ducktapeal
DuckTapeAl
Spreadsheet Jockey. #1 Theodore Cervantes fan. Mid-30s. it/its
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I grew up on stories of the Dust Bowl.
My dad’s parents were Okies–environmental refugees, before anyone had a word for it. They left their families, the land they were renting, their animals, took their 1-year-old daughter, and drove to California. My grandpa worked in a peach packing plant. My grandma cleaned houses.
They were so lonely that after a couple years they went back to Oklahoma, with their total savings of $20. Later, they bought land. Built a house. Survived.
My mom’s dad was a kid then, and his family stayed in western Kansas. Stayed because my great-grandpa was too damn stubborn to leave, stayed when their neighbors had all left, stayed because they didn’t have enough money to leave. They slept with wet rags over their faces. My great-grandpa tied a string around his waist, tied the other end to the house, and went to check on the cows, while my great-grandma tried to make soup from a little milk and a little flour. There was so much dust swirling in the air, the soup turned to mud. She cried, begged her husband once more to let them leave, and they went to bed hungry.
My grandpa’s oldest brother was the first one in the county to leave his wheat stubble in the field instead of plowing it under after the harvest. His neighbors made fun of him. His parents scolded him for having messy fields. 70 years later, at his funeral, someone told how people from Japan came to visit the farm, to see what he was doing differently.
More than 80 years after the Dust Bowl, I stood on a mountain in Ecuador watching, horrified, as a man with a tractor plowed a steep field. He would back up the hill, set the disk in the ground at the top of the field, and drive down, breaking up the soil, dragging it downhill. Dust billowed around him.
The man next to me, a rich-for-the-area farmer, sighed happily. “Look at all that dust. Isn’t that great?”
“What? No!” I was shocked.
“Why not? That’s what a modern farm looks like.”
I thought of the old black-and-white photos, dust clouds like black walls rolling in across the prairie. That’s what a modern farm looked like, too.
The next field down, four people and four oxen–well, dairy cows used as oxen–were planting. They used plows, too, but instead of a disk pulverizing the soil, their plow was a straight piece of wood, metal from an old leaf spring bolted to the end. One team of oxen used that plow to open a furrow, the women walking behind dropped maize seeds into the soil, and the second team of oxen dragged the same kind of plow just above the first, closing the furrow and burying the seeds. They walked along the hill–side to side, furrows running along the contour of the hill. If they were raising any dust, it wasn’t enough for me to see from across the valley.
The man with the tractor probably finished in an hour or two. The whole group, people and oxen and all, probably spent the whole day planting the same size field.
As the maize grew tall, you could see the difference: In the tractored field, the top rows were yellow, spindly, trying to root in the yellow-brown clay the topsoil had once covered. Down below, in dark, rich earth, the maize was tall, green, strong.
In Mali, years later, a farmer explained to a group of visiting scientists why, despite having made erosion control bunds, his rows of maize still went up and down the slope, instead of along the contour, parallel with the bunds. “Because of the wind,” he said, like it was obvious–because it was. In the rainy season, the wind comes from the south, and when storms come it blows hard enough to send dust and dishes and clothes left on the line flying and tumbling with it.
The rows of maize have to be parallel to that wind, or they’ll blow over. So sure, you can put the scientists’ earthen ridges in to block the downhill flow of water, but your rows can’t follow that meandering contour. Your rows have to face into the wind.
For thousands of years we’ve been coaxing, wrestling, dragging our food from the soil. If we’re careful, and lucky, we can make our peace with it. If we charge into places unknown–the high plains of Kansas and Oklahoma, the steep slopes of the Andes, the storm-swept fields of West Africa–if we plow, and plant, and harvest without thinking? Without learning from the place? Dust clouds blackening the horizon, stunted maize on worn-out soil, crops blown down in thunderstorms–the earth is forgiving, but only so far. We have time to learn, to make mistakes, to do what is easy even when it does harm, but only so much. Beyond that, we destroy the very literal foundations of our lives.
