#druid

"It is not paranoia when they have told you in advance what they intend to forget."

The dates of the surgeries, the names of the doctors, the letters, the receipts in a fireproof box on the floor of a closet in a house on red Georgia clay.

Cumaidh sinn cunntas — we will keep count.

https://thistleandmoss.com/p/count-the-motherfuckers-back-a-stolen-election-1-6-million-photographs-and-124-graves#heroes-bright-signals-the-ones-who-?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Quotes #Trans #TransRights #Queer #LGBTQ #Resist #Solidarity #Gaelic #Druid #Surveillance #Privacy #Photography #Georgia #Memory #Journalism

"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."

— Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (1988)

She wrote that while she was dying, which is the detail people leave out when they put it on a candle. Not a bath. The decision to keep a body alive that a system had already written off, and to understand that decision as strategy.

What have you stopped protecting?

https://thistleandmoss.com/p/count-the-motherfuckers-back-a-stolen-election-1-6-million-photographs-and-124-graves#the-practice-armor-you-can-wear-tom?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#AudreLorde #Quotes #SelfPreservation #BlackFeminism #QueerHistory #LGBTQ #Resist #Solidarity #Poetry #Literature #MentalHealth #Photography #Trans #Queer #Druid

When a dread shows up, write one line: the single piece of evidence you actually have for it. Not the fear. The evidence. Then put the pen down.

Most dread cannot produce a receipt. It arrives dressed as a conclusion and hopes you won't ask for the paperwork, and when you ask, it thins out into what it always was. The ones that can produce a receipt have earned your attention — and now you know which ones those are.

Tha do chorp a' cuimhneachadh — your body remembers.

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#Mindfulness #Grounding #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Druid #EarthBased #Paganism #Gaelic #SelfCare #Journaling #Photography #Nature #Queer #Trans #SlowLiving

Half a head of green cabbage, shredded as fine as you have patience for. One cup flour, two eggs, three-quarters of a cup of water, whisked loose. Fold the cabbage in with a handful of sliced scallion until every shred is coated.

Widest skillet you own, oil until it shimmers. Press the whole thing in as one thick coin. Four or five minutes a side, until the underside is lacquer-brown and it slides when you shake the pan. Cut in wedges. Splash of soy.

Two dollars. Three people. Hot food with a crisp edge and a soft middle. Nobody in this house goes to bed hungry because the week was hard — that's a rule I made a long time ago and I have never once regretted the cabbage.

What's your two-dollar meal?

https://thistleandmoss.com/p/count-the-motherfuckers-back-a-stolen-election-1-6-million-photographs-and-124-graves#the-nurturing-food-as-medicine?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Cooking #FoodAsMedicine #CabbagePancake #BudgetCooking #HomeCooking #CastIron #Food #FoodPhotography #Photography #MutualAid #Kitchen #Vegetarian #SlowFood #Queer #Druid

Skullcap, lemon balm, chamomile, rose. Dried, packed loose in a clean pint jar.

Three parts vegetable glycerin to one part distilled water, poured while you stir so the glycerin actually moves into the plant instead of sitting on top of it. Cap it, date it, dark cupboard. Four to six weeks, shake it whenever you remember. Strain through cloth, squeeze hard, bottle. Half a teaspoon under the tongue at the hour your brain decides to relitigate 2019.

Two honest cautions. Buy skullcap from a source you trust — the market has a long history of adulteration with germander, which is hard on the liver. And chamomile sits in the ragweed family, so if that family has ever closed your throat, leave it out and let the other three carry it.

What do you reach for at three in the morning?

https://thistleandmoss.com/p/count-the-motherfuckers-back-a-stolen-election-1-6-million-photographs-and-124-graves#the-nurturing-food-as-medicine?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Herbalism #FolkMedicine #Apothecary #Skullcap #LemonBalm #Chamomile #Rose #Glycerite #HerbalMedicine #Plants #Nature #Photography #Druid #SlowLiving #Queer

Face down. Forehead on your stacked hands or a folded towel. Belly on the ground, no pillow under you.

