By Rail to Canada, no Passport Needed
The clock showed 9:30 PM, Central Standard Time, September 15, 1958. Soo Line Train 9/13 was 21 minutes behind schedule as it cruised along in the fall Minnesota night, heading into the shallow bend towards the town of Hamel. There was no need to slow down from 58 MPH (93 kph) as the approaching station was not a stop for the train on its way to Portal, North Dakota and Winnipeg, Manitoba. From Minneapolis to Glenwood, Minnesota the two trains, also known as the “Dominion” and the “Winnipeger”, ran together before being split for their final destinations. The Dominion would be picked up by the Canadian Pacific for connection to Vancouver, British Columbia the next day.
GP9 diesel-electric locomotive No. 557 lead the train with the engineer and fireman aboard, followed by cabless power unit 503B. Behind them came six baggage cars, five sleepers, three coaches, and a lounge car, not in that order. Aboard the cars were 75 passengers, about five Pullman Company sleeping car porters, three dining service employees, three mail clerks, two baggagemen, the conductor (H.M. Ratje), and two brakemen.
Bright headlights shown ahead in the dark. The firemen, seated on the lefthand side of the cab, was observing a road crossing ahead of them. The engineer, Herman J. Steinke, was keeping an eye out on the tracks ahead. One detail was missed by both men, however. A green light supposed to mark the switch for the siding that served local businesses in Hamel was dark. In fact, although they never could have seen it, the lock had been bashed off and the switch thrown so it pointed into the siding. The lamp extinguished. At full speed, Train 9/13 rocked hard and as it hit the siding curve 120 feet later, jackknifed across the tracks at 9:35 pm.
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The Accident
Miraculously, no one was killed as the first eight cars and both locomotives derailed spectacularly. Sixteen people were hospitalized for their injuries among the dozens treated at the scene. Witnesses in Hamel reported the crash impact felt like an earthquake, calling in to the Hennepin County Sheriff to notify them of the disaster. The Sheriff’s emergency calls were answered by Civil Defense rescue teams and six fire departments within thirty minutes to begin the process of extracting those unable to escape the cars. Uninjured patrons were bussed back to Minneapolis by the Soo Line for the night, to figure out ways of getting them on to their destinations.
It was during the rescue efforts that a Hamel Fire Department firefighter noticed the damage to the switch lock that prevented tampering. While it was locked to point into the switch rather than the main line, he noticed that the shackle of the lock had clearly been battered open before being re-closed. Investigation by police and ICC officials also disclosed that someone had tried to batter the lamp’s connecting bolt so it could be rotated to give a false ‘clear’ indication. When that had failed, someone had apparently settled for extinguishing it. Five hours before Train 9/13 came through Hamel, about 4:30 PM, the local track maintenance foreman had inspected the line. He reported the switch had been set correctly at the time but could not remember if the lamp was lit yet. It was fueled twice a week, having been topped off three days before.
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The Suspect, the official Verdict, and the Aftermath.
By the first of October railroad police were seeking a man known to peddle sewing needles door-to-door in the Hamel area. He was in his fifties, stoop-shouldered, an ‘eccentric dresser’ who wore a flap-eared cap. Local residents had noticed the man in the area of the siding earlier in the evening but thought nothing of it at the time. Police apparently failed to locate him, or cleared him of wrongdoing, as no further remarks on this suspect appear in the newspapers.
On December 17, 1958 the Interstate Commerce Commission officially rendered its report on the incident. After examining the crew, witnesses on the ground, passengers, and the incident scene itself, they concluded the crew was not at fault for the accident. The ICC official accident cause was listed as malicious tampering, by person or persons unknown, who had deliberately forced open the switch, changed its direction, and extinguished the indicating lamp. From the transportation safety end of things, it was case closed.
Engine 557 and 503B were returned to service, as did the injured employees. Rail traffic was disrupted for several weeks until the line could be fixed. Today, perhaps the last survivor is Engine 557, still operating in Hanska, Minnesota as Farmers Co-Op of Hanska No. 124.
​
Conclusion and Questions
In 2023 it seems highly unlikely that the September 15, 1958 derailment will ever be solved. No one died, and the newspaper headlines of the day were occupied with the tragic Newark Bay bridge accident on the Central Railroad of New Jersey that killed 48, so it quietly slipped from memory. However, that does leave us with some room to speculate on the cause.

