A Dusty Paradox

apihtawikosisan:

Aaron Paquette is an incredible First Nations artist whose gorgeous work you really should see if you haven’t already.  Unfortunately, I am not writing this merely to praise his work.  Last week his wife was hit by a car while she was out jogging, and the short piece he wrote about this is something I think people need to read.

In his own words

On Wednesday May 30, 9:10pm a body was shattered.

The body was that of my dear wife. She was just finishing up an evening jog with a friend when she was struck by a vehicle. It hit her and then ran over her, pinning her body beneath one of the tires.

Her friend was screaming at the driver but he was unaware there was anybody beneath the car.

Police and Emergency Medical personnel lifted the car from off her.

I was not yet aware of any of this as I was at home. Our 1 year old baby asleep in his crib.

Backtracking events leads us to the road snaking through our neighbourhood (she was only a few blocks from home), and a yield sign that was mostly ignored.

A car and an SUV had a contest of who could be more impatient, or who could text best while driving. Exactly what was going on in the two drivers’ minds I doubt we’ll ever know. But lack of concern, lack of precaution led to the accident. That we do know.

When I arrived on the scene there were dozens of people who had poured from their houses to see what was the matter. Emergency vehicles were on scene and my wife was in an ambulance.

She was alive. I asked her if she knew me and where she was. She looked into my eyes and blinked twice. Her whole body was shaking from the shock.

That’s when I noticed her wrist was snapped in half.

Her face was bloody and beginning to swell.

A couple of hours ago, after a long night of tears and waiting, we found out the rest. And there will be more to come.

Deep cuts, contusions and road rash all over her body and across her stomach.

All her ribs are broken.

There are tubes draining the blood that is gathering between her ribcage and her lungs.

Her liver and pancreas are lacerated.

Along with her wrist are broken fingers. This is her left arm. She is left handed.

She has fractured vertebrae. The worst is the T11. It’s obliterated. They will fuse the vertebrae around it with metal plates. There will metal plates holding her wrist together.

She will live.

She has many surgeries ahead and a long road to recovery. It’s uncertain yet if there will be any loss of limb function or if there will be any long term effects from concussion.

She will not be snuggling with our baby for a very long time. She won’t be doing any of the things she loves.

She loves to teach. She has a grade 3/4 split class. She was so excited to get back to them after her maternity leave and now she won’t be back for a very long time.

She loves to run. She was going to run a half marathon in two weeks.

She loves yoga.

She loves dancing.

She loves playing with the baby.

Right now she has tubes all over her, keeping her still, sedated, and alive.

Because someone couldn’t wait three seconds at a yield sign.

Because someone wasn’t paying attention as they drove a 1500 pound weapon.

I’m writing this to let everyone who is going to ask know what happened.

But I am also writing it to ask everyone who reads this to realize that as you scan these words someone is performing surgery on my beautiful darling.

Please slow down.

Please don’t text.

Please be patient.

And please remember that every time you sit in that car you take responsibility for lives you will never know except in passing. Literally.

Pass by. Pass by. Be aware and pass by.

And please, pray for my wife and especially for our little one who already misses his mommy.

We are blessed.

She is alive.

Her name is Clarice Cardinal-Anderson

Clarice has a long, hard road ahead of her, and she and her family will face some serious expenses even in a country that has publicly-funded healthcare.  Aaron was unwilling to accept donations at first, but says that he’s had to swallow his pride for the sake of his young son and his wife.

A site has been set up to accept donations of any amount, in return for which, Aaron is providing a high-resolution reproduction of one of his paintings, “Returning Home”.  It can printed for framing, for use as a poster or what have you.  This is a very, very beautiful work.

If you wish to help Aaron and Clarice, please feel free to do so.  If you are unable to, that is fine as well.  I think more than anything, Aaron is hoping that no one else will have to look on the shattered body of their beloved and know that there was no reason for this to have happened.  Please, drive safely.

tvintheradio:

Please Reblog And Help Find Her!

(via lovexrevolutions)

gondoleia:

dustyparadox:

我承认我欺骗了你
我利用克威的谎言来接近你
在你最脆弱 最需要帮助的时候 我趁虚而入
我讨厌我自己
你可以骂我 打我
你用力打我 把我打倒在地 打我头破血流都无所谓 我承认 我认了
但你不要不理我 不要把我当成空气 不要把我从你身命中抹去 

Err. I guess I’ll be the first to admit my mandarin is shit, but aren’t these lyrics just the teensiest bit disturbing? Or is that just me?

those aren’t lyrics lol

he’s apologising for lying to her about who he is

it’s a tad strong but it’s still better than how jerry yan’s character is behaving rn

Went to see a musical yesterday, guess my brain is still operating as if everything is a song and dance number. OTL

我承认我欺骗了你
我利用克威的谎言来接近你
在你最脆弱 最需要帮助的时候 我趁虚而入
我讨厌我自己
你可以骂我 打我
你用力打我 把我打倒在地 打我头破血流都无所谓 我承认 我认了
但你不要不理我 不要把我当成空气 不要把我从你身命中抹去 

Err. I guess I’ll be the first to admit my mandarin is shit, but aren’t these lyrics just the teensiest bit disturbing? Or is that just me?