This is not a stretch. Six slow breaths, letting the belly press into the floor on the inhale instead of lifting the chest.

You can't fake a diaphragmatic breath against a hard surface. The position removes the option — the floor gives you resistance you cannot argue with, and after four or five breaths something in the low back lets go that you didn't know was clamped.

What changes first is the jaw. That's strange, and you'll notice it around breath four.

Tha do chorp eòlach air an rathad — your body knows the road.

This isn't relaxation. It's returning your weight to something built to hold it.

Where does the day land in you first — jaw, shoulders, or gut?

Today's issue: https://thistleandmoss.com/p/rot-at-the-top-ice-at-the-bottom-and-kids-left-holding-the-fucking-bag?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#SelfCare #Somatics #Breathwork #NervousSystem #Rest #Grounding #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Druid #EarthBased #Folklore #Gàidhlig #Photography

The tulip poplars on my street started dropping their tired yellow leaves weeks early this year, out of pure August exhaustion, and the clay under them has gone the color of dried brick.

Before you argue with one single soul today, go put your bare palm flat on something the empire didn't build. A porch rail. A tree. The hood of your own beat-to-hell car. Hold it there until your shoulders drop. You cannot out-think a nervous system that believes it's being hunted, and that's the one fight all week you're guaranteed to win.

The earth has never once needed a federal form to know how many of us there are.

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#Grounding #Nature #Druid #Folklore #Seasonal #Georgia #Photography #Herbalism #MentalHealth #Solidarity #Gàidhlig #Community #Autumn

The dog days are breaking here in Georgia. Goldenrod up in the ditches along the county roads, ironweed with it — that purple so saturated it looks like a mistake somebody made.

The cicadas have changed shift. Long afternoon drone thinning out, the evening insects coming up underneath it. Muscadines going from green to bruise-colored on the fence line.

Tha an talamh a' cuimhneachadh — the earth remembers.

None of it asked permission from anybody in Washington. The season does not give a damn who won the primary, and that is the closest thing to good news the calendar hands out.

What's turning where you are?

Today's issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/new-letterhead-same-fuckin-leash-a-rebranded-cure-an-all-caps-siege-with-a-limp-dick-and-water-gives?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

#Gàidhlig #Gaelic #Nature #Goldenrod #Wildflowers #BloomScrolling #GardensOfMastodon #Photography #Georgia #Phenology #Druid #Folklore #Autumn #Plants

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Three weeks past Lughnasadh and the light has already changed its angle. Gold coming an hour earlier. Shadows longer across the red clay by four. Ironweed violent purple in every Georgia ditch and the goldenrod just breaking.

The black gums always turn first. They're turning now, one branch at a time, weeks ahead of the rest of the field — the way some bodies always know before anybody asks them.

And they aren't letting go because they made peace with anything. They're letting go because holding on through the cold would kill them. Release isn't serenity. It's the oldest survival technology on this continent.

Tha an talamh a' cuimhneachadh — the earth remembers.

What's turning early where you are?

Full issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/there-is-a-blue-wave-coming-our-salvation-fuck-trump?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

#Phenology #Nature #Autumn #Gàidhlig #Gaelic #Druid #Folklore #Georgia #Trees #BloomScrolling #GardensOfMastodon #Photography #Herbalism

Don't bin the heels. Four or five hard slices, torn by hand — never a knife, the ragged edges are the whole point — crushed coarse, then dry-toasted in a wide skillet over medium with a spoon of oil.

Keep them moving. Seven or eight minutes, until they go the color of a paper bag. Salt them hot. Two weeks in a jar.

A dollar of bread that was headed for the trash is now the thing that makes four dinners taste like somebody cared.

What's the cheapest thing in your kitchen that does the most work?

Full issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/there-is-a-blue-wave-coming-our-salvation-fuck-trump?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

#Cooking #Food #FoodAsMedicine #NoFoodWaste #Frugal #Kitchen #Herbalism #Druid #Folklore #Photography #Nature #QueerNews #LGBTQ

The goldenrod is up yellow along every ditch line in the county now, and the pokeweed has gone magenta at the stem.

