Your Body Is An Ancestor. Your Body Is An Altar To Your Ancestors. Every One Of Your Cells Holds An Ancient

Listen by Barbara Crooker

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

Use your libraries, folks. Show your librarians some love too 💕 ask them for book recommendations, and give thanks for the work they do. Libraries are some of the most efficient and least wasteful places. We get to borrow books we want to read and give them back then let other people borrow them. 📚♻️📚

🔥 The beacons are lit; the library calls for aid

The Trump administration has issued an executive order aimed at dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services - the ONLY federal agency for America's libraries.

Using just 0.003% of the federal budget, the IMLS funds services at libraries across the country; services like Braille and talking books for the visually impaired, high-speed internet access, and early literacy programs.

Libraries are known for doing more with less, but even we can't work with nothing.

How You Can Help:

🔥 Call your congressperson!

Use the app of your choice or look 'em up here: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Pro tip: If your phone anxiety is high, call at night and leave a voicemail. You can even write yourself a script in advance and read it off. Heck, read them this post if you want to.

Phones a total no-go? The American Library Association has a form for you: https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=23577

🔥Tell your friends!

Tell strangers, for that matter. People in line at the check out, your elderly neighbor, the mail carrier - no one is safe from your library advocacy. Libraries are for everyone and we need all the help we can get.

...Wait, why do we need this IMLS thing again?

The ALA says it best in their official statement and lists some ways libraries across the country use IMLS funding:

But if you want a really specific answer, here at LCPL we use IMLS funding to provide our amazing interlibrary loan service. If we can't purchase an item you request (out of print books, for example) this service lets us borrow it from another library and check it out to you.

IMLS also funds the statewide Indiana Digital Library and Evergreen Indiana, which gives patrons of smaller Indiana libraries access to collections just as large and varied as the big libraries' collections.

As usual, cutting this funding will hurt rural communities the most - but every library user will feel it one way or another. Let's let Congress know that's unacceptable.

This is one of the best takes.

"I want to live in a world in which teenagers can fulfil their natural purpose of being annoying" and "I do not always want to be annoyed by the teenagers" are compatible sentiments

Mhysa | Daenerys Targaryen

Girl Scout Cookie Time!

You can buy cookies online from any troop with a page set up.  People bought so many cookies from troop 6000 (who is based out of a homeless shelter in NYC) that is broke the counter on the website.

Here’s six troops from high poverty areas that may struggle to reach their goals. Individual troops list on their page what they’re doing with funds. for many of these its simple things like badges or craft supplies. Get yourself some cookies.

troop 168 Sabra Grande, Puerto Rico 

 Troop 3559 Chinlee, Az (Navajo nation)

 Troop 31897 Meadow Bridge, West Virginia 

Troop 70115 Rena Lara, Mississippi 

 Troop9626 Kykotsmovi Village, AZ  -Hopi Nation

Troop 30349 Darien, GA 

You can also just donate cookies on there and they’ll be distributed to the local community. (I work at food pantry here and clients are always excited to see cookies on the shelves)

You can look up your local troop by zip code on https://www.girlscouts.org/   If they’re similarly struggling to raise funds, reblog and add ‘em on to the chain.

Thank you for coming home with us that night when you were a kitten. You were our loved cat. The children loved you, and we thank you for letting them love you.

RIP sweet boy.

we're all so lucky that a cat can be orange. that's such an incredible color for a cat to be