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#ozarks recommended reads
hestusjamsession · 9 months
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I’m currently farming light dragon parts (sorry Zelda) and decided to do a follow up to my last post while I wait.
This list is all Linked Universe baby. Once again, if you know the blogs of some of these authors I’d appreciate it if you could tag them.
1. Linked Universe Age Swap AU by LazuliQuetzal
Let’s kick this off with a bang. This is a series of one shots centered around the Chain being alternate ages. We got Old Man Hyrule. We got Angsty Teen Time. We got Wolfkin Wild. It’s great. Check it out.
2. Dawn of the Fourth by LazuliQuetzal
By the same author, Dawn of the Fourth is one of those fics that I don’t think I’ll be able to do justice, so here’s a snippet:
Wild reached out and brushed a finger across the body’s cheek. Then he licked his finger. “Eleven,” he decided, smacking his lips.
“Hey, what the fuck.”
“Dirt tastes different depending on age—”
“No, don’t explain it! Why are you like this, I hate you so much—“
3. The Man and the Pup by Bubbly_Kandy
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Hyrule, there were eight boys and a man all trying to exist in a world that doesn’t want them.
This one has some serious fairy tale vibes which I love. It’s also kind of dark at times. It’s not finished but maybe if I point enough people towards it the author will pick it up again. Who knows? One can dream.
4. Deserving by @a-little-bit-of-ravioli
When Colin overhears part of a conversation between his father and his adopted big brother, he decides it’s up to him and his friends to protect Link from those wishing to do him harm.
5. Malevolence by @thescrapwitch
Wolfie eats something he shouldn’t and things go downhill from there. Secrets are revealed, friendships are tested, and Ganon is a jerk.
This fic is a masterclass in tension. If you need some heavy angst with a happy ending, this is your fic.
The one shot Wolf Heart by the same author is also very good.
6. Our Nightly Confident by Wisetypewriter
Alternative titles are “Wolfie is the Best Boy” and “Men Will Literally Talk to a Wolf Before Going to Therapy.”
This was one of the first LU fics I read and it’s so sweet. If you’ve liked Lupis Vigilans (coming up) you’ll really like Our Nightly Confident.
7. The Fierce Dadity Series by @skyloftian-nutcase
A series focusing on everyone’s favorite Mask-bound God/Spirit just trying to take care of his favorite mortal.
There’s a lot of fics by Skye that I love and it’s hard to narrow it down. But Fierce Dadity is up there.
8. Brethren in a Cradle by @skyward-floored
After coming across a village raised to the ground, the Chain finds its sole survivor: a baby boy. They quickly learn that there is more to this child than meets the eye.
The “Baby Joins the Chain AU”. Also I always get Skyward_floored and Skyloftian-nutcase mixed up and I would like to make a formal apology.
9. Where Your Meant to Be by @adrift-in-thyme
Malon has lived her entire life in her tower, never seeing the outside world. When a former-hero-turned-thief climbs through her window, her life takes a whole new turn.
The Tangled AU I didn’t know I wanted until I read it.
10. Lupus Vigilans by @pluviatrix
A character study of each of the Chain told from the point of view of Twilight, Hillbilly in Resident.
Wholesome and hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure, I can’t recommend this fic enough. Also, I’m from the Ozarks and it’s cool to see that accent represented in the wild.
Their other fic, And Still The Cradle Blossoms is also really good if you’re like me and need a good cry at three in the morning.
11. Down by @musashi
When the Chain gets hit by a horrible illness, it’s up to Sky to take care of eight stubborn heroes. Each chapter is focused on a different member, and Twilight’s chapter in particular hit me in the feels.
I love sickfics for some reason and this one is so good.
12. Colors by HylianHarmony
A Four centric fic where he reveals the Colors to the rest of the Chain. Also he has a mind palace which is pretty neat.
This fic isn’t finished but it’s too good not to recommend.
13. Alone Together by Blueskullcandy
Another Four centric fic but told from the point of view of different members of the chain (including Four). The Twilight chapter in particular is worth the read by itself.
This fic is also not finished but I still recommend it. It’s really good.
14. Brothers Becoming by @turtleduckscribbles
After a fight with Twilight, Legend is forced to face his fears and insecurities and confront the one person he wants to avoid at all cost.
Prickly Legend learns to let others in.
15. Not Like You by HylianHarmony
Wind deals with serious imposter syndrome, but the others don’t realize it until it’s almost too late.
This is one of my comfort fics y’all. When I’m down I’ll read it and it always manages to cheer me up. I can’t recommend this one enough.
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crmsnmth-journal · 21 days
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3/7/2024 9:06 PM
For a Thursday, it was a pretty good day. Woke up, had my coffee and morning cigarette on the porch, slowly cleaned random spots in the house. Went to see both my psychiatrist and my psychologist so that killed two hours and it's taken a long time, but I know how good therapy is for me. It's another outlet to get everything out of my head. It's like if I don't vent it, either writing, or therapy or whatever, the thoughts get all tangled and it gets overwhelming. It sometimes feels like my heads going to just explode into a shower of half-finished thoughts and brightly colored confetti. So I take therapy pretty seriously.
It was after therapy that the day could've turned horrible, but I'll be damned if it didn't stay on a pretty good track. I guess some background is needed here though. So my father passed away in January of this year, complications of a stroke and a seperate car accident. He chose to go out in hospice, rather than spend the rest of his life stuck in a bed. I don't blame him. But his death was the catalyst for something that had been building for over a decade. A serious anger at the very idea of pointless suffering. What was the point of the stroke if he was just going to die from a car accident? Stuff like that. My grandmother is another one who lets me vent, but she is extremely Christian. I'm agnostic at best. I believe in a higher power, but I'm not sure I really believe in a God figure. And her and I get into these weird theological debates. The last one we had was a few weeks ago, once again about the concept of pointless suffering. I may not be Christian, but I have read the bible, and I like theology in general. Religion is really fascinating once you get past the horrible things it's caused. I can hold my own against her. Because of this last discussion, she made an appointment for me with the pastor of her church. And at three o'clock today, I found myself sitting across from a preacher. I was there for two hours talking to this man about the concept of suffering. I asked why an infant could be born, only to die two days later of some complication. What was the purpose of that child's short miserable life? I gained a lot of respect for this man of the cloth today. He flat out told me that he didn't know. It doesn't make sense. He didn't try to feed me the "God's plan" bullshit. He didn't try hard, and he answered a few questions I had about Job's tale of pure suffering. The guy was honest with me. Sure, I didn't get any of my questions answered, but if even a man who's given his life to his God doesn't get it either, I don't feel so…alone about it, I guess. I'm still just as angry, and I think I will be for a while.
Also, I hate Jason Bateman so so much. For some reason, I put Juno on. I tell myself it's for it's amazing soundtrack, but what can I say, it's nostalgia too. Either way, I always forget Jason Bateman's in this and I just want to punch him in his face. With a baseball bat. And too think, I absolutely love Arrested Development, but even then I want to just push him down a flight of stairs. He just…irks me. I've tried getting into Ozark so many times by the recommendation of others, and I don't think I've ever made it halfway through the first season. Jason Bateman just looks like the guy who'd be an arrogant over-sarcastic dick-head. And I'm truly convinced that Micheal Cera was never supposed to be an actor. He just wandered on set and is way to awkward and polite to correct and it just became his life.
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jasper-pagan-witch · 1 year
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Hi friend! Hope your end of the year is going well, and that you're drinking enough water.
You said that your asks were open and empty, and yooo, do I have a few questions my ADHD brain forgot about. 😂
One, I remember seeing a couple posts from you about deities and entities, and I was curious about your general experience with how you connected with them. Don't want to pry, but curious about the process you went through. (It's my next subject of study after I finish a tarot project)
Two, what things (witchcraft related or not) do you like to do at the end of the year?
Three, what is your least favorite misconception about the witchcraft community, and why?
And four, favorite source (like a blog, yt channel, book) for spell, tips, etc?
This reads like more of a "get to know you" vs anything specific, doesn't it? 😅😂
Ooo, I'm gonna have a lot to stay here, so I'm gonna break out my fun post dividers that I make over on @jasper-graphics to help split things up!
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How I connect with deities is interesting compared to all of the 101 posts I see about deity work. I build an altar, verbally introduce myself once, and then proceed as though they're definitely already there. I'll use divination such as tarot to interact with deities and interpret messages, because I fucking love tarot.
