Lake Lewisia #527

The teams in charge of caring for the Buried Gardens have received a number of citizen reports of mysterious giant vines sprouting next to the central fountain and reaching to unseen heights, and they can confirm this is a real plant and not a collective hallucination. Xenobotanists and folklore specialists have begun investigations of both the plant and whatever may exist at its terminus somewhere above cloud level. Adventurers wishing to take advantage of the distinctly ladder-like series of thorns ascending the vines are advised to take adequate survival gear and to familiarize themselves with Lewisia ordinances regarding first contact events, just in case someone is living up there.

---

LL#527

plague journaling

So the next county over has a federal prison in it. There's been a massive outbreak of covid-19 among inmates and staff. Which is horrible for a lot of reasons. The thing that is making me crazy about it this evening, though, is the news coverage of the numbers.

The local news channel does a case number recap each day: new cases, total deaths, hospitalizations in and out of ICU, cases classified as fully recovered. Now that there's been this outbreak at the prison, they cover its numbers as well. And every time they switch to covering the general population numbers, they specifically say, "These are cases in the community, not including inmates or prison staff."

There's probably some good journalistic reason why they say it this way. It's probably some technical term, to indicate that the inmates are not freely moving in the community and thus potentially spreading the virus. (The exclusion of staff, or guards or however it is they say it exactly, as well somewhat undermines this, but never mind.) So I'm probably pissed off for no good reason, which would surprise no one. But damn, it annoys me every time.

Who do they classify as part of the community, then? Where do they think these inmates are coming from, if not the community? (Not that I think it makes a difference, but these are low- and medium-security facilities, so it's not like they want to avoid being associated with Hannibal goddamn Lecter.) It's just--

My nephew, the son of my brother who died in 2018, just got released from a similar such prison about six months ago. He's a dumbass, in much the same way his father was, but that's okay. He's made bad decisions, and he ended up in jail, and he's trying to do better. He came from a community; he returned to that community. In between, did he just...cease to exist? If he had gotten sick, why would his illness not count? Why would he need to be tallied in a special column of "people we don't really care about?" People who are incarcerated aren't, like, temporarily assigned to a different species.

Can we just all stop being absolute shit to each other for five goddamn minutes?