In 1984, When Ruth Coker Burks Was 25 And A Young Mother Living In Arkansas, She Would Often Visit A

“In 1984, when Ruth Coker Burks was 25 and a young mother living in Arkansas, she would often visit a hospital to care for a friend with cancer.

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.

For this, Ruth has been nicknamed the ‘Cemetery Angel’.”— by Ra-Ey Saley

I just wanted to share the Instagram announcement, because of the bit at the end.

Eric Carle’s Instagram is full of art, if you want to check that out. Here’s one I thought was nice.

fuck it. spike this, spike that.

this is an anvil. good luck post below me.

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If you have a Duolingo account, please consider upvoting this request to add Coptic to their language courses.

Coptic is the final stage of the Egyptian language. It is currently endangered, with less than 300 Egyptians speaking it as their native tongue.

It would mean a great deal to indigenous Egyptians in the Coptic community to have our language preserved, and this would be a huge step forward.

If you don’t have a Duolingo account, consider sharing this with those who might. Thank you! <3

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: tommy isn’t a uniquely violent character, he’s a uniquely punished character.

tommy doesn’t grief more than other people, he doesn’t kill more than other people, he doesn’t steal more than other people, he doesn’t cause conflicts more than other people (being involved is not the same as causing), but while other characters have faced consequences in the sense of revenge (think the pet wars) tommy is the only character that has Consistently faced consequences in the form of being punished from a place of authority.

people in the fandom treat tommy differently because the Narrative treats tommy differently, however the whole point of this narrative is that it’s unfair.

dream targeted tommy with exile because he wanted to hurt him, dream’s done worse to george himself and had actively been trying to frame tommy to get him exiled a week before. other characters have started blaming tommy for what’s happened because dream painted tommy as the center of all of their problems (dream holding l’manberg hostage to exile tommy, lying about the community house, announcing that he’s going to destroy l’manberg because tommy told tubbo to give him his disc, doomsday being centered around tommy despite techno planning to destroy it before tommy had teamed up with him). dream hurts people and tries to find a way to blame tommy to put a wedge between him and them, to hurt tommy with his attachments to other people and hurt people with their attachment to tommy. he’s being Unfair and tommy recognized that all the way back at the trial.

and the thing is? tommy’s still grown as a person. he’s Apologized, he’s made an active effort to change his behavior and try to stay out of trouble, and dream is Still hurting him. Still targeting him.

the argument that tommy being traumatized/a child/abused/etc not being an excuse, that he deserves to be punished for his actions, falls flat because he’s the Only character being asked to do so for the actual “crimes” that he’s committed. no one else is held to the same standard that he is, both in the lore and by the fandom. it’s not that tommy is flawless or that he’s never done anything wrong, it’s that no one’s Ever insisted that sapnap needs to be punished for griefing, that Tubbo needs to be punished for burning people’s things, or even Dream for having been the center of conflicts long before tommy showed up and long after.

it’s a double standard that sits Wrong. wrong because tommy’s made an active effort to apologize, to grow, to be a better person, and was still demonized by the fandom while it was happening and accused of never learning.

wrong because he’s been uniquely hurt in a way that no one on the server has been in the name of “punishing” him, and I think at that point we have to ask if “punishment” is something that he really needs let alone Deserves.

and Wrong because the logic and reasoning that we use to get there, to Get at the idea that he deserves punishment when other characters do not, stems from the same logic that his abuser used to justify his abuse.

if tommy was a side character whose personality wasn’t Any different he’d never be treated this way by the fandom, he’d never be demonized the way that he is. you can think that he’s annoying without thinking that he should suffer or without trying to justify it by pinning him down as morally in the wrong somehow. likewise he isn’t actually More guilty than anyone else is just because another character says that he is

You know what? I don’t want neurotypicals to see me as “normal.” I want them to be okay with my wackiness.