no boys allowed in the room!!!!

Wait wait sorry to interrupt, but can I back up?

Man, I was in such a GOOD MOOD this morning, because I went to a botanical walk given by this guy:

http://www.plant-lore.com/

THIS. SOUNDS. AMAZING. I want to *be* that guy someday. You guys don't live in Tucson, so I can share my favorite fact that the golden barrel cactus always grows south! It is nature's compass, and it does not give a fuck about your standard map orientation.

OMG, Crabbits, he was sooooo great. So knowledgeable (but a little bit batty, in all the right ways) and telling us which plants you could eat, and which tasted nice and which were "well, you *could* eat it, but I wouldn't advise it, on account of the taste..." And relating flowers' smells to animals such as goat or mouse (which most of us did not know what they smelled like). I picked up a guide so I can see when he is doing other wildflower walks on commons I know.

That is amazing about the golden barrel cactus. I love how plants know more about directions than we do, e.g. moss always on the North side of trees and the like. And how do they have that awareness? Is it magnetic, or is it on account of the angle of the sun?

I really wish we could have a ROLLING BOTANY THREAD where we could share facts like, golden barrel cactus always grows South. Or Brambles reproduce without pollen, as clones. So every different genotype of Bramble is actually a distinct species! That would be the best thread ever, to me, right now. (Except every single thread I either start or participate in lately except this one seems to get invaded by specific dudes following me from thread to thread howling about misandry, so I expect even a thread about botany would get derailed by some guy who simply could not resist howling "NOT AAAALLLL STAMENS!!!!!" at me.) I am typing this kinda in the spirit of LOL but also kinda :-/

I would love to go on a botanical walk! I love walks/hikes with smart people who tell me about things. Jeff and I went on vacation September before last to a "science ranch" and that is basically what it was. Hikes with a geologist and biologist, lectures, star gazing with an astronomer at night. It was maybe the best vacation ever. Well, going to London was probably the best. But then the science vacation.

SCIENCE RANCH!!!! OMG, this does sound like the best holiday ever. Geology, botany, astronomy, all in one cool and interesting location...? Like, science camp for grown ups. I love it!

(I also found out that the South London Botanical Institute are going on a field trip to Yorkshire to lookit a MOOR, I can just imagine a bunch of botany geeks going up on the moor and studying lichens and mosses and furze bushes and this sounds like the best time ever.)

It was in the mountains in Colorado and it was absolutely gorgeous. Sigh. I'm feeling wistful about such a vacation now.

A field trip to look at a moor is super appealing!

M oors are so romantic to me, as a person who read The Secret Garden way too many times growing up.

Ditto. I never read The Secret Garden but moors definitely feature prominently in my favorite books. I would like to visit a moor, a heath, and a craggy, windswept cliff, please.

ohhhh yeah, bring the heaths

Mountains in Colorado? This science ranch gets better and better! I bet that was so beautiful. (I have never been to Colorado, but just flying over it in an aeroplane, the landscape looked so astonishing!)

Moors are one of those things that are just... aaah, I could get all Emily Dickenson about them, except I have actually seen them. I know Cornish moors very well, they're kind of amazing places that are like deserts - they seem barren and lifeless unless you know them really well, and then everything seems so alive and throbbing with vitality. (There's a Daphne Du Maurier quote about Cornish moors I might dig out). Where moors run down to craggy, windswept cliffs, that is the actual best. (Which is Cornwall and Yorkshire, basically.)

I'm literally sitting here with my chin resting in my hand and sighing at the thought.

Found that Du Maurier quote:

It was a silent, desolate country, though, vast and untouched by human hand; on the high tors the slabs of stone leant against one another in strange shapes and forms; massive sentinels who had stood there since the hands of God first fashioned them.

Some where shaped like giant furniture, with monstrous chairs and twisted tables, and sometimes the smaller crumbling stones lay on the summit of the hill like a giant himself, his huge, recumbent form darkening the heather and the course tufted grass. There were long stones that stood on end, balancing themselves in a queer miraculous way, as though they leant against the wind; and there were flat altar-stones whose smooth and polished faces stared up towards the sky, awaiting a sacrifice that never came.
…
Strange winds blew from nowhere; they crept along the surface of the grass, and the grass shivered; they breathed upon the little pools of rain in the hollowed stones, and the pools rippled. Sometimes the wind shouted and cried, and the cry echoed in the crevices and moaned, and was lost again. There was a silence on the tors that belonged to another age; an age that is past and vanished as though it had never been, an age when man did not exist, but pagan footsteps trod upon the hills. And there was a stillness in the air, and stranger, older peace, that was not the peace of God.

