Notices by Ari Gardens as a Verb (arisummerland@beige.party)

About 11,900,000 people is 3.5% of the United States population, which I understand is a critical tipping point for protest to make a difference.

Average that as 6000 people at 2000+ sites -- who thinks we're getting close today?

Big cities have more folks, smaller cities have fewer…

They moved the protest in our town to a park that has an edge along a very busy street, so I got to wave and honk on my way from one job to another. 🥳🏳️🌈

#NoKings #GigWork

@RamenCatholic

Also:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2y9xq58no

@mapachin @argumento @RamenCatholic

Lolol wow I am so not a "liberal". It's so funny that you're using that as a pejorative! 🤣

The Internet. It just doesn't stop, does it?

@RamenCatholic @mapachin @argumento

This is why I commented. I love and respect you, I love the Monsterdon community, and I detest purity tests and trolls.

Often and I don't engage, but when I see somebody I care about engaging, I'm often gonna jump right in.

Nobody messes with Mothra! 🦋

Hey, leftists, how about you stop it with the purity tests, all right?

Human beings are not designed to be in a panic 24/7. We've already got fascists and authoritarians and right wing Christian assholes trying to force us into panic 24/7 so we become exhausted, tired, and no longer want to do the work.

You're not helping if you nitpick people on the same side as you. Your way is not the only way!

Human beings need breaks to rest, be creative, and yes, be entertained, and if you criticize people for taking a break from the outward horror for as little as two hours, comrade, you need to go touch grass.

Ye gawds, this is some fabulous stuff, mang. #TheOatmeal

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/creativity_things

I have to admit something: I got the email today about the leftover plants from the native plant sale last weekend (that I'm no longer involved with) and yeah, I picked up 20 more plants today, cheap. Woo!

No idea where I'm gonna put them, but at least I have the big garden in case I don't have room at home.

Right now the new plants are enjoying the rest of the rainy day outside. I'm looking for a little more variety in my native plantings in my front garden. A couple of plants have basically taken over.

New-to-me instance, so I suppose I should do an #intro again -- and pin it.

Late-realized #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #GenX #Enby and more or less lifelong Kansan living once more in the blue bubble of #LFK. In one year I will have lived in my current house as long as I lived anywhere else in my entire life. That is kind of scary to me.

I have no idea what I said as an intro when I joined Mastodon in late 2022. I had just gotten slapped by the book of face because I said I wanted to drive to Texas to punch a Nazi. That'll tell you a lot about who I actually am.

I'm still #Novid because masking is punk as fuck, as is caring about other people in your community -- not just the shiny loud ones who are always talking and saying everything is fine.

It's not.

I believe it's going to be some version of OK, but it's going to be really different, and it might be pretty difficult, and a lot of people are going to be really uncomfortable -- but you probably already know that.

I love reading, learning, sleeping, foraging, unlearning, listening, learning to repair things, and being quiet for long stretches. I grow as much food and medicine as I can on my own small property. I try to be a good steward and give back to the land and the animals.

I am a chicken tender, and they are the joy of my existence. Those goofy birds helped me get through some really rough years recently. When you've got creatures that you have to get up and tend to many times a day, there's a reason to keep your feet on the ground on this earth for a while.

I have two dogs, three cats, and never enough time to do all the learning and reading or even work that I want to do.

I've been in my profession of bodywork for over 30 years and still love it. I'm only able to work part time due to my AuDHD and chronic physical conditions, so my work fits my needs very well.

I'm redheaded, left-handed, short, fat, and existentially angry most of the time, but I am also one of those people that will usually shut up after complaining and try to find a solution.

I'm a #meditator, meditation teacher, certified #yoga teacher, certified listener #poet, am becoming a certified #herbalist, and I like to question everything, especially authority. I have too many #typewriters and only two hands, and never enough time for all the poems that want to be scribbled down or typed out.

