The garden lasted a few months. Then, an agent of the town’s housing authority found out about it and told my mother it was against the rules. “But no one’s using the land,” I remember her arguing. “The kids in the neighborhood play there.” The response was clear: Get rid of the garden or be evicted. Here was another one of those impossible choices of poverty. This was what my classmates would never understand, as they earnestly debated welfare fraud and the grasping desperation of the undeserving poor.
My mother stopped tending the garden and the next weekend a maintenance worker came and poured something onto the soil that made all the plants die and turned the grass brown.
This is what they did all over bushwick. The older black folks would start gardens ,especially on Broadwag,and the city would tear them up and pour bleech and rat poison and put up barbed wire and “no tresspassing” signs . Brutalized a beautiful sanctuary in the city.
Now white folks want them,NOW they’re “community gardens” allowed to flourish.
[ID 1: a tweet from Kaitlyn Greenidge @ SurleyBassey dated 8/6/20 reading, “when we lived in a public housing community my mom started a community garden to grow food to save money and occupy the kids that live there and the public housing authority came and pulled out all the plants and poured bleach into the ground to destroy it. because gardens weren’t allowed.” this was a response to a tweet by Armani @ HistoryOfArmani asking, “what radicalized you?”
ID 2: another tweet by @ SurleyBassey from the same date reading, “wrote about it here,” linking to the article ‘my mother’s garden.’ /end ID]
I would literally take the ghost of Ronald Regan with running mate Bill Clinton’s boner circa 1997 over Donald Drumpf do not test me
Yeah I’m a socialist and don’t like the current state of the democratic party either but if you don’t vote for Biden you’re literally taking a chance to drag the country a bit farther left and just ignoring it. I dunno what to tell you.
Biden would also be our oldest president. He probably won’t last more than one term. Do you want four more years of an actual wannabe dictator or four years of a 90s Democrat who can be pressured farther left if we try hard enough like seriously
Biden: thinks the post office should exist and global warming is real 2020
We need HOAs or some idiots will paint their house purple or put tractor tires in their front yard. If you want tractor tires, don’t move to a HOA neighborhood.
I couldn’t even fathom how horrifying it must be to live somewhere there are…purple houses and and yucky stuff in people’s yards. Thank God I don’t have any real problems like that.
listen my Nonna and Nonno live right by a purple house (it’s a nice lilac) and as a kid I was fucking obsessed with it because purple is my favorite color. I’d go nuts whenever we passed by it. Also it had a purple mailbox to match and it blew my mind.
No more HOAs. More purple houses.
imagine trying to control what someone else can do with or on their own property just because you don’t agree with their taste in decor
NO MORE HOAs MORE PURPLE HOUSES
Related, becuase I just had to move: “just don’t move into an HOA” Do you know what a PAIN IN THE ASS it is to find NON-HOA Housing? Very nearly everything in the CO front range that isn’t a rental has an HOA these days!
Short list of the Shit the HOA at my pervious house tried to pull:
Banning personal and community food gardens (The reason the tag for my garden is “The garden of earthly HOA violations”)
Banning people from using thier personal yards as Native Plant Restoration microzones, something that looks gorgeous and is extremely helpful to the local ecology
trying to get the city council to remove protections on adjacent city Open Space/Native Plant restoration zone so they could mow it.
mandating the use of ONE landscaping company in the neighborhood, coinicdentally owned by the HOA president’s son
Mandating the use of an unecessary water purification company on all properties.
suing city animal control for collecting lose dogs and cats and returning them to the addresses on thier collars. You know. that thing animal control does so the animals don’t get run over or disemboweled by the coyotes or catch and spread rabies. The thing that’s illegal to let your pet do out here for those reasons Karen.
Suing the city council to remove a city bus stop in the neighborhood that was heavily used by many residents. They damn near got away with it becuase the HOA meetings were always in the middle of the day on a weekday. You know, when the residents that use that stop are working.
Sending people letters threatening to fine them for having “Out Of Season” holiday decor. Specifically targeting my Indian neighbors who were celebrating Diwali, not Christmas and the Jews with visible Menorahs.
Fining people for doing thier own appliance and car repair on thier own personal property
Fining people for operating a business out of thier house, specifically targeting a disabled neighbor that does comission tailoring and garment repair out of her home. never bothered a soul except the one snoopy bitch who didn’t like that her clients were allowed to park in the tailor’s designated and otherwise unused parking space.
