Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This really is a full service blog.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Books are my comfort food!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Come on, man.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Summer Saturday Morning Open Thread: Chalking the White Horse of Uffington

Summer Saturday Morning Open Thread: Chalking the White Horse of Uffington

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Something nice and uncomplicated, for a treat.

It’s just… something we *do*, okay? It’s been in the family for a long time!

The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric monument that’s been around since the late Bronze Age, some 3000 years ago. Situated on a hill in the South of England and measuring 360 feet long, the horse is made of deep trenches filled with white chalk and is easily visible in the satellite view on Google Maps.

So cool. Here’s the truly amazing thing though: the horse requires regular maintenance or erosion and grass growing over the chalk will obscure the figure. Which means that the inhabitants of this area have continuously cleaned and maintained the horse — through changes in religion, king, climate, and empire — for 30 centuries…

It’s chalking day, a cleaning ritual that has happened here regularly for three millennia. Hammers, buckets of chalk and kneepads are handed out and everyone is allocated an area. The chalkers kneel and smash the chalk to a paste, whitening the stony pathways in the grass inch by inch. “It’s the world’s largest coloring between the lines,” says George Buce, one of the participants…

In the past, thousands of people would come for the scouring, holding a fair in the circle of a prehistoric fort nearby. These days it’s a quieter event. The only sounds are the wind, distant birdsong and the thumping of hammers on the chalk that can be felt through the feet…

Looks like this year’s Chalking Day is August 28. Come and get stuck into this peculiarly satisfying task and help keep the Horse visible for miles around. Protective gloves and a hammer are provided. Families are welcome…

Reader Interactions

157Comments

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    (Repeated.) Slightly reticent about asking because of rhymes-with-lowbid, so consider this tentative feeler as to whether or not folks may be interested in a B-J meet-up.

    Planning to travel to NYC area August 24th through September 8th. Most popular days in the past have been on weekends, so that would mean a choice of

    Friday, August 26
    Saturday, August 27
    Sunday, August 28
    Friday, September 2
    Saturday, September 3
    Sunday, September 4
    Monday, September 5 (Labor Day)
    .
    Preference as to a date? Also too, afternoon or evening? Any strike-throughs are dates someone already has mentioned as not being amenable to their schedule.

  9. 9.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    That is what I love about this country, there are so many quirky little things that go on on this Island that have been going on for centuries and no one bats an eyelid, it is “just the way it is done”.  There are weird little festivals that involve men climbing ladders and getting a kiss from the lady of the house in lieu of taxes, flowers are involved too.  The Flora Dance in Helston, the Cheese Rolling nonsense, the Town Criers, the wandering brass band festival in the North West. It is all very ancient and sometimes very silly but I love it.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I read (Smithsonian mag?) of the Uffington White Horse some years ago. I can only say now what I thought then:

    1) Pretty damned cool.
    2) I would really like to help out with the maintenance for a day or 2, Just to be a part of it. No matter how small my contribution, that would be pretty damned cool too.

  13. 13.

    Spanky

    All the news outlets want you to know that Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson are breaking up.

    I know you all would want to know asap.

  21. 21.

    kalakal

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Totally agree, I always loved the way the UK does eccentric whereby strange and lovely things are treated as everyday and normal. Voluntary upkeep of neolithic monuments over 1,000s of years, local festivals & customs, people doing weird things to their house eg having a 30 ft fibreglass shark sculpture built into the roof of a terraced house and having the neighbours approve.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headington_Shark

    closing the motorways (Interstates) for hours so wildlife can be shooed off safely, elite soldiers wandering around London in Napoleonic era uniforms. I lived in West Yorkshire for years and the number of weird local customs was wonderful. eg schoolboys from my old school built and have maintained a drystone cairn for over 500 years atop some cliffs for no discernable reason.

    https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/arts-and-culture/weekend-walk-giggleswick-scar-schoolboy-tower-1773434

    In Leeds there was a very upmarket car dealer that when some blackbirds built a nest in the wheel arches of a Porsche 911 turbo roped it off and wouldn’t let customers near it off for weeks until the babies flew away. The RNLI (maritime rescue) is a charity and all the lifeboatmen volunteers (and very good they are too). I personally loved the Boaty McBoatface episode, only the English could be build the most advanced, multi million antarctic research ship and when asked what to name it, instead of something inspiring or macho like Challenger or Intrepid come up with Boaty McBoatface.

  24. 24.

    eclare

    @Litlebritdifrnt:   When I lived and worked in London many years ago the motto was pretty much “if it was good enough for Queen Victoria, it’s good enough for us.”

