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| Coyote and her shadow |
Photo Credit and more nature videos by "Angelo Coyote" / Leland Hermit
Coyotes are not universally admired. They more than wolves live on the fringes of heavily populated areas. Coyotes are viewed with hostility by sheep ranchers and city people with indoor out door cats. Pictures to present them as they are matter.
This photo comes from a gifted wildlife photographer who lives somewhere in #CO03, the district served by #LaurenBoebert, or as RantWoman sometimes refers to her #LandslideLauren or #NotoriousGED.
The former hashtag refers to Rep. Boebert's whisper thin re-election victory in the 2022 midterms. The latter is, RantWoman hopes, a kinder and slightly more respectful hashtag than others used to characterize Ms. Boebert's educational background and desperate need for a commitment to lifelong learning.
Every time Rep. Boebert goes one a particularly homophobic rants, this constituent posts to Twitter a list of topical resources and utters a prayer that if, heaven forbid, one of Rep. Boebert's sons turns out to be gay or learns that a good friend is gay, the resources are there.
Next, RantWoman offers the Text of Quaker Call asking Friends, as RantWoman understands it, how they are called to uphold our democracy
RantWoman's standard of trolling:
--There are some hashtags RantWoman will not touch even if she agrees with the rest of a tweet.
--RantWoman strives to be respectful about family and children who might or might not want to serve as posterkids for the gun rights lobby.
--RantWoman gets REALLY tired both of classism and reflexive hostility to religion.
Will any of this matter?
RantWoman is skipping all the videos in her stream about the poor condition of the Russian army, military objects on fire in Russia, and which segments of the human this war's meat grinder are hottest.
RantWoman also is cautious about interpretation of all videos without further research.
Joseph Stiglitz on the state of the world economy
DW Interviews Jeffrey Sonnenfeld on impact of war on Russian Economy
Jake Broe on link between the collapse of SVP and the war in Ukraine
Part of US 6th Fleet visits the Black Sea
Times Radio on British perspective
Second assassination attempt on Putin
Sweden and Finland aiding Ukraine
Russia heading toward collapsein Ukraine
Ukrainian fortifications on the Belarussian border
France 4 on who sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline
Sy Hersh says US sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline
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| Dare to chase sunflowers in the fog and gloom |
This year, RantWoman is chasing multiple metaphors. RantWoman may or may not achieve daily binge blog spiritual practice but she is going to wander around in some of these memes.
--open all the doors and exclaim about the contents even if it's mediocre chocolate.
--eat a chocolate a day and free associate about whatever wacky emotional entanglements RantWoman drags out of the Christmas ornament box
--compile this year's naughty and nice lists
--grab whatever nuggets get seeded in different meetings for worship and see where they go.
Tonight RantWoman is appreciating a message about how sunflowers can grow in all kinds of places including toxic waste dumps.
| other desk clutter |
Meet The Fluffy Lavender Chicken.
The chicken share's RantWoman's certainty the world is entitled to RantWoman's opinion and is likely aid and abet TantWoman as she composes a number of posts which may or may not get posted before the actual events to which they refer.
Consider for instance this list of NPYM Annual Session Interest Groups
Other readers who do not use screen readers may not even notice headings. RantWoman nowever is extremely grateful there are two layers of headings so that RantWoman can skip to a specific item.
RantWoman is also grateful to see both themes about taking care of community AND about Quakers doing good in the world.
Beyond that, RantWoman is going to save some all disabilities all the time meditations and let the season at least until after even events inflaming RantWoman's opinions have occurred. Stay tuned!
Stimming 101 or How I learned to stop worrying and love the stim
The Dark of Stimming Self-injury and destructive habits
RantWoman experience points, including stuff RantWoman always gets to think about before she fully interacts with the content. RantWoman offers these essential realities of her life offered unapologetically. If these details make other Friends' as well as members of the famous Care and Accountability Committee eyes glaze over, RantWoman invites readers to skip to the next heading.
--The Home page The Artism Spectrum looks like it has a lot of useful information.
--The site behaves well with RantWoman's screen reader EXCEPT for the ads which just sound realy stupid when read through RantWoman's screen reader.
--Has RantWoman mentioned that, as with apps, every time RantWoman touches a website she gets to fret about possible gaps in accessibility?
