hardleeric.bsky.social
AVL WNC
69 posts
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It just says “LGB” as of today.
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Find all that out soon enough. Promise we will.
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That all tracks. If you haven’t done it, you don’t know. Oh, and by the way, I talk to Americorps, Jobcorps, teaching fellows here in America, in rural Appalachia or Dallas or NYC, with the same stories. It doesn’t hold up to an audit but it’s absolutely invaluable. And when we kill it, we’ll 13/
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Those nights I explained a plot line from Friends (they loved Friends in my village) moved the dial of equity a little. In development work you cling that. So when I hear a Colombian U.S.A.I.D. program found funds for a “transgender opera”? Yeah, that tracks. The waste and excess- $20m to mudirs 12/
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I stopped them from beating him. I stopped them from beating lots of people, for the time I was there, at least. For the price of being game to raise money for a 5th playground. In more optimistic moments, I think maybe my influence even made a difference after I went back home. Maybe one of 11/
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Eyebrows shot up. We talked about gender equity — did you know Rich does dishes too? — a lot, just in a thousand passing interactions that had nothing to do with the playground. And also, one time they brought in a resident who’d been shut in a goat pen from childhood, a true feral person, and 10/
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99% of the time I’m not positive I did anything else either. When I hear U.S.A.I.D. dollars went to weird plays and other dumb-sounding stuff too, I think about the playgrounds, though. And how, one time when my then-wife and I cooked fried chicken, we said “Rich cooked too!” And the women’s 9/
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It’s redundant. It’s fucking frustrating. It’s objectively wasteful and ridiculous. If I’m Elon Musk rampaging through America’s receipts, it’s the first thing I hold up for derision. None of those deriding were ever a face of “soft power,” though, I promise. I never built a playground, and 8/
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And that’s development work. In what we were told was the 2nd most developed country with a Peace Corps program (we were told Romania was first) at the time btw. A country whose leaders went to Sandhurst and speak better English than me and get [gestures] all of it, better than any of us. 7/
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Then he takes me to a window of his office and pulls aside a curtain. And there, on a side of a he complex no one has ever gone, no one is allowed to go, but perfectly visible to the mudir’s visiting dignitaries, sit 4 perfect untouched playgrounds. One from each previous volunteer, side by side 6/
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When we get to business I say, sir, what am I supposed to do? This is a “needs assessment” and “listening to the locals.” The training has a lot to say about those. “A project (burnamaj)?” he says. Yes, a project. Ahh. He says, a playground. You could raise some money and build us a playground. 5/
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It’s mayhem 24/7. So one day a few weeks into my 2-yr tour I go to the mudir in his huge office to one isolated side of the center. I drink the proffered tea and at one point as I remember it he literally parades some other local elders through to see me. Takes a while to get to business there. 4/
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a “mudir”, a director, who was a bit of a local bigwig. Treatment of any of our residents, such as it was, was a bit of a shambles, though there were some valiant efforts, especially in arts and music classes. Mostly they sat in a classroom sunup to sundown, with breaks in a big central courtyard 3/
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This place — a “markaz” in Arabic — housed people of all ages, literally babies to senior citizens, with developmental or mental health problems that their families couldn’t stay on top of. So they’d been sent here. There they were watched over be a few dozen staff, mostly local women, and 2/
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All that stuff and more will get tarred and axed. That’s the plot. Grift and espionage opportunities are ancillary.
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I felt like she was doing a Kurt impression with her voice. Not her usual voice.
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Is it weird to have Dave Grohl’s daughter singing All Apologies, but not *that* daughter that he fathered with his mistress? Is everyone, in fact, “gay”?
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St Vincent nailing it at the R&RHOF induction, 2024
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Who voted for this?
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Nissan Doormats?
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I’m from the Northwest but Lindsay’s Detroit born and raised.
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- Things I say at least once a week.
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“Sweetheart, this is Watergate, goodbye!”