  25. 25.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: It occurs to me that Joe has been blessed with really good memes. The Onion-version-of-Joe-Biden was hilarious, I loved the Obama-Biden memes, and Dark Brandon is also fairly spicy.

    One quality of Joe’s that serves him well in this media age is that it is obvious that he enjoys humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously. I think this is an underrated part of his appeal.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Spanky:

    Who is Pete Davidson? And I don’t understand, he and KK are breaking up? Isn’t she married to Kanye West?

    NB: These are all questions I don’t care about the answers to.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: I loved that, too. What’s more, you could tell that Biden also liked it and thought it was funny.

    TFG isn’t funny. He is bizarre, and extreme, and outrageous, but not funny. It’s inhumane.

  30. 30.

    oatler

    @Baud:

    There’s a Sandman comic where one of those chalk carvings ,a man’s figure in a “door”, pulls the door open to allow Oberon and his homies to attend a command performance of  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Good luck adapting that, Netflix.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @eclare: @Baud:

    With Biden, I like to use the “I did that.” Such as with the latest jobs report. “Yep, he did that.”

    Falling gas prices? “Yep, he did that.”

    etc etc

  32. 32.

    kalakal

    @Suzanne: In stark contrast to TFG. A sense of humour is very much what makes people attractive and being able to laugh at yourself is so appealing. Compare Obama’s charm with Mango Mussolini’s sullen pouting

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m not going to give you any explanations about Pete Davidson because fundamentally, I can’t explain him either. Why an endless succession of prominent models/actresses/pop singers seem to find him irresistible enough to start a relationship, even though they never seem to last more than a short time, is baffling. But it’s probably best not to pay attention.

  34. 34.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Meanwhile, FTFNYT is blaming Hillary’s emails for the break-up

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​Who is Pete Davidson?

    Pete is an SNL comic. Sometimes he is even funny. Maybe more often than not.

    As to your other questions, I haven’t a clue.

  36. 36.

    Suzanne

    @kalakal: Funny you mention about a sense of humor being attractive.

    A few years ago, I read a piece about a social science study that explored this. Both men and women say that they want a partner with “a good sense of humor”. But what does that genuinely mean to people? So when they surveyed men, men overwhelmingly answered that “a good sense of humor” meant “she laughed at my jokes”. For women, “a good sense of humor” meant “to make jokes and say funny things”. (No info on how this plays out in same-gender relationships, age breakdown, if responses were different for trans people, etc.) But I found this fascinating…. a place where sexist attitudes/expectations hide in places where we may not have thought to look.

  37. 37.

    eclare

    @kalakal:   I saw some write-up about TFG’s lack of a sense of humor.  IIRC, the only incident of TFG ever truly laughing mentioned in the article was when he made some “joke” comparing Hillary to a dog.

    Dogs are great, TFG should be so lucky.  He is lower than dogshit.

  38. 38.

    Suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Why an endless succession of prominent models/actresses/pop singers seem to find him irresistible enough to start a relationship, even though they never seem to last more than a short time, is baffling. 

    Because he’s probably funny and that’s really appealing!
    (Magic D may also be involved. Don’t underestimate that.)

  39. 39.

    mali muso

    On the topic of community maintenance of ancient structures, in my husband’s home country of Mali, there is an annual re-mudding of the Great Mosque of Djenne, the worlds largest mud brick structure. Everyone is involve in mixing the mud, ferrying it to the mosque in baskets, clambering up the ladders to deliver it to the masons and competing in teams to see who can complete their section the fastest. It’s quite the event, le Creppisage.

  42. 42.

    David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Pete Davidson got one thing right: “Everyone knows I’m white because I became hugely successful while barely showing up to work.”

  43. 43.

    sab

    @SiubhanDuinne: I know you don’t care but Pete Davidson was a Saturday Night Live performer. His dad was a fireman killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11 when Pete was a little boy. That led to psychological issues.

    He used to be engaged to pop star Ariana Grande ( the young singer who was such a trouper when some terrorists shot up her young teenage girl audience in the UK a few years ago.) Her fans were extremely nasty to him about the breakup although it was her idea not his.

