“10 distractions, in case you need them for some reason”

In case youโ€™re searching for things to take your mind off the immediate horrors of the real world for, you know, some reason, here are ten:


โ€Œ3D Workers Island is a horror story told in the form of late-nineties screenshots from forums, websites, and a mysterious screensaver.

โ€ŒPractical Betterments is a collection of very small one-off actions that improve your life continuously. Examples include putting a spoon in every container that needs a spoon or cutting your toothbrush in half. Gently unhinged.

โ€ŒSomeone remixed a cover of Raffiโ€™s Bananaphone with Ms. Rachel and itโ€™s kind of a bop?

โ€ŒDavid Gilliver creates amazing light paintings โ€” one of his latest was just shortlisted in the British Photography Awards. This article says he uses a lightsaber while dressed all in black; the pinnacle of Sith expression.

โ€ŒWitches on roller skates! Sure, Halloweenโ€™s over. But witches on roller skates!

โ€ŒThat time Sir Terry Pratchett modded Oblivion is โ€œthe untold story of how Discworld author Terry Pratchett became an unexpected contributor to the world of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,โ€ even as his Alzheimerโ€™s progressed. The video is based on this older article.

โ€ŒAfter having a stroke at 25, Eilish Briscoe created a typeface to show the process of learning to write again โ€” and has created a series of typographic exhibitions centered around the idea that โ€œexpression is a luxuryโ€.

โ€ŒHalfbakery is โ€œa communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its usersโ€. For example, the beardaclava, which is โ€œa carefully woven balaclava that hangs as a thick and luxurious seamless extension to your existing beard, perfectly matching its colour and hair qualityโ€.

โ€ŒGodchecker is here for you if you need to check a god. โ€œOur legendary mythology encyclopedia now includes nearly four thousand weird and wonderful Gods, Supreme Beings, Demons, Spirits and Fabulous Beasts from all over the world.โ€ Comprehensive.

โ€ŒWigmaker is a game about making wigs. And itโ€™s open source!

https://werd.io/2024/10-distractions-in-case-you-need-them-for-some-reason

ย ยท Ben Werdmuller

Iโ€™m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society.ย Sign up to my newsletterย to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.

Peace & Justice History for 11/5:

November 5, 1872
Susan B. Anthony and a few other women in Rochester, New York, voted in the presidential election, all of them for the first time.
Susan B. Anthony
She wrote later that day to her fellow suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, โ€œIf only nowโ€”all the women would work to this end of enforcing the existing constitutionโ€”supremacy of national law over state lawโ€”what strides we might make . . . .โ€
Anthony’s vote went to U. S. Grant and other Republicans, based on that party’s promise to consider the legitimacy of womenโ€™s suffrage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Read Susan B. Anthony’s speech On Women’s Right to Voteย 
November 5, 1949
The Peace Pledge Union in Great Britain set up the Non-Violence Commission to study nonviolent resistance and how the ideas of Gandhi could be used to reach the Unionโ€™s goals of getting U.S. troops out of Britain and to end production of nuclear weapons there.
November 5, 1969
Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panther Party, was sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of contempt of court during the federal Chicago Eight trial in Chicago; he was charged for his insistent claims to the right to choose his own lawyer, or to represent himself. After the Chicago Eight verdict, the contempt charges were withdrawn.
November 5, 1982
36 were arrested in a demonstration at Honeywell, Minnesota’s largest defense contractor. The “Honeywell Project,” a local campaign against the arms maker, dogged the company for over three decades, at times with success.ย It continues today, targeting Alliant Technologies, the arms-making branch of Honeywell that was spun off in the 1990s.
Protests at Alliant continue today.
Alliant is the manufacturer for the Pentagon of artillery shells made with depleted uranium (DU or U-238, a by-product of uranium enrichment) which have been used extensively in Iraq and Kosovo. The Defense Department denies any health effects from use of DU (though army manuals warn soldiers of its toxicity), and contests accusations of DUโ€™s role in Gulf War Syndrome.
More about the Honeywell project from War Resisters’ internationalย 
November 5, 1987
Govan Mbeki, an early leader of the African National Congress, was released from South Africaโ€™s Robben Island prison after serving twenty-four years (for treason).
He served his sentence alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and many others who fought apartheid.
Govan Mbeki
His son, Thabo Mbeki, was elected in 1998 (and force to resign in 2008) to succeed Mandela, who was the first president elected following a new constitution which granted the right to vote to the entire non-white population, comprising 85% of the countryโ€™s population.

