#mrsdashwood — Public Fediverse posts

The End of an Era

Well friends, we reached the end of an era on Monday night with the death of Mrs. Dashwood, last of the Dashwood flock.

After nine and half years it started to seem like she would just keep going and going and going even though she had clearly slowed down considerably from her younger days. But Monday night when James went out to close the chickens up in the coop, Mrs. Dashwood was sitting in the run. She didn’t get up when James went in, didn’t protest when he pet her, didn’t complain when he picked her up and put her inside the coop. She didn’t appear to be in pain, just slowly fading. 

In the morning she was dead, lying where James had placed her the night before. 

I was already at work and James was on his way to work, so he put her body in a big bucket, secured the top, and put the bucket in the garden shed to keep her safe until the evening. We buried her with gratitude and kind words beneath the elderberry tree in the chicken garden with all the other dead chickens—and I wonder why the elderberry is such a vigorous tree! 

Ethel and Sia were in the run and had a clear view of everything going on. With only the two of them now, Sia has pretty much stopped picking on Ethel. Instead of sleeping on opposite ends of the roost at night, they now sit side-by-side. Instead of Ethel waiting for everyone else to leave the coop in the morning so she doesn’t get pecked, she is first to jump down and walk out the coop door.

Was Sia’s big adventure of a week ago too much for Mrs. Dashwood’s old heart? There is no telling. But I miss her happy coos and her crooked foot and her magnificently fluffy butt. 

The two Nuggets are four-years-old. They will likely be with us for a few years yet if all goes well. Yesterday we covered over the collards and cabbage and opened the main garden gate much to their great delight. When I let them out of their run, Sia was screeching her complaints that it was the middle of the afternoon and how dare we keep them from being able to wander their garden? But as soon as I called them to follow me through the gate to the big garden, Sia’s complaints turned into happy coos. Not quite like Mrs. Dashwood coos, but she did make me smile because I’ve never heard such sweet calls from her before. It is unfortunate that Mrs. Dashwood didn’t live long enough to have one more wander in the big garden. It was gorgeous yesterday and she would have loved it.

Why did the Nuggets have to stay confined to the run until the afternoon yesterday? Because we can’t trust that Sia won’t go adventuring if unsupervised. James and I attended a No Kings rally on the other side of the lake near our house. 

We had been trying to figure out how to fit in all of our errands early and get to the huge rally in downtown Minneapolis. But then I learned there was a rally within walking distance in my very own neighborhood! Problem solved. 

We walked over and stayed for around an hour and half. My neighborhood turned out! People lined both sides of the busiest street in the area for about 5 or 6 blocks. It wasn’t the thousands who turned out downtown, but we had a couple hundred. Signs and flags, blow up costumes—unicorn, T-rex, giraffe, shark—and someone wearing a fleece frog costume with others wearing frog hats or carrying frog stuffies. People in the cars driving by honked, waved, and stuck their own flags and signs out of car windows since they were clearly on their way to the rally downtown. 

One guy drove by with his arm out the window, hand high and flipping us off. We just cheered louder. He couldn’t ruin the day or the party atmosphere. 

The day was jubilant and uplifting and everyone was excited to be taking part. When James and I decided it was time to walk home, the rally was still going on. We could hear if from our front porch 2 miles away! It felt great to take part. And while protests alone won’t change anything, it is encouraging to know there are so many people in my city, state, and country who are not okay with our president and what he is doing. I have to trust that they, like me, are doing what they can to resist authoritarianism. 

• It was windy!
• James keeping the message simple
• Not quite Todd the frog, but the spirit is there

I know last week I said I’d tell you about some of the really good books I’ve read recently, but with all the things I am pushing it off again. I will give you a great quote from one of the books that I just finished reading this afternoon, Theory & Practice by Michelle de Krester.

The story is told from the point of view of a woman who is writing her master’s thesis on Virginia Woolf. It takes place in the mid to late 1980s when theory was taking over English departments everywhere. I remember those days well since that is precisely when I was in college studying English and eventually writing my own master’s thesis. It’s a fantastic book that marvelously pokes holes in academia and in theory, because, of course, theory is not practice. Real life often doesn’t match abstract theory, and theory can be used to turn “texts” into something they are not and never intended to be. Highly recommend the book.

And now the quote. Paula is our narrator’s thesis advisor, the feminist in the English department. 

Paula had chestnut ringlets like a character from Jane Austen and big blue ponds for eyes. Nature had designed these things to deflect male attention from her bloody teeth. She feasted on raw patriarchal stupidity.

Heh. I love a good feast on patriarchal stupidity.

Take care, keep well, find joy, and resist fascism like it’s 1939.

#MichelleDeKrester #MrsDashwood #NoKings #Nuggets #patriarchalStupidity #TheoryPractice

Sia’s Big Adventure

James’s work schedule is Sunday through Thursday. After running some errands in the morning, he opened the run door to let the chickens wander their own little garden. It has cooled off to more seasonable weather, and James didn’t have the sliding glass deck door open, but the chicken alarm was so loud he still heard it.

He hurried out to the chicken garden to see Ethel standing near the garden shed calling out in a panic. Mrs. Dashwood was on top of the compost pile sounding her alarm. James didn’t see what had spooked them, so for safety, he scooped up first Ethel, then Mrs. Dashwood, put them in the run and closed the door. 

Then he looked around for Sia. She was nowhere to be found. He looked in our main garden. He looked in the neighbor’s yard. He went out the gate into the alley, calling Sia! Sia! Not along our alley fence nor across the alley. James was panicking himself by this point.

