The wildfire 🔥 smoke has reached Milwaukee. The air smells of old crusty campfire and the skies hazy, with particles. Hazardous to those with allergies, and to the people just learning they have allergies, or chronic diseases such as heart disease and asthma, all of which can cause pulmonary blockage.
9am in the alley10am work New Berlin10am sun at work in the ex-burb New Berlin, WIWork 10am haze in the woods New Berlin
Air pollution contributes to deaths at about ~7 million worldwide a year.
“Wisconsin has seen blazing heat in recent days with an extreme heat warning or heat advisory in effect across the state Wednesday. The National Weather Service offices in Duluth and Milwaukee/Sullivan said temperatures will feel close to 100 degrees or more.”
Anot so fun fact, but in the Bush 2 administration they made the decsion to change “Global warming” to “Climate Change” which does not sound as scary. Guess that psyop worked very well, because climate change and the science around it is much more difficult to explain and message, whereas “Global Warming” is easy and direct, you understand what’s happening with two words.
Let’s go back to calling what’s happening “Global Warming”, the science had been clear since the late 70’s regarding the loading of C02 and other heating gasses into the atmosphere and what it is doing on a global scale. In system dynamics, the heat, its adding energy, which pushes systems to be more chaotic.
Time to mask up
I’m an Ecologist, when the threads and connections, the mechanisms among and between life forms and their environment start to break that’s when extinction happens. There’s only so much energy (heat) that biotic organsims can process to keep them in homeostasis, even non-living things such as soil, have properties change at heat (energy) is added.
….. andI’m a realist, and every day we take one step closer to self-inflicted speciecide.
For whatever reason these four short scifi stories are interconnected. It was never my intention nor concept, these stories were written at different times in my life; yet they all speak to the philosophy & concepts of reality, creation, chaos, order, and individuality.
Compartmentalized Accessed when needed Cached in dust Pushed away, Given the hand Boundries surround me, not for thee Break glass, emergency Kept to the edges Unsupported extension Unable to convert Purpose lost Overwhelmed in memory
This is one of my favorite parks in the county. In fact MKE city and county has the most park area for an urban area and some of the longest protected shore front public parks in the nation. If you golf, an entire system of public golf courses as well, the most in the nation. Most of this public access is do to the socialist governments in the City and county up until the early 1970’s.
I have pride in my city, yes it has problems, but having to face decades of bigotry and hatred from Republicans and right-wingers it has installed a sense of pride and willingness to fight back against their oppression and gaslighting of MKE and the area.
“Enter this wild wood and view the haunts of nature”Jack in the pullpit
I dont do writing prompts often. This is a long memoir, because my journey didn’t just start with me waking up and deciding to put my work online. It was evolution and adaptation that has led me here.
I think what’s more interesting is why i decided to end up using WP-JP as my chosen platform.
I literally have miles of written content & underground published essays, fiction, poetry, prose, illustration, water color painting,activism, political opinion editorials, zines, been in punk bands, music, miles of creation behined me over the long years. The majority in hardcopy, much of it now lost.
I’ve been writing in some capacity most of my life. I normally don’t write biographical peices, because as a fiction and prose writer my experiences are written in as code: I use them indirectly, I enjoy it, its fulfilling to world and character build, and the “act-of-writing” also acts as therapy.
I was Fully active writing until about 2002. After 2000 my focus went to education, I got a BS in Ecology, spending a few summers doing Marine Ecology based on islands both in the north Pacific and north Atlantic.
Me at a hotel drinkng retreat I set up in New Hampshire in the summer of 1999 when I spent 4 months doing Marine Ecology and working on Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire.
In Wisconsin i did lot’s of invasive species work, herbariums for the Mueseum, urban forestry surveys, worked in a vineyard, etc…but Ecology jobs were in short Supply and I needed insurance. So I became a Field Chemist cleaning up Hazardous Waste. I traveled the midwest, plains states, and the south for about 2ish years, untill i got a Biotech job. I liked the travel, but my mind was on not getting poisoned, melted by acids and bases, or blowing up.
2010-2011: Alien Relay 2.0 an online political blog in the wake of the Wisconsin Uprising after the Republicans killed public unions.
In 2012: My writers block and a loss-of-self began…………Summer of 2019: I had a trauma reaction from my relationship that expressed itself in a long hypersexual period & delibating anxiety & dissociation, this unhealthy awakening would lead to something even more traumatic. I Dabled in hook-up apps, reddit, kik, AFF, etc….was catfished, scammed, grifted on…I failed in spectacular fashion trying to hook-up…I learned these things were not for me. You needed to be hard, cynical, and couldn’t trust anything. Funny thing at this time, I thought non-binary meant people who didn’t use dating apps. 😅 That’s either really cute or appallingly ignorant, I like to think a little of both.
December 2019: Covid fears start worldwide as China is hit hard in Chengdu.
January 2020: At the biotech firm we got a majority of are synthetic DNA bases from Chengdu, we started masking and gloving up in the material handling/hazardous waste department I ran. I often worked by myself for weeks, while coworkers were out due to early social isolation recommendations.