Other than that? As long as I feel like I'm getting a go-ahead, I'll just go ahead. If I don't, I'll thank them for their time and put things away - sometimes some of the stuff will go to other deities, but otherwise everything gets put in a box together in case I need to talk to or work with that deity in particular again.
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I just fucking rest at the end of the year. I don't care about "preparing for the new year" or "saying good-bye to the old year" in any way. I just have to remind myself to use the right year for a good couple of months while I get used to the forward march of time.
Boring? Yes. Do I care? No.
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I don't like any of the general ideas of the witchcraft community, even back when I was a witch. I don't care for people calling us all Wiccans, or all dark, or all "black magic users" (which is SUPER RACIST btw), or all soft and sweet, or that we all follow the Wheel of the Year...I just don't like stereotypes, even if they're "accurate" to myself or others.
That's why I'm a wizard, not a witch. I gave up on the whole thing because I was tired of having to scream not all witches at Generic Wicca Is Witchcraft Is Wicca Book #347.
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I have many favorite sources for ideas. I tend to hoard posts on @jasper-grimoire, but I'm a big fan of the following things:
Books:
Grovedaughter Witchery | Bree NicGarran/@breelandwalker
Ozark Folk Magic | Brandon Weston
Queer Magic | Tomas Prower
Morbid Magic | Tomas Prower
Do I Have to Wear Black? | Mortellus
honestly most of the books in the beginner magic section of my bookshelf
YouTube Channels:
Annabel Margaret | The Green Witch (same person, two YouTube accounts)
The Witch of Wonderlust
Chaotic Witch Aunt
I'm also becoming fond of The Stitchin' Witch, but that's one of those channels where I have to speed up the voice.
I watch a few more magic/tarot YouTubers, but I keep yelling at them to get to the point and to script their videos because they stumble over their thoughts, repeat things over and over, or fill their speech with "uh" and "um". It's YouTube, you can edit your videos before you put them up, I promise-
Ahem. Moving on.
Tumblr Blogs:
@crazycatsiren
@will-o-the-witch
@serpentandthreads
@stagkingswife
@traegorn
@windvexer
@breelandwalker of course
And more, but once you follow all of these people, you can look at the recommended blogs on their pages and go from there. Go observe their posts and read their masterposts. Give them your money if you can. They do so much to better this platform and the magic community as a whole and deserve to be supported.
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Hopefully this gave you a bit of insight into what I consider to be pretty decent things! Above all, be respectful.
~Jasper
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serpentandthreads · 1 year
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Meet the Folk Practitioner
November 14th, 2022 // Do Not Reblog
Personal
Name: Runa
Pronouns: She/Her [Default] | Any//All [However You Perceive Me]
Age: 22
Signs: Leo Sun, Libra Moon, Sagittarius Rising
Where: USA, in the deep south
Magical Interests
Southern + Appalachian Folk Magic
A Little Bit of Pop Culture Magic [Thanks Jasper]
Ancestor Veneration + Ancestor Work
Animal Spirits/Venerating + Working with Animal Spirits
Animal + Plant Archetypes
Incorporating Magic into Art [Crochet + Pyrography]
Divination [Playing Cards, Tarot, Oracle, Bone Throwing, Elder Futhark Runes, Ogham]
Animism + Syncretism
Folklore + History
Some Of My Favorite Magic Blogs
@jasper-pagan-witch @windvexer @a-witch-named-crow @le-coffee-witch @pondering-the-kaiju @stagkingswife @sewceress @growing-yet-into-magic @hexfeathers @christowitch @crimsondawnsdevotionals @coinandcandle @breelandwalker
Fun Facts
I've been practicing magic since 2018, and narrowed my path down to being a folk practitioner as of 2021.
I am a fiber artist (crochet & loom knitting) and a pyrography artist.
I also sew, though it is still a very new hobby to me.
I am a vulture. As in, I ethically collect animal bones and pelts.
I enjoy a variety of video games, mostly cozy games.
I'm more of a coffee person, but I do enjoy sweet tea.
I have adhd and was recently diagnosed with autism. Things have been wild trying to navigate all of that.
Did I mention that I am the local forest hag? Because I am.
Miscellaneous
Things I Do In My Downtime
Crochet & Loom Knit
Pyrography
Read & Write
Binge Movies & Shows
Gardening [The dream is to build a homestead.]
Play Video Games [Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon, Rimworld, Pokemon, The Long Dark, etc]
Favorite Films
Movies: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Lilo & Stitch, The Lion King 2 (I relate to Kiara more than Simba, sorry), Brave
Series: Ozark, Peaky Blinders, The Originals, Shameless (US), Outer Banks, Castlevania, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Legend of Korra
Currently Binging
Currently rewatching The Walking Dead. Stopped watching it after Glenn died. Now watching it over since the show is ending. Feel free to drop recommendations for movies and shows!
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practical-herbalist · 2 months
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About
Hey there, I'm H (they/them) and this is my side blog focusing on (practical) herbalism and herbal medicine.
There's also a lot of content relating to: medical chemistry, foraging, healthy recipes, cultivation and harvesting, bushcraft, and hunting/fishing.
There will be some content relating to: ethical/humane omnivorism, locavorism, animal welfare, worker's welfare and rights, anti macro farm / intensive farming, land stewardship, and environmentalism, though my blog specifically for ethical omnivorism is ethical-omnivore-h.
My main is homo-adaptionem. My witchcraft blog is grotesque-grimoire. My youTube channel is H. adaptionem. You can see all of my playlists at h-adaptionem.tumblr.com/ytplaylists. Misc Series, including Practical Herbalism: h-adaptionem.tumblr.com/miscseriesytpl.
I'm a witch, a home cook, a novice herbalist, a novice forager, and a newbie ethical onmivorous flexitarian. I am NOT an activist, just a dipshit with opinions!
Currently researching: practical-herbalist.tumblr.com/research Currently growing: practical-herbalist.tumblr.com/garden Disclaimers: practical-herbalist.tumblr.com/disclaimers FAQ: practical-herbalist.tumblr.com/faq
Foraging in: the Ozarks of the USA Ontario of Canada
Stay safe and stay weird!
Blog info below; I recommend reading before you view the rest of the blog; definitely read before following. Enter at your own risk.
TL;DR:
disabled, LGBT, an adult
EXCESSIVE TAGGER; most trigger tags have "CW" before them; tags all slurs
doesn't mind like/reblog spam
doesn't check mentions or replies; send an ask if you need to get my attention
OG tags: Answered - asks I've answered Face of H - pics of me pracitcal-herbalist - refers to this blog H. adaptionem - refers to my YT channel of the same name Homo adaptionem - all og posts
Like/reblog spamming is fine, I don't mind at all.
If you want my attention, you have a better shot if you shoot me an ask, as I rarely check my mentions/replies. I have a shit ton of stuff blacklisted, so I may not see your asks/mentions/posts if they include slurs, content triggering to me, etc. It's not that I'm ignoring you, I'm just trying to take better care of my mental health, Y'know? Gotta police my own intake of content, etc. etc.
Most things are tagged, so block what you need to using tumblr's own blocking function, Xkit, or Tumblr Savior. Slurs and triggering content usually have a CW before them, even if the OP doesn't consider the content triggering. I tag excessively, deal with it.
DNIs/DNFs are useless and performative; I just block (& report if needed) who I dislike/etc, and I block liberally, for any reason. I respect most other people's DNIs, if they're accessible. If I can't read it, I won't bother. Don't like me? Block me.
I block anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti-chemo, anti-recovery, anti-medicine types, and those who promote quackery and fake "treatments" or "cures" on sight. This includes: New Agers, starseeds/indigo children, crystal healers, energy healers, faith healers, etc.
I block radfems of all types (febfems, perfs, terfs, tirfs, twerfs, swerfs, etc.) because their underlying rhetoric & theory goes completely against our understanding of biology, neurology, sex, gender, and DNA. Also they're sexist and LGBTphobic lmao
I also block trad weirdos (not trad goths, you are loved here <3) for reasons I hope are obvious. I'm a bisexual tranny they/them who hates organized religion, hugs trees and despises big oil, loves weird ass porn & kinks, and loves bodily autonomy & thinks abortion, tattoos, piercings, & transitioning is cool. You like natural medicine because you're under the delusion that it's a part of your (bigoted) heritage. I like natural medicine because chemistry is cool and plants are neat. We are not the same.
