roadsidewildflower

I feel like there's a disconnect between "crime" and building communities of mutual aid, respect, and love. Also there's an irony in focusing on the qualitative nature of property values in this kind of space? Regardless, the vast majority "crime" doesn't really help anyone--stealing someone's bike for resale is shitty, shoplifting from a local store is shitty (and tbh even the big ones bc then they pull out of the neighborhood, leaving us w/o a pharmacy), and tagging stuff up is a shitty exercise in ego-boosting. IDk, I think people have a right to feel safe in their communities no matter the affordability of housing

This is what you get when you put someone in charge who was raised and educated inside India. This is not India and we dont want it to become like India.

I think we can acknowledge this man's poor behavior and systemic misogyny in India without painting over a billion people as unqualified to lead or as dangerous to our country's cultural character. I have several of friends raised and educated in India, now living in the US, who are quite feminist--almost certainly more so than the average American citizen, especially given near half of Americans will vote for a sexual predator for the third presidential election in a row.

What I’ve gathered from this thread is that it’s been spun into more rich racist bullshit.

i do think this is a mischaracterization that some people are pushing because it's easy, though fundamentally untrue. imo, most of the people who originally cultivated and belonged to the idea were women (a lot of them queer) who were looking for way to find authenticity in a very artificial and consumerist world. it was people thrifting and gardening and baking, etc. i'm thinking back to tumblr like ten years ago when it was actually relevant and that's what i can remember of it at least, that and a whole bunch of moodboards with pretty art and landscapes lol

but obviously, any time there's money to be made, monied interests are going to come along and try to co-opt something. it's why any hobby space is now filled with people posting about all the crap they buy for their hobby, instead of actually doing it. anyway, like i wrote in a much longer comment (which tbh feels like a futile use of time, as i forgot how fruitless arguing an idea on the internet actually is/feels), i don't think it's worthy of disdain, etc.

“wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all raised our children on books instead of screens and let them play outside in the fields with other kids and walked to the local market and farmed our own food"

yes. as an educator, let me repeat--yes. these are good things that are children would benefit from. doing the weird, rhetorical strategy of implying these ideas (or the people advocating for them) slide seamlessly into racism is just...weird. like, you can dislike cottagecore while also accepting that it wasn't..."cryptofacist propaganda"

a few years back when i was more online, i was in a few cottagecore kind of spaces. they tended to be dominated by queer women and there was nothing particularly conservative or propagandistic about it. to me at least, it seemed to come organically from women who wanted to uplift things that were seen as outdated or stiffing or gender-stereotyped (threadwork, baking, gardening, etc.) as solutions to artificial and consumerist life. why buy fast fashion when you could thrift, mend, or make? why buy processed food from megacorps when you could grow your own ingredients and make food yourself? etc. and yeah, a lot of them were taking inspiration from the old american transcendentalists and brittish romantics, which you could say are colonialist, etc., but nothing is without fault and generally there are a lot of beautiful ideas from that era that can be taken into and discussed in the modern day, as we navigate tensions between technology and pastoralism (the machine in the garden, by leo marx, is an interesting bit of lit crit on this if you're into that kind of thing). i'd say too that a lot of them were community minded, either through advocacy groups, spirituality (witches and theists alike), community gardens, etc.

maybe the vibes have shifted in the years since, as i feel like the "tradwife" has become a thing on tiktok. but like...the people i know irl who are cottagecorey aren't on tiktok? they're reading and spending time outside and crafting things. so if you're getting the "cryptofacist propaganda" angle from that kind of thing, then I think we're talking about two discreet movements that just have some aesthetic overlap. influencers are never gonna be authentic representations of any kind of group, but most of the cottagecore people i've known irl haven't been rich in the slightest, they've actually mostly been retail workers or biology or lit grad students lol.

but ultimately...it would be wonderful if we were raising our kids on books instead of screens. anyone working in education can tell you that. and yeah, playing outside is good, actually. having a garden is also awesome, and being able to walk to the local market is doubly so. and the awesome part is, all those things can be done in the city, or the suburbs, or in rural america. they can be done in diverse communities built on compassion.

anyway, there are a lot of good things to be drawn from that whole subculture, imo

makes me want to become a beacon of pure love for my fellow lost fireflies winking and blinking in the long, dark night of the cosmos

fucking beautiful, stealing it

brb, boutta update my teaching philosophy in case I decide to go on the job market again

hmm I'm trying to remember how they reacted, and honestly they couldn't entirely remember. I think they liked voting for which one went up there, mostly because middle schoolers really like voicing their opinion. Probably a lot of them thought it was dumb, and some of them thought it was neat. To be honest, any way that middle schoolers are interacting with the subject of death is going to be fairly surface-level given where they are in their development as humans. But, I hope I was able to give them some of the tools to really begin exploring what these ideas mean to them, especially when the ideas and feelings start hitting like semis as they age. We also did a bunch of cool things, like I had a quarter where each week we'd read a fairy/folk tale or two centered around an idea (beauty, greed, evil, etc.), and then read some philosophy/news adjusted to their level that complimented the idea, and then they'd do some writing or whatever. Pretty fun. Kids seemed to actually like it tbh

But then I moved from my struggling rural district to a polarized rural/suburban district, and the kids there hated it and whined everything was too dark smh

Yes, I actually intended this as a personal attack specifically for you! So glad you saw it!!

A few years ago I read Tuck Everlasting with my middle school students and had them brainstorm a momento mori phrase we could write and put next to the clock by the door, as a reminder that both death was coming and that the more they wished time would go by for class to be over, the more their very lives passed them by. We did a little poll, one phrase won, and I put it up on posterboard by the clock. Only thing is, I can’t remember the phrase. How I wish I could. But time wears away at us all and robs us of the little things, these little memories that make us ourselves, until we exit life as the same tabula rasa we were at birth. Like waves slipping in, and out, leaving nothing but smooth sand left in their wake; a half memory of what used to be, as the cycle of life and tine churns ever on.

A few years ago I read Tuck Everlasting with my middle school students and had them brainstorm a momento mori phrase we could write and put next to the clock by the door, as a reminder that both death was coming and that the more they wished time would go by for class to be over, the more their very lives passed them by. We did a little poll, one phrase won, and I put it up on posterboard by the clock. Only thing is, I can't remember the phrase. How I wish I could. But time wears away at us all and robs us of the little things, these little memories that make us ourselves, until we exit life as the same tabula rasa we were at birth.

time's the biggest goon of all

we’re not born “to” anything

umm ackshually someone else told me that we're born to pass on our genes, so checkmate camus