Trying to fine a neighbor for flying a Pride Flag
HOAs are invasive, bigoted, corrupt and cruel institutions that should never have been allowed to be created. If you live in and HOA area, showing up at the meetings to tell people what the fuck is wrong with them, Joining your HOA board to protect your neighbors and possibly organize the dissolution of the HOA is one of the best things you can do to protect the marginalized members of your community.
FUCK HOAs AND LONG LIVE THE PURPLE HOUSES AND TRACTOR-TIRE GARDENS OF THE WORLD.
I’m a busy man. Got two caution signs to remind me to slow down sometimes. Got a vibrating megaphone. Clocks. Radiation. Four goats. Got half a tank of simple columnar epithelial tissue. 60% through my day. Half a tank of gas. And it’s only 10:50.
I had a biology teacher that told us this story about an octopus at an aquarium in Australia. The staff were concerned because their population of crustaceans kept disappearing. No bodies or anything. So they checked the video feed to find out what’s up.
Across from the the crustacean tank was a small octopus tank. This little fucker squeezed out of a tiny hole at the top of his tank, walk across the hall, and get into the crustacean tank. He would then hunt and eat. After he was done, he crawled back out and get back in his tank
Here’s the kicker: security guards patrolled the area. The staff realized that the octopus had memorized the security’s routine. It would escape and be back between the guards’ round.
My friend who worked at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska had a similar story. Rare fish were disappearing, they suspected theft, and so set up a camera. An octopus was unlocking the top of its tank, walking across the suspended walkway, unlocking the other tank, eating his fill, re-locking the other tank, then re-locking its own tank.
I can’t remember what zoo this happened at, but there was another octopus somewhere who was unscrewing a water valve in the room where its tank was located and routinely flooding the place. The staffers had no idea what it was until they filmed the octopus caught in the act.
RELEASE THE KRAKEN!! But, sir, it has already released itself!
My dad worked in a lab and one of the rooms had a tank with an octopus in it. If they didn’t go play with the octopus he got bored and would climb out of his tank and steal the paperwork off the desks, and drag stuff into his tank to let the scientists know he was upset with them.
It has been bad this year. We’re on track to have the most injuries of any year in recent history.
So I’m of the belief that this comes down to a couple things, one of which is going to expose a major personal bias of mine (you’ll know it when you see it):
There aren’t enough Rangers this year to keep folks appraised of the rules: So this year we’re operating on a highly reduced staff. Most years Interpretive Rangers are out in force, and we’d be able to keep folks away from animals, respond to calls about wildlife jams (traffic jams caused by animals, either by their standing in the road, or by folks stopping to look). That gives us the ability to both educate the public about safe wildlife viewing rules, and prevent folks from getting into situations that might be dangerous.
People Don’t Read Signs: This is a maxim in the NPS, folks just… they don’t try to read the signs, or the park newspaper, or anything. They will make no effort to educate themselves for their own safety, and will deliberately misread signs they understand to try and get away with things they want to do, which brings me to…
People want a ‘unique’ experience: People right now, for better and worse, are inundated with social media. There’s an expectation that there are things you need to see, because that’s What You Do in the area. Add to that though that folks are always going to want something that other people don’t have. That means getting closer to the bear for that great picture. Getting closer to the bison because ‘he seems calm.’
The Government Encouraged Unprepared Folks to Come into Wilderness Spaces: When COVID was first getting serious, many state and local governments encouraged people to go outside, go camping and hiking. The CDC is still saying that camping is an extremely low risk activity. As a result a FLOOD of people with no outdoor experience rushed into outdoor places. Zero preparation, zero outdoor knowledge, all these people who would usually vacation in Hawaii are trying to visit the few National Parks that they know offhand. As a result they are used to a resort-type experience, and assume that the space they’re entering is as controlled of an experience as a big hotel complex in the Bahamas. They are, of course, wrong.
The Disney-fication of Wild Spaces
Movies: People get these images in their heads of movie characters, especially Disney movie characters, having these magical experiences with animals. They hold out their hands, and the animal comes to them. They think they have a special connection with wildlife, that they’re different than those fools who get hurt. They hold onto this mindset and do things that they really shouldn’t be doing because they want to think they’re special.