Stay safe and stay weird!
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demi-shoggoth · 1 year
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2022 Reading Log, pt 29
My life has been tough lately, so I do what makes me happy. Read books about monsters.
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141. The Old Snatchengrabber’s Big Book of Child Eating Monsters by Mike Rosen. This is not beloved British children’s author Mike Rosen, or asshole Republican pundit Mike Rosen. This is a different one. This book is a collection of folkloric bogeymen, illustrated in a cartoony style. Most of these are European, but some from around the world do appear. Some liberties have been taken with the monsters at hand, mostly in the art—the yara-ma-wa-yho, for example, is an amorphous blob instead of a hairless monkey-frog, and Krampus is both female and thicc. Brief, but pleasant.
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142. The United States of Cryptids by J. W. Ocker. I’ve quite enjoyed Ocker’s Season of the Witch and Cursed Objects, and I quite enjoyed this book as well. The book is as much about crypto-tourism as it is about actual cryptozoology. As such, it takes a pretty broad view of what a cryptid is, including various UFOlogical entities, as well as folkloric entities like the wendigo or Navajo shapeshifters, if they have places to visit or sell merchandise for. It’s also pretty respectful, acknowledging that those aforementioned Navajo shapeshifters, for example, are taboo to a lot of Navajo people still. Ocker has clearly done his homework, and acknowledges that creatures like the Ozark Howler are modern hoaxes, as well as suggesting some very obscure monsters that are ripe for becoming tourist attractions (such as the Derry Fairy, the Prime Hook Swamp Creature and the Kodiak Dinosaur).
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143. The Enemies of Rome by Stephen Kershaw. In some ways, this is the best whirlwind tour of Roman history I could imagine, covering events from the mythical foundation of Rome to the last of the Western emperors. It is most interested in what the Romans thought of the various people they fought and usually defeated, and how Romans built their own identity as separate from “barbarian”, even though they themselves were barbarians from the point of view of Greek culture, which they wholeheartedly appropriated. A lot of time is spent in the late Republic era, which I appreciated. Too often, books about Rome written for a popular audience skip straight from the Punic Wars to Julius Caesar. One thing I didn’t like, however, was its constant use of modern neologisms. “Fake news”, for example, shows up more than five times before I stopped counting. It was cute once, but rapidly became irritating.
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144. Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws by Adrienne Mayor. This is a collection of short articles written for various magazines and websites by Mayor, collected and occasionally updated. Most of them are on the subject of weird ephemera of the classical world, often times animal themed. Examples include several articles on tourism in Greece during Roman times, a history of Roman perfumes, the use of weasels as household mousers in the Classical world, and of course writings on Greek and Roman monsters. The book includes her original article proposing that the griffin is based on Protoceratops fossils, and the argument is pretty much just “I went looking for a real animal that looks like a griffin, because I couldn’t imagine that it was a symbolic hybrid, and this is what I found”.  In the foreword, she refers to that essay as “embarrassing”, although whether because she has repudiated that (very poorly supported) hypothesis or merely because of its fannish tone addressed to Jack Horner, remains unsaid. I can’t say I recommend this book, but I didn’t consider reading it a complete waste of time.
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145. Eaters of the Dead by Kevin J Wetmore Jr. If I could describe this book in one word, it would be “sloppy”. It is a survey of folklore and mythology related to cannibals and man-eating monsters. It seems, at least at first, to be arguing for a hypothesis that all cannibal monsters are embodiments of fears of survival cannibalism, but seems to give up on that thesis half way through. Possibly because the author realizes it’s a non-starter. For example, he claims that ghouls represent a fear of survival cannibalism in the Arabian Desert, before revealing that modern authors consider the corpse-eating and grave-robbing aspect of ghouls to be a Western appropriation in gothic literature, as opposed to an authentic folkloric belief. It also pairs some ideas in very odd ways and acts as if they make sense, like discussing both feeding the dead to vultures (as the Zoroastrians and Tibetans do) and Polyphemus in the Odyssey in the same chapter. It also seems weird to write a book about man-eating monsters, spend an entire chapter on ghouls, but dismiss zombies in two paragraphs. There’s some interesting ideas in here, and some good sources, but I think I would rather read those sources than this book (and in some cases, I have!).
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kammartinez · 10 months
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By Sue Halpern
Five years ago, Tamara and Cirt Yancy moved to Nixa, Missouri, for the schools. The town sits on the Ozark Plateau, a dozen miles from Springfield, in the southwest corner of the state. In the past thirty years, its population has more than quadrupled, from five thousand to more than twenty thousand, turning a small agricultural community into a manicured enclave of recently constructed town houses set amid rolling hills. Twice in the past decade, its high school was designated a “blue-ribbon school” by the U.S. Department of Education; U.S. News & World Report rated it as the top high school in the area.
The Yancys, who have three children, were living in a Seattle suburb, which had become prohibitively expensive; Missouri, where Cirt had gone to high school, seemed a better bet. Culturally and politically, though, Nixa was a shock. It’s in the middle of the Bible Belt, with large Pentecostal and Baptist congregations. In 2020, Donald Trump received nearly seventy-five per cent of the vote in Christian County, where Nixa is the largest city. “It’s a nice area, but I did not know the political climate at all,” Tamara, who had grown up in the Pacific Northwest, told me. “It’s hard to be vocal about your beliefs in Nixa unless it’s straight, white, Christian, conservative, Republican.”
The Yancys first heard rumblings about a book ban in early 2022. On Facebook, people were saying that a small group of women in Nixa had begun filing official removal requests for books they considered to be pornographic, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (The complaint against “The Bluest Eye” reads, “Children of any age don’t need to be ‘educated’ on their mother’s sexual fantasies, incestual rape or unapologetic pedophilia.”) “The book bans came out of the blue,” Tamara told me. “I didn’t even know that in this day and age that was a thing, or that anyone would consider banning a book for any reason.”
By mid-April, the women had officially objected to sixteen books. It was the first time in more than fifteen years that anyone had requested a book be removed from the school’s library shelves. The Yancys and their Facebook friends, most of whom had never met in person, began talking about how to push back. “We created this book-warriors group,” Cirt said. “We’re going to fight to keep the books in the library.”
They called their group U-Turn in Education, to mirror the name of No Left Turn in Education, a national right-wing organization that, in 2020, began a crusade to insure that critical race theory was not taught in schools. The warriors were optimistic, Cirt told me. They built a Web site, in part to inform parents in the community that there was already a policy in place to restrict access to books they did not want their children reading.
To evaluate the books in question, the school administration appointed a set of committees, which eventually recommended that four of the books remain on the shelves: “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Homegoing,” “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto.” The committees also recommended that the other twelve books be “retained with restrictions,” meaning that they would not be shelved openly and could be checked out only with parental permission. But that, it turned out, was not the end of it. The women who initiated the book-removal requests appealed three of the committees’ recommendations. The seven-member school board would have to decide if “Fun Home” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” both queer coming of age memoirs, and “Homegoing” a multigenerational novel about the ramifications of the slave trade, would be allowed to remain in the high-school library. That decision, which was to be announced at a school-board meeting, would be final.
On May 12, 2022, hundreds of Nixa residents filed into the community room of the school district’s administrative building. Hundreds more were in a nearby overflow room or at home, watching on a live stream. Most members of U-Turn were in attendance, as were about twenty high-school students. Before the meeting started, the students had presented the school board with a petition opposing the removal of books from the library; of the three hundred and forty-five students whom they’d approached, only five chose not to sign it.
One of the petition’s organizers, Meghana Nakkanti, a junior at the time and a member of the debate team, was the first speaker during the public-comment period. She cited Miller v. California, the 1973 Supreme Court case that redefined obscenity from that which is “utterly without socially redeeming value” to that which lacks “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” a criterion, she said, met by none of the books in question. Another student, Justice Jones, who reported on the book bans in the school magazine, helping to spark student opposition, pointed out that “limiting a student on the perspectives they can read is not preparing them for the types of people they would encounter outside of school.” Tamara Yancy spoke, too. “I don’t really have much to say, because I think that you guys probably will listen to the students,” she said. “Their voice should be the loudest. Theirs should be the one you should consider. It’s their library.”
