you need to be earnest. you need to tell people that you love them. you need to speak on how you’re feeling honestly. you need to be sentimental. you need to stop letting the fear of other people laughing at you have so much control over how you express yourself. you need to get over yourself. you need to be embarrassing but true.

Woo hoo!!! I picked this up from the kiln the other day and I'm SO happy with how this turned out!! It's a little plant pot that I made for my sister in law (surprise!!!😁) I can't stop looking at it. I think the glaze settled into the carved bits really well and it looks great in the sunlight. I had to take a lot of pictures so I remember this sucess piece!

Hey everyone! This is me and I wanted to reach out on all platforms.

If I have ever brought you joy, laughter, insight or knowledge especially about Black, Indigenous, Queer, Autistic, or Disabled matters please consider putting in a commission, or donating.

Whether you are able to help us financially or not, please share this, we are so grateful for Any amount of support. Even a dollar can be put to help feeding our cats, or affording safe food for my partner who has severe food allergies.

Goal: $0 / $1,217

July 10th, 2023

It's time we decolonize the Cascadian volcanoes

If we can say Denali instead of Mt. McKinley then we can say Lawetlat'la instead of Mt. St Helens. The mountain is named Tahoma, not Rainier. Naming a mountain after Jefferson doesn't erase its true name of Seekseekqua.

One name tells of the thousand years indigenous history and culture of the tribes who live there. The other name tells me nothing but colonialism.

Mt. Baker: Kulshan

Glacier Peak: Dahkobed

Mt. Rainier: Tahoma

Mt. St. Helens: Lawetlat'la

Mt. Adams: Klickitat

Mt. Hood: Wy'east

Mt. Jefferson: Seekseekqua

Three Sisters: Klah Klahne

I MET THE WORLDS SHARP EDGES BREAD-SOFT, EXPECTING TO BE TORN FOR THE GREATER GOOD, BUT INSTEAD THE MEANNESS AND HARDNESS BECAME GENTLE UPON MEETING MY SURFACE. I STILL HURT, BUT I DID NOT DIE OR KILL OR DIE OR KILL OR DIE.

(THEIR NAME IS LITTLE SOFTNESS)

what if you got on a plane and it started going down the run way and started speeding up and then it turned into the interstate and just started driving to your destination

Hi everyone! Here are some sample pictures from the second batch of my mug project. I had a lot of fun taking pics of these and even more fun with making them. I can't wait to give them to my friends this weekend🫂

Life's little pleasures

English added by me :)

don’t let birding become a wealthy people thing. you don’t need to complete a list of 500+ birds, you don’t need to travel around the world, you don’t need to have seen a species only seen by a handful of people in the wild. it’s OK to just watch the birds in your area, with or without binoculars; gatekeeping birdwatching is ridiculous and i hate to see it

today i watched some roadrunners at the game store :)

you are winning birding 👍

a cockatoo i saw in a tree

Literally some of the best birding I've ever done is just hanging out looking at geese, goslings and sandpipers behind a Costco, next to some busy roads. It was so much fun because they were an oasis away from the crowded store and the boring errands I was running. My partner was with me, so I got to share the joy of seeing these cool animals with him, which is even better!

The joy of birding is that birds are everywhere! You can enjoy them anywhere you happen to be and it doesn't have to cost you anything! They're just little guys who pop up in your life and all it takes to "bird" is looking at them and appreciating that they're there. :)

♡ ⚢ ♡

I’d like to tell you a little story today about why a lot of problems need social workers, not cops.

a long long time ago…like 2010, I worked 2nd shift (2pm-10pm) in a homeless shelter. I worked on a floor specifically for men with addiction and mental health problems. For most of the shift, I was the only staff working. Most of the time, the job was chill to the point of being boring. My job was to do the little things that needed doing, and be always ready to respond if shit went down. Most of the time, nothing much happened.

So one day I’m sitting at my little desk, trying to get up the motivation to organize the food pantry a little bit, and I head SCREAMING.