1. The ICC Got It Wrong: There was no deliberate sabotage. Railroad locks take a beating even without deliberate tampering and investigators followed a path that would absolve the company and its employees of fault for incorrectly positioning the switch. The investigation makes no remark on when the switch had last been legitimately used before the accident.
2. The Peddler: A convenient target. Marginalized and possibly without a home, as he is also described as ‘dirty-faced’, it would be convenient to latch onto a sighting of him near the switch as an explanation. We’re given little motivation to why he might have tampered with the switch. However, after examining several cases like this, there often doesn’t seem to be much motivation amongst those apprehended. Children playing around, wanting to see the train wreck, without any more information its hard to say much more.
3. Someone Else: Local children, teens, another resident. Someone wanted to see the train crash. Notably someone had to wield a heavy tool against the switch lock and lamp bolts, no Lockpicking Lawyer here, which would seem to point towards an adult.

​
Sources
The Interstate Commerce Commission Report of the Accident Investigation occurring on the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad at Hamel, MN: https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/45711
The Soo Line Public Timetable in effect at the time of the accident: http://wx4.org/to/foam/maps/2-Perry/015/d/1958-09-07SOO_systemPTT-Perry.pdf
News Articles and Photos (As a warning, this does include images of a non-fatal railroad crash and injured persons being transported): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1d1ZFYlPVNnZZxI6nf0jITZTLFb2xiSHv?usp=sharing

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https://preview.redd.it/wit72znalm4b1.png?width=461&format=png&auto=webp&s=aa3061abed19f2a9aba0df660dd8ec6db8164119
VANCOUVER, BC / THENEWSWIRE / May 30, 2023 – Element 79 Gold Corp. (CSE:ELEM) (OTC:ELMGF) (FSE: 7YS) ("Element 79 Gold", the "Company") announces that, further to its November 17, 2022 release announcing that the Company had entered into a non-binding letter of intent (the “Valdo LOI”) with Valdo Minerals Ltd. (“Valdo”), the parties have mutually agreed to a 60-day extension to the exclusivity period to enter into a definitive agreement for the sale of three properties from its Battle Mountain Portfolio located in the northeastern Nevada, US.
The other terms of the LOI, as announced by the Company on November 17, 2022, remain unchanged.
Proposed Transaction Highlights

• Valdo to acquire 100% interests and obligation in:
  
  • The North Mill Creek Project - comprised of 6 unpatented claims located at the margins of the Goat Window in Lander County, Nevada, an exposure of lower plate rocks beneath the Roberts Mountains Thrust, the preferred carbonate host of Carlin-type gold deposits.
  • The Elder Creek Project - comprised of 23 unpatented claims, which cover the historic Elder Creek open-pit mine in Lander County, Nevada, hosted in upper plate rocks where the mine area is believed to represent leakage from the deeper lower plate of the Roberts Mountains Thrust.
  • The Elephant Project - comprised of 197 claims located at the foot of the mine dumps at Nevada Gold Mines' Phoenix operation hosting a covered pediment target with various depths of cover based on the displacement of fault blocks.
• Valdo to issue 3,750,000 common shares at a deemed price of $0.30 CAD per share representing an aggregate value of CAD 1,125,000.
  
• According to the revised exclusivity period, the transaction is expected to close by July 15, 2023.
  

