Fantasidjur

looks like a bowerbird nest - guess Newports are their smokes of...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:15:06 -0400

looks like a bowerbird nest - guess Newports are their smokes of choice

tsarbucks: migratingwhales: In his five short weeks of life,...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:38:21 -0400

migratingwhales:

In his five short weeks of life, Orbit hasn’t met many other owls.

So he isn’t at all worried that his new best friend doesn’t hoot back.

The orphaned chick is perfectly content in the company of the stuffed bird perched next to him and is never far from his side.

Orbit, a common barn owl, was given the toy by Lyndsey Wood, his carer at Folly Farm, near Narberth in West Wales.

She said: ‘A friend suggested that I find something like a toy owl to stop Orbit feeling lonely.

‘I thought he might try to eat it, but he just cuddles up to it and goes to sleep.’

OH MY GOD

dying

pbs-food: We kqedscience: Whole Foods Shows Customers the...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:30:30 -0400

pbs-food:

We kqedscience:

Whole Foods Shows Customers the Bleak Future of Produce Without Bees

“The decline in bee populations has been all the buzz lately, which led Whole Foods Market to team up with the Xerces Society to show us what a world—or at least, produce section—without bees would look like. The University Heights, Rhode Island store removed all foods that are reliant upon the important pollinators, and it leaves a pretty slim selection; 52% of the produce department’s offerings would be pulled from shelves without bees around to help.”

(via inhabitat)

strangeloopstrangeloop: drunk-sincerity: Club Soda on...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 02:30:20 -0400

strangeloopstrangeloop:

drunk-sincerity:

Club Soda on Flickr.

Fort Wayne is such a cool town.

never been but this makes me wanna go

The El Paso Miracle

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:52:29 -0400

The El Paso Miracle:

How can a comparatively poor, high-immigration town that sits across the border from super-violent Ciudad Juarez be one of the safest big cities in America?

”..the very process of migration tends to select for people with a low potential for criminality..”

makes plenty sense to me!

From "My Bearded Days" - by Jess N-S in Femme a Barbe zine

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:27:00 -0400

“…I had come to expect it. was on guard all the time…I watched people try to figure out what pronoun to use for me, and that no longer felt empowering, just inaccurate. I started anticipating that leaving my house meant a battle with the world, and I was getting badly beaten.

I started to hate everyone. I started to hate strangers, assuming they would fuck with me. Or pity me. Or stare in horror. And often I was right. I felt guilty, like breaking the norms in the way I did caused this horrible junior high attitude to come bubbling outside of otherwise lovely people. I felt like I was only seeing people at their worst, that I was only inspiring their worst.

I know it’s not my fault, and it never was, that sometimes people are just assholes. But I couldn’t sustain it anymore.”

***

This passage, which I found in a zine about hairy women that my best friend gave me, really hit home, and I find myself returning to it during rough times in my decades of struggle with self-acceptance. It’s only a small snippet of an article which explains her years of living with a full beard, and her ultimate reluctant choice to get laser hair removal. She expresses regret in having had to make that choice, because she doesn’t want to be complicit in other women feeling like they, too, need to succumb to cultural demands for depilation. That my facial hair is somewhat less substantial (I only have a decent moustache and a smattering of chin hairs, not a full beard) and that the conclusion I’ve come to about how to handle it are different are not the most relevant details here - her feelings are what resonate.

I’m moving on after several years of substitute teaching in part because I’ve decided that being taunted about my masculinity and hirsutism daily is not in my best interests. I’m a good teacher, and a lot of students have expressed delight in having spent time with me, but I haven’t been able to successfully deflect all of their negative opinions, and yet again it’s having repercussions in my personal life. I come home to my partner feeling hostile & defeated, and I expect him to help lift me out of the pit. It’s not his responsibility, and it’s not fair to ask that of him, yet I seem to be unable to externalize all the verbal abuse. The fact that my students are going through puberty, will soon, or have recently doesn’t justify cruelty in my mind - just illustrates the toxicity of our society, and how indoctrination begins at such a young age.

I should know by now, though, that I am not helping by also assuming the worst of grown adults. I should try harder to remember that women who conform to gender standards more successfully than I do, even the ones who may rather not in a world where they felt that was an option socially or economically, are not my enemy. No one choice any of them make is the enemy. The mandate is the enemy - the double standards, the need to make secret what women go through to meet them, and the impossible expectations are the enemy. The women and trans* people who fight the same internal battles daily but have chosen a different way to survive, to get by - who have chosen a path that puts them further in line with the norm - are not the biggest threat to me. They are my most likely allies, because they see in my choices other possibilities - roads not taken - and honor them by offering respect. I owe the same to them, even if I envy their privilege.

The woman who wrote this deserves to feel accepted and loved, with or without her beard. I also deserve to feel accepted and loved, even with my moustache and the tens of thousands of hairs on my body that I can hide or show depending upon how strong I am feeling on a particular day. When I look around and see a bunch of bodies and faces I don’t relate to on the surface, I would do well to remember that many of these women may in fact have more compassion for me than disdain. Many, to be sure, do not, but always assuming the worst of people is poisoning my relationship to self and others and making it difficult to allow anyone to love me - even those who already do.

Love to all people who want a world in which we are all encouraged to be the selves which best reflect who we are, even if we haven’t all personally been able to live this dream to date.

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:10:12 -0400

Big effort to save wild Bonaire donkeys from servitude

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:08:38 -0400

caribbejan:

The Donkey Sanctuary is hopeful efforts to provide a better life for 200 wild donkeys on a Caribbean island will prove fruitful, horsetalk.co.nz reports.

The British-based charity has gone into bat for the feral donkeys on the island of Bonaire, in the Dutch Caribbean.

Donkeys have been living feral on Bonaire for hundreds of years and many fall victim to terrible acts of abuse, road traffic accidents, illness, dehydration and sometimes starvation.

The charity has stepped in to help a local charity, Donkey Sanctuary Bonaire, to persuade the government of Bonaire to reconsider its plan to transport 200 feral donkeys to Haiti.

Read More

akapearlofagirl: Lance David Goines

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:04:30 -0400

akapearlofagirl:

Lance David Goines

selchieproductions: They’re called snjågloe in South Saami. ...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:31:19 -0400

selchieproductions:

They’re called snjågloe in South Saami. And they’re tiny and cute as fuck.

disgustinghuman: thre3f: House, Tree & Mountain Rings by...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:52:42 -0400

disgustinghuman:

thre3f:

House, Tree & Mountain Rings by Clive Roddy

!

would rock

coolchicksfromhistory: Two girls feeding a kangaroo, New South...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:49:19 -0400

coolchicksfromhistory:

Two girls feeding a kangaroo, New South Wales, circa 1925.

battling depression one interspecies friendship at a time

Wiener Nationals with Luigi at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, CA

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 02:31:08 -0400

Wiener Nationals with Luigi at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, CA

Please Read:

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 02:27:20 -0400

gaylienz:

My parents think that no one would date a girl who chooses to grow out their leg/armpit hair. Reblog if you would, please. I am going to prove a point.

would & have but am sadly way less gay than I’d like to be so mostly I just rock it myself

Wildwood, NJ Documentary

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:58:58 -0400

Wildwood, NJ Documentary:

Have I already posted this? Never too many times…

gogoatz: what do you mean people born in 1997 arent 3

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:59:55 -0400

gogoatz:

what do you mean people born in 1997 arent 3

theblackvegan: Vegan S’mores Ice Cream need

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:58:48 -0400

theblackvegan:

Vegan S’mores Ice Cream

need

vernonfarm: The fields are flooding and the rain’s still falling. Soggy roots. Unexpected day off...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:29:25 -0400

vernonfarm:

The fields are flooding and the rain’s still falling. Soggy roots. Unexpected day off work. Back to bed with the poodle. Choices: Mend, Snuggle, Make saag with all that farm spinach, Straighten, TV on the internet, Organize my desk, Rabbit play date, Stitch patches on vest, Banjo, Clean out fridge/freezer, Museum?, Letters, New Farmers Almanac reading, Store winter clothes, Watch music videos, Laundry…

best list

oldloves: Stephen Hawking & first wife Jane Wilde on their...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:50:30 -0400

oldloves:

Stephen Hawking & first wife Jane Wilde on their wedding day, 1965

nybg: As I was scrolling through the “botanical garden” tag, I...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:14:39 -0400

nybg:

As I was scrolling through the “botanical garden” tag, I stopped about halfway down on this photograph to admire what I thought was the pattern in the fabric of what I imagined was a handmade cactus from a seller on Etsy. When I got to the bottom I was shocked to see that it was a real plant. Isn’t it beautiful?

This plant is Euphorbia obesa, a succulent from southern Africa, at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is a relatively new botanical garden, having opened in just 1995, and looks like an incredible place to visit. ~AR

wish list!