Here's a good, thorough article on the painstaking fight to win back natural citizenship after a 1906 proposal got rolling. #History #US #Feminism #HumanRights #Women #Politics

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2014/spring/women-citizenship-repatration

It's just racism, xenophobia, and related ethnoreligious tension all the way down.

I preferred when it was turtles. 😡

(Please no one tell me the turtles were racist, too.)

#Crankypants

US friends, did you know about the 1907 Expatriation Act?

TIL that, in 1907, Congress enacted a statute that stripped women of citizenship if they married a non-citizen. SCOTUS upheld this law in 1915. It was fully reversed in 1940, but women who'd lost citizenship weren't eligible for redress if they'd ever resided abroad while married.

I know I have to stop reading things about our shaving cream sandwich of a world for a while, but for fudge's sake.

The cruelty we've *always* been fighting.

Just popping in because I was reminded that today is el Día de Amor y Amistad here.

To quote the great Bilbo,

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

(Nah, I kid. I know we're all on different journeys through the cosmos, and come to our views and values from different experience sets that sometimes/often clash, but I'm thankful to share a planet with you all. Be good to yourselves today.)

Back to work with me~!

Two quotes, and then I'm off for the day:

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X.

+

"If you don't heal what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you." - Anonymous.

Anger at the world and our folly as a species, which gets hoodwinked time and again by tribalist nonsense, isn't going to fix a thing.

Gotta be present in it.

Gotta keep trying to do what we can. 🕊️

When did @cjshaneartbooks disappear?

I hope she's okay. I know she was having a rough one, and that certain topics on this site make it very difficult to build community across some pretty big ethical divides, much as we're still trying.

If anyone knows her elsewhere, please pass on my best wishes.

And if anyone would like to submit a photo of theirs for consideration for a CoSo-wide prompt for the #Zine, please do!

Because abZurd is focused on community-building and more hopeful and environmental living, there will be a strong preference given to simple, evocative photos on related themes.

Also, keep in mind that we might need to reproduce your photo in black-and-white, or at best black and one colour (for print), or black and two (for the digital version).

[email protected]

For our next #Zine issue, I'm proposing a section dedicated to #Ekphrasis.

Ideally, we'll get a #CoSonaut to submit a photo we can use to inspire CoSonaut writing, but for now, here's a weekend prompt to practise:

This is a public domain piece called "The Farm", by Joan Miró. It was made a little over a century ago, 1921-22, to depict homegrown water collection systems for a farm running dry.

#CoSoArt, #WritersOfCoso: If you need a creative prompt this weekend, why not a give this one a spin?

Definitely going to write about a Mesopotamian god for my next Rewind Wednesday. (You'll love this dude--very down to earth.)

Just imagining the social media venting I'd be doing in that era, with *that* era's geopolitics shaped by equally fervent religious conviction, makes me chuckle. Ruefully, perhaps, but a laugh's a laugh.

Oh, each track is so good.

"I've seen you change the water into wine
I've seen you change it back to water, too
I sit at your table every night
I try but I just don't get by with you
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
I do not care who takes this bloody hill
I'm angry and I'm tired all the time
I wish there was a treaty,
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine"

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/yvRZslZ75b4

Oh! And it's Leonard Cohen's birthday, so I think we all know what album to put on today.

"If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame."

#CoSoMusic
https://youtu.be/v0nmHymgM7Y

And... now we breathe, accept that humans do be like that sometimes, and carry on. Have a good Saturday, folks!

Ekphrasis challenge later on.

*And when it comes to religion, to be clear: if it wasn't our current lone holdout from the Canaanite pantheon of gods, it would have been some other pantheon before that - or whatever pantheon we create next. Specific faiths are just a wrapper for deeper human behaviours in our authority-seeking group species. Getting rid of any specific wrapper doesn't change our underlying tribalism. This is why I sorely appreciate the people trying to lean into the nicer parts of our cultural lore today.

The walk helped a bit.

It is very easy to be angry at religion for causing so many moral blindspots.

I have no love for most Abrahamic faith traditions, although I sorely appreciate the people trying to make the best of horrible stories, crafting something better out of the nicer bits.

But it's not just religion. It's comfort.

So many people who live with *more* are quick to judge people whose access to resources is extremely limited.

Relative safety is impressively good at making us cruel.