Let’s talk about stimming!
Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge
“Stimming” is short for “self-stimulating.” Everyone stims
to some extent, whether that’s bouncing
your leg when sitting, twirling your hair, biting your nails or clicking a
pen’s button more times than necessary.
Neurotypicals—that is, people with “typical” brains—are the
definition for “normal” stimming, but the beauty of neurodiversity means that there
are many people who stim much more than
the average neurotypical. Autism is the neurological set-up most commonly
associated with stimming, but it’s not the only one. People all over the
neurodiversity spectrum may use stimming to self-regulate, to focus or to express
themselves (like, squealing with joy).
In response to the UFM disability survey, someone asked if we
could learn about stimming. So I want to share this pair of articles that I
really enjoyed:
Stimming 101, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Stim
The Dark Side of the Stim: Self-injury and Destructive Habits
Both are written by Kirsten Lindsmith, an autistic artist, writer, software developer and autism advocate.of anxiety, of anything), is something that everyone has felt at some time or another is something that everyone has felt at some time or another.
Autistics are easily overloaded, and simply need to release tension
more frequently. When I stim, I often feel like an old fashioned boiler letting
off pressure—sometimes in tiny bursts, sometimes in huge belches of steam. Sometimes
stimming releases pressure—especially the
good kind of stimming. Sometimes a stim will help us focus to block out
invasive and overwhelming sensory input, becoming an essential coping aide.
It’s a type of self-soothing, whether one needs to be
soothed because something is just too cute or because that ambulance siren is
just way too loud, the root cause is essentially the same.
In my opinion, the question shouldn’t be why autistic people stim, it should be why do autistic
people stim in such a specific way. Not every autistic stims, and not every autistic
person shares all the typically autistic stims. I’m a finger waver, but I’m not
often a hand flapper. I have a vast number of vocal stims, but I’m not usually
a rocker or a bobber. I know hair-twirlers who rock back and forth. I know knuckle-crackers and foot-tappers who
don’t wave fingers or flap hands. Every autistic is as unique as her own personal stimming lexicon.” (Emphasis and
links in original)
In our society, disabled folks are often intentionally and explicitly
separated from neurotypicals—special education is a prime example. One result
of this segregation is that those of us who are (or who could pass as)
neurotypical often have not been exposed
to the full spectrum of neurodiversity, including the many ways people self-regulate
by stimming. Teasing and reprimands push people to repress “excessive” stims as
much as we can, decreasing the natural diversity of ways of being that seem
“normal” to society. So anything beyond neurotypical stimming may make people
uncomfortable.
Usually ignorance and ableist prejudice is the problem, not
the stim itself. While there are a handful of unhealthy stims, which Kirsten talks
about in the second article, most stims are entirely harmless. But stims can be alarming if you’re
not used to them! If someone starts flapping their arms or moaning repetitively,
you might wonder if they’re in crisis, on drugs or detached from reality. You
might feel afraid, because if one Kirsten
describes stims as “essential self-calming behaviors.”
She says that one of the most common questions she gets is “why
do autistic people stim?” Her answer: The build up of emotion, the need to
release emotional or physical tension due to an overload (of cuteness, of type
of “normal” behavior has been thrown out the window, who can predict what that
person will do next? But stimming is a normal and healthy tool for many people.
On the contrary, suppressing stims may lead to meltdowns or outbursts.
Being interpreted as threatening just for having a sensitive
nervous system can have deadly consequences. Elijah McClain was Black, autistic
and 23 years old when he was murdered by police after someone called 911
because he was “waving his arms,” a common stim. Leroy Moore, a disabled Black educator
and advocate, estimates that approximately 70% of those killed by police are
disabled.
It is long past time for neurotypicals to broaden our understanding
and acceptance of neurodiversity. These two articles offer a starting point for
understanding stimming—and some tricks to manage self-harm! I hope you will
enjoy learning from them as much as I did.
RantWoman commentary:
--RantWoman thinks reading the voices of people with disabilities in their own words is really important and RantWoman does not want to discourage contributions to the newsletter. Here though, maybe RantWoman would have offered only limited quotes, would have let the links speak for themselves and maybe would have written a whole article about police shootings and people with disabilities. .