I'm a big fan of classic sci-fi, new sci-fi, speculative fiction, memoirs, and #books packed with useful information. I'm on the hunt for an entire set of encyclopedia, as I'm increasing my useful paper book collection. My TV choices tend toward #StarTrek, British comedy, and documentaries about weird cults/religions.

I'm very literal, and my sense of humor is very dry. I cut my teeth on 1970s #Doonesbury, to give you and idea of what I mean.

I am a weird combination of mostly vegan/vegetarian, but I do eat some chicken -- and the eggs my hens produce. So figure that one out if you can. (I can't!)

I love to cuss but I am very, very bad at it.

Some things I love about Mastodon: My Au friends here, all your cat and dog and rat and plant posts, watching monster movies on Sunday nights, my Novid and Covid-cautious friends, my #MLS soccer friends, and the character limit on this new-to-me instance. Woot!

Any questions? Thanks for reading.

Happy New Pope day to all who celebrate.

@RamenCatholic what would happen if we all became ordained in the Church of the Latter-day Dude and then we were actively preaching, perhaps opening a drop-in center -- do you think that would work? I've been ordained since 2009...

Ah ha ha ha lolsob #ifixit just sent me a happy one year anniversary email, which means that the computer I was working on last year is still not fixed and it's been sitting on my workbench for a year now. Smart. 😖

@DoNotPunchDown @arrrg @hannu_ikonen they would take my phone forever and disappear me if they saw what was on it. It's shocking that we've come to this point? Yet it is not shocking at all. 🤬

Photos from neighbor brunch this morning.

Yeah. Weird stuff. I know.

In honor of #WorldPoetryDay, here is one of my faves from 2023.

https://arisummerland.ghost.io/world-poetry-day/

@Daojoan

This. Exactly.

I don't know if Sarah is on Mastodon; if she is, I would appreciate an @

I'm going to ask a #computer question:

Give me your takes on: system 76,
MNT reform, lemur and darter pro.

Go!

Thanks everyone for the hugs and comments on my dark posts yesterday. I'm not gonna take them down; they are content-warned.

I don't necessarily have a glimmer of hope today, but I had some decent rest overnight, and I don't have work pressures today (well I have some meeting notes I need to clean up and send off).

Regardless of if my friend wants to go, I'm going to go sit by the county lake later this afternoon.

I often amuse myself when I make lists. Two things that are on my Lake List today are water for bees and peanuts for crows. I will take a shallow pie pan and pick up some rocks to put in it on our picnic table so if bees decide to visit us, hopefully they will find some refreshment.

I'm determined to befriend local crows if they'll have me, and one of my friends tells me that raw unshelled peanuts are the way to do it.

It's not terribly warm out today, but that's what layers are for!

Other people have posted reminders to check on your autistic, neurodivergent, queer, POC etc.
friends.

Please do, and make the time to listen.

Allow us to feel what we feel. Allow us to rage, or cry, or dissociate. We need safe harbor.

Many/most of us are not okay. Not in the slightest.

I can't speak for everybody, of course; but the reason I'm more quiet these days except for trying to make some stabs at humor -- especially with my new hashtag (and hopefully a bot, if I get approved) -- is:

Things are looking really grim for us.

This is not 2017. They didn't not expect to win. They did win, and they had a plan. And now they are dismantling the government as we have known it. I will not see that repaired in my lifetime.

I was angry as hell in 2017. I marched. I signed petitions.

We're way beyond that now.

We're beyond righteous anger and virtue signaling how "against" everything we are and how aghast and insulted we are.

We're beyond signing petitions and marching and carrying signs, no matter how good a person it makes us feel. It is crunch time.

Fascism is fucking here.

The United States government is effectively an oligarchic autocracy full of boot-licking toadies and politicians whose families are literally being threatened if they oppose the wannabe dictators, and there isn't any way to magically make that disappear.

We can't go back even to October of last year. Do you notice the lack of opposition voices in the Democratic Party? It's because their families are being threatened by the goonies who are loyal to the orange shit stain.

The Democrats fucking failed. But you already know this.

