01. Miike Snow - Billie Holliday
02. The Kills - Future Starts Now
03. WHite Lies - From The Stars
04. Sting-A Thousand Years
05. Radiohead - Idioteque
Here’s an accessible article I found on this as the Washington Post has a fee to be able to read. Overview on the wildlife refuge.
And I just want to remind people of what is happening at Boca Chica beach and wildlife refuge, the site of SpaceX’s largest launch and test site. Here is a PBS shortfilm on it and what affects it has on the local community and local indigenous community. Here is an article on it more focused on the impacts on migratory birds.
If we do not put a stop to it, Johnston Atoll will face the same impacts, if not worse, as in Boca Chica and SpaceX’s numerous other launch sites.
Not even mentioning that Johnston Atoll was perviously a launch site used by the U.S. government in the 60’s and we know from the past what will happen to the ecosystem if it occurs again.
Because it is the anniversary of his death, I wanted to share a small story about my grandfather.
Before I knew that I was intersex, I identified as a trans man. And I went the way any trans man has to go if he wants to transition in my country. My parents thankfully were supportive but I was afraid to tell my grandparents. My grandparents were German and lived/were raised during the third reich. While both of them never said or acted in a way that suggested that they had fascist views (my grandfather was until he died part of a leftwing political party), but there still was this fear in me. “They are old, they grew up surrounded by abhorrent beliefs…”. And then there was my aunt. Who would constantly claim that my grandfather was homophobic.
The problem was, back then, there were no openly out gay people in our area, so I never got the chance to see my grandfather interact with someone who was queer. So I just believed her. Because she was so insistent on it. And because it confirmed my fears and my brain loves to be constantly afraid.
But I knew I wanted to come out. I had to, eventually, because I had stopped my estrogen treatment (back then, I did not know that I got that because I was intersex) and went on testosterone instead and first physical changes began to show. We all lived in one big house, so my grandparents would eventually notice.
I was so afraid that my father at some point offered to talk to his parents. I waited outside in the hallway that led to their kitchen and listened.
My father explained, easy to understand, that I was going to transition from female to male because I felt terrible in my body. My grandfather asked, “Is that why the child* is so depressed all this time?” I had been in and out of multiple clinics for manic depression at that point. My father gave a yes. And my grandmother made the incredibly selfish comment, “Can’t that wait until I am dead?”
Before I even got time to be upset, my grandfather slammed his fist down on the table. I had never seen or heard him do anything like that before. He was a very calm and collected man who preferred to leave the room before he got too angry. “No, it can’t wait. The child gets to get well now. And if that is what is going to help, then it needs to be done.”
From that day on, he never used my deadname again or used the wrong pronouns for me. Sometimes, he would stop in a sentence to think and remind himself, but he did always address me correctly.
He celebrated with me when my name was legally changed. He built the bed frame for me and my boyfriend’s bed when we moved in together, just like he had built the first adult sized bedframe for me when I outgrew my small bed. He drove my boyfriend to his chemo sessions because my grandfather also had cancer and knew how terrifying it was to go alone.
Did he fully understand what it means to be intersex? To transition? No. But he understood that one of his loved ones was suffering and that he could help to alleviate that pain. And so he did.
He taught me calligraphy. He taught me how to sew. He taught me bookbinding. He gave me many gifts.
But the biggest gift he gave me was, that when someone hated me for what I am, I could stomach it. Because this man was willing to unlearn the bigotry he had been taught for decades so he could love me for who I am.
*in my grandpa’s dialect it was normal to refer to children as just ‘the child’ (genderless)
EDIT
I was blown away by how many people have reblogged this post. I believe my grandfather would be very happy to see that he can give some hope and love to others even now.
I do not want him to stay faceless; so here is a piece of art I made for his obituary, with a slightly altered quote added now.
Dahlias were his favorite flowers. Orange ones especially. They reminded him of the home he had to flee from as a child.
You know how canaries were historically brought into coal mines, because if the mine was full of carbon monoxide the canary would die first and the miners would be able to escape before they died too?
I just found the greatest thing.
This is a canary resuscitator.
When the miners notice the canary getting sick with carbon monoxide poisoning, they can close that circular hatch so no more gas gets into the canary cage, and open the valve on that oxygen tank to keep the canary breathing. In other words, they made a spacesuit for birds.
By immediately giving the canary access to clean air, the miners can save it from the poison. The bird lives. To be clear, this is not for economic purposes, this was specifically created because the miners felt bad and wanted to save the bird.
Isn’t that just the perfect demonstration of what humans are like? We started sacrificing small creatures to save ourselves, and then felt bad and spent our valuable resources on saving the critters too. Because yeah the canary was the only way to test for CO, but it’s a living creature too, dammit!
I was born fucked in the head and forced to live out my life like some deranged castrated eunuch, prob so I’d be pushed to go live out my days as a monk or something, in order to achieve any sort of sense of fulfilment as fate prob intended for me. Why haven’t I managed to abandon all my desires and done that by now lmao