Most of the chairs in the community room, though, were occupied by people who had come to voice their opposition to the books on the docket, many of them members of a private Facebook group named Concerned Parents of Nixa. Some of the speakers called the school librarians pedophiles and groomers who should be arrested and put on a national sex-offenders registry. The final speaker, a Nixa student named Alex Rapp, went off script. He addressed the librarians directly, saying, “We as a student body are behind you and will support you.” And then, one by one, the school-board members were polled on the choice to retain, restrict, or remove each book. In the end, they voted to restrict “Homegoing,” whereas the two queer memoirs would be permanently removed from the school library. “I am not for bans for any reason,” Tamara told me. “But it would be one thing if a book was never in the library because, during the vetting process, it was decided that it was not appropriate. It’s a totally different story to have it in the library and then physically removed. That, to me, is a lot worse.”
Many of the books being challenged in Nixa are on lists posted by Book Look and Book Looks, Web sites spun out of the dark-money-funded, conservative organization Moms for Liberty. Besides nearly identical names, the Web sites have complementary goals. Book Looks stated mission is to provide “reviews centered around objectionable content, including profanity, nudity, and sexual content”; Book Look’s “plan of action” is to get people “engaged with outrage” and to vote out school-board members who “refuse to work on this issue.” According to research by PEN America, nationally, more than sixteen hundred books were banned between July, 2021, and June, 2022, and most of them addressed L.G.B.T.Q.+ themes or had a protagonist or prominent secondary character of color. Most of those books were targeted by groups that did not exist before 2020, but which now, the report notes, “share lists of books to challenge, and . . . employ tactics such as swarming school board meetings, demanding newfangled rating systems for libraries, using inflammatory language about ‘grooming’ and ‘pornography,’ and even filing criminal complaints against school officials, teachers, and librarians.” Tamara, who is a substitute teacher, told me that she has been called a groomer and a pedophile “many, many times.”
In southwest Missouri, the book bans were also being promoted by Andy Wells, who was then the head of the state chapter of No Left Turn in Education. Wells, a former Army helicopter mechanic, is hostile to what he calls “government” schools. At a recent gathering of the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, which gives scholarships to families to send their children to private Christian schools, he said, “This is a place where we, we as Christians, have the option to send our children to where we want them to be educated, not where the people who want to change society want them to be educated.” According to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, who sued the Wentzville, Missouri, school district over its book-removal policy, Wells is part of “a targeted campaign . . . to remove particular ideas and viewpoints about race and sexuality from school libraries” and “has advised that challengers should talk about sexual content in the books rather than sexual orientation, sexual identity, or race to avoid legal scrutiny.” (Wells denied that the campaign’s intention is discriminatory and maintained that it was about removing explicit material from schools; the suit was withdrawn when most of the books were returned to the library shelves.)
Groups such as No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty are now active in hundreds of school districts around the country. A number of state legislatures have taken up their cause. Around the time of the book bans in Nixa, Rick Brattin, a Missouri state senator, proposed legislation that would make it a Class A misdemeanor for anyone affiliated with a public or private school to provide students with “obscene” material. “In schools all across the country, we’ve seen this disgusting and inappropriate content making its way into our classrooms,” Brattin said. “Instead of recognizing this as the threat it is, some schools are actually fighting parents to protect this filth. The last place our children should be seeing pornography is in our schools.”
Two months later, a version of Brattin’s provision was added to a sex-trafficking bill, S.B. 775, making it illegal to expose a student in a K-12 school to “explicitly sexual” visual material, without defining the meaning of “explicitly sexual.” Nonetheless, any school employee found to have done so can be jailed for a year and fined two thousand dollars. The law went into effect last August. According to Colleen Norman, who chairs the Missouri Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, teachers, administrators, and librarians, fearful of running afoul of the law, began removing books from their classrooms and school libraries: “Because the law is vague, schools are overreacting and pulling everything that could possibly in any way be deemed inappropriate, because they’re afraid of a lawsuit.”
In February, the Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the prosecuting attorney in Jackson County (as a proxy for all Missouri prosecuting attorneys) on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, challenging S.B. 775, which it called “the government censorship law that caused school districts across the state to order the removal of hundreds of titles from library shelves.” Weeks later, the chair of the Missouri House Budget Committee, Cody Smith, retaliated by removing all funding for public libraries from the state budget. Though S.B. 775 is specific to schools and school libraries, Smith expressed anger that the Missouri Library Association was a party to the suit. “I don’t think we should subsidize that effort,” he said at the time. “We are going to take out the funding and that is why.” In April, the Missouri House agreed with him, passing a budget that eliminated the four and a half million dollars that had been allocated for the state’s four hundred public libraries. (The Republican chairman of the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee is apparently moving to block the effort; he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “There is no way that money is not going back into the budget.”)
Meanwhile, Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, who is running for governor, and who has been shoring up his conservative bona fides by, among other things, voicing his opposition to gay marriage, proposed a complementary rule to S.B. 775. It penalizes public libraries that allow minors to access “non-age-appropriate” material. It also, he said, gives parents “the right to challenge a library’s age-appropriate designation for any material.”
Ashcroft’s rule is set to go into effect at the end of the month. “What this could mean is that if a teen-ager walked into my library and wanted to check out something by Stephen King or James Patterson, they would not be allowed to because it is in the adult-fiction section,” Norman told me. “Under this new rule, it would mean putting into place new systems that libraries currently do not have to create a separate library card for children. That would be a huge financial burden on libraries and goes completely against our tenets of intellectual freedom and free access to materials and education and resources.” Because the secretary of state’s office administers Missouri’s public-library system, Ashcroft’s rule did not require the legislature or the public to vote on it.
I met the core members of U-Turn in Education one evening in late March, a week before an election that threatened to add two candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty to the school board. The mood at the meeting, held in the home of Sheila Michaels, one of the librarians at Nixa High School, and her husband, Jeremy Hayes, was convivial. After more than a year of working together, the group members had become good friends; they told stories and joked around, but the stakes were high. The election threatened to install a “parents’ rights” majority on the school board, which would likely lead to more book removals. Michaels, who has two children at Nixa High, said, “Even if I didn’t work here, the fact that a small, very angry, and loud group of people undermine my parental choices isn’t right. They say that it’s all about parental rights, but they’re trampling on the rights of others.”
Michaels grew up in an evangelical household near St. Louis, and attended Evangel University, a Christian liberal-arts college in Springfield. “But then you go into public education, and you see all these different types of people and their struggles,” she said. “And that just builds your empathy so much.” She became a librarian five years ago, after teaching English at the school for more than a decade. “For better or worse, librarianship is my identity,” she said. “It’s my values.” Last year, she was named an American Library Association Emerging Leader; this year, she was appointed to a national task force working on issues related to intellectual freedom. She told me a story of a student who saw an L.G.B.T.Q.-ally sign on her office window and sought her out; the girl’s parents were threatening to kick her out of the house for being queer. “If we take away books that represent marginalized populations, what does that say to those kids who are in those populations?” Michaels said. “You’re not appropriate? You’re not O.K.?”
Two members of U-Turn, Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk and Jasen Goodall, were also running for the school board. Dudash-Buskirk, a professor in the communications department at Missouri State, had been a particularly outspoken member of the group, she said, because her job was secure and she no longer had a child in the school system. At the school-board meeting last May, she had read provocative passages from the Bible, implying that perhaps it, too, should be banned. “I was reading about Lot’s daughters, and how they got their father drunk so that they could rape him and produce an heir,” she said. “And these people were shouting that I wasn’t reading this from the Bible. It was disturbing.”
Goodall, who owns a store that sells billiard tables, seemed less likely to be a member of U-Turn. He had spent six years in leadership positions in the P.T.A., had been the president of the P.T.A. Council, and counted many Nixa school administrators among his friends. “I’ve always tried to stay neutral in politics because of our business,” he told me. But, after the Goodall’s house burned down last September, his priorities shifted; the realization that life could change in an instant convinced him that it was no longer prudent to stay out of the fray. “I really don’t care if someone that opposes me shops with me or not,” he said. “This issue became more important than saving my business.” The Goodalls have two children in the Nixa schools; two and a half years ago, their youngest came out to them. “My daughter makes it personal for me,” he said.
The next night, at a candidates’ forum for the school-board election, around sixty people sat in the gym of Nixa’s junior high school, as the five candidates answered questions that had been provided in advance. Alex Bryant, an evangelical pastor who likes to say that he is “a big, bald, and beautiful Black guy” married to “a little white lady,” told the forum audience that he “absolutely” supports the efforts of Concerned Parents of Nixa, which had been renamed Concerned Parents of the Ozarks, to remove books from the school library. The reason he was running for school board, he said, was “to serve the people who are like me. We’re conservative, and we want our kids taught math, science, history, and English, not critical race theory or gender ideology or any of that stuff that does not line up with our values.” Bryant was endorsed by Moms for Liberty, even though the organization does not have a chapter in the county.