--RantWoman almost did not reprint the full article partly because RantWoman found the copyediting a little confusing. RantWoman will now stick to better copyediting of her own stuff.
--RantWoman does not know what to make of the word "enjoy." These articles are important and contain valuable details, details that definitely do not sound like fun to live with, but "enjoy" is not necessarily the first word RantWoman would use even to describe the read
1. RantWoman finds herself imagining earnest Quakers trying to speak of, say, stimming in Meeting for worship. The quakerese word for speaking of a concern about problematic behavior is "eldering." Some efforts at eldering go better than others. RantWoman can imagine a conversation going something like
Friend attempting to elder "WE don't stim / crochet / do sudoku in Meeting for worship."
Friend being eldered. "I have been listening to the NPR show 'Says You,' and you get 5 points for knowing what stimming is, but who is 'WE?' I know many people who find these and other activities very helpful in getting to a worshipful center."
(Readers curious about the subject of sudoku are invited to use the search bar on this blog. RantWoman's version of the above response might or might not include encyclopedic discussion of vision loss realities and perhaps further eldering such as "Friend, be glad you can see across the room to be bothered. And if RantWoman doing sudoku in Meeting for worship is the worst problem of your day, say a prayer of gratitude about that too!")
2.RantWoman finds the second article really helpful both in terms of an individual autistic person's issues and in terms of spiritual accompaniment for any parent, spouse or caregiver. RantWoman finds it helpful when a member of a specific community can say "this is too much" with love and tenderness.
3. RantWoman highly recommends Musings of a Quaker Witch for one thing because there are 4 really frank articles about disability highlighted in a box on the right hand side of the page.
RantWoman is curious, where will Friends be led next?
During this impending winter of #pandemic and soon-to-be-exPresidential shenanigans, RantWoman is striving to be festive, to cultivate grace, to draw out the best in all, most of all herself.
Okay, this is RantWoman. Let's try for festive and try to hold holy whatever comes along.
RantWoman offers clues to visual motifs and then presents some new tags. Hopefully the new tags will be more self-explanatory than some of the existing ones RantWoman is in love with. RantWoman does not promise to go back and add tags to many old posts where they belong. This is the unedited version of Blog as Quaker Journal.
Visual motifs and what they mean
Christmas Cactuses: GRATITUDE
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| Plant Exchange Christmas Cactus plants with Pinkish White and darker pink blossoms |
Random images of holiday Gifts:
These will be intended both as appreciations of gifts, efforts that are very meaningful to RantWoman and donations of unsolicited in-kind technical assistance
New tags
Grace
Forgiveness
Since we are discussing holiday themes, RantWoman needs to comment on one theme from a previous year: readers may have noticed that one year recently RantWoman observed Hanukkah with a bunch of "Nothing Appropriate" visual images. RantWoman realizes the entire series may have had different impact for some people than RantWoman intended. RantWoman in no way INTENDED to slam an entire religion. If anything, RantWoman intended to highlight abundant ignorance floating around in US culture. RantWoman also was symbolically working out how to deal with lingering and recurring fury with the RantParents for doing nothing appropriate about one situation stuck in RantWoman's mind along with other holiday memories. RantWoman's tasks are both to figure out more concisely what needs to be said to whom and when and to heed the call about forgiving 70x 7 times RantWoman apologizes if this theme offended anyone and hopes that this explanation can help anyone concerned sit with a more complex picture.
RantWoman also offers confessions.
First, RantWoman has adequately spoken to NO ONE about how helpful some forms of Quaker service were in helping RantWoman stay on her feet psychologically while dealing with SOME aspects of midlife vision loss. Plop another Christmas Cactus of Gratitude here about this topic even though the conversation will quickly degenerate into WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE TIME TO LISTEN...?
Second, but related to the first, recently in connection with one of the hats RantWoman wears outside Meeting, RantWoman wrote a "How NOT to do it" skit about how to lobby legislators. The skit was a blind mother, with an unreasonable ask, on a Zoom call with a legislator. The mother had several distractions. The senator did not know very much about blindness and did things like yawn out loud. In other words, both sides found many reasons to be less than charmed by the encounter. Despite all of this, the two did get to an agreement to explore the topic further.