Read more about Govan Mbekiย 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november5

“Rest In Sweet Music”

Music was a haven for me when I was young living in my parents’s house. Much of what I’ve heard and enjoyed throughout my life has had Quincy Jones’s hand involved. May he rest in power. This is sad.

You cannot write the history of Black music and entertainment without Quincy Jones. During his 70 year artistic career as a musician, producer and composer, his impact has been felt throughout our culture. According to a statement from his family, Jones died Sunday night at the age of 91, at his home in Bel Air, Calif. (snip-much MORE; tissue alert)

https://www.theroot.com/colman-domingo-sheryl-lee-ralph-other-black-celeb-pay-1851688458

New South Wales parliament passes bill to strengthen LGBTQ+ rights

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/17/new-south-wales-parliament-passes-bill-to-strengthen-lgbti-rights

Equality bill will allow transgender people to have their sex changed on their birth certificates without surgery

The NSW equality bill brings the state into line with others.

The NSW equality bill brings the state into line with others.ย Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP

Rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people inย New South Walesย have been strengthened with the passing of a bill in the state parliament late on Thursday, after the legislation was watered down to gain Labor support.

The equality bill will give transgender people the ability to have their sex changed on theirย birth certificatesย without undergoing invasive surgery, bringing the state in line with others, and non-binary will become a gender option for birth certificates.

ย 

There were cheers in the chamber when the bill passed about 8.40pm. Theย independent MP Alex Greenwich,ย who introduced the package a year ago, embraced the leader of the government in the upper house, Penny Sharpe after the vote that succeeded without the oppositionโ€™s support.

Greenwich said the changes would โ€œimprove LGBTIQA+ dignity, safety and equalityโ€ and thanked Sharpe for her work getting the legislation through the upper house.

โ€œWeโ€™ve got more work to do and we start that work now with new confidence from these significant wins for our community,โ€ he said on Thursday night.

After months of stagnation, Greenwich convinced the premier, Chris Minns, to support the bill by making a number of major concessions, including dropping changes to the anti-discrimination act.

While advocates welcomed the remaining elements of the bill, many also raised concerns that protections for LGBTQ+ teachers and students at private schools had been dumped.

The Equality Australia chief executive, Anna Brown, thanked community members who shared their stories and all those who campaigned to garner support for the changes.

โ€œThese new laws will have no impact on the lives of most people in our state, but for a small number of people it will make their lives immeasurably better,โ€ she said after the bill passed.

โ€œItโ€™s a journey that continues as we turn our attention to the stateโ€™s anti-discrimination laws and our ongoing efforts to protect vulnerable teachers and students in religious and private schools across the state.โ€

Greenwich had hoped the Coalition would allow MPs a conscience vote on the bill but earlier in the week the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, confirmed his party would stand against the reforms.

Despite that, the Liberal MP for the North Shore, Felicity Wilson, crossed the floor.

โ€œJust because your party doesnโ€™t have a conscience vote doesnโ€™t mean you donโ€™t have a conscience,โ€ she told ABC Radio Sydney earlier in the week.

Greenwich said on Wednesday that the Coalition was moving further to the right and โ€œusing my community as a political football, as a political punching bagโ€.

โ€œI am concerned that we are seeing a rightwing trend developing within the Coalition,โ€ he said. โ€œNo other leader has denied their members a conscience vote on LBGT issues.โ€

The opposition attorney general, Alister Henskens, held a news conference with religious figures and community members opposed to the reforms earlier in the week.

Among the concerns he raised was about the โ€œimpact upon the privacy of womenโ€™s spacesโ€.