    Pete is most famous for ridiculing Dan Crenshaw’s ostentatious glass eye on SNL. Pete had to apologize quite publicly on SNL to keep his job. Crenshaw accepted the apology graciously which is about the only publicly gracious thing Crenshaw has ever done. That was before we knew what an a**hole that congressman from Texas is

    ETA I follow his career because my stepdaughter has the same personality disorder because of similar childhood trauma.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Suzanne: ​I had a high school revelation in junior or senior year. It seemed that some of the least attractive guys I knew ended up steady with some of the best looking girls around. Could not figure it out. A bolder than I buddy of mine who knew one of those girls asked her.

    “He makes me laugh.” was all she said.

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @Spanky: only for being famous for being famous.

    And we all know what Terry Pratchett, another British institution, said about that.

    (Or if we don’t: It was in Moving Pictures. The Patrician sees how the crowd is reacting to the new moving-picture actors, who are famous just for being famous, and thinks this could be a very dangerous thing and he might, reluctantly, someday have to have them killed.)

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: I would really like to help out with the maintenance for a day or 2, Just to be a part of it.

    Same here, though I’d be ever-so-slightly worried there was some part of the quaint olde ritual, possibly involving flint knives and a wicker horse, that they didn’t share with the general public — except for one lucky chalk-smasher who gets forcefully recruited as the guest of honor.

  50. 50.

    eclare

    @OzarkHillbilly:   That makes sense.  One of my best friends in high school was not attractive if you saw a photo of him, but he was extremely popular because he was hilarious.  Across all cliques, nerds, jocks, etc.

  54. 54.

    kalakal

    @Suzanne: That really is fascinating, I’ve never thought of that. I like people who make me laugh and while I’m pleased if people laugh at my comments/jokes I feel it’s more that their sense of humour and mine overlaps than that they have a ‘good’ sense of humour per se. I do find people who make jokes about others but can’t handle jokes made about themselves very unappealing.

  60. 60.

    sab

    @eclare: Iffy. He developed an infection and had to go back into surgery to clean it all out. He’s in the hospital now. Good news is everything ( hands, feet, innards) all still work properly but the infection is going to be a long term problem. 8 week course of IV antibiotics (!! I am not a medical professional) when he gets home and then probably lifetime antibiotics.

    Good news is they are putting him on a low carb high protein diet which he needs and which I as a mere wife could never impose. The surgery probably would have gone better had he been less plump. We think it was a bad stapling job by the surgeon rather than a failure in my home care afterwards.

    So good news is so far he’s almost as good as new, if we can get him through the convalescence.

    I now know what a glaring of cats is, because the five of them are not happy to have him gone, and let me know whenever I come home.

  61. 61.

    sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: I had a law school boyfriend who was the love of my life and also of a number of other girls. He was homely bordering on ugly. He  looked just like a short-haired version of  those troll or dam dolls that were a thing in the sixties. But he was hilariously funny, and actually liked women as people. Committment issues, but nobody is perfect. 70 years old this year and has still never been married.

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Anne Heche is in serious trouble:

    Pictures and video footage obtained by US media outlet TMZ showed Heche driving a blue Mini Cooper, which was later pictured severely damaged at the scene. The vehicle struck a two-storey home and erupted in heavy fire, according to the Los Angeles fire department (LAFD).

    “Fifty-nine firefighters took 65 minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish the stubborn flames within the heavily damaged structure,” an LAFD report stated. “One female adult [was] found within the vehicle, who has been taken to an area hospital by LAFD paramedics in critical condition.”

    The LAFD also confirmed to the PA news agency that the vehicle had driven 30ft into the residence but that the occupant had escaped without injury.

    Assuming it took awhile for them to first realize she was still in the car and who knows how long to get her out, she must have severe burns.

    My cousin was burned over 90% of his body when his tractor trailer was hit head on by a drunk driver. He was hauling asphalt and the tanker ruptured and buried him in the cab. He lived for 20 pain filled days before finally dying. His last words to his fiancee were, “Karen, let me die.”

    I hope Anne doesn’t have to go thru anything like that.

  63. 63.

    eclare

    @sab:   OMG that is a lot to handle.  I hope you get some rest at home while he is in the hospital, although that too causes stress.

    That’s good that the drs may have scared him into a new diet, I hope that works.

    FWIW a former co-worker’s husband was on IV antibiotics at home for his foot on and off for years, and she didn’t mention it much except to say that he was back on them or off them.  I hope it sounds worse than it is.

    Thank you for the update.

  65. 65.

    sab

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The diet should go well since he won’t be driving himself to the grocery anytime soon. It’s similar to how I used to feed myself before we got married. No more donuts.

  66. 66.

    kalakal

    @sab: My goodness that’s hard. Make sure you look after your own health.

