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birdsndogs.bsky.social

@birdsndogs.bsky.social

We started a #tradewar with our closest ally #canada ?

March 6, 2025 at 8:59 AM

Reposted

ex-Lethality Jane

@lethalityjane.bsky.social

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

February 15, 2025 at 5:49 PM

Reposted

Don Martin

@bydonmartin.bsky.social

Clint Smith (Above Ground is in my top collections ever)

Morgan Parker (Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night is an entire gospel)

Idris Goodwin (These are the Breaks)

Keep it going.

February 10, 2025 at 6:06 PM

Reposted

Don Martin

@bydonmartin.bsky.social

If last night’s halftime show has you wanting to read more Black poets, some of my personal favorites who do not get enough mainstream attention are:

Saul Williams (Amethyst Rocks changed me)

Staceyann Chin (PLEASE watch her perform literally anything)

February 10, 2025 at 6:06 PM

birdsndogs.bsky.social

@birdsndogs.bsky.social

@bydonmartin.bsky.social Post your Kendrick Lamar Pulitzer winning poet thread here, please!!!! 💕

February 10, 2025 at 4:01 PM

birdsndogs.bsky.social

@birdsndogs.bsky.social

Not sure why I didn't think of this before, but was Nibbler in Futurama a Boston Terrier? Bundle's Christmas hat indicates yes

February 6, 2025 at 9:52 PM

birdsndogs.bsky.social

@birdsndogs.bsky.social

I'm new here and this just lets you know who I am, in a nutshell: the kind of person who throws her dog a 1st birthday party (but not the kind who invites humans or other dogs that don't already live here). Credit to Jim Gaffigan for the audio (if it posts)