A screech owl attacks ornithologist Arthur A. Allen as he examines its young By: D. G. Allen From: The Book of Bird Life 1961

REMEMBER SKIP-IT FROM THE 90’S

my weapon of choice during school yard fights 

DnD campaign but the only weapons are 90′s toys @riskpig

Distance weapon: those sky dancer propeller toys.

I’ll allow it.

I have but two words:

Are those a weapon or piece of armor?

Party walks into the inn to rest and the pub looks like

Perfection.

@anotherspecter

I ride into battle on one of these

Animal Companions

Fresh combat

Monks have to use these

Wizard’s Spell book

Warlock Patrons

Archfey

Fiend

Celestial

Great Old One

The undying

THE B A R D

It got better since I last saw it

This is so weird bc being born in 1997 I saw all these toys… old, dirty, and faded by the sun

it’s so weird to think of them as new and current toys rather than the relics of a bygone age

Currency

Dungeon:

the party embarks upon a laser quest

for those who feel uneasy but don’t remember, that feeling is correct

I got a concussion from a skip-it once.

I saw a wall get shattered with a skip it at a birthday party

I broke a light fixture with one of those sky dancer things, and definitely cracked myself in the ankle with the skip-it more than once.

The only thing more deadly to ankles were razor scooters

Happy Spring Equinox! This is what the path near my house looked like yesterday.

The Nice Guys (2016)

Rewatched this tonight for the umpteenth time and remain convinced this sequence alone should've earned Gosling an Oscar. Underrated comedic genius. 10/10.

When you're out to slay.

When you're quivering in your boots.

There's more:

I thought I was pretty hip to calling my reps but I’d never previously heard about speaking to a staffer in charge of a particular issue! Good tips in this post from Gordana Richardson:

“Advice (from a high-level staffer for a Senator) on contacting your representatives:

You should NOT be signing online petitions or emailing. They are essentially ignored or trashed. Instead…

YOU SHOULD MAKE 6 CALLS A DAY: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative. Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to.

Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (DC and local), and exactly how many people discussed said topics. They're also sorted by zip code and area code.

Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1; closer to 11-1 regarding hot-button issues. Congressmen who may be on the fence to vote with the their party can be swayed by call volume. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven't.

So, when you call:

A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of the topic you're calling about ("Hi, I'd like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please") — local offices won't always have specific ones, but they might. Record names of staffers you speak with. Don't leave a message if at all possible.

B ) Give them your zip code even if they don’t ask for it. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they'll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

C) Make it personal if at all possible. "I voted for you in the last election and I'm worried/happy/whatever" "I'm a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos," "As a single mother…" etc.”

Hey, I want to help, but this is a lot, or at least it feels like a lot. So here's what I did to get through it. I took it in 3 steps, one step a day.

Step 1: Go to www.house.gov and enter your Zip Code. It will tell you who your representative is. Hypothetically, my Zip Code is 12345. I received this screen:

If you click the linked name under the picture on the left, it will take you to their Gov site. EDIT: Apparently some Zip Codes have multiple representatives, but I'm also told that the site will walk you through how to figure out which Rep is yous.

Find your representative's phone number. It is somewhere on their site. Tonkos and a few other's I checked at random are at the very bottom of their screen. Find every office phone number on the list, write them down where you will see them.

Now you do the same for your two senators, but quartzevelen handily made a list, so you can just Ctrl + F your state name. Write down those Office numbers as well. You should now have around 6 phone numbers written down.

Congratulations! You're done with Step 1! Continue onto Step 2 once you're ready, I recommend starting it as soon as possible, but feel free to do it a day latter.

Step 2: Think about what you want to say, and WRITE IT DOWN. Please Write it down so you can stare at it and read it aloud during step 3. I don't have a good script for this, I think there are some in the notes, but I personally avoid Tumblr Notes like the plague. I don't want to give any advice on what to write or say, because I have very little experience in that regard, I'm just trying to make the barriers to starting lower.

Step 3: Call at least one phone number. This is the biggest step, but it's also easy if you've done steps 1 and 2 on previous days. If there are reasons preventing you from calling, you could also send an email. It's going to be harder to find your Rep's email address, but it should still be doable in roughly the same way.

Congratulations! You've done something to help! You've done more than a lot of other people on Tumblr. If you want to do more, you can now do Step 4, as many times and as often as you want.

Step 4: Call at least one more phone number than you did the day before, until you're calling every phone number you wrote down.

I left several very stuttery voice messages when I called my rep, because they didn't answer, despite me calling at what I assumed would be normal business hours.

Reblogging to normalize stuttery voice messages! You did it! HELL YEAH!

Your lovely step-by-step writeup was the nudge I needed to place some calls today for library funding and Social Security, so thank you! (I also got a very sweet call-back from a staffer who informed me 5 Calls actually had the wrong rep for my address. I live in a weird unincorporated area, so that explains why I've gotten conflicting answers from look-up tools.)

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

you're falling in the trap!! it will be read by many people, many times, and it will live on in their memories. and maybe no single other human will match you in time spent dedicated to your story, but as a collective we will outlast you. acts of creation only grow when they are shared

This. Writing is not like dinner. It can be consumed many times

no amount of bird posts i make can ever capture how truly strange bitterns are

i say this with so much love and adoration in my heart. what the fuck is that

(american, least, great, and yellow bitterns)

Sometimes someone puts their cat in the friend Slack and you gotta dress ’em up in a little outfit I don't make the rules

Blessings.

And also with you

As a former librarian I'm actually required to remind you that many libraries that subscribe to Libby are opted into a program that lets you subscribe and access magazines for free with no wait

And that this is actually a really fun, low cost way to not only access news and larger cultural magazines, but also to get free patterns for many different crafts that you can screenshot if need be and that lower the financial barriers to entry for trying new things

From my experience working in both academic and public libraries, many libraries are use it or lose it funding-- I have to say this because a lot of patrons feel guilty for how much they use the library and how often they're using it funny enough, but the worst thing you can do for libraries is not try out new features and not use what's already given to you as much as possible.

The numbers that come as a result of your patronage are how most libraries justify their continued existence in times of financial hardship, which sucks but, go check out some magazines on Libby!