Theme Parks: So Disney has made a lot of money off making fake, sanitized versions of America’s outdoor spaces, packaging them and selling them to folks. People see the old 1903 Inn near where I worked last year, and their first response is always “Oh like the one in Disneyland!” This is the introduction a lot of first-time National Park travelers have to our park. Then they come out here, where there are no smoke machines on the hot springs, they are boiling; there are no safe animals; there are countless ways to die, even in the front country; and they have NO IDEA how to deal with that. Their image of a National Park is a sanitized theme park area, so they show up here asking “What are the Best Attractions to do here?” and assuming that they are as safe here as they would be in Disneyland. They assume we wouldn’t let them do anything dangerous, and wouldn’t allow dangerous things to come to them, because of course! There’s just this fundamental misunderstanding about what National Parks are for. Yeah, we want you to have a good time, but this isn’t a theme park and if someone can’t get their head around that they’re going to always be in a more dangerous spot that someone else.
This is America and I’ll Do What I Want: Self explanatory.
Anyway, here are the rules for seeing large wildlife:
Stay 25 yards (25m) away from all large animals, except…
When watching bear and wolves stay 100 yards (100m) away
If an animals moves toward you, it is on YOU to maintain that distance
In a car you are not obligated to maintain that distance
If you’re watching a bear from your car you probably want to keep your windows up
Do not feed animals, or by inaction cause an animal to eat human food
A fed animal is a dead animal
Wildlife management doesn’t want to remove animals, but by feeding the animal you killed it
Throwing a bite of food to a bear is as good for that bear as you getting out of your car with a shotgun and pumping a dozen rounds of buckshot into its face
A habituated bear is more likely to hurt humans in the future, so feeding that animal might also get a person hurt or killed
Even squirrels and birds (but we won’t have to remove them, they’ll just die by themselves)
If an animal changes its behavior because you’re around, you should move further away from it
Do not fly drones near animals (they are illegal in National Parks anyway, but it stresses them out A LOT)
Remember you are a house guest in this animal’s home, be a good guest by practicing leave no trace
If the next person to pass by where you were can tell you were there, you did not practice leave no trace
This means no making cairns, no painting rocks, no carving your name into a tree
Genuine question, How is feeding an animal automatically killing it? I understand habituated animals lose their urge to hunt and forage by instinct yes but you make it sound like one hand fed sunflower seed will make a blue jay explode
So, you’ve hit a big point for me, so I won’t focus too much on animals losing the desire to forage naturally.
Once you remove the fear of humans from an animal, that animal will come to people, and linger by people, and potentially get aggressive with people. Animals have strong survival instincts, and one of the most critical among them is ‘don’t mess with things that may be dangerous.’ Humans are a huge neon sign that says ‘What’s this? Bad i bet!’ to wild animals. If you remove that fear by rewarding and incentivizing dangerous behavior, you have an animal that’s going to hang out on roads, around cars, near heavy machinery, etc. Animals, once they begin to lose their fear, will often do most of the work of habituation themselves. It does not take dozens of people feeding an animal, it takes one person rewarding an animal for lingering in an unsafe space.
Additionally, for larger animals like bears, habituation often leads to aggression.
Let’s detour for a moment: Have you ever been to a petting zoo? One of the ones where you pay a few quarters and you get a cup of food to feed the goats? So, you have your food, you walk in, and the goats are all over you. They walk right to you to get their treats, they’ll jostle you, and push you. Once that food is gone, and even if you didn’t buy food to begin with, those goats continue to show interest, but the mood changes. The goats stand on your shoes, they nibble your clothes, and if they finally get fed up with you not feeding them, they may full on headbutt you.
Kind of funny when a goat does it. Less funny when a bear does it. Bears only need to be fed once to forever associate a place or an event with food. Then, when they don’t get it easily, they’ll be likely to tear up tents, try to break into cars, etc. to get it. A fed bear is an aggressive bear, and often even the most intense hazing will only put a temporary stop to that behavior. It’ll last maybe until the next hard spring, or dry summer. But at some point that bear will be back in heavily populated areas, harassing people. In the end, most National Parks will make the hard choice in that situation to destroy the bear. Or the wolf.
Habituation is a process, but it can start very quickly.
Governments after giving out One (1) stimulus check that isn’t enough to cover most families’ basic needs, at a time when joblessness and financial strain are at an all time high, and then deciding they don’t want to do anymore:
