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#Southern USA
reasonsforhope · 1 month
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"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.
The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.
Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.
The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.
“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.
“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”
The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.
“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”
By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.
The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.
However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."
-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024
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intheholler · 8 months
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On Appalachian and Southern Stereotypes
After seeing some people leap at the opportunity to insult and further harm us under my posts, even by obviously leftist accounts, I wanted to address some of the most popular stereotypes of our region.
Not as an excuse. There are many negative, violent and otherwise harmful features of the American South. We have a horrific history especially in terms of the violence we inflicted and continue to inflict upon the Black community that cannot be forgotten, and, as a culture, we do need to pay our dues.
But maybe this will help y’all apply some nuance to the situation and understand that we aren’t all your enemy.
Stereotype 1: Everyone is a Republican Racist
Absolute horse shit, my friends. There are people like me all over the south and in the hollers. We just get drowned out by the fascists, and it is all by design. 
In my home state of North Carolina alone, they are working tirelessly to make it impossible for young, often liberal (if not outright leftist) voices to be heard. They specifically target regions with heavy POC populations.
As recently as May of this year, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned their own previous ruling which once made gerrymandering illegal. This allows Republicans free range to draw their congressional lines wherever benefits them most. 
Meanwhile, Roy Cooper, our Democratic governor, has been in office since 2017.
Gerrymandering is a real problem, and it reflects the worst of us. But it does not reflect all of us.
We are a working class, pro-union people.
We are coal miners and mill workers and farmers.
We took up arms against the government and fought for our labor rights during the Coal Wars as recently as the 1920s.
We bled for labor rights at the Battle of Blair Mountain.
It’s a myth that you keep perpetuating that we are all closed minded, bigoted regressionists. It diminishes the efforts of everyone from the coal miners to people like me while we try to make the region a better place.
It actually only worsens what you say that you wish you could “saw off into the ocean.” 
That's my home you're talking about.
Stereotype 2: Everyone is Obese
36.3% of the overall population of the Southeast is obese. This is true.
Have you considered why that may be? For starters, Southerners are more likely to be uninsured compared to individuals living in the rest of the country.
"Among the total nonelderly population, 15% of individuals in the South are uninsured compared to 10% of individuals in the rest of the country."
Partially because they didn't even expand the same Medicaid benefits to us. and partially because we are just so fucking poor. 
17% of the American South is below the poverty line, compared to 13% in the Midwest, 13% in the West, and 13% in the Northeast.
Percentages under 5% may not seem like much, but when you consider 1% of the total United States population is around 3,140,000 people, yeah, that adds up real quick.
How does this relate? Well...
Mississippi has 19.58% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 39.1% obesity rate.
West Virginia has 17.10% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.6 % obesity rate.
Kentucky has 16.61% of its residents below the poverty line, and a 40.4% obesity rate.
Are you seeing the trend?
We, generally speaking, are more likely to be unable to afford to feed ourselves wholesome foods, and we are less likely to be able to afford medical insurance--two things that are obviously important to maintaing good health and a "healthy" weight.
By the same token... 
Stereotype #3: We're All Uneducated 
The South and Appalachia are some of the lowest ranked in terms of educational funding and spending per pupil in the entire country. We don't even break the top 30 on the list, y'all.
49. Tennessee at $8,324 per pupil 47. Mississippi at $8,919 per pupil 45. Alabama at $9,636 per pupil 42. Kentucky at $10,010 per pupil 36. North Carolina at $10,613 per pupil 35. South Carolina at  $10,719 per pupil 33. Georgia at $10,893 per pupil 32. West Virginia at $10,984 per pupil
The top three best-funded states, by comparison, receive between $18k and $20k per pupil.
In terms of higher education, student loans are a death sentence for everyone but especially impoverished kids just looking for a way out. It just isn't feasible for most of us. And that's if we even tested well after going to shitty schools our whole lives. If we had better education, we'd have better literacy in all things, including critical thinking, allowing us to better see through the bullshit we are taught. But we don't. And you aren't helping the ones who are trying in spite of that.