“As we progressed toward the initial term of the LOI, Valdo expressed a desire for an extension as they finalize their project structuring and capitalization plans,” said James Tworek, Element79 Gold Corp CEO. “Our collaboration with Valdo holds great promise, spurred by their continued interest in how the optioned portfolio synergizes with their other regionally adjacent projects, we are confident that this extension will pave the way for a successful closing and strong Valdo story in the future.”
Element79 Gold’s Battle Mountain Portfolio
The Battle Mountain Portfolio was originally comprised of 15 separate projects totaling over 44,478 acres across 2,203 unpatented claims in five counties: Elko County, Eureka County, Humboldt County, Lander County, and Nye County. Most of the Battle Mountain Portfolio is located within the Battle Mountain Trend, with several projects close to globally reputable gold deposits including Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine.
The Battle Mountain Portfolio is comprised primarily of early-stage projects. While drilling has been completed at some projects, such as Elder Creek (155 holes) and Clover (104 holes), many have only surface sampling and geophysical surveys completed. Of particular note are the Long Peak, Elephant, Elder Creek, North Mill Creek, Clipper, Pipeline South, West Cortez, and Walti Projects, which are interpreted to lie along the northwest trending fault that hosts the high-grade Pipeline deposit, which is included in Nevada Gold's Cortez Mine.
Qualified Person
The technical information in this release has been reviewed and verified by Neil Pettigrew, M.Sc., P. Geo., Director of Element79 Gold and a "qualified person" as defined by National Instrument 43-101.
About Element79 Gold
Element79 Gold is a mining company focused on gold, silver and associated metals and committed to maximizing shareholder value through responsible mining practices and sustainable development of its projects. Element79 Gold's main focus is on two core properties: developing its previously-producing, high-grade gold and silver mine, the Lucero project located in Arequipa, Peru, with the intent to bring it back into production in the near term; and its flagship Maverick Springs Project located in the famous gold mining district of northeastern Nevada, USA, between the Elko and White Pine Counties. Maverick Springs hosts a 43-101-compliant, pit-constrained mineral resource estimate reflecting an inferred resource of 3.71 million ounces of gold equivalent "AuEq" at a grade of 0.92 g/t AuEq (0.34 g/t Au and 43.4 g/t Ag) with an effective date of October 19, 2022. The acquisition of the Maverick Springs Project also included a portfolio of 15 properties along the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada, which are non-core to its primary business focus. In British Columbia, Element79 Gold has executed a Letter of Intent and funded a drilling program to acquire a private company that holds the option to 100% interest of the Snowbird High-Grade Gold Project, which consists of 10 mineral claims located in Central British Columbia, approximately 20km west of Fort St. James. The Company also has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Dale Property, 90 unpatented mining claims located approximately 100 km southwest of Timmins, Ontario, Canada in the Timmins Mining Division, Dale Township. The Company is analyzing the non-core Nevada projects, The Dale Property and Snowbird Property for further merit of exploration, sale or spin-out.
For more information about the Company, please visit www.element79.gold
Contact Information:
James C. Tworek, Chief Executive Officer E-mail: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
For investor relations inquiries, please contact:
Investor Relations Department – Dylan Anderson
Phone: +1 (613) 879-9387
E-mail: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Sorry for the long post. I just need to vent.
Like the title says. I started DM'ing like 5 years ago. But I had 0 background/started with the Wave Echo campaign. My players were all new as well. We played infrequently.
A few months ago we decide to start playing again, but this time in earnest, with regular sessions scheduled, and a slightly different combo of people. I wanted to run my own campaign so I had the creative freedom instead of following a road map. It has been a big undertaking, but I'm reading lots to try to keep it balanced, fun, and interesting, while putting a big focus on PC backgrounds affecting the world. I want my players to be invested.
When we started, I had all their characters brought together by being arrested under suspicion of working for the first major boss. They were then given the mission to hunt down the boss, but they were given a long timeline to complete this task.
