If You Really Want To Help Indigenous People, Now Is Your Time.

“Untitled“ by | Erin Moon

Mt. Baker, Whatcom County, Washington

I could not figure out what this was about until the last sentence

The wrong Dodo went extinct

Lol I never thought about it that way but it’s so true! I play piano and flute, but I’ve also picked up some guitar and ukulele along the way and I can manage a cello too. I can also play the piccolo, but not particularly well. I don’t know how to use a violin well enough to say I play it, but I’ve learned a couple simple songs on one. (I’ve wanted to learn the harp since I was 13 or so, but those aren’t easy to get a hold of.)

What instruments do you play?

Him: yes

I love elephants

So in the new episode of The Flash, Failure is an Orphan, who else looked at older Grace Gibbons for like one second and immediately realized she was the same actress who played Alicia Baker in Smallville?

haha I got it right last time I had to think about this! my great-grandmother’s sister’s grandson is my second cousin once removed! I should bring a copy of this chart to his wedding (it’s later this week.)

Who the Hell Is This Person Talking to Me and How Exactly Are They Related to Me: The Chart, just in time for your Thanksgiving gathering.

(Source: Apparently commenter “Platypus Man” from this Lifehacker post)

IT’S RELEVANT, IT MATTERS.

My uncle, regarding the accusations of sexual harassment and assault against Donald Trump: “Well, there’s no proof. But even if he did, so what? Most politicians have done bad things. It’s not relevant to his capability as President.”

It’s not relevant, hm? (I did not know how to convey to him how awful and scary it was that he said this.)

It doesn’t matter that the President, a person in a position of major power, has been known to abuse that power to hurt women? It doesn’t matter that he’s a predator – and predators are selfish and thrive on the fear of their victims? Those girls that he hurt, they don’t matter? Their pain doesn’t matter?

What if it was me? The niece you’ve known since she was a little girl? If he, or any man like him, hurt me, would that not matter? Does my unfortunately extensive experience with sexual harassment not matter?

(Though thankfully it’s never escalated to assault for me. But it has for so many others.) Why isn’t human pain something that matters?

aw, sweetheart. this is adorable.

Bedtime cuddles

Humans are awesome

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I wish I could have gone to a school like this. Can you imagine an education that is academically well-rounded, teaches life skills and hobbies, ensures the overall physical and mental health of its students, and it’s ALL GIRLS? Girls who learn to be supportive of each other? No male teachers who ignore female students and put them down. no worries about being sexualized at school. (no teenage boys. no dress code.) 

this is the dream. I wish I could have gone there. I want to leave my astronomy class to go to figure skating and then later I have embroidery club and martial arts. 

just. please. I want this to be a thing. I’ve dreamed about something like this myself lol.

I want to meet the amazing, talented, well-rounded and extraordinarily competent and fierce women who would come out of a program like this.

My biggest personal feminism fantasy?

I make a lot of money. Enough money to buy an old estate on a large bit of property. Something like this:

Then, I modify it into classrooms and dormitories. I make common areas and a cafeteria that is open to the kitchen. All of this serves a purpose.

I open a girl’s school. Grades 6 through 12. It’s called something like

Artemis Academy

or some other strong female symbol name. It has no religious affiliation. It is scholarship based, maybe a pay-what-you-can model, but ideally we work our way to 100% donation based maintenance, with every penny going back into paying the staff and bettering the schools.

Our teachers and instructors are all women, highly educated women or women skilled in their trade. There is a STEM and Law focus, ideally, with plenty of the arts. The girls are taught history and painting and music and writing alongside biology and law and physics and calculus and coding. The curriculum does not hide women, it highlights them and their accomplishments.

They take shifts to help cook meals in the evenings with the female chefs, so they can be self-sufficient. There is a large garden on the ground that everyone tends so the girls have that connection to their food, that understanding and pride. Maybe there is room for chickens and goats too, for milk and eggs, and to teach them how to get their hands dirty. Chores like mopping, and dusting, and laundry, and mowing are divided among the girls and rotated so every one of them learns how to live independently.

Science classes can venture onto the grounds for sample collection, some instructors may prefer to give their whole lecture in the courtyard. A painting class may spend an afternoon setting up easles on the lawn to study capturing light.

The lawn is for physical activities: running, and yoga, and kickball. Any sports teams the girls want to form, maybe there’s a rec league run by the older girls.

Movement, and the possession of one’s own body, is important. Uniforms are comfortable and non-restrictive. Something like this:

Clubs are abundant. Poetry clubs, and book clubs, and dance, and knitting, and debate, and scary movies, and whatever they want! There’s a mentorship program that pairs each girl with one in the grade below her. There are event nights, for movies or crafting or “How To” presentations where the girls can teach things to one another (how to sew a button, how to draft a professional email, how to change the oil in a car). The community is diverse and close.

We bring in women judges, and physicians, and professors, and engineers, and sculptors, and chefs as speakers. They talk realistically on the struggles of being a woman in their field. They talk about how they overcame and thrived. They talk about career paths, and college admission, and navigating the world through the unique lenses of womanhood.

It is a school by women for girls, to let them become self-sustained, self-realized, self-loving, truly empowered women.

It’s my dream to make it happen.