Stereotype 4: Bad Teeth
Quickly going to touch on this one--when we consider a lack of access to affordable, healthy food, shitty medical insurance in general and our poverty rate, this one is kind of obvious. Even so:
“Dental coverage was significantly lower than the national average in the South Atlantic (45.6%), East South Central (45.6%), West South Central (45.9%), and Pacific (48.0%) regions.”
Every time you make a toothless hillbilly joke, ask if poverty is really the butt of the joke you want to be making.
These are just the most pervasive of them, imo. And they can all be underlined by extreme poverty which is absolutely by design.
It also contributes to why it isn’t so easy to “just leave” as we are so often dismissively told to do. Moving is expensive.
And why should we have to, anyway? Why should we have to flee our homes?
Why, for those who feel safe enough and/or have no other choice, should we not stay and fight to better the region?
And why can’t you other leftists get behind us and help us in our fight instead of perpetuating harmful stereotypes? We're your people, too.
Just some food for thought. And I hope some of y’all take a big ol bite.
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heartshapedcaskett · 13 days
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Home sweet home
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shutterandsentence · 6 months
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Photo: Bryson City, North Carolina
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americanhell · 9 months
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clairephoto · 1 year
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Somewhere near Great Falls, South Carolina
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missalmond · 1 month
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enjoy some pictures i took today 😊
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1lifeinspired · 7 months
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Charleston, South Carolina
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haveyoumadethisdish · 4 months
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Southern Baked Mac & Cheese (Southern USA)
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princesssarisa · 11 days
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In Cinderella Tales From Around the World, I've now read all the tales from the United States and Canada. Most of these variants are Native American; some scholars think the archetype of Cinderella spread to these tribes from French Canadian settlers, but the indigenous people made it their own. There are also some US and Canadian variants from non-indigenous sources, which the book follows with two similar versions from the West Indies.
*The first Native American variant in this book is an Ojibwe version. The heroine is abused by her stepmother and two stepsisters, but a manitou (spirit) gives her fine clothes and a magical box in which to secretly store them. Some time later, the stepmother sends her to fetch water, and along the way the girl meets her grandmother, who warns her that she'll hear music, but not to look back in its direction – if she succeeds in not looking back, she'll become more beautiful than ever. She does, so one of the stepsisters sets out to the same place to gain new beauty too, but she ignores the grandmother's warning, looks back, and turns ugly. Some time after this, a dance takes place, the heroine attends wearing the dress the manitou gave her, and the chief's son falls in love with her and marries her. But after she gives birth to a son, the stepmother sticks a magic pin in her that turns her into an elk, and one of the stepsisters takes her place. Yet as in similar European variants, every day the elk comes back to nurse her baby, and eventually her husband finds her and pulls out the pin, restoring her to human form. He then has the stepmother and stepsisters executed.
*Another variant, from the Mi'kmaq and Algonquin peoples, is one I grew up with: it's been adapted into two picture books, The Rough-Face Girl and Sootface, and as "The Indian Cinderella" in an episode of the cartoon series Adventures from the Book of Virtues. The heroine lives with her father and her two cruel older sisters, who destroy her beauty by burning her with hot coals, singing off her hair and leaving her face covered with scars. Meanwhile, near their village lives a great, mystical chief or warrior who is invisible, or who can make himself invisible. Every girl in the village wants to marry him, including the two sisters, and they all dress in their finest to go and meet him. But the Invisible One will only marry a maiden who can see him, so his (visible) sister meets each one of them, and tests them by asking what his sled-strap and bowstring are made of. All the maidens, including the heroines' sisters, tell lies and are sent away. But the heroine dresses herself in improvised clothes and goes too, despite all her neighbors jeering at how ugly and shabby she looks. When the Invisible One's sister asks the usual question, she replies that his sled-strap is the rainbow and his bowstring is the Milky Way. This is the true answer. The sister then bathes her, which makes her hair grow back and heals her burn scars to reveal her natural beauty, and she marries the Invisible One.
**There's also a Huron variant on this story, with long additional episodes where suitors court the two older sisters, but they disdain the men, set near-impossible tasks for them, and when they succeed, finally say they'll marry them only when they've finished embroidering fabrics for the wedding. They force their younger sister to do the embroidery for them, but every night, like Penelope in The Odyssey, they undo some of it. Eventually, however, a great invisible chief comes to call, and the older sisters lie that they can see him but describe him inaccurately, while the youngest sister describes his true, otherworldly appearance and becomes his bride.