โ€œItโ€™s moving too far and itโ€™s moving too quickly,โ€ he said.

But the attorney general, Michael Daley, said the opposition was misrepresenting the package.

The bill also repealed offences for living off the earnings of a sex worker and made threatening to โ€œoutโ€ a personโ€™s LGBTIQA+ status an offence.

From Teri Kanefield:

Peace & Justice History for 11/4:

November 4, 1811
A group of men in Bulwell, near Nottingham, England, armed with hammers, axes and pistols in the dark of night, broke into the workshop of a master weaver named Hollingsworth and smashed six weaving machines the men thought threatened their jobs. They and their supporters opposed the industrialization that had turned home-based sustainable textile work into factory work with significant loss of jobs through mechanization (and those at much lower wages), as well as the attendant air and water pollution.
Luddites smashing loom.
They called themselves followers of the probably fictional General Ludd and continued their attacks for months, with over a thousand knitting machines destroyed. In response, thousands of troops were sent to stop the rebellion, and Parliament passed a law making destruction of weaving machines a hanging offense.
Luddites has since become a term used for those who oppose technology.
November 4, 1956
Two hundred thousand Russian troops with 1000 tanks stopped an
anti-Stalinist uprising in Hungary and installed a new pro-Soviet government. Although civilians had set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest, the Soviet air force bombed the capital and troops poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.
Hungarian Army and National Guard troops participated in the resistance; only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought alongside the Warsaw Pact troops. The help promised from the U.S. to protect and aid the anti-Stalinists never came.
20,000 Hungarians ultimately died as a result (as well as 4000 troops), and ten times that many left the country permanently.

Hungarian ‘freedom fighters’ temporarily forced back Soviet tanks and troops.

Soviet tanks in Budapest.
Pictorial history of the Hungarian Uprisingย 
November 4, 1984
The first free elections in Nicaraguan history were held. Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista Front claimed a decisive victory (70%), defeating six other parties, in the country’s first elections since the revolution the Sandanistas had led five years previous. The high-turnout election (83%) was monitored by 400 independent election observers who said the election had been fair.

Read moreย 
November 4, 1995
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was fatally shot minutes after speaking at a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel.

The rally in Kings of Israel Square
ย ย Yitzhak Rabin
Read moreย 
November 4, 2008
The first African American ever nominated by a major political party as candidate for president went before the electorate. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and his Democratic vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, faced Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; independent candidates Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez; Green Party candidates former Representative Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente; and former Repepresentatives Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november4

Sunlight and Butterflies, or Some S–t Like That

It has struck me that we need a reduce-stress-be-in-the-moment-self-care sort of thing. Some of us have chronic conditions, some are recovering from surgery, some of us are physically fine other than great stress that may be getting the better of us, and some of us may have a combination of some or all, or even something else. I’m pretty sure we’re all aware of tools, but sometimes things are so worrying that we forget about that, as we urgently try to fix things, or even submit to our brains’s workings with cortisol and fear and what all. So. I don’t know what, if any of this, might help someone, but I gotta try. So here’s what’s likely gonna be a long post, with a mixed bag of stuff. Actually, I think it may turn into 2 separate posts, because I see I’ve only got one item covered, and it’s already post-length. So there may be Part 2. And maybe yet another one.

I think I should first refer people to the hotlines where professionals want to and can help. Maybe someone thinks they don’t need or want to call, or maybe someone thinks they’re not there yet. It’s just good to have the resource at hand, is all. Some gain strength from knowing they can call. So, of course, there’s 911, or whatever the 3 digit emergency number is where you live. Then, more specifically, there are numbers for mental health assistance, like 988 where you can text Q to 988 if you want an LGBTQI+ affirming counselor. National Domestic Violence Hotline , (800) 799-7233. Crisis Text Line ,Text HOME to 741741. National Sexual Assault Hotline , (800) 656-4673. SAgEโ€™s Farmer Support Hotline , 833-381-SAGE. Veterans Crisis Line , 988, then PRESS 1 Text 838255, Chat online. Much more at https://www.apa.org/topics/crisis-hotlines . Also, https://glaad.org/resourcelist/ . No doubt I’ve missed something, so please put it in comments.

