I still think that my favorite urban legend/folklore fact is that there are certain areas in New Orleans where you cannot get a taxi late at night not because it isn’t safe, but because taxi companies have had recurring problems of picking up ghosts in those areas who are not aware that they are dead and disappearing from the cab before reaching the destination and therefore stiffing the driver on the fare causing a loss for the company.
An occupational hazard of cab driving I had not previously considered
I love that the nola problem here is not “ghosts in my taxi cab,” but “ghosts are FUCKING BROKE DEAD BASTARDS & I GOT BILLS”
Horror is when ghosts get into cabs and scare drivers
Magical realism is when cab companies have to develop policies to prevent ghastly fare-theft
In a book about the tsunami in Japan in 2011, the writer talked about how there was a huge increase in reports of ghostly activity. Apparently in Japan treating ghosts rudely is basically considered the stupidest thing you could possibly do. For months after the tsunami, taxi drivers would pick up a passenger only to have them give an address in one of the devastated areas. The cab driver often looked up halfway to the destination to find their fare had disappeared. Not wanting to be impolite to the person (even if they were dead) they’d drive to the address, open the door to let them out, then drive away.
It’s the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere! This is the time when gardens are really getting going, when summer fruits are abundant in the wild, and everything is still green and new. I’ve been taking my niblings out berry picking, teaching them the best spots to look for wild black raspberries and how to tell when red raspberries and blueberries are ripe. I’ve harvested and dried rosemary and oregano, and pulled all the garlic to cure before braiding for storage. I’ve also been giving away extra tomato and pepper plants to literally everyone I know and then some, because I miscalculated and then panicked and ended up started more than double what I can actually plant!
[photo id: a yellow colander with a mix of black raspberries, red raspberries, and blueberries.]
[photo id: a round outdoor table covered in garlic plants, freshly pulled with dirt still clinging to the bulbs.]
[photo id: a towel laid flat on a black cooktop, with rosemary branches heaped on it.]
What have you all been up to recently? What solarpunk projects have you been working on? Please share!
thinking about that one comic where the radfem strawman (strawwoman?) says “you’re not trans. society told you women are inferior, and you believed it because you hate yourself. you wanted to be anything but yourself.” and the argument is painted as a Bad Terfy Thing but it’s actually one of the most succinct & reflective quotes i’ve read about gender…
This argument can be made about anything so I partially agree with its idea that we use gender and other identities to help us navigate our life based on our last experiences but I disagree with the idea that just because there’s “a reason” behind a part of someone’s identity it means they “aren’t real”. That’s BS.
It’s akin to my homophobic father telling me I’m “not actually gay” because he “knew what’s making me this way” whatever TF that means. You can try to pinpoint moments in my early life that “made me gay” that might seem convincing but in the end it’s a complex combination of nature and nurture and self that makes me who I am. there’s honestly little value in saying “You aren’t gay, you were just raised in a separated household and had no positive maternal figures and are in a society that assigns value to you based off how well you can assimilate” even though parts of that are true, it doesn’t mean I’m not gay. It just means someone has a half a brain and is trying to connect two dots to prove a weird point.
