiece coming from america.

i'd also love to see some resources about the fires in canada if anyone has sent you any. i know for california, Cal Fire (fire.ca . gov) has info on calif. since there was a lot of rain this year (i've never seen so much rain in my life) i'm hoping fire season won't be too bad but we never know...

hi anon!

it's okay to vent about it. i understand that for those who have dealt with or are currently dealing with large wildfires would be annoyed by those who are not experiencing it as they are. still, i don't think it's right to blame those people without educating them a bit on it first.

honestly even when it comes to the east coast smoke most news talk specifically about nyc than the other places dealing with the same thing. picky news coverage can be frustrating to say the least.

and you're certainly right about it being new to us but not everyone else. the east coast is generally pretty wet with hurricanes in summer (which hurricane season officially started around a week ago, which i'm curious if it'll be affected at all since the smoke is also going east into the atlantic and wildfire smoke throws off marine ecosystems and cyclones are worse when the water is warmer) and snow storms during winter. i think no matter where you are, people will react extremely if something out of the ordinary happens. personally i can't even imagine it since even when i lived on the west coast, it was near seattle and mostly wet.

thank you for providing some info on california! nobody else has sent anything yet, but i'll definitely post if they do! :)

my screenshot was from fire.airnow.gov and from zooming in more i get a slightly better picture of where the fires are but the low accuracy is likely because the site's focus is only the us. nasa is usually quite good in capturing this things in the states, so i checked the canadian space agency to see if they had better images of the fires. while i didn’t find any recent satellite images (best i found was a video from a month ago), i was directed to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) which has an updated interactive map on the homepage. This site alao has links to individual centers in each province.

[nerdygaymormon]

For queer people, our “normal” is relatively recent

I know it’s scary with all the legislation & accompanying rhetoric being made against the queer community. Trans people are having their medical care taken away, and basic parts of their life, such as the ability to participate in athletics or go to the restroom, regulated and restricted. Gay people are being called "groomers." People are told queer people are a danger to children, and recognition of our existence is being removed from some schools and libraries.

Please remember, there are a lot of people on our side. We will work to remove these abominable laws. We will work for increased tolerance and acceptance. Things will get better. 

I thought we could use a reminder of how recent it is that we gained the rights and visibility and acceptance that we have become accustomed to. Our ‘normal’ is fairly recent and it’s good to remember that there have been people fighting against us all the way, and yet we made progress and culture became more accepting. Sadly, there are groups of people trying to undo all of that.

Less than 3 years ago in the summer of 2020, it became illegal to discriminate against gay and transgender employees at work if they're doing something which is allowed for others. If a woman is allowed to wear a skirt to work, and a trans woman comes to work wearing a skirt, the employer can't fire her for that. Likewise, an employee who joins a gay softball league can't be fired for that if other workers are allowed to join softball leagues.

In the last 5 years Pete Buttigieg, an openly gay man, was confirmed by the Senate to serve in a Presidential Cabinet position. Colorado's governor Jared Polis is the first openly gay person to be elected as a state governor. Virginia's Danica Roem is the first openly trans person to be elected to a state legislature. Sharice Davids from Kansas is the first openly lesbian woman elected to the US Congress.

In the last 10 years openly trans individuals were finally allowed to join the US military. Oregon's Kate Brown became the first openly bisexual person elected governor. Marriage equality became legal across the nation, same-sex couples can now marry in all US states. The American Psychiatric Association retired the concept of a "gender identity disorder" because being trans isn’t a ‘disorder.’

15 years ago, Barack Obama was running for president and said he didn't support gay marriage. If he'd been in support of it, he'd lose many votes from Democrats. 15 years ago people didn't come out in high school, maybe they told some close friends, but generally they weren't OUT out. 15 years ago Hillary Duff made a PSA to inform people it's not nice to call things "gay" as a way of saying they didn’t like something.

20 years ago, most people didn't know anything about trans people, hadn't even heard of the concept. 20 years ago the Supreme Court forced 14 states to decriminalize homosexuality. 20 years ago celebrities still lost jobs in television and movies if they came out.

The way things were 15 and 20 years ago feels so alien to us now, but it wasn’t that long ago. There were major setbacks along the way, and we’re experiencing some major setbacks now, but I trust that science, medicine, reasonableness, and civility will eventually win out. Truth is on our side. Meanwhile, it sucks that people today are having to deal with this mess.

[queenofglassbeliever]

Jake's and Sarina's wedding headcanons meme

Where they get married. Cathedral Park under St. John's Bridge in Portland Oregon.

When they get married. In autumn (late September) of 2021.

What traditions they include. They have a Christian and Hindu fusion wedding and find ways to blend traditions. Jake and Sarina have a bachelor and bachelorette party respectively. During Sarina's bachelorette party, she has the mehndi ceremony (adorning hands and feet with henna tattoo) with Cassandra, Eve, Nicole, and Estrella. Jai mala (exchanging jasmine flower garlands to wear) and the exchanging of the rings. The jai mala happens when Sarina reaches the end of the aisle. It's followed by the Hindu vows then the Christian vows and the ring exchange. And their friends toss rice at them at the end of the ceremony.

What their wedding cake looks like:

Who smashes the cake into who's face? Sarina smears a bite of cake on Jake's face. While she's laughing, he silences her with a kiss. Which gets cake on Sarina's face and they laugh.

Who proposed to who? Jake proposed to Sarina in the summer of 2020. It was morning and they were having breakfast. Jake made french press coffee (Sarina's favorite way to have coffee). The coffee was in a new mug that he bought for her just because. (Sarina collects novelty mugs). They do the daily crossword together and when Sarina reaches the bottom of her mug she sees "will you marry me?" written on the bottom. Jake gets down on one knee and with a ring and proposes.

Who walks down the aisle and who waits at the alter? Sarina walks down the aisle while Jake waits at the end of it.

What their wedding dress/suit/other looks like: Sarina wears a red bridal lehenga. The garment blends modern and traditional Indian aesthetics. Jake wears a black three piece with a bolo tie and a black cowboy hat.

What their color scheme is and what sort of decor they have. The color scheme is jewel toned and includes red, burgundy, orange, yellow, and forest green. They have a mandap set up on the deck for their alter. Lights, flowers, and foliage are strung up across the arches. There fall leaves and flowers on the stairs which serve as the aisle. The staircase is also lined with glass lanterns with candles inside.

What flowers are in the bouquet (what do the flowers mean?) The bouquet has red roses, purple waterlily dahlias, orange rank and yellow kalanchoe. Red roses symbolize love and passion. Purple dahlias are a symbol of grace, beauty, dignity, and kindness. Ranunculus flowers mean charm and attractiveness and kalanchoes mean persistence and eternal love. For added greenery, the bouquet has seeded eucalyptus, gumdrop eucalyptus, maidenhair fern (in orange), and leatherleaf fern. Eucalyptus is a symbol of strength, protection and abundance. And the fern is a symbol of sincerity, magic, fascination, confidence, shelter, discretion, reverie and a secret bond of love. Silk flowers are used and after the wedding, the bouquet becomes the center piece for the Stones' dining room table.

What their vows are. Saptapadi, the seven vows of Hindu marriage. Jake an Sarina walk seven circles around the fire in the mandap. While walking, they say the vows. 1) To nourish each other. 2) To remain lifelong friends. 3) To be together forever. 4) To take of family. 5) To share joys and sorrows. 6) To preserve wealth. 7) To grow together in strength. After the saptapadi, Jake and Sarina say the classic Christian wedding vows. "I, Jacob Stone, take you, Sarina Bhonsle, to be my wedded wife. . .till death do us part." "I, Sarina Bhonsle, take you, Jacob Stone, to be my wedded husband. . .till death do us part."

If anyone's late to the wedding. Flynn. Naturally.

Who's in the bridal party/groomsmen? It's a small ceremony. Most of the guests are the Library people. And the rest are a few family and friends Jacob and Sarina have outside of the Library. Because of this, they decide to not have a bridal party and groomsmen. Instead they just have a Best Person and a Person of Honor. Jacob asked Cassandra to be his Best Woman. Sarina asks Ezekiel to be her Man of Honor.

What their bridal party/groomsmen are wearing. Ezekiel wears a burgundy suit with a kurta shirt. Cassie wears an orange cowl neck gown. The color coordinates with Jake's orange ranunculus boutonniere.