I will share a bit about myself here. I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety. Could be brain chemistry, could be that my life has not been a calm flow, both, something else. Whatever it is, I have it. Having treated and therapized, I know which tools work for me, and I use them, sometimes unconsciously. Anyway, I don’t like seeing people having trouble, or being troubled, or being hungry, sick, cold, hot, traumatized by war, etc., etc. My mindset has always been to do all I can to fix. Mostly to fix things immediately for the people I’m trying to help, but also the bigger working to fix. We’ve all seen my posts where I’ve shared some of the issues and items on which I work.

The thing about that is, it helps me to feel like I’m doing something that can help somebody else. It overrides anxiety and introversion when I have a reason to be “bothering” people for the greater good.

In regard to current events stress, which is weighing on all people everywhere, there are many of us around the world who are able to do just that one thing that seems so tiny-an hour on the phone, say-to make a difference, and reduce our concerns and stress. So, here is the volunteer page for the Harris-Walz campaign: https://go.kamalaharris.com/ . They still need people to make calls. Making calls to voters in other states is one of my favorite parts of helping a campaign! With a cell phone it’s almost cost and pain-in-the-neck free. Again, I’m aware of various medical issues around the commentary; that’s why I say even one hour will help the campaign, and will also help us. In addition or instead of this, one could contact campaigns of legislative candidates, like Sen. Brown, Sen. Baldwin, Rep. Sharice Davids, Colin Allred, and so many more. An hour of calls will help. And, again, you will feel better having spoken with people to further the greater good.

Now calling is a thing I’m putting forward. To me, it’s personal for each of us, what and how much we’re doing about the stress of the things in the world. I neither need nor want to know if/what anybody’s doing. I’m only putting this out as a thing from which to take our power, to put our power to work.

Since this is this long, I’ll put the first post I read this morning, it inspired me. It’s good-one of those things I needed to read, though I didn’t know it until I got started. It reminded me that while I didn’t necessarily learn or have these experiences in the same way or as early in life, I know these things, and I can do them when needed. I bet we all do, and can. I’m going to share a goodly snippet, but we should read it all if we can. Then, I’ll stop for lunch, then bring back another post part. Well, unless any- or everyone comments that they’re good, and please no more! ๐ŸŒž ๐Ÿ˜„ And now from Vixen Strangely:

Maybe We Will Just Protect Ourselves

I tell this about myself because its true and a little weird, but when I was small, my dad taught me how to hook my fingers up and around an eyeball in its socket–just in case I ever had to. I knew what a xyphoid process was at six years old. I knew where to drive the heel of my hand into a human nose. I was taught that I didn’t have the physical strength advantage in life, so I had to have the will. I was taught that you have to walk in awareness. I was taught you watch your drink. I was taught to carry improvised weapons. I was taught to see the world in terms of potential improvised weapons.

I was taught this because some boys never get told what they should never try. Or get told but don’t really learn it. (You don’t use your knee–it’s inexact. You grab them by it. You can squeeze and disrupt a generation of losers. And I never had to do any of that. Not once. Because it’s really only a small percentage of men who are actual monsters–most are reasonable and not actual sociopaths. I like men, really. They are interesting enough and some have valuable skills. They care for the people around them and often are smarter than they think they are. It’s a confidence issue. When you are told to value muscle over brain, you know.) 

I was raised to think, more or less, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. Math, science, art, politics. Sports. And it simply never occurred to me women were just out there, somewhere, either not voting because their husbands said they couldn’t or voting for exactly what their husbands told them to, until I heard about that in my early adulthood–because why? That’s crazy: we’re fully-fledged adult people, right?  Even if I knew I was born just before Roe and just before women generally could even get credit in our own names. 

I’ve been married twice. The idea of a man not knowing what he’s even getting politically going into a relationship is weird to me–this is me. We are talking politics. You don’t know me and not know my politics. 