The cicadas have dropped out of that high electric saw into something slower and more tired. Late in the dog days. The light is already leaving three minutes a day and nothing consulted you about it.

The goldenrod does not know what a studio decided about who gets seen. It comes up the same as the year you were born and the same as it will the year after the last executive in this argument has become a name on a stone nobody in the family bothers to visit.

An talamh fo do chasan — the earth beneath your feet. It has not moved.

What's turning where you are? I answer every one of these in the comments under the piece.

Full issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/todd-blanche-is-still-trump-s-ass-monkey-trans-erasure-continues?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

credit: picture I took a few months back on the west side of atlanta.

#Phenology #Nature #Goldenrod #Wildflowers #LateSummer #Gaelic #ScottishGaelic #Druid #Folklore #Herbalism #Photography #Gardening #Solarpunk #QueerNews

Chickweed. Fliodh. Germinating right now in the cool of the nights — a low mat under the shrubs, tiny white star flowers, and one line of fine hair running down the stem. That hair is how you know it's the real thing and not a look-alike. Learn it once and you'll never mistake it.

Eat it raw. It tastes like sweet corn silk and cold water.

Cooling and mucilaginous, which is old plain language for it coats an irritated gut — and after a summer of heat and stress-eating, most Southern guts qualify.

What are you finding coming up in your yard this week?

Today's issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/zero-percent-asked-for-this-fuckery-now-name-the-lake-and-come-sit-down#the-nurturing-food-as-medicine?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Chickweed #Foraging #Herbalism #WildFood #Herbs #Plants #Botany #FoodAsMedicine #Gaelic #Druid #Garden #Photography #NaturePhotography

The heat has not broken. Ninety-four in Atlanta today, ninety-five tomorrow, the air outside my door still standing up like a wall.

But the light has changed. It comes in lower after three and goes gold across the clay in a way it did not do in July, and if you've lived here long enough your body reads that slant before your calendar does.

The hummingbirds are staging right now, fattening at the feeders before the crossing. Not one of them is waiting for the weather to feel like autumn. They read the light. They go.

A' chiad ghaoth fhuar — the first cold wind — hasn't come. The light knows anyway.

What has your body noticed this week that your calendar hasn't?

Today's issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/zero-percent-asked-for-this-fuckery-now-name-the-lake-and-come-sit-down?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Phenology #Nature #Autumn #LateSummer #Goldenrod #Hummingbirds #Georgia #Atlanta #Druid #EarthBased #Seasonal #Photography #NaturePhotography

The goldenrod along every ditch is standing up green and shut, holding its yellow, waiting for the nights to drop before it spends anything.

This is the deep hinge of the year — after the fireflies thin, before the first cool morning. Ninety-seven million people under heat advisories from the Plains through the Southeast.

An talamh fodhad — the earth beneath you. Holding the heat. Patient. Keeping its own record of what this summer was.

What's still shut where you are?

Today's Gathering → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/what-survives-the-morning-trump-is-dying-and-we-all-get-to-watch#the-nurturing-food-as-medicine?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

#Nature #NaturePhotography #Goldenrod #Phenology #Wildflowers #Summer #Druid #Pagan #Herbalism #Plants #Gaelic #ScottishGaelic #Photography #Earth #Seasons

The black gum turns first. The rest of the woods won't admit to it yet.

Goldenrod budding. Pawpaws dropping in the dark, not one person having approved it. And one tree flagging a season nobody else is calling.

When I stop being furious long enough to look, I understand that being early to the truth is not the same as being wrong.

This publication runs the way that tree does — no advertiser, no billionaire, no venture ghoul waiting to strip it for parts and sell your reading habits to a broker. Nine outside sources went into today's issue. Readers cover it, weekly, in small amounts, on a rail that isn't owned by anybody:

https://liberapay.com/wendythedruid/?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Wendy-New-RSS

What have you been early about that people are only now catching up to?

