communication vacuum

seawitchery:

This is the saddest thing I have read in a long, long time.
erickimberlinbowley:

The Loneliest Whale in the World.
In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:
She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang. She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.
Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.

celebrating the hood (women-hood and men-hood and the inter-hood)

turning the he into she into they
i found this article by Milla ahola and i am celebrating the gender diversity and inclusiveness that she has shared by electing to use the pronoun 'she' instead of 'he' throughout her blog, and the resultant dialogue to initiated on her blog helps me understand other realities besides mine and be compassionate and sensitive to them.
a few months ago while speaking with a friend who shared her intersexual friend's request to refrain from addressing to them as he or her, instead a request was made to be addressed as 'they', i had started thinking of referring to my friends as 'they' in their absence and so not to reveal their identity when i talk about a story where they were present or a part of. this i found greatly changed teh way people responded to teh story or my sharing... now i am feeling inspired to bring that diversity and inclusion in my own writing, with the use of the pronoun 'they' instead of 'he' or 'her'.

‘She’ & ‘Love’

by Milla. Most of the time she is used as a gender neutral word for third person singular in this blog.

It was a young woman in Finland who came up with this. In Finnish there is no s/hedivide. There’s only one word: hän. So she got really frustrated with having to make that difference in other languages, and came up with she.

I think it’s brilliant for so many different reasons.

1) It turns the current power system on its head: in most languages the gender “neutral” word is masculine. for instance in Spanish, where a group of women would be called “ellas” – feminine form of they – while a group of men would be “ellos” – masculine form of they.

a mixed group of men and women will always be in masculine form – “ellos” – even if there would be an overwhelming majority of women and only one man.

2) For the same reason as the above, it’s nice to question what feels “natural” (habitual!), by using she as the gender neutral. For most people it feels very strange and uncomfortable.

3) Woman is always pushed into second place, and made invisible. For this reason it’s nice to create a shift with more visibility towards the word she.

4) It’s about time we stop perpetuating the segregation between the (artificial) construct of male/female [human behavior separated in two categories - or: gender - expectations on a person's behavioral patterns from birth, mostly based on the arbitrary occurrence of cunt or penis]. We don’t use different words for brown or blond haired persons. So why should we think it’s important to know the sex (cunt or penis) of the one that’s being talked about? Unless we think it’s important to maintain this system called patriarchy.

5) The current bipolar (“One or The Other” – Two Options Only) system ignores the fact that many humans are born intersexed. If the word ‘he’ or ‘she’ is supposed to be areference to the biological sex of a person, then intersexed persons are excluded from existence within the current use of language.

farmer's Almanac : quail's egg and other chronicles

so yes, whilst walking in the farm, sharp eyed and ever so observant my friend gaurav saw an egg in the path ahead, jassu reckoned it was a quail's egg, who likes to go for a walkabout around the field, dhruv was careful not to go too close and didn't even talk about touching it, vandana wasn't keen to get closer and mamoo looked on pensively at dhruv's response.

is it a stone or a potato, tis the question..

the overcast look

carrots being kept in the ground till they flower as the cucumber plants beside them need the shade to germinate

chickpeas from the farm, before they mature into an off- white colour