    It does sound like things are improving, hoping for the best for you both

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    I’m not going to link for obvious reasons, but there are photos circulating where the russians cut off a POW’s head and put it on a pole. Wonder if Amnesty will have anything to say about that.

  68. 68.

    eclare

    @sab:   Ha!  One summer when I was young my dad took a job in another state and moved while my mom and I stayed behind to sell the house.  My mom lost ten to fifteen pounds that summer.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: I was sorry to read of this yesterday. I went thru a somewhat similar situation with my mother. The one most important thing for my sanity was talking to my Minnesota sis once every week or so. I hope you have somebody you can talk to as well.

  70. 70.

    Chris T.

    Should claim that it’s a cat… and maybe make it a bit more cat-like, though it already has whiskers!

  71. 71.

    Spanky

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “He makes me laugh.” was all she said.

    Well yeah, that’s what Jessica Rabbit said too.

    Back before (I thought) I liked girls, there was a girl in second grade who had the most awesome giggle I have ever heard before or since. I found out that I would do aaaaanything to get a giggle out of her.

    This, naturally, commuted to other relationships down the road. Go with what you know (especially when it works!)

    Sadly, I can’t recall which girl that was back in second grade.

  72. 72.

    Suzanne

    @sab: Many hugs. I’m sorry you both have to go through this.

    I know it’s a generalization/cliche, but I do observe that when women do the food purchasing and planning, both partners lose weight and are healthier. Apparently that is also borne out by evidence.

  73. 73.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @kalakal: I watched the video. I’m not the smartest guy in the world but I can count and I only see 6 roundabouts. How do they come up with 7?

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Roses brought to honor love on that Valentine’s Day in 2018 lay withered, their dried and cracked petals scattered across classroom floors still smeared with the blood of victims gunned down by a former student more than four years ago.

    Bullet holes pocked walls, and shards of glass from windows shattered by gunfire crunched underfoot at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, where shooter Nikolas Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members.

    Nothing had been changed, except for the removal of the victims’ bodies and some personal items.

    Twelve jurors and 10 alternates who will decide whether Cruz gets the death penalty or life in prison made a rare visit to the massacre scene on Thursday, retracing Cruz’s steps through the three-story freshman building, known as Building 12.

    After they left, a group of journalists was allowed in for a much quicker first public view. The sight was deeply unsettling.

    Yeah, I don’t need to see that.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    @oatler: That’s a classic!

    I watched the debut of the Netflix series last night.  I doubt it will appeal to too many new fans (ie, folks who have never read the graphic novels) but it was cool to see it on-screen.

  77. 77.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: There’s a large outer one, a smaller inner one, and five even-smaller ones between. The innermost one goes in the opposite direction from the others — it’s like a ball-bearing axle, now that I look at it again.

  80. 80.

    Miss Bianca

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:

    The only Kardashian I give a hoot about is Garak.

    lol – me, too!

    (I’ve been doing a rewatch of Deep Space Nine for the first time since it was on the air IRT, and it’s a little disturbing how hot I find the Cardassian make-up looks on the guys, Garak in particular. The women, not so much.)

  81. 81.

    CaseyL

    @Suzanne: What “good sense of humor” means to me is an appreciation of absurdity and a willingness to laugh at oneself. IOW, a sense of proportion and not taking oneself seriously.

  82. 82.

    Miss Bianca

    @sab:

    I now know what a glaring of cats is

    Oh, that’s hilarious, that is. So apt.

    And terrifying, because, well, apt.

  84. 84.

    zhena gogolia

    @sab: I’m so glad you checked in. This all sounds so difficult. I hope his continued recovery goes smoothly.

  85. 85.

    Cmorenc

    @Suzanne: WTF is a “cishet” woman?  Sometimes I think we make it too easy for RW sexist assholes to ridicule us on the progressive side for being too-obsessively “woke” in our speech

  86. 86.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: Amnesty International sure has shit the bed lately. Seems like they ought to know better than to let themselves get bulldozed like they did. Is Russian propagandizing just that effective, or has “both-sidesing” everything from an insurrection to an invasion just become so endemic among otherwise respectable institutions that they just can’t help themselves?

  88. 88.

    eclare

    @Cmorenc:   I knew what it meant, but I googled anyway, just to see how long it took.  It took maybe one second.  First result.

  92. 92.

    Cmorenc

    @eclare: yeah i can google too – why not simply say “heterosexual” (person)  which is familiar instead of some obscure term (in most quarters) like “cishet” ?  “Heterosexual” doesnt carry any oppressive meaning, and adopting “cishet” as a synonym only confuses most people outside hip circles except to mark you as someone with an agenda.