#Nature #Phenology #Autumn #BlackGum #Trees #Georgia #Photography #Solarpunk #Druid #Folklore #MutualAid #Gardening #NatureScrolling

Tomorrow's the show (3pm EST), and the argument I want to say out loud at length is the one this issue only had room to state: that a country can find a trillion dollars for bondholders in a weekend and cannot find a wage for the people keeping each other alive.

#Owncast, self-hosted, nobody can turn it off → https://live.thistleandmoss.org?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Peertube → https://spectra.video/a/wendythedruid/video-channels?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#BlueSky Live → stream.place/thistleandmoss.com?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

What do you actually want me to chew on for an hour? Come in and talk to us. We talk we engage

#Journalism #IndependentMedia #Owncast #SelfHosting #Fediverse #TransRights #QueerNews #Politics #Photography #Solidarity #Druid #NoAI

Seven items, feeds three, under ten minutes if the rice is already cooked.

Sweat a diced onion in butter. Crushed tomatoes in, let them go jammy about four minutes. Fold the leftover rice through until every grain is coated red. Fry the eggs hard-edged and lay them on top.

That's dinner for three people out of a pot of rice you were going to feel guilty about. Nobody in this house goes hungry because the week was cruel.

What's the thing you make when the money's thin and the day already took everything?

Full issue → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/pay-the-fucking-rent-gratitude-doesn-t-cash-bessent-bails-out-the-bond-market-spain-guards-its-own-a#the-nurturing-food-as-medicine?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Cooking #Food #Recipes #CheapEats #FoodAsMedicine #SkilletCooking #Eggs #Rice #Photography #FoodPhotography #Solidarity #MutualAid #Druid

Two tennis balls in a knotted sock. Ninety seconds. That's the whole protocol.

Lie on your back and set them under the ridge at the base of your skull, one either side of the spine, on the soft shelf above the neck bone — never on the bone. Let your head's full weight go down into them.

First thirty seconds feel like nothing. Second thirty feel like an ache with an opinion. Somewhere in the last thirty the shelf gives and your eyes water for no reason you can name.

Tha do chorp a' cuimhneachadh — your body remembers. Those are among the smallest and most overworked muscles you own, and they've been braced since Monday.

Where does the news land in your body first?

#Somatics #Selfcare #ChronicPain #BodyWork #Gaelic #Gàidhlig #Herbalism #Druid #MentalHealth #Photography #Wellness #Solarpunk

Last week of August and the goldenrod is throwing its yellow along every ditch and fence line in Georgia.

The cicadas have gone from a wall to a scatter. And somewhere down in the dark under all of it the mycelium is doing the year's actual work, and not one person is watching it or thanking it for anything.

The land does not require an audience to keep its promises. Suidh sìos. Tha ùine gu leòr agad — sit down, you have time enough.

What's turning where you are this week?

Today's issue, free every morning → https://thistleandmoss.com/p/pay-the-fucking-rent-gratitude-doesn-t-cash-bessent-bails-out-the-bond-market-spain-guards-its-own-a?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#BloomScrolling #Goldenrod #Wildflowers #GardensOfMastodon #Nature #Photography #Georgia #Phenology #Mycology #Druid #Folklore #Gàidhlig #Alba #MastoDaoine

We are extraordinarily good, in this community, at eulogy. We had to be. We got very good very young at saying the beautiful thing after the person could no longer hear it, and that skill has calcified into a habit of waiting.

So: pick one living person. Today. Tell them out loud, in words, what they have been to you. Not a text with a heart on it. Words. Out loud. Today.

Is fheàrr caraid sa chùirt na crùn san sporan — a friend in the court is better than a crown in the purse. Say it while there's somebody in the room to catch it.

This publication runs on readers. No advertisers, no sponsor read, nobody holding the leash. If it's been the thing that gets your jaw to unclench → https://liberapay.com/wendythedruid/?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Grief #Community #MutualAid #QueerCommunity #LGBTQ #Gàidhlig #MastoDaoine #Druid #Folklore #Solidarity #Photography #Care