If elected, Bryant would become the second board member chosen to advance parents’ rights, joining Bridget Bidinger, an original member of Concerned Parents of the Ozarks, who unseated a long-serving incumbent in April of last year. During Bidinger’s campaign, she had appeared on a podcast produced by We the People, an organization dedicated to “restoring the Constitutional Republic as created by our nation’s founders.” “It’s not about banning books,” she told the show’s host. “It’s about making sure the library is offering books that are age-appropriate. When it comes to books that are sexually explicit in nature or pornographic in nature, those books have no place whatsoever on the library shelves.” Bidinger told me that the pandemic, with its vaccination requirements and mask mandates, had shaken her and other parents in Nixa out of what she called “a very trusting mind-set” about public education. “I loathe the word ‘ban,’ because it’s taken out of context in many of the cases, and it’s meant to stoke fear of censorship and fear that your freedom of speech and your rights are being taken away,” she said. “But I’ve got to think that the majority of people, myself included, are doing it with the best interests of the students, and protecting their minds.”
When the election results were tallied the following week, Bryant received more votes than Dudash-Buskirk and Goodall combined. The Nixa school board will vote on the next set of books in June, ​​which will include the possible removal of three graphic novels to maintain compliance with S.B. 775. A total of fifteen books had been challenged, three of which, Tamara Yancy told me, were not even in the high-school library: “They didn’t even check. They just downloaded the information sheets from Book Looks and turned them in.” She and Cirt have discussed whether they should move again. “But on the other hand,” Tamara said, “who’s gonna stand up, if not us?”
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kamreadsandrecs · 10 months
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By Sue Halpern
Five years ago, Tamara and Cirt Yancy moved to Nixa, Missouri, for the schools. The town sits on the Ozark Plateau, a dozen miles from Springfield, in the southwest corner of the state. In the past thirty years, its population has more than quadrupled, from five thousand to more than twenty thousand, turning a small agricultural community into a manicured enclave of recently constructed town houses set amid rolling hills. Twice in the past decade, its high school was designated a “blue-ribbon school” by the U.S. Department of Education; U.S. News & World Report rated it as the top high school in the area.
The Yancys, who have three children, were living in a Seattle suburb, which had become prohibitively expensive; Missouri, where Cirt had gone to high school, seemed a better bet. Culturally and politically, though, Nixa was a shock. It’s in the middle of the Bible Belt, with large Pentecostal and Baptist congregations. In 2020, Donald Trump received nearly seventy-five per cent of the vote in Christian County, where Nixa is the largest city. “It’s a nice area, but I did not know the political climate at all,” Tamara, who had grown up in the Pacific Northwest, told me. “It’s hard to be vocal about your beliefs in Nixa unless it’s straight, white, Christian, conservative, Republican.”
The Yancys first heard rumblings about a book ban in early 2022. On Facebook, people were saying that a small group of women in Nixa had begun filing official removal requests for books they considered to be pornographic, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (The complaint against “The Bluest Eye” reads, “Children of any age don’t need to be ‘educated’ on their mother’s sexual fantasies, incestual rape or unapologetic pedophilia.”) “The book bans came out of the blue,” Tamara told me. “I didn’t even know that in this day and age that was a thing, or that anyone would consider banning a book for any reason.”
By mid-April, the women had officially objected to sixteen books. It was the first time in more than fifteen years that anyone had requested a book be removed from the school’s library shelves. The Yancys and their Facebook friends, most of whom had never met in person, began talking about how to push back. “We created this book-warriors group,” Cirt said. “We’re going to fight to keep the books in the library.”
They called their group U-Turn in Education, to mirror the name of No Left Turn in Education, a national right-wing organization that, in 2020, began a crusade to insure that critical race theory was not taught in schools. The warriors were optimistic, Cirt told me. They built a Web site, in part to inform parents in the community that there was already a policy in place to restrict access to books they did not want their children reading.
To evaluate the books in question, the school administration appointed a set of committees, which eventually recommended that four of the books remain on the shelves: “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Homegoing,” “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto.” The committees also recommended that the other twelve books be “retained with restrictions,” meaning that they would not be shelved openly and could be checked out only with parental permission. But that, it turned out, was not the end of it. The women who initiated the book-removal requests appealed three of the committees’ recommendations. The seven-member school board would have to decide if “Fun Home” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” both queer coming of age memoirs, and “Homegoing” a multigenerational novel about the ramifications of the slave trade, would be allowed to remain in the high-school library. That decision, which was to be announced at a school-board meeting, would be final.
On May 12, 2022, hundreds of Nixa residents filed into the community room of the school district’s administrative building. Hundreds more were in a nearby overflow room or at home, watching on a live stream. Most members of U-Turn were in attendance, as were about twenty high-school students. Before the meeting started, the students had presented the school board with a petition opposing the removal of books from the library; of the three hundred and forty-five students whom they’d approached, only five chose not to sign it.
One of the petition’s organizers, Meghana Nakkanti, a junior at the time and a member of the debate team, was the first speaker during the public-comment period. She cited Miller v. California, the 1973 Supreme Court case that redefined obscenity from that which is “utterly without socially redeeming value” to that which lacks “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” a criterion, she said, met by none of the books in question. Another student, Justice Jones, who reported on the book bans in the school magazine, helping to spark student opposition, pointed out that “limiting a student on the perspectives they can read is not preparing them for the types of people they would encounter outside of school.” Tamara Yancy spoke, too. “I don’t really have much to say, because I think that you guys probably will listen to the students,” she said. “Their voice should be the loudest. Theirs should be the one you should consider. It’s their library.”
Most of the chairs in the community room, though, were occupied by people who had come to voice their opposition to the books on the docket, many of them members of a private Facebook group named Concerned Parents of Nixa. Some of the speakers called the school librarians pedophiles and groomers who should be arrested and put on a national sex-offenders registry. The final speaker, a Nixa student named Alex Rapp, went off script. He addressed the librarians directly, saying, “We as a student body are behind you and will support you.” And then, one by one, the school-board members were polled on the choice to retain, restrict, or remove each book. In the end, they voted to restrict “Homegoing,” whereas the two queer memoirs would be permanently removed from the school library. “I am not for bans for any reason,” Tamara told me. “But it would be one thing if a book was never in the library because, during the vetting process, it was decided that it was not appropriate. It’s a totally different story to have it in the library and then physically removed. That, to me, is a lot worse.”
Many of the books being challenged in Nixa are on lists posted by Book Look and Book Looks, Web sites spun out of the dark-money-funded, conservative organization Moms for Liberty. Besides nearly identical names, the Web sites have complementary goals. Book Looks stated mission is to provide “reviews centered around objectionable content, including profanity, nudity, and sexual content”; Book Look’s “plan of action” is to get people “engaged with outrage” and to vote out school-board members who “refuse to work on this issue.” According to research by PEN America, nationally, more than sixteen hundred books were banned between July, 2021, and June, 2022, and most of them addressed L.G.B.T.Q.+ themes or had a protagonist or prominent secondary character of color. Most of those books were targeted by groups that did not exist before 2020, but which now, the report notes, “share lists of books to challenge, and . . . employ tactics such as swarming school board meetings, demanding newfangled rating systems for libraries, using inflammatory language about ‘grooming’ and ‘pornography,’ and even filing criminal complaints against school officials, teachers, and librarians.” Tamara, who is a substitute teacher, told me that she has been called a groomer and a pedophile “many, many times.”
In southwest Missouri, the book bans were also being promoted by Andy Wells, who was then the head of the state chapter of No Left Turn in Education. Wells, a former Army helicopter mechanic, is hostile to what he calls “government” schools. At a recent gathering of the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, which gives scholarships to families to send their children to private Christian schools, he said, “This is a place where we, we as Christians, have the option to send our children to where we want them to be educated, not where the people who want to change society want them to be educated.” According to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, who sued the Wentzville, Missouri, school district over its book-removal policy, Wells is part of “a targeted campaign . . . to remove particular ideas and viewpoints about race and sexuality from school libraries” and “has advised that challengers should talk about sexual content in the books rather than sexual orientation, sexual identity, or race to avoid legal scrutiny.” (Wells denied that the campaign’s intention is discriminatory and maintained that it was about removing explicit material from schools; the suit was withdrawn when most of the books were returned to the library shelves.)