Isn't that just the best? I wish I were there right now.

That is lovely.

Carl, I just wanted to say: I wish there were a "like" button beside so many of your posts lately.

i'm generally in a pretty good mood too. i'm going hiking in the woods in 2 days w mr and i just finished sewing a cape i started to make like 2 years ago? 18 months? sunday is my 1 year anniversary of having my very own drum set and learning to use it. feeling pretty good about myself in general, tbh. pardon the braggin but honestly i have no one else to tell but this thread. to write to a friend and tell her how great i'm feeling is across the board inappropriate, but somehow telling this thread is ok. i dunno. it probably isn't ok but i'm gonna do it anyway.

omg I saw a woman this morning wearing a cape, or maybe more like a capelet? And she looked AMAZING. I am very excited for how amazing you are going to look in your cape.

This is a good thread for bragging!

La Lech's cape is amazing. Definitely worth bragging about.

Also I love that Du Maurier quote - combined w/ the "spooky Brit TV" bump re: Children of the Stones really has me desiring some countryside desolation.

Isn't that from the adaptation with Jessica Brown Findlay that was just on BBC1, where everyone bitched about the mumbling?

Brag away, babe. Capes are great! Playing drums is fantastic. Gotta have a place for shouting "you go girl!" and slapping one another high fives as well as punching dudes in the dick and upsetting the patriarchs of ILX with our shrewish misandrist ways. ;-)

Oh, I need to lookit the "spooky Brit TV" thread because I really really want to see Children Of The Stones again; have not seen it since I was a wee tot and it scared the shit out of me, then, so I'd love to see what it's like now.

I copied the quote out of the book. I have no idea about the adaptation, except everyone everywhere except Cornwall complained about the mumbling, and everyone in Cornwall complained "you call that a *Cornish* accent? That's Bristol! Up country! not bleddy Cornish at all!"

holy shit LL I just remembered that you were in my dream last night!

Mr Veg and I were in a bar and there was a cool jazz improv group playing and I said to Mr Veg 'Hey see that drummer? That's LL. she's only been playing for a year, isn't she amazing?' and you were laying down righteous beats with those cool brush things and it was a p rad dream

:D

ha! that's awesome! i don't have any brushes but i am going to make a trip to the drum supply store (?) for my anniversary.

also i am really self-conscious about bragging.

This thread made me hungry for other biomes – think I am gonna hit Mt. Lemmon this weekend; they have seven different biomes there. Oh yeah!

It's good to practice bragging sometimes.

I know you are not fishing for cape-liments but I v much admire your cape, and that you made it!

Some shit I am excited about: 1. my boyfriend's family really likes me and is nice to me, which is very weird after my former marriage, where his family was mean to me and blamed me for everything; 2. consequently they got me a composter, which I very much wanted; 3. I shredded up a whole bunch of unneeded work-related papers (felt good) to turn into a carbon source; 4. it means I am feeling cheery about having a big tupperware full of scraps in my fridge.

DECAY!!!

where was the science ranch!? i wanna go!

thanks! i had a lot of help from a friend, who via this process has endeared himself to me for life, so i feel like i got a cape AND a friend. that's my kind of way to pass the time, yknow? he is a costume designer and can sew literally anything. his cape is so beautiful that it makes him look like he needs a throne. it's amazing. we have the same buttons though!

i do need to focus on being positive in a way that i feel comfortable but also allows me to celebrate whatever i please. i think sometimes i hear people around me complaining about this and that and it's partially an effort to not be someone who other people complain about. not only that, but i don't have any kids to be proud of so i just have myself, and i am sometimes proud of myself. i guess that's not such a terrible thing.

I think it's actually really important to learn how to be proud of yourself in a way that's positive and life-affirming (but not in a way that's smug or alienating to others) and it's a hard balance to strike, but what's the alternative? Self loathing or self doubt or constant self effacement? Which is not great to be around, either. I think that burst of pleasure and "yay, this is a great thing" that invites others to participate in your joy is a good thing for everyone around you.