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is there anything we can do for you in this difficult time?
give me a million dollars
take all the feeling out and replace it with steel
end capitalism
kill the Gods
give me a quest to find my true purpose and a magic weapon so that I might achieve it
give me a map to find my True Love (patent pending)
infinite nachos
in other words
there's nothing that anybody can do.
I will collapse on my own time
and hope that the Earth is shielded from my fall
maybe Zeus will come to your house and ask for succor in the guise of an old man
you'll poison his bread and he will have earned it
the flowers will bloom around his body and Gaia will claim him
we will drink ambrosia at the top of Olympus while those that remain cower
good riddance to bad Gods
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one of the best things ever is when u find a really talented artist whos obsessed with an obscure/unpopular character and just lovingly draws their underrated guy 30 times a day even tho all their posts get 5 notes. these ppl are the backbone of society. they’re thriving theyre mentally unchained
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actually there were 0 time travellers on the Titanic, because the time cops have an entire outpost to safeguard that one particular point in history. every rookie spends a least a month on Titanic duty and they all complain bitterly about it since it is, essentially, the time travel equivalent of being the guard who has to stop tourists from licking the Liberty Bell.
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i have too many followers so i will.do a giveaway now !! put in yhe comments and rebolgs what you blog about and who you are and stuff and if you are a lucky chosen one you will get a nrew people following you who would enjoying seeing that !!
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gang I need your help I have a phrase I really want to catch on and it’s calling any secret or invisible struggle you have a “fight with a gorilla” like the onion article. if they can have cinnamon roll catch on this can too. “yeah she told me about it, I had no idea, sounds like a real fight with a gorilla” “sorry man I can’t come I’ve really been fighting the gorilla lately” do you see the vision
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showering:
pros: you get to feel clean. you get non greasy hair, non oily feeling skin, it just in general makes you feel better, more energised, refreshed.
cons: there are so many steps. oh my god are there so many steps. before getting into the shower there are steps. during the shower there are steps. and once youve gotten out of the shower? guess what!!! more fucking steps!!!!!!!! UGHHHH
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before the poll, a quick definition of terms:
"mutual" - you found this post from a mutual (on their blog or your dash)
"following" - you found this post from someone you're following, but who isn't following you
"random" - you found this by scrolling through someone's blog, who you don't follow. this includes people following you
"For You" - you found this on the For You page
"recommended" - you found this in a "Check out these blogs" popup, or a "recommended" post when looking at a different post
"other" - you found this post some other way. comment how?
"reblog ✅" - you're going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post
"reblog ❌" - you're NOT going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post
with that out of the way:
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The thing that really gets to my heart about how Laios’s autism is portrayed in his conflict with Toshiro is that his pain is centered and sympathized with.
How many dozens, hundreds of stories have we gotten about that obnoxious side character who just won’t take the hint and get lost, plaguing the main character who is never up front about their actual feelings but we’re supposed to relate to? How it’s played for humor half the time, a lighthearted burden on the main to make them roll their eyes before the Big Challenges of their story, with no thought to the pain and loss of the side character investing so much emotion into caring for someone who finds them a nuisance?
I think it’s even more poignant that Ryoko Kui is writing from a Japanese perspective that puts Toshido’s approach even more in the default, culturally enforced norm, but still asks “what about the feelings of the person who doesn’t have that all-important knack for ‘reading the room’ and picking up on all those invisible messages never said aloud?” and encourages us to care
#delicious in dungeon#dungeon meshi#dunmeshi#delicious in dungeon spoilers#dungeon meshi spoilers#dunmeshi spoilers
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The fight between Laios and Shuro ending with Shuro reminiscing/fantasizing about Falin really did a great job of mirroring what happens in the real world with Autistic Men vs Autistic Women. In my mind, both Laios and Falin are autism coded, and Shuro fights with Laios over how much he hates the autistic traits that Laios has and how annoying he finds them, then immediately goes on to explain he thinks Falin is the most unique woman he's ever met and loves how her mind works. Autistic men are so often thought/depicted of as annoying/cringy/etc while Autistic women are often thought of/depicted as the manic pixie dream girl or the 'not like other girls' girl. It was such an interesting thing to have back to back, cause it really went 'whoa society do think like that so often'.
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