(Source: gondoleia)

silver-shade:

[Image text]

MISSING

Oscar “Trai” James

Missing from: Sunday, May 27th 2012
Age: 14 years old
Sex: Male
Height: 5’ 6”
Weight: 120 lbs
Build: Thin
Eyes: Brown
Race: Black/African American
School: Rock Quarry Middle School (Tuscaloosa, AL)

Clothing: Trai was wearing a red/yellow shirt with blue Aeropostle shorts, and Navy/white Aeropostle flip flops when he was last seen by his mother. It was reported that he was later seen at Super Skate (HWY 82) wearing a blue striped, button down shirt.

If you have any information about his whereabouts, please contact our local police department, his family, or any member of Community Unity as soon as possible!

Cassius Lanier - 205.239.0820

FOR CURRENT INFORMATION & HOW TO HELP, Visit the Community Unity Facebook page at this link.

IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT Oscar James CALL Tuscaloosa Police Department (205) 391.2121

[End Image Text]

thisdayandaige:

Reblog!!!

(via ladyatheist)

trolleyology:

From The Atlantic:

Stephen Fincher, Congressional representative of the 8th district of Tennessee, once posted the following observation to his Twitter feed:

Half an hour after posting his message, however, Fincher deleted it — thus depriving the world not only of an opportunity for comparative textual analysis, but also for conversational interaction with a politician.Post, think better of it, delete. That might have been the end of things. A small insight into a politician (or, at least, into the staffer of a politician) lost to history.

Until now, that is. Today, the transparency-minded folks over at the Sunlight Foundation are releasing a new service: Politwoops, which exists solely to resurface deleted tweets from politicians’ accounts. The project follows the official Twitter feeds of, among others, President Obama, members of Congress, and presidential candidates; when a pol has a deleted a tweet, Politwoops records the deletion and archives the message. It also records, helpfully, the time of deletion and the amount of time elapsed between posting and deletion. Think Tweleted, only politics-focused and operational.

The Politwoops team has been compiling a database of deleted tweets for six months now — so, though today marks the service’s official launch, Politwoops has already recorded over 3,000 deleted tweets for your schadenfreudistic enjoyment. These include: Senator John McCain mocking the tears of Vladimir Putin after the latter’s re-election; Newt Gingrich’s campaign account tweeting, Dole-like, in the third person; and Representative Jeff Miller tweeting a link to a Facebook poll asking, “Was Obama born in the United States?”

This is fantastic.

(via theatlantic)

venceremos:

Mother Jones’investigation into the FBI’s post-9/11 practice of creating the terrorists it is prosecuting. They have an amazing series of stories and infographics as part of the full series. Amazing work.

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)

cindytheblasian:

Please help my friend </3  I miss her ! please REBLOOG ! :(((

Missing since early Tuesday 05.29.12 morning. Marisa is a 15 year old biracial young woman. She is 5-5 to 5-7 and about 135lbs. Marisa ran away from home in the early hours of the morning mentioning in her letter that she was going to Cali. She currently attends Atlantic Coast High School and takes all honors and AP classes. Marisa is in a very depressed state of mind and we are all worried. If you see her or hear from her please let us know.  I just want to know she is safe and I want her home

the letter just said Cali, thinking L.A. but dont know, she took all her clothes except her softball uniforms and practice gear, she also took her school books with her at least the ones she had at the house.. as far as we know she had $10 and what ever change she had in her 5 gallon piggy bank she also took her Gravity Long Board (a stretched skateboard) last thing I saw her wearing was dark blue shorts and one of her softball tournament shirts but she probably changed before leaving she also has her tan colored pillow pet… Thanks for any help

(via angrybrownbaby)

stfuconservatives:

Where Your 2011 Tax Dollars Went

(via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)

freedominwickedness:

Since various and sundry defenders of radical feminism have taken it upon themselves to claim that trans* people are being “hysterical” and “delusional” when we say that radical feminists call for the outright eradication of trans women, let us examine actual firsthand quotations from prominent radical feminist leaders:

The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul⁄spirit⁄life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion ⁄ elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.

Mary Daly, “Gyn⁄Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism” (1978)

All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, and appropriating this body for themselves. […] As the male-to-constructed-female transsexual exhibits the attempt to possess women in a bodily sense while acting out the images into which men have molded women, the male-to-constructed-female who claims to be a lesbian-feminist attempts to possess women at a deeper level, this time under the guise of challenging rather than conforming to the role and behavior of stereotyped femininity.

I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.

Janice Raymond, “The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male” (1979)

When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her. His intentions are no more honourable than any female impersonator’s; his achievement is to gag all those who would call his bluff. When he forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done.

Germaine Greer, “The Whole Woman” (1999)

I have argued elsewhere that this surgery [GRS] needs to be understood as a violation of human rights for this reason. It is political surgery in the same way that lobotomies carried out on homosexuals in the gay-hating 1950s in the west have been identifiable as surgery for a politically oppressive purpose. […] When the degree of damage that the surgeons are prepared to inflict reaches the stage of breast implants, labiaplasty, limb amputation, or sex reassignment surgery, there is good reason to introduce legislation to stay the surgeon’s hand.

Sheila Jeffreys, “Beauty And Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West” (2005)

These are all direct, firsthand quotes from professionally published material not even offhanded remarks made in a moment of anger and/or taken out of context. Furthermore, they are quotes from prominent and widely respected radical feminist academics, not from random angry online feminists with no actual power or influence.

So there we have it. Radical feminists really do declare that the existence of trans women is an act of rape, murder, and necrophilia. Radical feminists really do demand that trans people be “morally mandated out of existence”. Radical feminists really do claim that medical treatment for trans people is a human rights violation which should be legally prohibited.

And those who claim they do not say these things are liars.