He walked down the alley, calling and looking in yards, and finally, across the alley and nearly four houses away, there’s Sia, standing in a little grassy patch by a garage and looking a bit confused and lost. 

In spite of her white bouffant impairing her vision, she is a fast and wily chicken who is hard to catch. James approached slowly, talking to her quietly. When he bent down to scoop her up, she tried to make a run for it. James cut off her escape and because she wasn’t familiar with where she was, she didn’t know where to swerve, so James was able to catch her.

He held her tight against his chest and could feel her pounding heart. She struggled, but James kept up the soothing talk while he just stood holding her. She quieted, and James carried her back home. He deposited her in the run where Ethel and Mrs. Dashwood were still fretting. With the flock back together again, they could all calm down. 

Given the unknown reason for their panic, Sia’s escape and the upset it caused the other two, all three of them got to spend the remainder of the day in the run to keep them calm and safe. Saturday they were back out in their garden as if nothing had happened.

It probably won’t be much longer before they will be able to come into the main garden. We had a frost warning Monday night. James and I covered the tomatoes and peppers, but the frost didn’t happen for which I am glad. There are still quite a few green tomatoes, green cayenne peppers, and green chili peppers that need to get ripe. But we’ve seen the last of our truly warm days and now temperatures are mostly around 60F/15C – 70F/21C, not exactly encouraging for ripening the tomatoes and peppers. 

I’m still picking pod beans. I also still get a small handful of green beans most days. The collards are loving the cooler weather, and I’ve got some snap peas and a few garden peas from my late summer planting.

I’ve not picked any carrots from the garden, waiting for James to tell me he is ready to make carrot top pesto since the greens don’t last in the fridge. Well today is the day. And oh my goodness did there turn out to be a lot of carrots in the garden! 

I knew there were heaps of beautiful greens, but that doesn’t always translate to big carrots. In fact I’ve not had luck with growing anything but stumpy carrots not much thicker than a pencil. This made me decide to plant scarlet nantes carrots, which are generally shorter. I also had some leftover purple carrot seeds from last year. These are a longer carrot and last year I got one tiny one.

I’m not certain what was different this year. Maybe it’s because I sowed them in early May instead of late April. Maybe I was better at keeping the sprouts watered. I know I was definitely better at thinning them—thinned them twice and probably should have done a bit more. For the first time ever I got actual honest to goodness full-sized carrots! To be sure, the spots I didn’t thin quite enough had the usual small carrots, but overall they did so well I am giddy. As I pulled them out I hummed a happy tune.

Now James is in the kitchen making carrot-ginger soup and carrot top pesto. We’ll freeze the pesto and eat that later. The soup we will enjoy for dinner tomorrow night and as leftovers. I baked a multigrain sourdough loaf today that will go along with the soup quite nicely.

Soup season is here! Earlier in the week we had miso-tofu soup. Carrot-ginger soup this week. Next week it will probably be apple-sweet potato. Pretty soon we’ll be able to start digging up sunchokes and they will make it into all sorts of dishes, but especially soup.

I had been planning on talking about some fantastic books I’ve read recently, but my day is running out so I will give you some online reading instead.

If you think the law and legal writing is boring, y’all are in for a surprise. Legal briefs and court opinions can be extremely dull, but there are plenty that make for compelling reading. One of them that had been filed with the court but not yet published was obtained by the press and wowza! The case, American Association of University Professors, et. al. v. Marco Rubio, et. al., is about whether non-citizens lawfully in the United States have the same freedom of speech first amendment rights as U.S. citizens. The judge, D.J. Young, ruled yes they do.

That’s not the most remarkable part, however. Starting on page 147, yes, it’s a really long decision, with Judge Young’s conclusion and his argument for determining a remedy, things really get going. We leave behind all the technical legalities and launch into a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump and his administration. Winding down, he quotes Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address as the Governor of California in 1967 talking about how freedom is a fragile thing. And then Judge Young concludes:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?

Judge Young clearly has integrity and courage unlike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who quit teaching his class at George Washington Law because the Dobbs ruling overturning legal abortion generated some “unpleasantness” from his students. You can read a snarky take on it at Above the Law, “Justice That Said Abortion is Unconstitutional Fails to Carry Semester to Term.”

In the meantime, Trump hosted a round table to talk about Antifa, a nonexistent “terrorist” group. Apparently Antifa has infiltrated the entire country and wants to destroy the American people and their way of life, whatever that means. There is no such organization or network called Antifa. But apparently being anti-fascist is unAmerican these days.

We are going backwards in time to the McCarthy era, only instead of Communists, the government has it in for trans people (but have you noticed it’s only trans women? They never mention trans men) and anti-fascists and is allegedly even developing secret watchlists.

Groovy.

No doubt, in spite of Antifa’s nonexistence, there will be a great made up fantasy created and many people will fall for it. We will have people reporting on their neighbors before we know it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Conversation published a good article, “The science of defiance: A psychology researcher explains why people comply—and how to resist.”

Defiance, it turns out, is all about choosing to act in line with your values. It can be as simple as saying no when pressured to do otherwise. Complying stems from a very human behavior of not wanting the other person to think you don’t trust them and the discomfort you get if you say no. The article suggests we can build our defiance muscles and provides a framework for action for difficult situations. They conclude that defiance takes practice, that “each act of consent, compliance or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.”

Have courage my friends! Take care of each other. And just say no.

Better Together feat. Jack Johnson | Playing For Change | Song Around The World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuTIFsvlmAM

#Antifa #beans #carrots #ClarenceThomas #defiance #Ethel #freedomOfSpeech #JudgeYoung #McCarthyEra #MrsDashwood #peppers #Sia #soup #tomatoes