I am jealous of your composter, Crabbits. I mean, we have food waste compost that the council collects. And obviously there is the MASSIVE INDUSTRIAL COMPOST HEAPS at the community garden. (Which gets chipped and mulched and put back into the vegetable beds in winter)

But I wish I had the space and the garden to compost at home. Decay is so interesting, the process of rotting is really kind of amazing. They've got into different schools of woods management locally, and councils have been leaving blown down trees in situ more and more, and watching the slow process of decay and how logs break down, and provide habitat for bugs and insects and STAG BEETLES and then become nurseries for younger plants... it's just amazing. I love watching it so much!

LL, I love that you made a sewing and design friend! Some of the best friends I have made in life have been other knitters. Sharing skillz together is an awesome way to bond with people! Also gives you someone to *share* positive accomplishments. No one else is going to recognize how much work your thing took!

It took me a long time to learn to say "hey I did a thing" and it is a good skill to have.

sciencegetaways.com/science-ranch-2012/

They do it every year!

*Suggests group gurl thread field trip to science ranch*

xps fwiw none of what you posted had the slightest whiff of bragging imo

i think it sucks when you get to place or point where you feel bad sharing the positive stuff in your life. it's good to be happy and proud of yourself, i don't think you can really be of positive service to other ppl unless you have at least some small piece of happiness or pride in your life.

I have happiness, I just feel uncomfortable sharing it! Thanks though -- I've always had trouble releasing anything from my inner thoughts.

I will brag:

We just had a meeting and were joking about how to turn our team meetings into drinking games and one coworker suggested "drink every time carl agatha makes a wise crack and everybody laughs." Granted, there's a low bar to humor among a bunch of attorneys specializing in a notoriously esoteric and non-humorous area of law but still, it made me feel good.

That's awesome, CA.

OK me too. I got an email from someone at work recently thanking me for always being so professional and reliable. That felt pretty great even though it took me a second to realize that he wasn't being sarcastic.

This morning on a very crowded bus a lady shouted over two people to tell me that she loved my haircut an that it looked gorgeous on me. That was pretty neat too.

I am doing super intense and hard therapy a lot right now but it's kind of awesome and I'm proud of myself for it.

You should be. That is hard work!

Oh man somebody put a copy of Lean In in the mother's room (a room set aside in a workplace for nursing mother's to pump breastmilk, for those unfamiliar). I'm side eyeing that so hard.

My feeling is that if a woman leans in, some arsehole will find a way to look down her blouse.

HA

I've been visiting with family recently, and one of my cousins said "Aunt J (my grandma) you remind me of Grandma B (my grandma's sister). Whenever we compliment you, you say something negative about yourself." Is it a family thing? Or a generational thing?

I recently had a friend tell me he likes hanging out with me because I don't talk about how I hate myself or put myself down constantly.

I have a posi-brag! My volunteer newsletter got a lot of praise last week, including maybe was shared with a whole coalition of other neighborhood groups as an example of how to make a great community newsletter (I wasn't at that event but I was told beforehand that they wanted to share it). People have noticed! My neighbors in my block assoc are all proud that we have the BEST newsletter of any neighborhood association, like they won't say it to me directly but there's a lot of competition to be the BEST at things like lushest gardens, nicest houses, cleanest streets, coolest public events, and I'm glad I'm holding up my end so ppl can be proud of us. :D

I dunno; just years of experience have taught me that whenever I try to do a posi-brag about myself, someone (usually a man, but y'know NOOOOTTT AAAALLLL MEEEENNNN) will always pop up to tell me I'm not all that and to get over myself. So it's really hard for me to say something good about myself without a kind of automatic flinch. I'm insulting myself before someone gets the chance to.

And for years, I kinda believed that I had to do this constant ... I dunno. Compensation? Like there was this constant need to big up ~things I was doing~ or ~projects I was involved with~ because the kind of validation of "lookit this record I've made, or picture I've drawn or story I've written" was a substitute for that inability to ever believe that people might like the actual me. (And most people don't like the actual me anyway!) But it becomes kind of a vicious circle, because people see that as arrogance or attention-seeking or whatever, so slap you down harder.