Groups such as No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty are now active in hundreds of school districts around the country. A number of state legislatures have taken up their cause. Around the time of the book bans in Nixa, Rick Brattin, a Missouri state senator, proposed legislation that would make it a Class A misdemeanor for anyone affiliated with a public or private school to provide students with “obscene” material. “In schools all across the country, we’ve seen this disgusting and inappropriate content making its way into our classrooms,” Brattin said. “Instead of recognizing this as the threat it is, some schools are actually fighting parents to protect this filth. The last place our children should be seeing pornography is in our schools.”
Two months later, a version of Brattin’s provision was added to a sex-trafficking bill, S.B. 775, making it illegal to expose a student in a K-12 school to “explicitly sexual” visual material, without defining the meaning of “explicitly sexual.” Nonetheless, any school employee found to have done so can be jailed for a year and fined two thousand dollars. The law went into effect last August. According to Colleen Norman, who chairs the Missouri Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, teachers, administrators, and librarians, fearful of running afoul of the law, began removing books from their classrooms and school libraries: “Because the law is vague, schools are overreacting and pulling everything that could possibly in any way be deemed inappropriate, because they’re afraid of a lawsuit.”
In February, the Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the prosecuting attorney in Jackson County (as a proxy for all Missouri prosecuting attorneys) on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, challenging S.B. 775, which it called “the government censorship law that caused school districts across the state to order the removal of hundreds of titles from library shelves.” Weeks later, the chair of the Missouri House Budget Committee, Cody Smith, retaliated by removing all funding for public libraries from the state budget. Though S.B. 775 is specific to schools and school libraries, Smith expressed anger that the Missouri Library Association was a party to the suit. “I don’t think we should subsidize that effort,” he said at the time. “We are going to take out the funding and that is why.” In April, the Missouri House agreed with him, passing a budget that eliminated the four and a half million dollars that had been allocated for the state’s four hundred public libraries. (The Republican chairman of the state’s Senate Appropriations Committee is apparently moving to block the effort; he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “There is no way that money is not going back into the budget.”)
Meanwhile, Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, who is running for governor, and who has been shoring up his conservative bona fides by, among other things, voicing his opposition to gay marriage, proposed a complementary rule to S.B. 775. It penalizes public libraries that allow minors to access “non-age-appropriate” material. It also, he said, gives parents “the right to challenge a library’s age-appropriate designation for any material.”
Ashcroft’s rule is set to go into effect at the end of the month. “What this could mean is that if a teen-ager walked into my library and wanted to check out something by Stephen King or James Patterson, they would not be allowed to because it is in the adult-fiction section,” Norman told me. “Under this new rule, it would mean putting into place new systems that libraries currently do not have to create a separate library card for children. That would be a huge financial burden on libraries and goes completely against our tenets of intellectual freedom and free access to materials and education and resources.” Because the secretary of state’s office administers Missouri’s public-library system, Ashcroft’s rule did not require the legislature or the public to vote on it.
I met the core members of U-Turn in Education one evening in late March, a week before an election that threatened to add two candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty to the school board. The mood at the meeting, held in the home of Sheila Michaels, one of the librarians at Nixa High School, and her husband, Jeremy Hayes, was convivial. After more than a year of working together, the group members had become good friends; they told stories and joked around, but the stakes were high. The election threatened to install a “parents’ rights” majority on the school board, which would likely lead to more book removals. Michaels, who has two children at Nixa High, said, “Even if I didn’t work here, the fact that a small, very angry, and loud group of people undermine my parental choices isn’t right. They say that it’s all about parental rights, but they’re trampling on the rights of others.”
Michaels grew up in an evangelical household near St. Louis, and attended Evangel University, a Christian liberal-arts college in Springfield. “But then you go into public education, and you see all these different types of people and their struggles,” she said. “And that just builds your empathy so much.” She became a librarian five years ago, after teaching English at the school for more than a decade. “For better or worse, librarianship is my identity,” she said. “It’s my values.” Last year, she was named an American Library Association Emerging Leader; this year, she was appointed to a national task force working on issues related to intellectual freedom. She told me a story of a student who saw an L.G.B.T.Q.-ally sign on her office window and sought her out; the girl’s parents were threatening to kick her out of the house for being queer. “If we take away books that represent marginalized populations, what does that say to those kids who are in those populations?” Michaels said. “You’re not appropriate? You’re not O.K.?”
Two members of U-Turn, Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk and Jasen Goodall, were also running for the school board. Dudash-Buskirk, a professor in the communications department at Missouri State, had been a particularly outspoken member of the group, she said, because her job was secure and she no longer had a child in the school system. At the school-board meeting last May, she had read provocative passages from the Bible, implying that perhaps it, too, should be banned. “I was reading about Lot’s daughters, and how they got their father drunk so that they could rape him and produce an heir,” she said. “And these people were shouting that I wasn’t reading this from the Bible. It was disturbing.”
Goodall, who owns a store that sells billiard tables, seemed less likely to be a member of U-Turn. He had spent six years in leadership positions in the P.T.A., had been the president of the P.T.A. Council, and counted many Nixa school administrators among his friends. “I’ve always tried to stay neutral in politics because of our business,” he told me. But, after the Goodall’s house burned down last September, his priorities shifted; the realization that life could change in an instant convinced him that it was no longer prudent to stay out of the fray. “I really don’t care if someone that opposes me shops with me or not,” he said. “This issue became more important than saving my business.” The Goodalls have two children in the Nixa schools; two and a half years ago, their youngest came out to them. “My daughter makes it personal for me,” he said.
The next night, at a candidates’ forum for the school-board election, around sixty people sat in the gym of Nixa’s junior high school, as the five candidates answered questions that had been provided in advance. Alex Bryant, an evangelical pastor who likes to say that he is “a big, bald, and beautiful Black guy” married to “a little white lady,” told the forum audience that he “absolutely” supports the efforts of Concerned Parents of Nixa, which had been renamed Concerned Parents of the Ozarks, to remove books from the school library. The reason he was running for school board, he said, was “to serve the people who are like me. We’re conservative, and we want our kids taught math, science, history, and English, not critical race theory or gender ideology or any of that stuff that does not line up with our values.” Bryant was endorsed by Moms for Liberty, even though the organization does not have a chapter in the county.
If elected, Bryant would become the second board member chosen to advance parents’ rights, joining Bridget Bidinger, an original member of Concerned Parents of the Ozarks, who unseated a long-serving incumbent in April of last year. During Bidinger’s campaign, she had appeared on a podcast produced by We the People, an organization dedicated to “restoring the Constitutional Republic as created by our nation’s founders.” “It’s not about banning books,” she told the show’s host. “It’s about making sure the library is offering books that are age-appropriate. When it comes to books that are sexually explicit in nature or pornographic in nature, those books have no place whatsoever on the library shelves.” Bidinger told me that the pandemic, with its vaccination requirements and mask mandates, had shaken her and other parents in Nixa out of what she called “a very trusting mind-set” about public education. “I loathe the word ‘ban,’ because it’s taken out of context in many of the cases, and it’s meant to stoke fear of censorship and fear that your freedom of speech and your rights are being taken away,” she said. “But I’ve got to think that the majority of people, myself included, are doing it with the best interests of the students, and protecting their minds.”
When the election results were tallied the following week, Bryant received more votes than Dudash-Buskirk and Goodall combined. The Nixa school board will vote on the next set of books in June, ​​which will include the possible removal of three graphic novels to maintain compliance with S.B. 775. A total of fifteen books had been challenged, three of which, Tamara Yancy told me, were not even in the high-school library: “They didn’t even check. They just downloaded the information sheets from Book Looks and turned them in.” She and Cirt have discussed whether they should move again. “But on the other hand,” Tamara said, “who’s gonna stand up, if not us?”
