In response to Slate’s article on the possibility having non-heteromative team in figure skating (particularly, ice dance and pairs), Oniceperspective shared a glimpse of Gabriella Papadakis (FRA) and Madison Hubbell (USA) working on their same-sex program. You can see how they switch the leading figure between them.
sorry i didn’t respond to your text right away. i was weeping at the sight of impossibly little white flowers scattered like stars in the desert brush
This isn’t the same flower, but you’ve reminded me of this excerpt from The Sand County Almanac :)
“he who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it […] a postscript to a hope”
[ID: The first two images are photos of small five-petaled white flowers in brush. Image three is an excerpt from A Sand County Almanac titled “Draba”. It reads:
Within a few weeks now Draba, the smallest flower that blows, will sprinkle every sandy place with small blooms.
He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
Draba asks, and gets, but scant allowance of warmth and comfort; it subsists on the leavings of unwanted rime and space. Botany books give it two or three lines, but never a plate or portrait. Sand too poor and sun too weak for bigger, better blooms are good enough for Draba. After all it is no spring flower, but only a postscript to a hope.
Draba plucks no heartstrings. Its perfume, if there is any, is lost in the gusty winds. Its color is plain white. Its leaves wear a sensible woolly coat. Nothing eats it; it is too small. No poets sing of it. Some botanist once gave it a Latin name, and then forgot it. Altogether it is of no importance—just a small creature that does a small job quickly and well. End ID]
May comic! Happy mental health awareness month. 🐝 Comic brought to you by my constant worry that I don’t exist if I have nothing to show for myself.
Advice to my past self: Read about burnout. Stretch. Stand up. Get lunch. Ask for extensions. Get help. Sleep. Take time off if you need to, don’t ask. Take care of yourself.
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
