Day: August 5, 2018

Also reminded by that tomato envy pic, I was also kind of impressed at how familiar a number of French heirloom seed varieties that get pushed here look. Especially with things like tomatoes and squashes.

And no wonder. Those were most likely taken back to France from a bit further up the East Coast. Slightly different varieties, but part of the same complex.

I mean, that wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. But it was still an interesting demonstration.

(And at least I haven’t seen anything claiming that the French brought tomatoes, unlike with the “Tennessee Cheese” type peppers. Ancient Spanish heirloom! 🤔 Not the only vegetable I have seen that claimed about, but one that popped into mind. And it’s not just that seed vendor.

My Nana always grew a similar “cheese” variety. Here’s another one. Those conquistadors must have been busy spreading vegetables around central Appalachia…)

Kind of a shame that I just didn’t have the spoons to try growing more decent tomatoes this year.

I also got kind of fed up with the results in this climate, especially with the big ugly Real Tomato™ heirloom varieties I tried. Even starting them out under cover, they kept taking forever to ripen–and too often with a taste and texture like they’d been grown in a refrigerator. I’m stubborn enough that I kept trying different things for like 10 years anyway.

Something tells me that they’d do much better in the wacky weather this year, though. Sustained heatwave here is feeling a lot like normal summer back home. (Minus anything being set up to cope with it less miserably.) It hasn’t even been getting colder at night than they like! 😮

silverhawk:

catopumas are so interesting 2 me bc theres only two species so far in the genus, and its either

a very gentle looking asian golden cat

very kind looking, round. 10/10

and then the other in the genus is

the bay cat, or as i like to call them – the weasel cat. long, kinda weird looking, but still 10/10 despite the weaselness.

isseymiyucky:

“I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a group of white people who are seated in front of us. We are in their workplace, and have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race. The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man is pounding his fist on the table. His face is red and he is furious. As he pounds he yells, “White people have been discriminated against for 25 years! A white person can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see 40 employed people, all white. There are no people of color in this workplace. Something is happening here, and it isn’t based in the racial reality of the workplace. I am feeling unnerved by this man’s disconnection with that reality, and his lack of sensitivity to the impact this is having on my cofacilitator, the only person of color in the room. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why are all the other
white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or tuning out? We have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism.”

—

 This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.

Read the rest here  !!

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

(via quietlyexhale)

Hi Ash. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to live with my Dad because our political views are quite different. I’m very very left and he’s kind of cautiously right. What I’m most worried about with this is that I still want to keep him in my life. I still love him. And often people say we should just cut people with different values out of our lives. But I can’t do that. We’re a close family with him and my Mom and I want to keep them in my life. But I just worry that makes me a horrible person.

livebloggingmydescentintomadness:

You are not a horrible person at all!! He’s your dad and you love him, that’s completely natural and normal. When people say those things, they mean your Nazi uncle, not your dad who’s conservative but not a monster. Nobody should ever expect you to cut your father out of your life because he’s not as far left as you’d like.

My mom and I live together, we’re extremely close, and she was a Republican her entire life until Trump came onto the scene and she had her eyes opened to the massive hypocrisy and evil of the GOP, and just how she’d been lied to for decades. She believed all kinds of things that weren’t true, she had a lot of ingrained bigotry, but she’s honestly one of the nicest, gentlest people you’ll ever meet. She had been taught that abortion is murder and being gay is a choice and a sin, but she’s never been hateful, she only thought she was doing the right thing.

I used to be a Republican too, because I’m a white Christian Texan who was taught the same wrong things my mom was, and it wasn’t until I came on tumblr that I even began to realize how much of what I thought I knew was wrong. We really can’t under-emphasize just how widespread and how effective right-wing misinformation and propaganda has been, because I can’t even begin to tell you how many things I’d been taught were just straight-up lies. 

It took me time to unlearn all of that and truly grasp how much I didn’t know, how much I had to come to terms with. Realizing that your entire worldview is completely backwards is more of a mindfuck than I can possibly tell you, so it’s not an easy process. It took months and years of reading and listening and learning for me to reach minimum acceptable tumblr wokeness, because I was starting from scratch. It also took years of conversations with my mom for her to not just hate Trump, but to realize many of her views were wrong or misguided, and freely declare herself a Democrat and a socialist. 

Neither of us were ever hateful people, just deeply ignorant and lied to, and that’s the important difference. If you have a relative who can look at Trump locking up brown children in cages and not care in the least, that’s an asshole you should drop from your life. But if they can see that such heinous acts are wrong, they’re just conflicted and confused from a lifetime of thinking the way they’ve been taught to think, they’re just ignorant and haven’t learned better yet – that’s a decent person. 

It’s especially okay for you to maintain a good relationship with your dad if you’re able to talk to him about these subjects and help him out of his ignorance. Cutting people out of your life is for those who are 100% unteachable and refuse to even consider that they might be wrong. You can’t help somebody who isn’t willing to listen. If your dad is willing to listen, then you should keep talking. You don’t have to fight or try to force him left, just talk.

You absolutely do not need to feel guilty for loving your conservative-leaning family members and wanting a good relationship with them. Ultimately, their beliefs aren’t your responsibility, and it’s only natural to want to be close to your parents if you can be. There’s nothing wrong with that, hon, don’t feel bad.