April 2020: Covid hits New York; by then i fully surpressed my needs. The biotech firm i worked for created Nucleotides, which were needed for the first few rounds of the MRNA vaccines, where i worked was one of the few places that made it and mostly for research before Covid. My Zoloft generic dose was doubled by my psychiatrist, i also started to become a serotonin zombie, increasing my already strong dissociation and suppressing my sexual needs. We would get a year’s worth of material in 3 weeks! Needless to say from the start of 2020 till when I was downsized/fired in August of 2022 (the corporation execs needed more ponies for their children). I was busy nonstop from the second I walked into work to the second I left work. I was 120% exhausted. However I am proud of the work i did, I helped save untold numbers of people’s lives by working with purpose, regardless of recognition I wear my work in that period as a badge of honor.
November 2023: On a November in 2023 on a Thursday i was locked out of the house, then I was sexually assaulted twice by two different woman in one night. I suppressed that trauma deep within me, telling nobody until January of 2025. Until this day, my immediate family does not know.
November 2015: I left social media, Facebook, in 2015 after I learned how Zuckerberg/FB with Cambridge Analytica’s help, helped Trump win by data-mining and targeting people. Being politically active, that was enough for me to quite, I also felt SM as hallow. In December of 2024 after Trump won, my politically active-self stirred and I joined Blueskye to battle X. Fact: Many X’ers that either left SM earlier like I did or it was their first time became active on Blueskye.
Holy Fuck! I was, we were, not prepared at all for what Social Mediabecame!
Energy Given freely Is as breathing For me Understanding Until now, ive had so much of it But, frankly I Am Utterly Exhausted I Speak Truth I Endless hope I Set Boundries I Don’t give up ……Why do I feel guilty?
Truth I am prey Human predators smell empathy As Sharks smell blood in the water Allowing myself to be used without equal reciprocity Used Endless cycle(s) of neglect Affection to weapon Sex to Weapon Shrunk as weapon Tool of endless emotional grounding Control Power Stability Comfort
I Am Tired …….So very very tired And I’m afraid I Have Changed I Am Broken Victim Survivor Pariah
This is a long read. Just a quarter of this novel I wrote awhile ago. I cringe at some of it, because I was younger, with a great lack of wisdom. Although I think I caught detail of the action pretty well.
Crotan on the right ive had at least 26 years, sword, then a huge Monstera, Money Plant, Australian Fern and I forgot the species on the farm left.To the right a species of Prickly Pear, then two other cacti i forget the species of. The one on the left has a effed up growth pattern from years of slow growth, it’s a bit phallic.Madagascar Palm at least 10 years old. Transplanting hurts, a lot.
FYI – I have a BS in Ecology. I took a lot of botany invertebrate zoology, mycology, loved studying algae, lots of marine as well and other focuses, because Ecology is multidisciplinary in nature. It’s really a deep-dive into system dynamics.
Always loved house plants before that though, hence a portion of my plant army.
So back in 2015 I stopped using Facebook and Social media all together, i did have a My Space before that. In-between I dabled in Reddit, twitter, and Instagram all of which in my point of view are cesspools. Not that I’m a saint, but I detest those who catfish & scam, trolls, asshole partisians, virtue superiority signaling, maga, aggreivment gender supremacist, trauma grifters, and the general way people treat eachother with disrespect and make instant judgements on your life and character. Also, the stalkers, who go after you, plenty of those ass hats.
I orginally quit social media in 2015 for two reasons, with my friends it felt hallow and fake why not just talk, the second was how MAGA used it with Cambridge Anylitica to get Trump elected, blatant manipulation and FaceBook was cool with it: that was to me grounds to tell FB to fuck off. I haven’t been back since, nor Amazon for that matter. I’ve always made decsions based on my politics and where I spend my money and what platform I allow to advertise to me i take important. One of the reasons I left Substack, because it’s owned by a libertarian tech bro. After the Charlie kirk assination they let MAGA gaslight and make death threats for at least a week. I have no doubt just like Zuckerberg & X, soon as a writer or blogger they will write into the terms that your work, copyright, or IP will no longer be protected.
The thing that disappoints me the most about social media is relationships with other people, or the superficiality of them. I am a person who always is trying to “bond”. I’ve found that the vast majority of people you think you are bonding with are not treating the experience of learning about eachother the same way you would physically, as in face to face. It’s as if the wired has a “buffer” that keeps these bonds that you build from ever becoming reality. I can’t imagine how it is to date with online apps, it must be like going through a menu at a 24 hour greek restaurant at 3am with a bunch of other drunk people.
In December of 2024, I went back in and to blueskye trying to push back against X like many X’ers, then came WordPress for my writing, then I left both for Substack in may of 2025 (also, partly because a WordPress writer was actively gaslighting me). I went to SS just when the notes part (the social media part) of SS came online. Though, I met a lot of cool people on Blueskye & Substack many who had helped me through some of the toughest emotionaly horrible months of my life, there has been only one that I have a meaningfull relationship with that I have from all of it.
The cruelty I faced for coming out regarding my assaults was sometimes overwhelming. The anger and spite directed at me for speaking out just to be heard, the cruelty, the hate, the rage. I finally had enough of it on SS too, like I had on Blueskye. Living with an assault considered taboo, I have no idea what I was thinking trying to find answers on social media sites. I was desperate just to find some grace in a world that views you as a villian at birth, even though you were not the villian, and the experience goes against the narrative.
Now, I plan on staying on WordPress. The last year has been an education for me. Social media is not for some people, I am one of them.
I’m a writer, on the darker side, and a terrible artist, but what I show you and what you read is genuine, it’s from my heart and mind. The majority of the art or images I take myself.
I give you me and I ask nothing from you in return.
Ecoheretic 