I haven’t mentioned this yet, but my mom and I sell fair trade products. My mom started maybe two or three months ago by just setting up a table at local farmers markets, but this month we’ve expanded a bit by selling at legit craft/vendor shows.

It’s all very exciting. Fair trade isn’t common around here save for churches with connections in, say, Africa. There’s a possibility my mom could eventually open a store, and I’m looking into selling online. It’s cool to think we have a chance to promote a good cause and help the people who make the products.

I have to say, though, it’s also a frustrating process for me. We recently found a cool company that sells products from Guatemala and my mom is excited to do business with them. I am too, but it’s becoming clear that they’re not exactly the embodiment of the fair trade movement. Fair trade isn’t just about fair wages, it’s also about sustainability. Sure, the products are made from reclaimed leather and recycled rubber, but they’re attached to papers and cards printed with several colors, and each individual item (think lots of jewelry) comes in a plastic wrapper. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? 

That’s just one example. I’m also uncomfortable working with a legit company which is extremely interested in marketing. Marketing and design are important if you want to sell things; I certainly believe that. I just don’t think this particular company’s principles are aligned with those of fair trade.

Here’s where it gets even more complicated: I don’t really think my principles are aligned with those of fair trade. It’s ultimately market-based and it encourages consumerism. I don’t know very much about economics, but I am not okay with consumerism and I do not want to encourage it.

On one hand I’m excited to help my mom and motivated to make this into something great; on the other hand it doesn’t feel like a good enough cause to get behind. I’m going to support her anyway, of course, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to convince her to stop using so many Ziploc bags and supporting companies which are so wasteful.

I’m feeling very extreme in comparison to everyone I know. I have these values and I think if you’re going to do something you should do it right, so I want to convince my mom and everyone else to stop making things so complicated. Let’s use minimal materials; let’s not offer customers a bag and when they ask for one let’s explain why we don’t have them; let’s be creative and come up with quirky sustainable ideas for everything we do. The problem is my mom isn’t that far along in her values and I don’t know that she ever will be. I don’t really have the energy to put up a fight about these things; I wish I didn’t have to.

This is a perfect explanation of why I didn’t finish college. Because nothing is perfect and I have no desire to play into any system that isn’t doing things the right way. And if there’s no right way, damnit, then I’m not doing anything. I’d rather do nothing than contribute to badness.

All I need to do is grow up a little more, figure a few things out, get to a point where I can do things my way. I’ll start my own company or grassroots organization or school or whatever turns out to be the best way to do things, and I will stick to my values and be different and it will be motherfucking good. My attention to detail and desire to do the best I can means I will make something great happen. Give me time. I’ll get there.

Motherfucking violent hummingbird just exerted dominance by grazing the top of my head as it flew by.

Don’t try to tell me that was an accident you freakishly adept creature. I’ve seen your bullet-like accuracy before. I know what you’re capable of. However—

YOU HAVE YET TO SEE WHAT I AM CAPABLE OF.

madamethursday:

When you post/reblog pithy little graphics or other things that bemoan others not using English words or grammar correctly, it makes me lose a lot more respect for you than anyone else. It makes me want to unfollow you.

On the best days, that kind of language policing and shaming is a little brother to the tone argument in which you don’t care if someone has said something true or important because you’re just there to tear it down any way you can by disapproving of the words, letters, and structure used and the failure of them to meet arbitrary standards. 

Arbitrary standards which, I should add, usually reside with the most privileged groups to set. Don’t believe me? Go look up the MLA (Modern Language Association) sometime and see how many rules of grammar and usage they’ve elected to change over the years. With them? Overnight what was correct before becomes incorrect and vice versa. Any group that can decide stylistic rules for millions without ever talking to those millions can fuck right off.

Or go look up how many words have entered and left “the dictionary” because a handful of privileged people have the power to make something a “real word” just by wielding such tools.

I’m going to make this simple. English as a language is not this perfect, beautiful, logical thing that must be preserved and protected from the dirty, filthy hands of people who won’t use it “correctly”. It isn’t even something that is actually all that streamlined. 

English is a tongue that’s been forced on millions of people around this globe either at the direct end of a colonizer’s weapon or by circumstance which makes English the language people have to speak in order to get better social and economic opportunities. 

How about you start with the ways in which Native languages here in the U.S. and in Canada were forcibly ripped from people through extermination and rounding up Native children and sticking them in hellish boarding schools until they spoke it just like white people thought it should be spoken. Then you can move on to other places in the world, (including the British isles, where languages like Gaelic declined greatly under English occupation in the seventeenth century and onwards) and see that English has often been a way for colonizers to have a stranglehold on the very method on which the colonized communicate with themselves, each other, and the world. 

