Kakieoan

Cherry Harvest

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

my mom was murdered last week leaving me without permanent housing, work, and my personal items. please boost this fund to support me in completing her end of life services:

gofundme.com

In loving memory of Khalilah S. Elam, organized by Akeila Elam

Khalilah Elam was murdered in her home on September 2nd, 2022. She left behind a nex… Akeila Elam needs your support for In loving memory o

“I belong to Oceania - or, at least, I am rooted in a fertile portion of it - and it nourishes my spirit, helps to define me, and feeds my imagination.”

— Albert Wendt, Towards a New Oceania (via beautyofoceania)

“I whet my lips to speak your name. To kiss your hands, curling into the posture of prayer, they could almost have been carved from stone. I swear: If idolatry was my only sin, then it’s because god wasn’t watching.”

— Torrin A. Greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of San Sebastian,” Poetry (vol. 221, no. 2, November 2022)

just… learn to change the oil in your car, know how to darn a hole in your favorite sweater, take no for an answer sometimes, accept when you don’t know something, think critically, discern when to stand up for yourself and when to back down, possess integrity, hold yourself gracefully, be comfortable w eating alone and even more comfortable w being put in awkward positions, develop rituals and habits, observe as much as but hopefully more than you judge, talk freely but listen actively, if you offer unsolicited advice be willing to also receive it, apologize for interrupting I don’t care if you grew up culturally doing that it’s respectful to maintain awareness of the world you weren’t raised in, shop w a grocery list rather than by the seat of your pants, pick your friends up from and drop them off at the airport, have hobbies that hone your craft, speaking of honing your craft: take your creativity seriously by continuously challenging and sharpening it, this one can be endlessly trying but working to cultivate a healthy relationship w what troubles you rather than resorting to castigating yourself upon approaching that which is unfamiliar, never show up empty handed to someone’s home for the first time, and help them clean up at the end of the evening, but leave as soon as you start wanting to go home so you don’t tinge the otherwise enjoyable time you had w irritation, date yourself, do the dishes before bed, also make your bed every morning, and clean parts of your home everyday, always seek knowledge beyond traditional education, move your body as much as it allows so you may sustain some sort of secure relationship w it as you age, judge the capacity as much as you do the intent, have a curiosity-driven mindset, know that you and the world you live in are mutable, value different perspectives but remain steadfast in your principals and beliefs, write by hand as much as you type, take initiative without prompting, seek help when and where necessary, learn to be financially literate, have friends who are significantly older than you (some of my dearest friends are in their 50s and 70s), learn from failures and setbacks by acknowledging and growing beyond your limitations, be the friend you wish(ed) you had by building and maintaining meaningful connections, embrace opportunities for personal and professional growth, recognize both the importance of compromise and when to choose discord over maintaining the peace, express gratitude regularly

Hawaii became the first state legislature to call for permanent ceasefire in Gaza

Common Dreams

In 24-1 Vote, Hawaii State Senate Demands Permanent Cease-Fire in Gaza

"Hawaii can be proud of its leadership role in carrying the movement to force an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Gaza to the 'state' leve

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3QkOmsBpG1/?igshid=9q3ayy7jgtlq

georgia.jelly on insta

A “forest” is not “good” just because there are many trees: The destruction of Valdivian temperate rainforest landscapes, their replacement with industrial monoculture tree plantations, what “forests” mean in popular imaginary.

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Landscapes are shaped over time by the changing imaginaries that result from new representations of nature and the value associated with it. […] [E]volving discourses […] have shaped the perception of the landscape in two socially and ecologically significant contexts in Chile. The first is the central-southern region of the country, a large portion of which is now devoted to commercial forestry plantations. […] The representation that was made of central-southern Chile in the 50’ and 60’ as a deforested and degraded land was the justification for promoting a new form of land occupation: the monoculture forest, designed and executed by a specific law. Forty years on from the passing of this law, the plantations of central-southern Chile have undergone a process of naturalization. In this case, the exaltation of nature has been permanent (before and after the changes doing by this law). The only thing that changes is the definition of nature, which ended up including forest plantations. That is, discourses influence perceptions and these lead to new practices […]. These estates have been consolidated with the help of policies implemented primarily during the second half of the twentieth century, and today form vast extensions of commercial monoculture forestry plantations.

H. Lefebvre makes an interesting point on this subject by underlining the idea of representations. The author claims that the notion of nature is a nostalgia, and that it lends itself to manipulation […]. What is this nature that lies at the heart of this discussion? Swyngedouw (2015) and Castree (2005, 2008, 2014) claim that [contemporary categorization of] nature […] has contributed strongly to the consolidation of a neoliberal approach to our relationship with our surroundings, strongly supported by notions such as governance, management, value attribution and services. […] Toward the end of the 1930s, there emerged a generation of agronomists concerned with the conservation of natural resources […]. In 1951 they launched a channel for promoting their ideas and interests: the Revista Forestal Chilena (Chilean Forestry Review). The publication made the case for the country’s “forestry vocation”, and emphasized the need for the industry to be developed. One year on, the timber producers’ trade association Corporación de la Madera (CORMA) was formed. […]

Besides aligning itself with the developmentalist discourse that predominated in the country at the time, CORMA introduced the (eminently determinist) idea that Chile was “a forest country”: that this was its nature, and that it was this activity which would be the source of its wealth and prosperity. This definition of a natural vocation considered the exploitation not only of “jungles” (native forest), but also of “artificial forests.” […] The president of the trade association, Julián Echavarri, expressed himself in similar terms in 1956, adding a certain nationalist flare to the forestry discourse […].

Later, with the advent of the military dictatorship (1973–1989), a new economic development strategy was adopted based on expansion of the export sector […] by means of an aggressive development policy embodied by Decree Law N. 701 of 1974, which established a series of forestation initiatives. The most important of these was a 75% subsidy on the cost of forestation. At the same time, development loans were offered by the Central Bank to stimulate private forestry […]. Meanwhile, State-owned forested areas were passed into the hands of forestry companies. […] The area planted with exotic species went from 576 thousand hectares in 1975 to almost 3.7 million hectares in 2014 […].

Meanwhile, for the people who spent their childhood in areas dominated by forestry operations, the plantations were a place of recreation and fantasy. […] For these generations, the pines are part of their landscape. […]  Similarly, city dwellers, and those people who live in regions further to the north who have never had contact with other types of forest, also believe that these forests are natural. […] [T]hey place new value on these artificial forests. Many of the plantations were located on the western slopes of the Coastal Range, and with time they became forests with a sea view. […]

[T]he natural landscape that has been generated in this sector of Chile’s Coastal Mountain Range is the result of a mechanism of economic production that sought to recover the profitability and productivity of the land […]. In the context of extreme neoliberal economies like Chile, discourses which drive the need for or desirability of natural landscapes appear in fact to accentuate inequality and lead to a distancing from the very objectives of environmentally sustainable development.

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Enrique Aliste, Mauricio Folchi, and Andres Nunez. “Discourses of Nature in New Perceptions of the Natural Landscape in Southern Chile.” Frontiers in Psychology. 17 July 2018.