And Now For Something Completely Different (or, I put my positivity on hold)

I really haven't been in any kind of mood to write what I usually write here on my blog. The massacre in Parkland, FL, has taken up so much of my time and my mind. Here's what I wrote about it on Facebook, which is what I keep going back to:

I’ve been thinking a lot about kids in school these days. Everyone has, but here’s something I haven’t seen put together a lot. The pieces are all there, people have obsessed over it and written articles and books that range from the insightful to the insulting, but so far in the wake of this tragedy I haven’t seen this said in so many words: 
The suicide epidemic among teenagers? Yeah, that could have something to do with the constant pressure of knowing your school could be next, your friends could be next, you could be next. The reason kids these days are more likely to commit suicide might have something to do with the way our society has invited the spectre of violent death into school at every level. 
A disclaimer: I have not done any studies. I don’t analyze gun violence, partly because it is not my field and partly because the U.S. government has made it very difficult for scientists to do so. What I have done is lived as someone who was a toddler when Columbine happened, was 15 when Sandy Hook and Aurora happened, was nineteen when Orlando happened. What I have done is live in a world where terrible things happened in places just like the one I went to five days a week almost every week for what remains the bulk of my lifetime and will always be my formative years. 
I watched as the prospect of massacre by gun grew up with me. I watched as it went from being the kind of tragedy that would rock the world to being a political crisis to being another part of the news, with stock phrases and inertia built right in as if this was a natural disaster. As if we were supposed to be sad but accepting, as if school shootings were like hurricanes or earthquakes, as if all we could do was practice drills and say something if we thought one of our classmates might be the next person to get a gun and kill us all. 
It’s hard to separate my memories of school from my memories of violence. When I think about history and government, I remember debating the second amendment and wondering what the hell any of my pro-gun classmates had in common with a well regulated militia. When I remember going to the movies with my friends, I remember not doing that for a while and buying TDKR on DVD when it came out. When I remember the jokes we told I cringe but I understand because the nasty gallows humor was a coping mechanism, one I would never recommend but can’t condemn because sometimes there is just no way to have good taste. 
When I remember my own depression, when I remember hearing about people my age or not much older killing themselves, I remember never being as shocked as the adults around me. 
Prison guards and veterans have higher rates of suicide than the general population, they say, because of their years in places where there is always the potential for violence. 
Is it really that hard to understand that when school shootings are regular enough that we can all plot the trajectory of the news cycle in response to them, when active shooter drills are undertaken in schools across the country, when teachers have to tell their students that they will give their lives up for them if necessary and other students volunteer because in the words of ten-year-old Dez Benard he “would rather be the one that died protecting my friends then have an entire class die and I be the only one that lived”— when all of these things are part of the background radiation of children’s lives they might carry the same burden and trauma? 
So the next time you hear someone talk about how cell phones or video games or this or that thing is the reason kids kill themselves, treat it like the victim-blaming garbage it is and move on. Kids aren’t dying because they lack the self-control to use technology appropriately. They’re killing themselves because we have made the environment in which they spend their lives into a warzone. They deserve better than that. We deserved better than that.

Archaeology Fun Day (and other fun days)!

I can't believe it happened! The event we've been planning since I joined EAOP happened last Saturday and it. Was. Fantastic.

I'll try and write more about it in my next post but suffice to say, fun was had by a large amount of people and at least two dogs! Above is the illustrious Koda, support animal to another member of our committee and friend to all. I didn't ask for permission to post pictures of the other little guy, but he was a 14-week-old puppy in training to be a guide dog and he was the cutest thing. 

Things To Do When You Have Too Many Things To Do

Yesterday, I trimmed and cleaned the cacti in my building's common area. That doesn't seem like the most efficient use of time for someone with as much going on as I have, so let me explain.

 I love plants of all kinds, but cacti and succulents have a special place in my heart. They come in so many interesting sizes and shapes, for one, and they fit into my life-- my tiny-apartment, travel-heavy life-- so well. 

Learning how to take care of them is a rare thing for me-- a hobby that doesn't tie in to my more, ahem, marketable interests (looking at you, Art and Design!) but is simply because I enjoy doing it. I love these little guys. So, even though I have a million things to do and about negative seven time to do them in, I took an hour out to repot some cacti, trim the over-crowded Cereus Tetragonus, and clean a few suspicious-looking spots off of a succulent. 

Some cuttings I'm propagating under my sunlamp. 

No regrets; now time to write a chapter.