Who gives speeches at the reception (bonus: what do they say?) Cassie and Ezekiel give speeches. As does Eve and Jenkins. Cass's speech is mostly about the good change she's seen in Jake since Sarina came into his life. Ezekiel ribs Jacob, basically saying that Sarina is too cool for Jake but wishes them a happy life together. Eve's speech is about officially welcoming Sarina into their weird found little family. Eve and Sarina later develop an inside joke that Eve is Sarina's Guardian-in-law. Jenkins congratulations the happy couple and makes a point to tell Jacob how proud he is of him.

Who catches the bouquet? Cassandra catches the bouquet. She then shares a knowing look with Estrella.

What their wedding photos look like. Photos of the newly weds were taken on the Cathedral Park staircase. As well as group photos with Ezekiel and Cassandra and photos with Flynn, Eve, Jenkins, and Nicole. There are also candid photos of the ceremony and the reception. Such as photos of the rice tossing and the cake smashing. Jacob and Sarina have a tri-fold frame of the cake smashing. First photo is of Sarina smashing cake into Jake's face. Second is of Jake kissing Sarina, getting cake on her face, and the third is of them laughing together.

What sort of food they have at the reception. Entrées: Mutton biryani and pork chops w/ fig & grape agrodolce. Appetizers: Bacon wrapped dates w/ goat cheese, potato skins, and amritsari paneer tikka. Side dishes: Masala mac & cheese, quinoa bhel salad, and tamale pie. Desserts: Cherry and apple fried pies, ras malai mousse and thandai truffles.

How wild their reception gets (who dances the best, who gets drunk first, etc.) Ezekiel is the best dancer. Some guests start a limbo contest which Jenkins wins and Flynn was a close second. Cassie gets drunk on champagne.

What their rings look like. Sarina's engagement ring & wedding band and Jake's wedding band.

What sort of favors they have. Wooden engraved bookmarks.

Where they go on their honeymoon. Château de Fère in France.

Something memorable that happens during the party/ceremony. A couple of Jake's cousins get too drunk and start a brawl.

Who officiates the ceremony. They hire a pandit to perform the Hindu parts of the ceremony and a priest to perform the Christian parts.

What song their first dance is to. "Here, There and Everywhere" by The Beatles.

Who gives who away as they walk down the aisle. Jenkins walks Sarina down the aisle.

[roboticchibitan]

The 2020 fire season on the west coast of North America was legitimately traumatizing. It’s part of the reason I want to move to Chicago. Because I (and a lot of my friends) have legitimate PTSD from it. It was awful.

Covid was killing people so fast there were refrigerated trucks outside of hospitals to hold the bodies because people were dying so fast morgues were full. We were in lockdown. And when the fires started... at first it was just a bit of smoke. But then it wasn’t just our smoke. It was smoke from California and Oregon too. My family in Southern Oregon had to evacuate because of a fire. A town near me burned to the ground. The school my sibling had been attending before being sent home because of covid partially burned down. It felt like the whole world was on fire.

And the smoke blocked out the sun. The way the smoke diffused the sunlight, everything was orange. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the end of the block (and my house was in the middle of the block). It was surreal. I felt like I was living through the apocalypse of a post apocalyptic video game. I kept thinking about the wastelands of Fallout: New Vegas because it genuinely felt like I was living through an apocalypse and everything was orange outside. I got sick and never got better that summer. I have so much grief.

I get nervous when it’s foggy, and if the sunset is too orange and the light coming through the blinds is orange, I get very tense and anxious. I remember when “fire season” meant “higher chance of fires” not “there will be fires.” I want to move elsewhere because I don’t want to watch the Pacific Northwest burn. I can’t stay here and watch as the moss all dies and the forests disappear. I can’t bear to stay and watch my home deteriorate because of climate change. Not after all that.

I’ll never forget that summer. It was awful for everyone, but the wildfires on the west coast were uniquely terrible for the people living here. I’m not saying we had it worse. Climate change is everywhere and there was a lot of things all going wrong everywhere at once. But for me.... That was fucking awful and I don’t want to go through another fire season that’s so bad the smoke blocks out the sun. That’s just. Too much for me now.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dodger Stadium :: 2023 :: floods from Hurricane Hillary

* * * *

[from comments] :: "I have persistent anxiety because of climate change. It’s definitely worsened since the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon. I’m also a strong empath and seeing so much devastation is really painful. I think anyone not feeling anxious about climate change is either 1) near or in the 1%, 2) a republican or 3) an evangelical."

+

“Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.” ― Bill McKibben

[bookofbrokencandles]

Yes, STILL sick.

Guys... I feel like I'm losing my mind. Mornings are hard, I'm still barely managing a full sleep, but then the middle of the day is okay and I start thinking oh I'm getting better I can only go up from here

And then suddenly I go back to coughing up a lung, with no relief cuz there's nothing to come out of my lungs anymore. And my throat is so. Fucking. Dry. Which makes me COUGH.

My throat is always dry. Every moment of the day. I'm drinking everything I can get my hands on. I'm eating cough drops. Cough syrup. Popsicles. I'm trying all the tips I looked up to deal with a dry throat while sick, all of it. And nothing works, my throat is still dry!!!! The curse is unending!!!!!!!

Sorry, I just needed to vent about it. I can't IRL because my voice is GONE and it refuses to come back. Probably because my throat is DRY.

I feel like I'm stuck in purgatory. My brain actually has a really bad habit of convincing itself every uncomfortable state I'm in that lasts a little too long will never, ever end and I will be stuck like this forever. I know it can't last forever, but knowing that doesn't make the feeling go away. It got especially bad in 2020, if anyone knows about the Oregon wildfires in September. It was a really traumatizing time for me, in ways I won't get into because I didn't even intend to talk about this right now, but during those fires, every time I told myself it'll end eventually, it got worse and it did not end. Obviously it's over now and I'm okay, but that experience really shook my ability to be optimistic when things get hard.

Anyway, I'm just uncomfortable and I'm tired of feeling sick and I really just want this to be over. I want to sleep. It's such a cruel joke that the best way to get better is to sleep, but I can't sleep because laying down triggers my cough. I'm so bored of this.

Sorry, I didn't mean to vent so much, but it just kind of came out once I started typing. I actually started this wanting to mention I've been making teeny tiny amounts of progress in the few moments of relief I have. It's not much, but it's not nothing either.

[follow-up-news]

A jury in Oregon on Monday found the electric utility PacifiCorp responsible for causing devastating fires during Labor Day weekend in 2020, ordering the company to pay tens of millions of dollars to 17 homeowners who sued and finding it liable for broader damages that could push the total award into the billions. The Portland utility is one of several owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based investment conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. The property owners, suing on behalf of a class of thousands of others, alleged that PacifiCorp negligently failed to shut off power to its 600,000 customers during a windstorm, despite warnings from then-Gov. Kate Brown’s chief-of-staff and top fire officials, and that its power lines were responsible for multiple blazes. There has been no official cause determined for the Labor Day fires, which killed nine people, burned more than 1,875 square miles (4,856 square kilometers) in Oregon, and destroyed upward of 5,000 homes and structures. The blazes together were one of the worst natural disaster’s in Oregon history.

[pcttrailsidereader]

Flee for Your Life? Wildfires transform hiking in California's mountains

This is an excerpt from an article published on August 21, 2022 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I wish so many of our posts were not related to wildfires but fires have become a critical issue in trip planning and trip safety. Make sure you read to the recommendations at the end of the piece.

By Ethan Baron

Andrew Schrock woke around midnight smelling smoke on a backpacking trip late last month in California’s far north.

“I heard what I thought was rain but was ashes on the tent,” said Schrock, 43.

Using a satellite-based device from the Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border, he texted family and friends back home to find out what was happening – but “no one was up.”

He’d had cell service a mile back along the iconic Pacific Crest Trail that stretches from Mexico to Canada, so he set out alone in the dark, got online, and discovered that the McKinney Fire – which has since grown to more than 60,000 acres, killed four people and required the rescue of 60 hikers from the California side of the trail – had ignited behind him to the south the previous afternoon.

Ask anyone who hikes in California’s mountains about wildfires and you’ll likely get an earful about canceled trips, detours, lung-burning smoke and, possibly, harrowing escapes. Backcountry travelers are increasingly finding themselves on the dangerous edge of a changing climate that is driving drought, parching forests, spreading tree-killing beetles and altering weather patterns. Add in heavy vegetation buildup from decades of fire suppression, and you have frequent, ferocious forest fires that scramble hikers’ best-laid plans and demand new tactics for staying safe.