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dritaholidays · 1 year
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The stockpile clever mo
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They are registered with the ATF as a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL Dealer) and their license number is 5-43-XXX-XX-XX-15385. Safe environment with the freedom of home, filled with Love and Support. THE STOCKPILE LLC is a gun shop located in Clever, MO. He caused an almost 2 month delay to my receiving of the suppressor. It's is a small daycare with a Big heart. I can not recommend him to anyone, and I will not do business with them again. I should’ve listened to him.I tired my best to make it work with 417Guns and gave him every opportunity to earn my business. Each month, two lucky ticket holders will each receive one gun from the list below. Each item has been submitted to local and national law enforcement agencies so you can purchase items ethically and safely. Drawing starts when the last ticket is sold or January 10. So I faxed the form myself at the cost of $6 and the next day I was able to resubmit my application.I went to 417Guns because of his advertisements on the radio of how long he had been in business and expertise. The Stockpile Clever MO is like eBay and Amazon’s used good marketplaces but our items come directly from licensed merchants from all over the United States. Thats when I interrupted his next excuse and told him I will do it myself. ( 13JN ) Memorandums Armed Forces : stockpile of weapons, 1669 ( 9FE ) Local. I was told a different story on why he couldnt send it every week. Bradley Veterans Hospital, Kansas City, MO. I bought the gun.I spent the next month trying to get him to fax that form. He called the ATF and confirmed he needed to send the form 3 via a fax. He claimed he was too busy to send the fax because he was going to leave for SHOT Show in a couple days, and I offered to buy a Glock 19 from him on the spot if he would take care of it that day. Ozark, Missouri Hours: Monday Friday: 9AM 6PM Saturday: 9AM 5PM. I explained to the ATF the dealer had the suppressor in stock, and they said it must of been a mix up, the dealer needs to fax in the approved form 3.I went to 417Guns, and spoke to Brent, the owner, explained the situation. When I called the ATF to ask them what happened they explained to me that the dealer was notified in December that due to a lack of an approved form 3 my application was denied.At this point 417Guns knew of the issue for almost a month at least according to the ATF. tons of nerve gas or other agent ' just in case ' is too clever, at best.
#THE STOCKPILE CLEVER MO FULL#
View full listings, live and online auctions, photos, and more. percent stockpile, the destruction of which would be dependent upon the. Online marketplace and direct channel for small retail merchants and everyone else. Browse upcoming auctions from The Stockpile LLC in Clever,MO on AuctionZip today. I found out when I received my refund for the application in mid-january. The Stockpile Clever MO - Buy and sell electronics, collectibles fashion apparel, phones, tools, coins, jewelry, cameras and everything else. The budgeting and ammo allocation is just a really clever way to simplify my. Due to a screw up by the ATF they denied my application for the suppressor on December 9th. Add a little money every month, and you have a stock pile being built up. This edition also contains suggested further reading and notes.I bought a suppressor from 417Guns the day after Thanksgiving 2015. Full Service Firearms And Pawn Shop With Focus On Jewelry and Antiques located in Clever, Mo. In Ian Johnston's introduction to his authoritative new translation, he examines the early appearance of key philosophical ideas in the text, the ten core doctrines of Mohism and the work's authorship. As one of the first examples of using systematic argument in conceptual debate, The Book of Master Mo represents a groundbreaking shift in Chinese philosophy. of nerve gas or other agent ' just in case ' is too clever, at best.
#THE STOCKPILE CLEVER MO HOW TO#
From encouraging universal love to condemning excess at funerals, the essays describe how to maintain peace and harmony, but as an expert in defensive warfare Mo Zi also wrote fascinating technical tips for defending a city, including methods for the identification of spies and how to stockpile food. it behooves nations with no current stockpile of chemical weapons to produce. Written in China in the fifth century BC, The Book of Master Mo is a hugely influential collection of philosophical writing, intended to deal with the turbulence of the Warring States period. 'Where there is universality, those living in large states don't attack small states, those living in large houses don't bring disorder to small houses, the strong don't oppress the weak'
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innnahas · 1 year
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Download iron man trainer
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The two travel to Europe as she continues to win Maggie eventually saves up enough of her winnings to buy her mother a house, but her mother berates Maggie for endangering her government aid, claiming that everyone back home is laughing at her.įrankie is finally willing to arrange a title fight. Frankie bestows Maggie a Gaelic nickname, embroidered on her boxing robe, Mo Chuisle (misspelled in the film as "mo cuishle"), but does not tell her its meaning. Scrap, concerned when Frankie rejects several offers for big fights, arranges a meeting for Maggie with Mickey Mack but, out of loyalty to Frankie, she declines. Since she has earned a reputation for quick KOs, Frankie must resort to bribery to get other managers to put their trainee fighters up against her. Maggie fights her way up in the women's amateur boxing division with Frankie's coaching. Frankie then reluctantly agrees to train Maggie. Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, Frankie's friend and employee - the film's narrator - encourages and helps Maggie.įrankie's prize prospect, "Big Willie" Little, signs with successful manager Mickey Mack after becoming impatient with Frankie rejecting offers for a championship bout. Maggie asks Frankie to train her, but he refuses as he does not train women and she is too old to begin a boxing career. Dunn is a cantankerous Irish-American trainer, revealed to be estranged by his own daughter.
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IRONMAN Cycle Trainer 2.0 Firmware Timex Cycle Trainer 2.0 Firmware Cycle Trainer 2.0 Firmware Update Cycle Trainer 2.Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald, a waitress from the Ozarks, shows up at the Hit Pit, a rundown Los Angeles gym owned and operated by Frankie Dunn. Problems can arise when your hardware device is too old or not supported any longer. This will help if you installed an incorrect or mismatched driver. Try to set a system restore point before installing a device driver.
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It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available. Also make sure you constantly check with our website to ensure that you don’t miss a single new release. Therefore, if you consider applying this release, hit the download button, take into account all the aforementioned aspects, and update the device’s firmware. Moreover, it’s best that this task be performed in a steady power environment such as the one ensured by a UPS unit.
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On the other hand, downgrading the firmware version can recover the device’s functionality in the event of a software update either turning up faulty or causing the unit’s overall performance to drop. You must use Device Agent v3.0.76 or newer with this firmware!Īpplying a newer firmware version than the one already installed on your unit can bring various enhancements, include workarounds for diverse problems encountered by the device, and improve or add newly developed features. Then open the Timex Device Agent from your computer Click and save the file to your computer.
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smokebank03 · 2 years
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Roaton Vacation - A Must-Have Experience
Crime is very low and the police not have a need to cart guns. Even though Oslo can be a special place to be Norway is as much more and it has a involving history. Solution to to experience this you will have to make the city behind and do some traveling.
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In fact, a regarding the professional yachts in Greece are owned by individuals instead of yacht charter companies. The owners charter them out in order to employ VAT and other tax good aspects. England is packed with so many waterways and canals that you can navigate. You may get a narrowboat and look into the tributaries to view some dazzling sites. There are over 2,000 miles of waterways to discover. There are different to help go boating in Uk. You can rent a boat and take a a tour. Local boaters will be able to show you different areas and cover the local history. Dorade won the Transpac - then called The Honolulu Race - in 1936. In excess of 83 years since its launch Dorade has been active in leading ocean races including The Transatlantic, The Bermuda, Fastnet, and believe it or not than fourteen Swiftsure races (Victoria Y.C.). Having several owners the actual years years, when compared with had a hard active history. In 1978 Dorade was owned through Mystic Seaport Museum, but was put back into service again when Antonio Gomez purchased the boat from the museum in 1978. From 1996-1999 exercise routines, meal owned by an Italian, Giuseppe Gazonni-Frascara. The yacht was restored in 1997 by the shipyard, Cantierre Navale Dell'Argentario. The the summer time at the forest is considerably less amped up or busy as the wintertime skiing time of the year. This makes it have more of an homey feel to they. The region in the summer offers all the magnificence within the high mountain country with all the beautiful views that are found in winter months season. Have yacht for rent near me considered chartering a boat? You is worth of doing an early lunch having a cruise and casual dining and dress or opt for a more formal affair later in the day with an opulent meal and dancing. This will be a very cool idea but there are pro's and con's you will need to consider. Before ingredients fishing in the Lake belonging to the Ozarks with fishing can i rent a yacht for a day, you must read within the list of rules. Rules might be generalized or specific, established your planned fishing movement. For example, paddlefish can not be possessed when caught. Can be a certain parts of the lake that 're no fishing places. There are some areas that prohibit grabbing, snaring and throwlines. There additionally limits during the number of fish can perform catch along with the size of fish may well be rightfully possessed. Self-guided excursions can are priced between 3 to 7 several hours. The prettiest wilderness section to paddle on the Grand River is a 3 hour trip between Glen Morris and Paris, france. All three companies offer this course. For a unique 6-7 hour exercise. the trip from Glen Morris to Brant Park offers best of the Grand. Below Brantford irrespective of how a calm water section called the Oxbow. is actually because a relaxing 3-4 hour paddle of serenity. If new towards Grand Bay. why not ask the outfitter variety of water is comfortable for your paddling skills and let them recommend an excursion.