Until it gets to the point where there's such a panoply of hatred to choose from, like, I can get whatever negative self-image of myself validated from any number of helpful people getting ~irrationally angry~ about me on the internet!

This isn't fun to talk about, though; I'd rather talk about compost or excellent capes or neighbourhood association newletter competitiveness (it is funny how community groups turn out the same, the world over.)

i'm wearing a cape right now!
ok it's a fleece throw tied around my neck because I couldn't be bothered to go and find a jumper

i sometimes worry that my friends are being dishonest when they compliment me, tell me they love me, that I'm awesome, smart, talented, whatever ... that i'm part of some enabling self-deception ... but then I am a good friend to my friends, so ... maybe not? Maybe I am actually making good decisions about people?

lol @ kinder :) Totally something I would do!

LOL you gurls and yr capes. Let's have a "what do you look like in your cape" thread.

(Alas, I have no cape, but I do have a weird cape-like shawl thing?)

Ugh, I was gonna try a new powerwalk route through a different common, but word has just gone out on twitter that there is a flasher "working" that part of the common.

On one hand, I'm kinda thinking "oh, how quaint, how 70s, an actual flasher" but then on the other hand, my mind is thinking "these guys are known to escalate" and then thinking about women are being warned to stay off that part of the common, and just getting angry, like it's my fucking common, I'll jog there if you want, and trying to weigh that against physical safety. And these tiny incidents become a focal point for basically what is a tidal wave of ~stuff one just puts up with~.

BB, my anti-street harassment working group is really really close to finishing our foundational statement--basically our manifesto--and after meeting last night for some tweaks I am so, so excited about it and how different it is from everything else out there. And I can't wait to link it here ASAP. I think you'll like it.

One thing that's become apparent to us is that when women first join up, they can be really angry and traumatized and not ready to grapple w a "community accountability"-style critique because of their individual hurts and the need to address those, to stem the bleeding first. Just to GET to a meeting, you have to leave your house, and that means it starts all over again (actually we have a running joke that we always seem to get street harassed on our way to meet each other). It's real. That damage is real and valid and you're not alone in feeling the psychological drag of it. I'm so glad your gardening is a healing thing/space for you that brings you back to your self.

That sounds really interesting and I can't wait to read it!

But at the same time, while not *denying* the reality of street harassment, I kind of need the acknowledgement that many women, including myself, have been in situations of receiving abuse without even needing to leave the house. (I'm not even talking about relationship violence, which I have been on the receiving end of.) But that The Internet is the "New High Street" and the experiences that women have here are as real and as traumatising and destabilising as the ones on the Street. (In fact, in some cases worse, because one cannot see one's attacker, it is much, much harder to judge the level of threat, from "merely creepy and annoying" to "genuinely alarming.") It has, however, been really heartening, in recent days, that it's almost like... other people have suddenly become able to *see* persistent and low-level problematic behaviour, and not just see it, but name it aloud for what it is, and confront the offender.

Like, I don't feel quite so much like I'm constantly going "did you also just see that, or did I imagine it?" To have other people see it and name it and confront it, that's made me feel a lot less alone, which helps with not feeling quite so frightened and angry. So I just wanted to say thank you to people have stepped up recently, I do really appreciate that.

Anyway, speaking of gardens and woods and ~healing spaces~ I need need need to finish my project on the Ghosts of the Great North Wood today! I have been putting it off long enough.

looking at the lazy U page is making me long for winter, strangely enough!!

But that The Internet is the "New High Street" and the experiences that women have here are as real and as traumatising and destabilising as the ones on the Street.

Yeah, totally. The internet is a necessary part of normal life now. When someone gets rape & death threats on Twitter, police depts frequently approach it like, "Well then just stop going on the Twitter, this seems self-explanatory, why would you go back to a place where you were harassed" which, oh excuse me for trying to, you know, LIVE. Also there are still ppl who behave like this is a reasonable strategy to irl SH too, as a friend's parents raised her to believe, "Just go straight to the store and back," "This would never have happened if you'd worn a bra," etc. Which then achieves the ultimate goal of discouraging women from claiming space in public or at least making them too afraid to resist oppressive behaviors.

PS I quickly ran to the store on my bday dressed up for my party in a blouse w/o a bra and dudes could NOT STOP, that is the most I've been harassed in A WHILE.