Schrock, of Long Beach, flew from Ashland, Oregon, to Fresno and then caught a bus to Yosemite to get back into the Sierra Nevada and finish his vacation covering more ground and enjoying the wilderness on his multi-year quest to complete the Pacific Crest Trail, he recalled while taking a snack break beside Lower Echo Lake near Lake Tahoe.

Dallan Clancy of Belmont, 68, finishing up a day hike 100 miles west of Sacramento at Carson Pass, said he had to cancel an overnight trip last September in the southern Sierra because the U.S. Forest Service shut access to all but one of California’s national forests over fire risks, including what the agency called “fire behavior that is beyond the norm of our experience and models such as large, quick runs in the night.” Clancy said he and four friends are aiming to do the trip this year, “unless it gets really bad.”

“We’ve always made note of escape routes, but on this trip, we actually planned our escape routes. We wanted to know the routes we could take to get out to a road,” said Jack Daro, a Southern California musician taking a break at Carson Pass during a backpacking trek to Yosemite National Park.

Hikers in years past “just went and did whatever you wanted to do wherever you wanted to go,” Wilkinson said. But 2020 marked a transformation, with the million-acre August Complex Fire, the Creek Fire northeast of Fresno that led to helicopter evacuations of hundreds of people including hikers on the John Muir Trail, and other massive blazes launching California into the age of mega-fires, Wilkinson said.

Nine of California’s 20 biggest fires since 1932 have occurred in the past three years, torching 4.1 million acres, according to Cal Fire. This year’s five biggest blazes have burned 116,000 acres, and “we’re just now getting into peak wildfire season,” Wilkinson said.

U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman noted that fire can move much faster in today’s baked-crisp forests. “The window between OK and not OK,” Freeman said, “is becoming shorter and shorter.”

Backcountry journeyers who think seeing smoke but no flames means they’re fine may be mistaken, Wilkinson said. “Fire can move like a freight train, much faster than a person can run.”

Some hikers have dramatically changed the way they travel. Loetitia Saint-Jacques, 50, a Tahoe City veterinary technician, was on an overnight trip this month near South Lake Tahoe. Before the mega-fires, she and her companions would take long trips into deep wilderness. “We don’t go as remote now,” Saint-Jacques said. “Now it’s shorter trips. We do overnights, instead of five to eight days.”

Long-distance speed-hiker Ella Raff had multiple run-ins with wildfire and its fallout after embarking on the Pacific Crest Trail in June to walk from Mexico to Canada. Last month, the Washburn Fire in Yosemite shrouded her in smoke for two days. “I was just breathing heavy smoke 24/7. It’s not very fun,” said Raff, 29, of Portland. Farther north in California, traversing 85 miles of trail charred from last year’s nearly million-acre Dixie Fire left Raff covered in ash and dismayed by a “surreal” landscape with little animal life.

Soon after, she smelled smoke from the McKinney Fire. As she was nearing the Oregon border, authorities shut the trail ahead. More than 100 miles of the route remain closed, with the fire, which started July 29, now almost contained. Raff made her way to Portland, then to Washington to hike the trail southward from Canada.

Changing jumping-off points, routes, destinations, or timing to cope with uncertainty about fires is now routine for hikers in California. The Caldor Fire, which ravaged 220,000 acres southwest of Lake Tahoe last year from August to October, forced Truckee artist Danae Anderson, 63, to cancel three backpacking trips. “Everything was too smoky up here,” said Anderson, hiking beside Lower Echo Lake. She went to Yosemite instead.

Reckless target shooting by a father and son allegedly caused the Caldor Fire. The inferno’s scar stretches nearly 50 miles southwest of Echo Lakes in a swath up to 15 miles wide, much of it a blackened wasteland of lifeless trees, some downed, some standing without greenery, granite on many boulders shattered in places by the intense heat. More than 80 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail were closed from the fire’s start last August until early this year. Hikers passing through such areas may find water scarce, and standing dead trees can pose a deadly toppling hazard, said Matt Rump, a trail stewardship staffer for the Pacific Crest Trail Association.