  95. 95.

    eclare

    @Cmorenc:   Those do not mean the same thing.  And het is short for heterosexual, so I don’t get the bee in your bonnet about this.

    Yeah, I do.

  96. 96.

    MisterDancer

    @Cmorenc: mark you as someone with an agenda

    Fuck yes, I have an agenda.

    Half the problem with Progressives is that we’re terrified of what Conservatives will say/do in reaction to supporting basic rights. I get the decades of trauma, I really do, but it’s time to at least acknowledge we have these trauma-based reactions, instead of justifying them.

    Insurrections don’t happen because you use terms like “cishet” or “Partner” or ask “what are your pronouns?”. We aren’t going to build common cause by curling up into a ball and avoiding making English work better.

  98. 98.

    Cmorenc

    @eclare: Concrete example: I am momentarily out on an oceanside beach in the loose company of several hundred people i don’t know, but have occasion to strike up friendly conversation with those nearby.  If I used the word “cishet”, how many of them are going to have the slightest clue WTF I am talking about?  Ok, so the beach is in North Carolina, not southern California.

  99. 99.

    eclare

    @Cmorenc:   I am out of this conversation, you are being intentionally obtuse.  No point.

    Hmm, Intentionally Obtuse might make a good band name.

  104. 104.

    Chris T.

    @zhena gogolia:

    But make sure not to mix up magazine and clip.

    Oh bejabbers! Gosh-all-Potomac, by St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of Purgatory!

    (spoiler link – and I’m particularly amused by the “homoerotic subtext” part)

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    BREAKING: My bank account.

    I put a bid in on the property in Central NY and it was accepted. Yay! Shit! (Repeat back to back every moment).

    Does anyone have a valium?

  111. 111.

    gwangung

    @Immanentize: People used to say exactly the same thing about “African American.”

    And Asian American. And they’ll (i.e., regressive white people) while ALWAYS blame it on “progressives” (meaning other white people) while denying the agency of the folks involved, who actually created the term.

  118. 118.

    Citizen Alan

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Was he the idiot who made that ill timed joke on SNL about the asshole with the eye patch that helped him pull ahead unexpectedly in a close race? And we’ve been stuck with that one eyed fascist asshole ever since?

  120. 120.

    Mike in NC

    I have a favorite photo of my lovely wife from 2019, playing mini golf on our cruise ship with the famous white cliffs of Dover in the background.

  124. 124.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @mrmoshpotato: Horace!!!!

    whole thing very very Terry Pratchett.  The more Discworld I read, the more English the whole thing got.  Pratchett made up very little.

    Along with the “famous for being famous,” which, unlike Horace the perambulatory cheese, is something worthy of ridicule but not just limited to the English.

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cmorenc: I get where you are coming from and there is no doubt more than a little truth to your first assertion about it turning some people off. At the same point I get where everyone else is coming from. To be honest, for this hillbilly it’s much ado about nothing. I neither know nor care about all the gender naming distinctions simply because, I’m not dating and I never will again. To me a person is just that, a person. If I use the wrong pronoun for somebody, I hope they will correct me and I suspect they will understand that I wasn’t making any kind of a political statement. Then I will pray that my few working brain cells can hang onto this new to me fact.

    It’s a brave new world, one I will be exiting someday soon. It is now far more my granddaughters’ world, than it is mine.

  131. 131.

    Ken

    @Baud: According to the google tubes, it’s a type of fortification. Which is embarrassing, since I thought it was a small ceramic dish.

  134. 134.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @Cmorenc: Concrete example: I am in an online liberal comments section, and some asshole is giving others a hard time for a word they used, saying they didn’t know what it meant, and that it wouldn’t fly at their local gathering.

    Then don’t fucking use that word, asshole! Or at least look it up yourself so you know what it means.

    Disrespect earns more disrespect back.

    And don’t hide behind the prejudices of your neighbors. That’s a weak move for sure.

    Ta!

  137. 137.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: If you were moving to Arkansas (or KY, IL, IA, NE, KS, OK) I would be happy to help like I did for many of my caving friends down there. One buddy had his house burn down and he held a house raising party one wkend (think of an Amish barn raising except with a bunch of half drunk, uncouth, foul mouthed cavers) We got it all up, barely. The last evening I was the only one still swinging a hammer putting up the last roof rafters.

    Unfortunately, NY is a bit more of a drive.