RantWoman's confession: she had WAY too much fun writing the How Not to Do It Skit. RantWoman is also seasoning an abundance of How NOT to do It material on her blog. RantWoman asks readers to bear with her and to try to extract nuggets of wisdom. Stay tuned...
RantWoman, we your adoring public and inquiring minds want to know, what did you do to observe #WhiteCaneDay #WhiteCaneSafetyDay #WhiteCaneDayWA
Today in #NDEAM, etc news
--Warning: RantWoman believes in signs, timing, even when the signs arrive when RantWoman is already psychically discombobulated.
--Warning: this post talks about assault, the police, people who have a right to exist and to ask for reasonable accommodations regardless of ... and generally to look out for each other. Readers who do not want to go near any of this are invited to click away now. Readers willing to invest some spiritual fortitude, thank you for sharing the walk. RantWoman generally now has come to refer to her long connections with the community technology center in her building using terms like Vocational Rehab and "Technical assistance." RantWoman promises to blog further about this terminology when she is less sleep-deprived and hopefully better able to comb verbal tangle into reasonable prose. Please note: RantWoman refers either to the STAR of Seattle or The Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme computing depending on RantWoman's mood and how off-brand RantWoman's meditations are. Stay tuned.
--Around RantWoman EVERY day, EVERY month is #PedestrianSafetyMonth and also a bunch of the Awareness month categories that have come RantWoman's way. Bless your hearts everyone who gets to take breaks from RantWoman realities.
--A 2016 blog item was delivered to RantWoman's email by an enterprising person who would like RantWoman to post a commercial link comment.
Security incident, self-defense...
--All the principles in the events above are white. RantWoman was not there and does not remember whehter the Chief Morale Officer who is African American was there or not. The STAR Center has a two adults rule not only for insurance company best practices regarding children but also because the two adults protects the staff as well. And theChief Morale Officer is invaluable, for one thing because many neighbors will tell her things they will not tell RantWoman.
But RantWoman digresses. The assailant in the story above, an elderly white guy, turned out to be a homeless mentally ill Level 22 sex offender who slept somewhere nearby. RantWoman generally likes knowing that sex offenders are securely housed with whatever resources they need so they do NOT have to come to the STAR Center, threaten staff with scissors, and generally make a scene. RantWoman does not think merely chanting #DefundThePolice will get WA to that point. In fact, RantWoman thinks there should be more funds in general exactly to fund community mental health and supportive housing. and would very much like to be having conversations also about what WA might do to pull itself out of being the most regressive tax structure in the US.
--Discussion question: what do readers notice?
--RantWoman may be written before of advice the officer gave about rearranging the entryway furniture to reduce the chances of anyone else getting trapped in a corner. RantWoman is now both embarrassed and grateful about how that evolved. At first RantWoman did not want to change anything. But RantWoman was not the one who was assaulted and the coordinator REALLY needed to change something. It took RantWoman a couple hours of staring at furniture space and thinking about person flows and then Eureka!
--Does something in the embedded video draw you in?
RantWoman will not run the risk of incoherence tonight and hoepfully will riff further below.
--The link for the product line the commenter would like RantWoman to post. Please note: rantWoman is posting the link. RantWoman in no way endorses any of the products displayed, but RantWoman frequently finds it useful to consider how the people who would endorse such products actually think.
COMMERCIAL link: all kinds of self defense products
In other words, RantWoman's state of mind / excuses for just posting a raggedy outline:
--The world RantWoman lives in, the exciting realm of vocational rehabilitation, (by the way happy #VR100) and ways of surviving there
--Adults with disabilities trying to set responsible coping examples for younger people with disabilities. ALWAYs trying. Succeeding? Ummm
It's COVID. RantWoman is unevenly able to manage appropriate sleep schedules and balance with exercise. RantWoman is vexed by more technological vicissitudes affecting her own equipment; RantWoman is also on an involuntary computer lab technology fast because the building housing The Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing is getting a new roo . RantWoman slept badly last night and did not make it back to bed. Instead after breakfast. RantWoman has plenty of material lurking for really good Dial-a-Tirade moments.RantWoman has now digested that, in addition to RantWoman and disconcerting medical news, RantMOM also has Things percolating. RantWoman gets again to express gratitude for ice cubes, plenty of various ingredients to make a hearty chicken and wild rice soup
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