sunflowers bloom

rise up

[cute-catts]

[plsfollowthesun]

"children become readers on the laps of their parents"

[plsfollowthesun]

The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs

Policies that gave addicts clean needles and places to use drugs were intended to reduce harm. They created a “zombie apocalypse.”

Late last year, I walked roughly a mile from downtown Seattle to the working-class neighborhood of Little Saigon and came upon a montage of human despair. An open-air drug market stretched along the intersection of 12th and Jackson: about 250 people, many smoking fentanyl or bent over in the thrall of the drug, tilting as if mid-fall. Three women lay passed out on the sidewalk, their chests slowly rising and falling, while fellow addicts stepped over them and dealers made sales. Young boys, schoolbags on their backs, stood on a far corner and watched.

[plsfollowthesun]

The Doulas Who Help Us Die

In an aging America, thousands of people have become death doulas, supporting others as they confront the end of life.

Before meeting a client, Virginia Chang, an end-of-life doula, performs a ritual that she calls “becoming an empty vessel.” She closes her eyes, plants her feet on the ground, and holds her arms at her sides, palms up. She breathes deeply through her nose. To still her mind, she begins to quietly chant a Sanskrit mantra such as lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu—may all beings everywhere be happy and free. Then she starts to move, pushing her hands away from her body, raising them above her head, and lowering them again in a gesture of surrender. Because she does this on the streets of New York City, no one pays her any attention. Delivery guys squeeze by with their handcarts; kids dodge and weave on their scooters; dogs sniff near her ankles and move on. Chang is a slight woman in her early sixties, with graying hair cut into a long, straight bob. She likes to wear lacquered red clogs, stretchy black pants, and a thin scarf of turquoise or coral pink, even in the heat of summer. To be of use to the dying, she believes that she must first set aside the buzzing miscellany of thoughts and cares that constitutes “her shit,” and that is what her ritual helps her do.

[voiceforjesus]

Today's Prayer ✝️

Dear Father in Heaven, we long for courage. You will answer our prayers and again and again grant us strength, the power of Your Spirit, the only power that can strengthen us. We thank You for all You have done for us. Help us onward from victory to victory until everything on earth is won for the good, to Your honor among all mankind. Amen.

[honeygrl]

The sun will always rise 

ig: annahndrcksn

[04k96]

[achillesinhighheels]

[dailyeffectiveprayer]

A daily effective prayer for today to bless you. 🙏

[plsfollowthesun]

What Students Learn From Blue-Book Exams - The Atlantic

Bring Back the Blue-Book Exam

The humble booklet is more than just a last redoubt against cheating. Staring down its empty pages, students discover what they’re capable o

Across the faded blue covers of the exam books in my attic, I can trace the arc of my academic career. I can still see the grades I received on tests in “The Meaning of Abstraction in Modern Art” (A) and in Neurobiology (B–). Just the sight of the booklets is enough for me to feel the pressure to perform, to sculpt the contents of a semester’s worth of knowledge into some fresh shape. But by the time I became a college professor myself, in 2013, the blue book had begun to disappear. Why struggle to discern student penmanship, or risk misplacing a final exam in the trunk of one’s Subaru (to cite a completely hypothetical example), when tests, like everything else, can be administered on a laptop?

[ashleynkardashian]

[plsfollowthesun]

America’s retirement nightmare has arrived

Economic insecurity and the rise of artificial intelligence are dismantling the traditional American Dream of retirement, leaving many older

The American Dream once came with an actual finish line. For much of the 1950s and 1960s, the script was simple enough for a child to understand. You worked hard, stayed loyal to your employer, and bought a modest home. Then, somewhere around 65, you retired with enough dignity to enjoy your remaining years. Retirement was the final reward for showing up, day after day, year after year. That promise has been dismantled piece by piece, transforming the American Dream into a cruel form of comedy where the joke is always on the worker.

[miseducatedmelanicmuse]

[agelessphotography]

Diana Ross at Studio 54, Sonia Moskowitz, 1979

[vexheart]

[musesaspirations]

justine skye

[shesanonymousfornow]

I love non-sexual intimacy.

Like let me sit your lap with your hands on my waist while I talk your ear off about something stupid that I just feel like telling you about. Let me play with your hands. Let me run my nails along your muscles to relax you. Lay your head in my lap while I scratch your head so you can fall asleep. Let’s cuddle while we watch tv at night in a dim lounge room with only the soft light of a lamp. Let me brush your hair and play with it. Let me literally just exist in your space.