  139. 139.

    raven

    @Elizabelle: Well, given that the last year with Bohdi and the 12 with poor Lil Bit and all her problems were pretty stressful, we feel a little funny that we all took to each other so well.

     

    Remind me to tell the story of getting attacked by an Aussie who belongs to my buddy last weekend.

  140. 140.

    Suzanne

    @Cmorenc:

    If I used the word “cishet”, how many of them are going to have the slightest clue WTF I am talking about?

     
    I am not currently in a beach on North Carolina, but I did just finish a yoga class with my trans gay Spawn, who knows what that word means.

    As for your fellow beach-goers, I would be willing to bet that at least a few of them know what that word means. And, you know, you don’t have to use it.

    If I was currently on a beach in North Carolina, I might use this as an occasion to ask myself if i really would want to spend my limited free time in the company of those who might be offended if I used the term “cishet”. But that’s just me.

  142. 142.

    Benno

    @Suzanne: I don’t know how I feel about any of this pushback. How is language, let alone culture, supposed to change if we only talk to and hang out with people who already talk and think like us? Somebody has to (re) explain what cishet means several times a year to my MIL (daughter is queer, long-term partnered, among other regular intersections with the non#heteronormative). There’s no animosity or prejudice from her. She’s not even that old. She just doesn’t seem to get it, but she exhibits no issues at all when dealing with her grand daughter, partner, friends, community, etc. I suspect there are a lot of people like this. Maybe not a majority of her generation, but a lot of people who are well-meaning and at least ambivalent about the whole thing, if not overtly accepting. Yeah, I suppose we could just cordon all these people off until they die and language/culture/acceptance can change that way. Or we could, you know, engage them where they are on their beaches in NC and work on the long, slow process of ground level change.

  143. 143.

    Citizen Alan

    @Suzanne:

    I have this awful and seemingly irresistible tendency to reward myself for purchasing a cart full of healthy food at the grocery store by getting a candy bar or 2 to eat on the way home.

  145. 145.

    Redshift

    I love the Uffington Horse! I got to visit it once; I’ll have try to go for Chalking Day, didn’t realize anyone could participate.

  146. 146.

    Ruckus

    @eclare:

    Strange, I always thought that he was lower than dog shit. I don’t know what is lower than dog shit on the shit scale, I just always have assumed that he’s lower than it.

  151. 151.

    Ruckus

    @Benno:

    Having a sister and a mother with a similar story, I will say that if mom accepts that this is a relationship, and supports it by not being negative, then that is quite often as good as it gets. My mom had very specific concepts of what her children would do for work, would do with partners, would do for life, and none of them actually ended up our complete life stories. And yet there is a relationship that both sides can accept. And have. I think that is as good as it often gets.

  152. 152.

    Suzanne

    @Benno:

    Yeah, I suppose we could just cordon all these people off until they die and language/culture/acceptance can change that way. Or we could, you know, engage them where they are on their beaches in NC and work on the long, slow process of ground level change. 

    Eh. I have to do plenty of engagement with people who don’t share my worldview. I also have limited spare time and I don’t spend it with people I don’t like (hence I am at yoga class and not on the beach in North Carolina).

    And I absolutely think it’s silly to complain about language shift toward inclusivity on a liberal LGBT-friendly blog. Especially judging the validity of that shift by what the randos on the beach in the south think. They might not like it. I don’t really care.

  153. 153.

    sab

    @kalakal: Wow,  learned a new word today. My sister says that there are forts ( with ravelins) all over coastal Asia that look just like the Castillo San Marcos in St. Augustine Florida. Probably built by the Portuguese.

  155. 155.

    J R in WV

    When we spent a week in Tuscany, every town and big farm had stone walls to keep the barbarians out come late winter when food was getting scarce. No ravelins, tho, or at least not many left. Some in Spain and S France, tho.

  156. 156.

    OB-1

    So Kim Kashkashian and Peter Davidson broke up; i guess there will be no more viola music in the TARDIS library.

  157. 157.

    topclimber

    Oh, so late with this, compliments of GK Chesterton and the Ballad of the White Horse:
    Before the gods that made the gods
    Had seen their sunrise pass,
    The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
    Was cut out of the grass.

    Before the gods that made the gods
    Had drunk at dawn their fill,
    The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
    Was hoary on the hill.

    Age beyond age on British land,
    Aeons on aeons gone,
    Was peace and war in western hills,
    And the White Horse looked on.

    It goes on to spin the story of King Alfred and the days when Anglo-Saxons were
    an endangered group. Vikings, you know.

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