It doesn't matter that I was yelling about fascists in 2016. Me being "right" 10 years ago and yet nobody listening then doesn't solve any problems. That is just a high horse straight to hell.

They are coming for me and for my people, so it is only a matter of time before I'm one of the people you know who has disappeared.

A friend of mine who worked in Russia for five years talked about that with us last Sunday. Everyone they knew knew somebody who had disappeared.

I am stuck in an incredibly red state in the middle of this fucking country, chained to my house and my animals, incapable of just picking up and making a move to say, France or what the fuck ever. I can't even make a move to another state that might be more of a safe harbor, because my mother is here, so I am stuck here with her as long as she is on this planet.

I don't have the resources to move, especially not both of us.

Nothing I have ever done or learned in my life has led me to be able to plan for this. As she is a cishet white human being, she's not threatened the way I'm threatened -- though, being female, and not having a birth certificate in her current name, she is threatened with disempowerment soon if the SAVE act is passed.

I am hunkering down, not really staying sane at all, drinking way too much, and not even hoping for the best at this point.

They're going to force me to be female, which I am not. I will never get my gender affirming top surgery. I have resigned myself to that at this point.

They're likely to force me to cede everything I actually own, too -- especially if that crazy thing in project 2025 comes to pass where the closest male relative is the one who ends up owning everything.

I've already apologized to my nephew about this.

I'm not going to get married again. I'm not going to become a tool for the fascist state, either, oppressing other people (like the aunts in Handmaid's tale).

I will willfully take my own life before that kind of bullshit happens.

Yes, it is that bad. No I am not being dramatic, and no I don't need to fucking calm down.

It's funny how many people told me to calm down 10 years ago, and now they don't even remember that they said that offensive shit to me.

I have no hope of ever traveling overseas ever again. I have no hope of ever taking an actual restful vacation ever again.

I know for a fact that we're going to exceed 2°C of warming permanently probably next year, so we're all in the same goddamn climate change boat, with a pile of fascist shit on top.

Yeah I'm tired. Yeah I need a hug. Yeah I need to cry in somebody's arms for an hour. That's not gonna happen. I don't have those kind of friends. I don't have a partner. My dogs just freak out when I get upset.

I'm just gonna watch my soccer game in an hour and then try to get some goddamn sleep and hopefully go to the lake tomorrow with my friend where maybe touching grass will save my sanity for a few hours.

This too shall pass, but probably not in the way that any of us want it to.

If you've read this far, bless you. Thanks for worrying about me.

I've decided that because I don't really like #gardening, but I AM gardening this year, that I'm going to allow myself to harness the power of my anger, irritation, and dislike of gardening (and the state of the world) and channel that all into gardening -- the best I can.

I'm calling it "spite gardening". Not because I hate plants, but because I dislike oligarchy and I dislike being so beholden to capitalist food systems, bit I also hate sweating, I can't be in the sun for long, and I'm protective of my hands bc of my main career (which isn't farming).

But I'm going to do it "in spite" of all of that, as well as try to harness my own spite -- of it and the world rn -- to find the energy to do it. Anger can be a good fuel if directed correctly.

I hope, anyway.

It may require caffeine. Especially when I'm getting up at 4:30 AM in June to beat the heat. I will need to be judicious with that added substance. It and I don't always get along.

Basically, I'm going to trick myself into doing this, set up systems for bleary mornings to get myself out on the land with the plants, and then, hopefully, I'll find out that I'm actually enjoying it at some point.

We shall see. I am lucky that I have some intelligent co-conspirators on this project. But my own 40 x 50 plot isn't gonna grow itself!

@RamenCatholic ummm... happy birthday? And I love you?

I am OG Gen X, gonna get to two years shy of 60 this year... WTF?

Tonight I was reminiscing with someone I know from the neighborhood about a show they're going to have in April that will be the 40th (?!) anniversary show of our old punk rock venue that was out in a cornfield east of town.

Damn! 🧓🏚️