By the time I’m on my feet, one of the residents was in view. Dude was 6ft 4, with a shaved head, and a SOLID build. He was screaming down the hall, and in his raised fist he had, I shit you not, a blood-covered meat cleaver. He was spattered in blood all over. I knew the man- I knew all the residents. He mostly kept to himself. Sometimes he’d talk to me about his hallucinations and paranoid delusions. (no question these ones were delusions, kids. Man eating pythons can not fit in a half inch radiator pipe.) He had a history of getting pretty worked up.

Switch the camera around 180 degrees. I was 120 lbs and 5ft 4 on a good day, and all by my self. Totally unarmed.

Ask yourself- what would an armed cop do in that situation- alone, with a huge man running at them with a huge bloody knife?

I’m not gonna pretend for one second that my fight and flight instincts didn’t kick in. The ancient parts of my brain that exist to protect me from danger by fleeing or killing something saw this and screamed a great big NOPE.

But by this point I had like 8 years of other training, to. De-escalation training. Training on keeping a cool head in a scary situation. Training that reminded me that I was responsible for the safety of the other 17 men who called this floor their home.

Training that told me that this man was my responsibility, not my enemy.

In short, the opposite of what many police departments train their officers in. They are trained to view people as hostile, to treat their beat like a war zone. To act immediately. I wont say none of them have de-escalation training, but I will say it’s a bit of a useless add-on when they’re taught to go with their gut feeling of whether or not a situation is dangerous.

Because my gut sure as hell perceived a danger.

Anyways, I didn’t run, and I didn’t attack. I rooted my feet and I asked him what was going on.

That was when I saw that he was weeping. He was terrified.

He had bought a new cooking knife off the tv- he liked cooking, and had been looking at it. But one of the side effects of his meds made him clumsy, and he’d dropped it. He’d sliced open the back of his knee, where there’s a huge vein or artery or something- and was bleeding a LOT. 

He was understandably alarmed at the river-like quantity of blood gushing out of him, and had run to the nearest help- me.

In his rush and his fear, he’d just forgotten to put the damn knife down.

The other residents had, thankfully, all stayed in their rooms, because a month before I’d got on several people’s cases for coming out to defend me- with the very best of intentions- during a previous incident. Their motives were good, but de-escalating a situation when other people are ready to throw hands is WAY harder. I’d told them to keep their buts in their rooms unless I actually called for help, and God bless them, every single one of them had done it.

This is the point when I called for help. One of the residents got the first aid kit. One called an ambulance. One gave me the literal shirt off his back because our damn first aid kit didn’t have a tourniquet so we ripped the shirt up to make one.

We helped calm the poor injured guy down, and he got a few stitches, and everybody was proud of how we’d come together to help each other out.

Nobody was hurt beyond that one initial injury. Nobody was traumatized. If anything, the guy who’d been hurt was happier, more engaged with the rest of us, having seen that everyone here would take care of him when he was in need. He hadn’t had much care given to him in his life.

So when you see meme’s of “lol what are those social workers gonna do NOW huh?” please remember that 1) we’ve been out here doing this work ANYWAYS and 2) We’ve been doing it unarmed and level headed, which is better than the cops.

Now, does social work ALSO need reform? Does social work ALSO contain racism and ableism and every other social evil? You bet! Just look at…like anything to do with CPS to look at how these systems break down.

But do not use social workers de-escalation training as some kind of “gotcha” to prove we need armed and militant enforcers on every damn corner. And please don’t let others do it, either.

A better way is possible.

monoculture forests are deeply unsettling in a way that is hard to explain to people who do not spend a lot of time looking at forests

this thing is alive in an undead hivemind kind of way and it wants to fucking kill me

Here are the light green mugs from my first set!! I've been told they look like gourds or melons. What a cute comparison!

Hi everyone! Here is my first batch of mugs!! I'm so happy with the shape and color of these guys. Stay tuned for the other three - they are a light green.