#emigrant

[thatpollguy]

Do you live in Finland?

Yes

No, but I used to

No, I've never lived there

Voting ended onNov 16, 2025

[sarielsnowings]

“El sueño de la razón…” 🥀

Here’s the full piece I made for the Claveles Zine, a lovely art project featuring Spanish artists. I decided to explore my complex relationship as an emigrant with my hometown, featuring some of its most beautiful imagery.

I’m so glad I can finally show you all the full piece, but I’m also so nervous. This is, naturally, a very personal piece for many reasons. I do hope you’ll enjoy it.

[abwwia]

Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993)

Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993) was a German-Swedish painter. She was an artist of figurative paintings in Germany's Weimar Republic. She emigrate to Sweden in 1937. via W #PalianSHOW

Lotte Laserstein28 Nov 1898 – 21 Jan 1993was a German-Swedish painter. Lotte Laserstein painting her large work “Evening over Potsdam” photographed by Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski She was an artist of figurative paintings in Germany’s Weimar Republic. The National Socialist regime and its anti-Semitism forced her to leave Germany in 1937 and to emigrate to Sweden. In Sweden, she continued to…

Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993)

[billionneuronscurious]

Emigrant Butterfly.

[gaysie]

i want to live at Camp Chitaqua.

i will spell literature as hippo porn and use patrol reports as sexting. i would watch Spreadsheets on Laptop all night while drinking an Eldritch Horror with my Cabin. i’ll have Chitaqua Toast every day that’s worth 5 bottles of Joe beer. i would go to Ichabod every night. i am also more likely to meet brownies, hot witches, Roman goddesses, and Women with “A” Names.

i wish i was Chitaquan :’(

[scotianostra]

On September 21st 1808, Eóghann MacColla,  commonly known in his native language as Bàrd Loch Fìne (the “Poet of Loch Fyne”), was born.

Known more commonly as Evan MacColl, yer man was born at Kenmore on the banks of Loch Fyne, Argyll and Bute, not to be confused with the Perthshire Kenmore, on Loch Tay.

It was with a rich heritage of tradition  MacColla was born into, his father was Dugald MacColl who was possessed of “the richest store of Celtic song of any man living in his part of the country.” His mother, Mary Cameron, “was noted for her storehouse of traditional tales, legendary and fairy tales.” and the are he was brought up in was by and large a  Gaelic speaking region, hence I am using his birth name in the language he knew as he grew up.

Though MacColla was fully employed farming and fishing, and later with road repairs, he nevertheless received a fair education. His father was fond of literature and procured books for his children when he could. The local village school offered a very limited education in English, and his father employed a tutor who taught his son English and instilled in him a love of Burns  and of English literature in general. His poetic efforts began in boyhood, founded on a rich vein of the native Gaelic literary tradition surrounding him in youth and inherited from his family, although also inflected by the growing influence of Lowland Scots and anglophone literature.

The majority of the MacColla family emigrated to Canada in 1831, but he could not make up his mind to leave Scotland. He continued his employment in road repairs while composing many of his best-regarded Gaelic lyrics. He published his first book of poems at his own expense in Glasgow in 1836. This was The Mountain Minstrel; or, Clàrsach nam Beann, and it sold enough to give the author a small profit. In 1837, he began contributing to the Gaelic Magazine then published in Glasgow. From October 1838 to January 1839, MacColl made a tour of northeast Scotland which was recorded in a diary published by Alexander Mackenzie in his biography of MacColla. Later in 1839 he became a clerk with the Customs House in Liverpool.

He remained in Liverpool until 1850, when, because of declining health, he obtained six months’ leave of absence and visited friends and relatives in Canada. While staying on his brother’s farm on the Trent River, he was introduced to Malcolm Cameron, then a Minister of the Crown and was offered a position in the Canadian Customs at Kingston, Ontario, which he accepted, a  post he stayed in for some thirty years.

MacColla wrote numerous poems while in Canada, including one in Gaelic in praise of a Scottish organization in Toronto in 1858. Being literate in Gaelic and was a well respected authority on the literature of the Highlands Eóghann was sought out in Canada by those who took an interest in the subject. During this time he became known as “the Gaelic Bard of Canada”

One of MacColl’s English poems is “Robin”, written for the occasion of the Burns Centennial celebration in Kingston.  The poem’s easy and melodious expression is in excellent imitation of Burns’ own style. He had been for many years the bard of the St. Andrew’s Society of Kingston, and his anniversary poems are greatly appreciated by all Scotsmen. His poetic gifts were inherited by his daughter, Mary J. MacColl who was also a published poet.

Taobh Abhainn Aora.

Mo chiad mìle beannachd air an èiteag chiùin cheanalta Bha leamsa glè leannanach an-raoir taobh Abhainn Aora

Mo rùn a’ chaileag Mhorairneach Dh'fhàg iomadh ògbhean farmadach Is na gillean chleachd bhith sealg orr’ A-nis air lorg mo ghaoil-sa

Fhir leis nach toigh bhith dealachadh Rid’ chridhe, fan bhon chailin ud Air neo chan fhada dh'fhanas tu Gun leòn nach leighis lèigh dhut.

Bean òg na pearsa dhàicheil i Bean òg a’ chridhe chàrdeil i Bean chaoin a’ bheulain blàth-bhinn ’S nan deud mar deàrrsadh grèine

Gu uile dreach mo leannain-sa A moladh mar bu mhath leam dhuibh ‘Sann dh'fheumainn spiorad rannaireachd Seann fhilidhean na Fèinne

Tha i gu lèir cho fhurailteach Cho ghaolach aobhach fhuranach ’S gu bheil mi fhin a h-uile là Dol tuille is tuille an dèidh oirr’

Translation

By River aray’s side

My hundred thousand blessings on the meek and mild precious maid who was most amorous with me last night by the River Aray

My desire the Morvern lass who made

many a young woman jealous - the lads

who used to pursue them now solicit

my loved one.

You who do not like to part with your heart, stay away from yon damsel other- wise it will not be long before you have a wound no physician could cure for you.

She is the young woman of the comely figure, the young woman of the friendly heart, the tender woman of the affectionately sweet talk and the teeth like shining sun.

In order to praise to you all the aspects of my sweetheart as I would wish, for sure I would need the versifying spirit of the old poets of the Fianna.

She is entirely so courteous, so loving, joyful, welcoming, that every day my passion for her goes from strength to strength.

[weeb-daddy-sempai]

My great grandfather left Italy for America as fascism rose there, and never looked back. He never said a word about what happened to him in the old country, but it must have been traumatic. Certainly, he wouldn't have wanted to be drafted into Mussolini's army and oppress his own neighbors, live in fear. He wanted to live someplace decent.

Generations later, from the once-great country my ancestor traveled to, I repeat, fuck fascism. Fuck the white supremacy, trans- and queerphobia, antisemitism, genocides, violence, paranoia, gleeful ignorance, and arrogance that come with it.

I want to leave America someday, and hope I can do it as an expat rather than a refugee.

I am an avid student of history. If things got better from this point somehow, it would be a miracle. Yes, more people are good on the whole, but the bad ones are violent, willing, and the rule of law is weak.

[quite-important]

when you’re living in a country that fucks you over with election so you think “oh, maybe I should go back” and then you realise you’re Polish

so I’m fucked either way

might as well be fucked in English