"The volunteer fire department, the ambulance squad as well, rely on contributions to their monthly pancake breakfast, to raise funds for a new engine."

-from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 6:47:15

In My house

French soldiers buying and reading newspapers at a kiosk in Rexpoede, in the far north of France (Department Nord, Region Nord-Pas-de-Calais) September 1917. The town is just 20 miles from Ypres, in Belgium, where the Battle of Passchendaele was being fought at this time. The battle was one of the bloodiest of the entire war, but is perhaps more infamous for the mud. The worst rains to hit the Flanders region for 30 years turned parts of the battlefield into a quagmire so deep that men and horses drowned in it.

Sisteron, FRANCE

Pavilion of the Magasins du Louvre department store on the 1925 Paris Art Deco Exhibition

French vintage postcard

How crazy is Severance from zero to "I think, as the two department chiefs, Mark and I should make contact with this goat department, see what they know."

"Bytown got a volunteer fire department in 1847, and by 1874 it was a professional department with steam engines and five permanent stations."

-from 305 Lost Buildings of Canada by Raymond Biesinger & Alex Bozikovic, pg. 98.

@merriblu HOLY FUCKING SHIT THESE ARE GOOD BLESS

Eminent Ecom Expands Acquisition Department in Response to Growing

Eminent Ecom Expands Acquisition Department in Response to Growing

Article content Corpus Christi, Texas–(Newsfile Corp. – May 18, 2022) – Eminent Ecom, which sets up Amazon Private Label businesses for its clients and then manages the products, inventory, sales, and customer service, has completed the expansion of its Acquisition Department. With a larger team of staff members, Eminent Ecom says that it will focus on clearing its two-month backlog of potential…

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robin <3 i'd love to hear about robins own, personal views on his sex and gender, please!

Thanks for the ask, Fray!! (answering it gives me something to do while i wait for the electricity to come back on!)

I'm putting this under a cut, because I've been typing for a while now and I feel like this'll be a long one. I will add that I'm briefly mentioning an eating disorder under the cut, in case you or anyone else wants to back out of reading that.

For the longest time Robin didn't really have any views on his sex or gender. He had a lot going on as a neurodivergent kid/teen due to poverty and, well, the repressed queerness; was just out there functioning/surviving somehow and was in general just pretty miserable all around, so any discomfort about his gender identity/expression was just part of a big heap of everyday sensory overload. There really wasn't time for him to focus on or take a closer look at himself much, and besides, he wouldn't have known the terms needed to put it into words.

He developed a bunch of unhealthy coping mechanisms about All Of That (drugs, sex, an eating disorder, ...) and really spiralled for a while until he met this man called Murdoc, who sort of became a mentor to him, and set him straight again.

And if Murdoc's one thing, it's perceptive.

So while Robin and him travelled together for a while, he provided him with the space he needed to just take a breather for once. Maybe express himself for once. And the option to talk about his feelings instead of having to bottle them up. And most importantly, since his wife Cynthia is a trans woman, he taught him the terms he needed to put all that dysphoria related turmoil he had going on into words.

So really, up until that point Robin hadn't thought about it much. Not thinking about it meant not having to deal with it, he was just hoping all those weird feelings, whatever they are, would go away one day. But of course they wouldn't have if he'd just continued to keep on going like that.

Now that he'd talked those feelings through with someone and then went on to change up his gender presentation, though, things got a hell of a lot easier. Murdoc used the right pronouns for him, called him by the name they'd chosen together (one of his favorite wildshapes to use to spy on people is an odd looking robin, and they both decided it's a nice fit), and after a while of that, Robin began to cook up medicine (cough, testosterone) that would change his body.

And all of a sudden he just felt GOOD about himself for once. His body wasn't just existing to carry him through the days anymore, instead he actively liked looking at it. His voice didn't hurt his ears anymore, it just sounded right. There was growth and hair in the right places and muscles where there used to be softness that he'd previously tried to get rid of by starving himself down to the bones.

See, and only then is when he started to really develop views on his gender and sex.

He is and always was, by all definitions of the word, a bisexual man, even when he was still blocking out the thought and just hoping for the dysphoria to go away on its own. Gender non-conforming (if he can wear them in a masculine way, he still wears many of his old clothes because he can't afford new ones for example, and he's insanely fond of jewelry, be that piercings, earrings, rings, bracelets, ankle bracelets, waist chains, etc) and somewhat gentler than other men he's gotten to know so far, sure, but really not all that different. Transitioning, to him, was like a lifeline he didn't know he needed extended to him, but now that he's gotten a hold of it, he wouldn't ever let it go.

Masculinity can be expressed in very many ways, and his way of expressing it is being forceful like rumbling thunder and strong like a centuries old oak that you can shelter underneath. He'll bear the brunt of the storm for you and keep you safe. And when it's over, and you open your eyes, rather than the lashing rain, you'll see the beauty of the sun's first rays shining through the greenest leaves you've ever seen, while their warmth caresses you.

(One thing I'll say (and it is really just more of a game-related issue) is that his in-game model looks pretty unchanged in terms of testosterone changes even after all the mods I installed to get him a little closer looking to himself. It does unfortunately have a lot of people jumping to the conclusion that he's some flavor of non-binary or futch/butch (and leaving comments that make ME dysphoric at the end of the day lmfao), when in reality, looking at him would not really differentiate him from a cis man and I'm simply limited by the game. There is no room to doubt his gender if going off "traditional" (binary) characteristics. He does bind his chest sometimes, and he usually wears his clothes in a way that covers/hides the shape of what's underneath. Funny enough, I am currently working on a painting of him and I'm kinda hyped about the absolute physical likeness I'm achieving with it, so I'm adding a little WIP!!)

"Pandemonium on Pine Street" by TIA INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY Via Flickr: It’s the long-awaited sequel to “Miracle on 34th Street” -- Coming exclusively to Seattle theaters every December from now until Rudolph’s nose doesn’t shine so bright. . . Click on the notes to learn a bit about what you’re seeing here in the heart of downtown Seattle. I promise you might chuckle a few times. . .maybe. Westlake Center, 4th Avenue & Pine Street, Downtown Seattle. For those who observe it, I hope you had a very enjoyable Christmas holiday. For all, enjoy the final few days of our year 2012. WATCH ***TIA: YEAR IN PHOTOS 2012*** TIA INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY / TIA Facebook / TIA Twitter / TIA Blogger