Crews take down the most dangerous trees, but because there are so many dead, and they provide important wildlife habitat, officials accept some risk to hikers, under the calculus that “if you get whacked, it’s your time,” said Cheryl Bailey, 73, a volunteer for the Tahoe Rim Trail Association, as she walked along the 2 1/2 miles of the rim trail that run through the Caldor scar and that she’s been helping rebuild.

Some hikers console themselves with fire’s importance to forest health, but many of today’s blazes burn so hot they kill trees accustomed to lower-intensity fires.

In the Echo Chalet store where Schrock, who fled the McKinney Fire, bought snacks, cashier Georgia Sprague, 22, chatted with the trekkers whose ebbs and flows depend on fires and smoke. Many expressed urgency over climate change.

“They feel a lot of a push to get out,” she said, “and see the world before it burns up.”

Wildfire safety tips for hikers

Recommendations for staying safe while hiking in the age of mega-fires:

Check websites such as InciWeb for fire information and PurpleAir for air-quality information before, and if possible during, backcountry trips.

2. Give friends and family your itinerary, always know your location and pay close attention to your surroundings in case you need to retreat.

3. Know whether fires are prohibited where you’re going.

4. Carry paper maps in addition to any digital maps or apps.

5. Use cell phones and satellite-based devices to monitor weather, fires, wind, air quality and alerts such as Red Flag wildfire warnings, and to stay in close contact with people not in the wilderness who may have better access to weather and fire information. Many satellite-based messaging devices such as the popular Garmin inReach also act as rescue beacons; trekkers wishing to stay less connected may prefer personal locator beacons that are only for emergency rescue.

6. Pay attention to signs at trailheads and trail junctions.

7. Gather crowd-sourced fire and trail information from reliable websites and forums.

8. Carry an N95 mask in case of smoke.

9. Watch the sky for smoke, and use your nose to detect it.

[transhuman-priestess]

All the wildfire smoke on the East Coast of the United States has me thinking about something I’ve noticed for a long time, which is that nothing seems to matter in America until it hits DC or New York.

I’m originally from Chicagoland. We get floods, tornados, and snowstorms constantly, but it barely merits more than a footnote on CNN or maybe a couple minutes on the weather channel, if you’re lucky. I’ve lived in Portland, Oregon for the last few years and back in 2020 we had some wildfires here, (we call them the Labor Day Fires but I think the official name was the Santiam Fire) that made the air so bad it went about 4x “beyond index” (the AQI does not have an upper bound, but anything beyond 500 is considered “beyond index”. For a couple of days it was between 1500-2000) and it was like that for almost a week. If some merciful rains hadn’t come in, it would have gone on longer.

That pale little dot? That’s the god damn sun. You could look right at it and barely see it. (AQI this day was about 1600, I think)

This has been happening in California for even longer than Oregon.

It’s frustrating that it takes until something happens to the east coast for anybody to give a damn.

[firjii]

I swear I'm not downplaying the seriousness of air quality hazards in large swaths of the US right now from fires up north. It's awful for everyone and I hope y'all don't have any serious or lasting health effects.

But I mean...what you're seeing now is literally what I went through in the 2020 Colorado/Wyoming/Arizona fires (your eyes are burning now? Wait until you vomit ash particles just because you went outside for 2 minutes to get the mail) and relatively few people outside those states gave half a fuck because a lot of people were too busy having looky-loo orgies about the California or Oregon fires from a few thousand miles away.

Coastal myopia is distinctly a thing in the U.S. and I can't help but get a little feral about the shocked reactions now.

[troutreznor]

Convergence / Bryan David Griffith, 2016

Smoke accumulated in encaustic beeswax on panel.

"The large wildfires in western Oregon in September 2020 were driven by the confluence of strong east winds and extremely dry vegetation, which reflected a long period of relatively low precipitation, high temperatures, and low humidity. The winds led to the rapid expansion of several existing fires, and enabled human-caused ignitions to become large fires that were quite difficult to suppress. Wildfires across the western United States are becoming larger and more frequent as the climate continues to change. The increase in size and frequency of wildfires initially is likely to be most pronounced east of the crest of the Cascade Range, and then in the western Cascade Range."

-Erica Fleishman, Director, Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and Professor, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University

photo captured and accompanying caption transcribed from "Rethinking Fire" exhibit at the World Forestry Center in Portland, OR