*The Zuñi tribe has a variant called The Turkey Girl, which stands apart from most others by having a sad ending. The heroine is a poor orphan, who either lives alone or with abusive sisters depending on the version, and earns her living by herding turkeys. One day a sacred dance is held and she longs to attend, so her turkeys magically wash her and dress her in finery and jewelry. But they warn her to come back before sunset to lead them home and feed them. The girl promises to do so, but at the dance she enjoys herself so much that she doesn't bother to go home in time. She comes back after dark to find that all the turkeys have fled into the wild, abandoning her to loneliness and poverty. This tale seems to be an allegory, warning poor people whose fortunes improve not to forget their old friends or be ungrateful to those who helped them.
*The book also includes retellings of Perrault's Cendrillon from Canada, the Southern US (written in slave dialect), the Bahamas, and Martinique. They're not different enough from from Perrault's version to warrant descriptions, but it's interesting to see the story told with each of these places' local flavors and dialects.
@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland
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molliemustdie · 3 months
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introductory post
hey gang its been awhile since i’ve used tumblr, i deleted all my other social media so i decided to come back here to see how much its changed.
so without further ado
my names mollie but you can call me molls for short, i like music ALOTTTTT (over 5.9k saved songs on spotify haha) , some of my favorite bands include modern baseball, the story so far, title fight, and hot mulligan. i’m 21 and i use she / they pronouns (in case u didnt read my bio lol). im from the south / midwestwern united states. some of my hobbies include: smoking weed, making music, writing poems, drawing, and i occasionally play video games.
im always looking for new buds and new music to listen to, so hmmmuuu :3
i dont got really anything else to add so uhhh thanks 4 reading and i hope u enjoy ur stay here
- molls <3
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goodwomanbadlady · 5 months
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Something I just realized about Good Omens. One of the (MANY) reasons I love the story.
In the southern US, it's fairly common to hear things in double speak. We're moving away from this with younger generations, but it's still relatively common. Think about the phrase "bless your heart." On the surface, it's a positive statement. But it can be used in so many ways, many negatively.
My aunt once sent me a card which read :
"I had such a great time taking your kids to the ballgame the other day." Which meant "you're welcome even though you didn't send me a thank you note."
I replied with:
"yes, kids are wonderful and should be cherished and protected." Which meant "I have not forgotten the abuse of my childhood and I will never let you treat my kids that way. You should be grateful I let you take them to the game."
Now, how this pertains to Good Omens. The two main characters have been using double speak for literal millennia. BUT, they use it to show love. By Aziraphale's carefully worded phrases and Crowley's little actions. By Crowley's halting conversation because he can't face his feelings. They aren't really able to even acknowledge it themselves, and YET we can read between every line some integral inner meaning of "I love you", "I care about you", "you matter to me".
We, as a fandom, have done that in many many posts.
It's healing to see double entendre used for a positive light. It's absolutely beautiful and heartwarming. It makes me think perhaps there's hope.
As many have said, there's little difference between positive reinforcement and censure depending on context.
Words, as we have seen especially in this fandom, have power. Be careful how you use them.
Show love.
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intheholler · 11 months
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i was taught at a young age to hate my accent because of all the stereotypes surrounding it. i mean outright warned that people were going to judge me for it, by people such as my own well-meaning mother who also spoke with a gentle southern accent herself.
meaning since i was a kid, i've tried most of my life to mask it. as an adult learning to love the appalachian parts of me, i've just been letting it fly. to me, it's been so liberating.
i have friends and family who have also tried to train themselves out of their accents, and some who never seemed to notice them at all.
so i was thinking, and now i'm curious:
i'm really curious about everyone's experiences so please feel free to elaborate. i really wanna hear your stories
reblogs appreciated for greater reach!
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heartshapedcaskett · 13 days
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Where the Pee Dee River runs
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shutterandsentence · 8 days
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When God speaks, things happen!
Photo: Captiva Island, Florida
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americanhell · 9 months
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