I was told to put in the work. Show it. Show up. I learned how to put a little bass in my voice. I learned respect is earned, not one time, but every time. 

Donald Trump never had to earn the respect that he has from the bottom up, in any environment where respect wasn’t just his for showing up. Women can see through it. Do you not see his relationship with Jeffery Epstein? The couple dozen claims of sexual harassment or assault? How he speaks about women all the time? The religious right (that he has allied with) desire to end no-fault divorce and the grinning sadist desire to monitor our menses and try to punish us for our fertility and even stop us from travelling to other states to save our lives?  (snip-More)

For Science! on Sunday

Acceleration of Pacific Ocean circulation is impacting global weather

November 2, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

Significant acceleration in the upper-ocean circulation of the equatorial Pacific Ocean over the past 30 years is impacting global weather patterns, according to a new study.

Map of pacific showing currents
West-east near-surface current trend between 1993โ€“2022. The blue colors show increased westward currents; red colors show increased eastward currents. The largest trends are observed in the central tropical Pacific Ocean (black box). Current velocity data from three equatorial moored buoys (yellow diamonds) provide a subsurface view on long-term upper-ocean current velocity trends. Credit: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024JC021343

The acceleration is driven by strengthening atmospheric winds. The oceanic currents are becoming stronger and shallower. Among the effects are increased frequency and intensity of El Niรฑo and La Niรฑa events.

The study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.

Researchers used data collected between 1993โ€“2022 from satellites, mooring buoys and ocean surface drifters.

They reanalysed wind data and satellite altitude measurements to create a high-resolution gridded map of ocean currents over time.

Among the findings is the roughly 20% acceleration of westward near-surface currents in the central equatorial Pacific.

North and south of the equator, currents going toward the poles have also accelerated. Currents going to the north pole have intensified by 57%, and the currents heading southward have increased 20%.

โ€œThe equatorial thermocline โ€“ a critical ocean layer for El Niรฑoโ€“Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dynamics โ€“ has steepened significantly,โ€ says first author Franz Phillip Tuchen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Miamiโ€™s Ronenstiel School of Marine Atmospheric and Earth Science.

โ€œThis steepening trend could reduce ENSO amplitude in the eastern Pacific and favour more frequent central Pacific El Niรฑo events, potentially altering regional and global climate patterns associated with ENSO.โ€

The new and comprehensive study provides a benchmark for climate models which have had limited success in accurately representing Pacific circulation and sea surface temperature trends.

The research helps explain why, for example, global mean sea surface temperatures have risen but parts of the tropical South Pacific have seen a cooling trend of more than โ€“0.5ยฐC over the past 3 decades.

Originally published byย Cosmosย asย Acceleration of Pacific Ocean circulation is impacting global weather

https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/pacific-ocean-circulation-acceleration/

Ghost of the Forest: Monotropa uniflora

Look for this other-worldly plant in moist, shaded areas of mature forests throughout much of North America, East Asia, and northern South America.

By:ย Nina Fosterย 

Deep in the forest lies a wildflower that defies expectations. Often mistaken for a fungus, the plant is a pale, translucent white in bloomโ€”sometimes tinted pink or, rarely, a deep red. The ephemeral flower blackens if touched and quickly decays if plucked from the earth.

This month, as we celebrate all things spooky and supernatural, itโ€™s only fitting to spotlight a species that is both ghost and vampire: Monotropa uniflora.

This peculiar plant can be found throughout much of North America, East Asia, and in northern regions of South America. It typically grows in moist, shaded areas of mature forests, springing from the soil to flower between June and September. Each plant has only one cup-shaped flower per stem, which droops toward the ground at first bloom. This downward orientation is thought to protect its nectar and pollen from rain. Carl Linnaeus had these properties in mind when he classified the plant as Monotropa uniflora in 1753. โ€œMonotropaโ€ is Greek for โ€œone turn,โ€ a reference to the arched stem that supports the nodding flower, and โ€œunifloraโ€ means โ€œone-floweredโ€ in Latin. Once pollinated and fertilized, the flower gradually turns upright, eventually maturing into a dry, woody capsule filled with thousands of seeds.