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jasper-pagan-witch · 1 year
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An Itemized List of My Spellbooks
Y'all know the drill by now - these are listed in alphabetical order for your convenience, and they're in height order for my convenience. Books for potions/drinks also wind up in this section. If I've written a review about any particular book, I'll link it.
A Spellbook for the Seasons. Author: Tudorbeth. Publisher: Edison Books Limited. Additional notes: I DON'T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK AT ALL. I ACTIVELY HATE THIS BOOK. Here's why.
A Tea Witch's Grimoire. Author: S M Harlow. Publisher: Amazon. Additional notes: Review here. I'm not at all impressed with this one.
Blackthorn's Botanical Brews. Author: Amy Blackthorn. Publisher: Weiser Books. Additional notes: I'm still working through reading this book. It's not garbage so far.
Ozark Mountain Spell Book: Folk Magic & Healing. Author: Brandon Weston. Publisher: Llewellyn. Additional notes: I would like to thank Missouri Evergreen for having Brandon Weston's other book for me to check out and read before I got both of these. I would have done the same for this book, but it was so new at the time that it was still protected by the "it's not allowed to travel out of county until it turns 6 months old" lock. I really enjoy this book and it's helping me learn about and appreciate folk magic.
Pastel Spells. Author: Rose Orriculum. Publisher: Amazon. Additional notes: Review here. Baneful-focused additions my beloveds.
Pestlework. Author: Bree NicGarran. Publisher: Amazon. Additional notes: Review here. While I haven't worked much with powders and oils, I will be using this once I dip my toe in. Baneful-focused additions my beloveds.
Potions, Elixirs & Brews. Author: Anais Alexandre. Publisher: Watkins. Additional notes: I have the notes for the book review on a post-it note in the front, though I've never published it yet. Despite its several issues, this is probably the one that I recommend as far as drinkable potions go.
Spell Jar Book For Beginners: 60 Enchanting Spells to Focus Your Power and Unleash the Magic. Author: Paige Vanderbeck. Publisher: Rockridge Press. Additional notes: I hate this book for many reasons. Saying not to appropriate and then turning around and appropriating DIRECTLY from hoodoo. Listing oils and inks as "spell jars" in the back. STARTING OFF THE INTRODUCTION by saying that the "most famous spell jar in history" isn't a jar (Pandora's box) and then turning around and admitting that, yes, it was a jar- I hate this book. I hate this book so much.
The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells for Modern Problems. Authors: Lady Passion, High Priestess and *Diuvei, High Priest of Coven Oldenwilde. Publisher: Sterling Ethos. Additional notes: Lots of people have gotten mad about this stupid fucking book, even me. It's stupid, appropriative, racist, uses the G-slur in place of Romani like there's no tomorrow, fatphobic, ableist, fetishistic- I hate this book with a burning passion. It doesn't even list spells until well past halfway through the book, it's more about this Gardnerian Wiccan coven preaching that its practice is the only right practice. Fuck 'em with a tin can and a cactus.
The Sisters Grimmoire: Spells and Charms for Your Happily Ever After. Authors: Bree NicGarran (with help from Anna in the first edition). Publisher: Amazon. Additional notes: Review here. If you can only get one spellbook here, I recommend this one.
Zodiac Spells: Easy Enchantments and Simple Spells for Your Sun Sign. Author: Lexa Rosean. Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin. Additional notes: I don't hate this book with a burning passion, but I sure don't recommend it. You can tell that it came out in 2002.
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lifeisnebulous · 2 years
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5/4/22
Day 3 without social media or video games. It really is hard to deprive myself of my escape mechanisms. It sounds so silly to write it down or say it out loud but it’s so much easier to escape into things than face myself alone with the emptiness of opportunity. I’m going to stick this out though.
As occurred the last couple days, I have definitely been more present at work during meetings and getting through other assignments. When there isn’t some other more entertaining thing to be doing, I’m kind of forced to be entertained by the things I have to do. The alternative is literally doing nothing which might as well be a form of torture. I went outside on two walks today. Nothing long but just walking around outside and it feels so odd because there’s not really a goal other than just something to do. I have found myself looking for and picking up other crutches such as watching TV more. I finished watching the new episodes of Ozark and of course the ending was dumb 🙄. When all else fails and shows don’t know what else to do, just kill one of the main characters you liked. It’s become a troupe.
I did manage to spend the afternoon looking into and reaching out to some therapists. There are way too many and it’s rather difficult identifying what your looking for. There was one website I was recommended by someone that had a filter list to choose from and it almost made me feel like I have my shit together because I didn’t identify with anything on the list.
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Who knows, maybe the opposite is true and I’ve got multiple issues on that list. I feel like I’m just looking for someone to share my thoughts with who can provide feedback on issues I need to address and I’d like to dig up all this wreckage I’m sure I’m carrying around from my childhood.
Tonight I spent a little time getting lost in researching cuneiform. I don’t know why but I always find early language fascinating to research and understand. I think in some ways I think there are mysteries to our existence that can be learned by looking at our very distance past and beginnings as a human race. This one video I watched was this old guy breaking down cuneiform. He was very old, scraggly looking, sarcastic, and made terrible jokes during his presentation and I was like that could be me someday.
I did some more reading on my personality type and some more step work. Nothing very exciting happened today. I can’t wait to get back in the gym. The tattoo is starting to scab up now so it feels even more irritating than before. But that means soon I’ll be able to get back in the gym. Now it’s off to read and then go to bed.
I need to find a better pillow. I literally have four different types of pillows but I wake up with neck pain no matter which one I use. This has to be the worlds most boring journal to read. I feel like I need to do random crazy shit during the day so I have some exciting content to share. Tomorrow I want to start writing down some goals and breaking them into achievable milestones. Good night!
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ozarkthedog · 3 years
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Filthy Fic Rec List
I was asked to list some of what I think are the Filthiest Fics I’ve ever read. 
All fics are in random order and contain various Fandoms/Genres/Pairings. 
The first half will be all the AO3 fics I’ve read and the second via Tumblr. 
Please heed all warnings with these fics!! Some are dark! and downright vile while others are Fluffy Filth. 
Some of the AO3 Authors are on Tumblr, but I read their fics first on AO3.
Archive of Our Own
MCU Fandom
The Mirrorverse Avengers Series  Steve/Nat. Nat/Tony. Steve/Nat/Tony.
Bucky Barnes and His 1001 Fetishes (or at least eight of them)  Stucky
Heaven's Just a Sin Away  Bucky/Reader/Steve
Getaway  Steve/Reader @darkficsyouneveraskedfor
Brooklyn's Sweetheart  Stucky/Reader @spacesnail3000
Steve's Therapist  Steve/Reader by @imdarkinme
Born To Be Yours  Stucky
Lot Lizard  Stucky
Cause There's a Circuit in My Chest, Unconnected from The Rest of My Mind  Stucky
It's In His Bite  Steve/Reader/Bucky
it's not an epic romance (it's a love affair)  Stucky/Darcy
Filthy Acts  Stucky
Red, Silver and Gold  Tony/Reader
Three's Company  Stucky/Reader
Bucky's Game  Bucky/Reader/Steve
Gym Day by @howdoyousleep3
Jim Hopper
Showing Appreciation  Jim Hopper/Reader
Late Nights Alone  Jim Hopper/Reader
Beetlejuice
people are strange but maybe you're stranger  Beetlejuice/Lydia
Walking Dead
Down To Your Knees  Rick/Beth
Original Work
Bought and Paid For
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MCU Fandom
Watch the Turn by @strawberrysoup  Steve/Reader/Tony
Just Desserts by @sweeterthanthis  Bucky/Reader
Daddy Lessons by @sweeterthanthis  Steve/Reader/Bucky
Scream For Me  by @sweeterthanthis Steve/Reader
Kinktober Day 22: Bondage  by @sweeterthanthis Steve/Reader
Hallows’ Eve by @sapphirescrolls Clark Kent/Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers/Reader
August Walker
The Entire Trapped Series by @dancingwendigo August Walker/Reader
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