Part of these groups recovering, rebuilding, and empowering themselves is being able to use the English language however they want, in the way that best suits them. 

If someone breaks into your home, beats up or kills your family, steals your treasures, smashes the rest and kidnaps you and then happens to give you their language along the way? You don’t owe them shit. You certainly don’t owe the native speakers of your assailant’s tongue a damn fucking thing when they’re running around benefitting big time from the suffering of you and yours. 

Nor is language something that is automatic or universally easy to use in the standard way for all people. More than a few disabilities or conditions mean that the standard use of English is either exhausting and difficult or damn near impossible for the person writing, speaking, or communicating with it. It doesn’t mean that what such people have to communicate is worthless because while trying to tell their stories or communicate they substituted “your” for “you’re”. 

See again the: you don’t owe anyone shit rule. You don’t owe a society that decides you’re subhuman based on bullshit criteria and wants to silence you anything. You don’t owe them a perfect presentation of your thoughts and ideas.

I mean, really, do you have any idea how arrogant, officious, petty, and utterly soulless you come off as when you start waggling your English teacher finger at someone for such things?

It doesn’t make you sound smart, it makes you sound snooty and spiteful. It makes it clear that you’re not interested in communication or actually understanding what anyone has to say. Complaining about improper grammar usage, especially in very informal settings, makes it clear that you’re interested in asserting privilege and dominance, in setting yourself up as some kind of authority who has the right to hand down condemnation and censure if someone comma splices a sentence.

So when you go around shaming people who do not use the English language the way you (especially if you are a white middle-to-upper class first language English speaker) think it should be spoken, you’re basically just spewing everything from classism to racism to imperialism/colonialism, and ableism. And you’re thinking that you’re superior because you’ve been privileged with the education, upbringing, and sheer LUCK to be able to easily use the English language in the standard fashion. 

And if the “there”/”their” issue is more important than all that to you? Then you’re the problem here.

(via monkeyknifefight)

YOU WILL FEEL THE WRATH OF TOWANDA MOTHERFUCKERS.

  cloud10 replied to your post: I did an important thing yesterday.

DAMNNNN! Thats one bad ass letter!

/flex why thank you, kind citizen.

I’d been putting it off for months. It’s brought me severe anxiety since February or March, when I began receiving many calls a day from a certain large company (see letter below). I tried to deal with it, but things kept getting worse and worse and it seemed impossible to fix so I curled up into a ball of anxiety and hoped it would go away.

It didn’t.

And the worst part of it is, I didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a mistake made by someone somewhere, a seemingly easy-to-fix error, but the issue hasn’t been resolved (yet) and I’m still being harassed daily by phone calls.

Finally, yesterday I took my stand. I wrote out my complaints, then searched the internets for advice and went all LEGAL on their asses.

I’m pretty proud of the results. I woke early this morning to print and mail two letters: one copy to the horrid collection agency, one to company headquarters.

In short: DON’T FUCK WITH ME.

Let’s hope I get some free shit out of this.

… apparently it’s a woman whom everyone believes drowned her child?

My question is this:
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE IN SUCH AN OUTRAGE?!
There are many, many more important issues than this. If you’re going to be pissed about something, make it something REAL. Get pissed about big business. Get pissed about factory farming. Get pissed about human trafficking. MAKE A BIG DEAL ABOUT THOSE ISSUES.

Congratulations, you’ve succumbed to media hype once again.

We’re fucking doomed.

- I’m white, middle class.
- I’m young. I have at least fifty years to go if I’m lucky.
- My birthplace happens to be a leading world power with (seemingly) unlimited resources.
- I happen to be alive in a time and place where, as a woman, I am (comparatively) free.
- Not only am I ‘educated,’ I’ve learned enough about history and society to have a solid idea of what is and isn’t important or worth my time/energy/money.

This is a recipe for an extremely lucky life… one at which millions of humans have never had a chance. What reason should I ever have to give up?

I just need a little more time. Once I hit my rhythm, world, watch the fuck out.

As a female, I feel expected to wear a dress or a skirt for this occasion. But why should I have to freeze my ass off? I think I’m going with a dress + jeans, socially acceptable or not.

Suck it, real world.

I work at a nonprofit that helps low-income/homeless people find housing… I’m Project Manager of a grant program that pays to repair peoples’ homes who can’t afford it on their own. It’s a lot of responsibility, at least for me, and I’ve been learning as I go. Today I have five meetings with the contractors who’ll be working on my first batch of homes… I’m super nervous. I’ve spent hours working on budgets, contracts, etc. and today I finally get to show ‘em my stuff. It’s so weird to be in charge of grown men who clearly have more professional experience than I do. Here’s hoping they take me seriously!

Wish me luck! :)

nbd.