Monotropa unifloraโ€™s hooked appearance has also inspired its common names. โ€œIndian pipe,โ€ for instance, derives from the flowerโ€™s resemblance to ceremonial smoking pipes used by many North American Indigenous communities. Other common names are more closely linked to the plantโ€™s eerie coloration, including โ€œghost pipe,โ€ โ€œghost plant,โ€ โ€œcorpse plant,โ€ and โ€œice plant.โ€

Monotropa unifloraโ€™s ghostly presence has just as much to do with whatโ€™s happening beneath the surface as above ground. Like any plant, Monotropa uniflora needs sugar to grow and reproduce. Most plants meet this need through photosynthesis, but Monotropa uniflora lacks chlorophyll, the pigment that gives plants their green color and powers the process by absorbing energy from light. It must seek sugar from another source.

The solution? Mycoheterotrophy: a form of plant nutrition in which plants obtain nourishment through networks of mycorrhizal fungi rather than photosynthesis. In this case, tiny threads of fungi in the Russulaceae family act as an underground bridge between the roots of Monotropa uniflora and those of nearby trees. The mycorrhizae deliver water and essential minerals to the trees in exchange for sugar. Monotropa uniflora takes advantage of this relationship by acting as a parasite on the fungal network, taking sugar and nutrients and giving nothing in return.

Monotropa uniflora seed capsules by Ryan Hodnett via Wikimedia Commons
Monotropa uniflora seed capsules by Ryan Hodnett via Wikimedia Commons

Mycoheterotrophy is a stroke of evolutionary genius. Monotropa uniflora essentially cheats the mycorrhizal fungi and trees from which it receives sustenance.

โ€œThe photosynthetic host cannot select against the mycoheterotroph without selecting against its own mutualist mycorrhizal fungi,โ€ explain scientists Sylvia Yang and Donald H. Pfister. Additionally, because mycoheterotrophs arenโ€™t dependent on light for photosynthesis, Monotropa uniflora can flourish in dark environments where many plants would fail.

Monotropa uniflora in Lore and Literature

All of these curious traits have made Monotropa uniflora an object of fascination for generations of storytellers. The plant is woven into oral histories and written narratives across cultures.

Cherokee storyteller Lloyd Arneach chronicles the plantโ€™s creation as a product of human selfishness. As the legend goes, the chiefs of two quarreling nations smoked a pipe together before resolving their weeklong dispute. According to Arneach, โ€œ[The Great Spirit] decided to do something to remind all people to smoke the pipe only when making peace. So He turned them into grayish-looking flowers we now call โ€˜Indian Pipesโ€™ and made them to grow wherever friends and relatives have quarreled.โ€

Cover of the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson.
Cover of the first edition of Poems by Emily Dickinson via Wikimedia Commons 

One of the most prominent storytellers to depict Monotropa uniflora was Emily Dickinson. Although widely recognized for her poetic prowess, Dickinson was also an amateur botanist. While taking botany courses at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, she assembled more than 400 plant specimens in an herbarium that resides in Harvardโ€™s Houghton Library today. Monotropa uniflora is among the hundreds of pressed plants that fill the bookโ€™s pages.

Plants provided constant inspiration for Dickinsonโ€™s literary works.

โ€œLike flowers in an herbarium, the odd little poems are a faithful inventory of the natural world,โ€ writes Barbara C. MalloneeMonotropa uniflora is no exception, appearing in a number of Dickinsonโ€™s poems and letters. In one quatrain, she writes:

White as an Indian Pipe
Red as a Cardinal Flower
Fabulous as a Moon at Noon
February Hourโ€”

Scholars including Yanbin Kang are working to decipher the symbolism of Monotropa uniflora in Dickinsonโ€™s poetry. The plantโ€™s white color could represent purity. Its nodding flower could suggest humility. Its ability to thrive where other plants cannot calls to mind both strength and lonelinessโ€”qualities that might have resonated with Dickinson, who lived reclusively at her familyโ€™s homestead later in life.

In 1882, Dickinson received a painting of Monotropa uniflora from Mabel Loomis Todd, a family friend who would become the poetโ€™s first posthumous editor. In her letter thanking Todd for the gift, Dickinson wrote โ€œ[t]hat without suspecting it you should send me the preferred flower of life, seems almost supernatural, and the sweet glee that I felt at meeting it, I could confide to none.โ€

Eight years later, Todd shared Dickinsonโ€™s words with the world by publishing the first collection of her poems. Toddโ€™s illustration of the poetโ€™s beloved โ€œpreferred flower of lifeโ€ graced the front cover.

Dickinson wasnโ€™t the only poet to pay homage to this otherworldly plant. Sylvia Plath, another Massachusetts resident with botanical interests, mentions Monotropa uniflora in her poem โ€œChild.โ€ She wrote this poem in January 1963, only two weeks before her death. Itโ€™s addressed to an infant discovering the world, unburdened by the darkness that casts a shadow over the narrating mother. Immersed in โ€œthe zoo of the new,โ€ the child learns of โ€œIndian pipeโ€ along with โ€œApril snowdropโ€โ€”two white, nodding flowers linked with the fleeting innocence of childhood.

More recently, Christine Butterworth-McDermottโ€™s 2019 poem โ€œMonotropa Unifloraโ€ plays with the plantโ€™s simultaneous embodiment of force and fragility. The employment of bold, active language (โ€œyou feast off other hostsโ€) and softer expressions (โ€œhow pale! how delicate!โ€) reminds us of the complex nature of Monotropa unifloraโ€™s existence. Itโ€™s both a skillful parasite and a sensitive species that begins to decompose upon separation from the fungal network that provides its nourishment.

Medicinal Benefits and Modern Use

Monotropa unifloraโ€™s significance isnโ€™t only poetic, itโ€™s practical. Several Indigenous groups in North America used the plant to treat ailments including inflamed eyes, epileptic fits, and toothaches. These properties were later echoed in books on the medicinal benefits of plants. In 1887, Monotropa uniflora was even deemed โ€œan excellent substitute for opium,โ€ easing pain and inducing sleep.

Today, tinctures made with Monotropa uniflora are sold on various online platforms. Foragers have also taken to social media to share the process of gathering the plant and making tinctures of their own. Their posts often advocate responsible harvest practices, namely leaving pollinated flowers untouched and collecting only in regions where the plant is abundant. Monotropa uniflora is at risk of local extinction in states including California, Nebraska, and South Dakota. It faces increasing pressure from wild collection for medicinal use, although more research is needed to determine the scope and severity of this existential threat.

With ties to ecology, poetry, medicine, and more, the ghost of the forest has several stories to tell. If you spot Monotropa uniflora in bloom, bright against the darkness of the forest floor, take a moment to contemplate the many ways in which humans have interacted with it for centuries. This is the mission of the Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative: to appreciate the unparalleled significance of plants to human culture.

Peace & Justice History for 11/3:

November 3, 1883
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decisionย Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were ultimately subject to U.S. law, โ€œnot in the sense of citizens, but . . . as wards subject to a guardian . . . as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.โ€
However, the Court acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal authority in the particular case at hand. The Congress, however, essentially overturned the Courtโ€™s decision two years later.

Chief Crow Dog, 1898
More onย Ex Parte Crow Dogย 
November 3, 1917
Bolsheviks, the followers of Vladimir Lenin, took control of the capital, Moscow, and the Kremlin, the fortress-like grouping of government buildings and churches at the center of the capital city, as the Russian revolution succeeded.
November 3, 1969

President Nixon announced the “Vietnamization” program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. โ€œWe have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.โ€
The last U.S. troops didnโ€™t return home until 1975.
November 3, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

Read more about the occupation:ย 
Read the Indian Manifesto:ย 
November 3, 1979
Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a “Death to the Klan” rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The political organization had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present.
Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.
November 3, 1985
The Rainbow Warrior bombed
Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeaceโ€™s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand.
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