Instead of any of the players deciding to investigate more about the boss, they left the conversation and immediately went to where the boss was believed to be located. I tried to slow them down by giving them lots of interesting things to explore in the city. I even gave them a side hook about a drug epidemic taking over the city, with them being attacked in the streets. Still, they press on, straight to the big bad. They literally incapacitated the drugged Orc, and left him in the street to keep going to the boss. Throughout all of this, I would keep reminding them that they had a long timeline. I even told them there were sellswords available for hire. Nope. Nothing.
Okay fine. So they make it to the lair. I had a few things happen, trying to warn them off. A few of the players even remarked that they shouldn't be here, and needed more info. Did they stop? Nope.
They find the big bad. At this point, I greatly nerf'd the fight because they were severely unprepared. I gave them some guard allies to help the fight. But the original plot was kind of a dark retelling of Snow White. So the big bad had a mirror of life trapping. One of them gets pulled into it as the others watch. What does the very first person do? Run straight at the mirror. They rolled high enough on the save. But they chose to fail the save and be sucked into the mirror. Oh, and it was their healer.
So they have rushed to the BBEG, and are immediately down two of their PC.
4 PCs left. 1 decides to back out the cave and hide. 1 is playing a sort of pacifist, so they waste two full turns running around the cave, just taking damage and doing nothing. The other 2 are trying to hit but have bad luck on rolls. The fight is a drag. It takes hours.
I keep telling them that the BBEG is not being affected by non magical effects. They keep trying to shoot with arrows. I show them that the people in the mirror can be released. It takes like a hour and a couple more of the PCs falling unconscious before they try anything with the mirror. I have the BBEG say a release word on the mirror. The 1 PC asks me to repeat the word, writes it down, and proceeds to do nothing with the info. Finally the barbarian with help from the hiding rogue destroys the mirror, and their friends are returned.
The healer instantly starts trying to deal damage. At this point, the PCs are dropping almost every turn. The healer is getting mad that their attack spells aren't hitting, but isn't providing any support to the heavy hitters on the team. I even stopped using the BBEG lair actions for a few rounds to try to cut them some slack. One of the PC was one fail away from death. The healer still didn't get them up. Some of the allies I gave them were put to sleep. It was 5 rounds before anyone tried to wake them up...and that was only after I told them that they could.
None of the players asked questions. None of the players knew their character sheets. None of them listened to me about the resistances. The pacifist PC even found out what damage hurt more, and tried to tell the group. The group did nothing different.
Throughout the fight though, I am being accused of working against the party. Being told that the DM is suppose to be on the side of the players. Some of the players are verbally going on about how this is a stupid game, blah blah blah. I try to explain that I was treating it like an open world video game. Where yes, you can go anywhere you like, but if you go too soon, you will be wrecked. That is not the video game's fault. However, I could've easily turned this into a TPK but didn't in view of their newness. I also made lots of concessions and changes to things behind the DM screen to account for their stupidity because I am on their side. But I don't want to teach them that they can go against the baddie any time they want and it'll go fine. That doesn't create stakes.
So, after the battle is done, the tension is high. I try to approach the subject that it isn't very fun for me to DM when I am being accused of being unfair and people are carrying on about how terrible the game is. I very clearly said that if they didn't like it, they didn't have to play.
Instead I am told that I don't explain enough. That I was working against them. That I am too rigid. That I am too black and white.
I try to defend myself by explaining that I have to follow core rules to give the game meaning, but there was lots I did to give them a break/bend the rules in their favor. I also explained that I was the only one who actually knew the rules of the game, so how could they know what I was or wasn't doing (they all agree I know the most about the mechanics).
An actual conversation: Me: I said that there was a sellsword. Why didn't you hire them? PC: I don't know what a sellsword is. Me: Really? Oh it's a common enough fantasy word. It's a mercenary. PC: Why would I know that? Me: I genuinely assumed everyone knew the word, my bad. If you didn't know what it was, why didn't you ask? PC: I didn't think to. DM: ...how is that my fault? PC: Why'd you use a pretentious word? rinse and repeat
Anyways, I really love storytelling, and I really like the world that is being built. But I don't really know what to do.
Any suggestions? AITA? Can I be doing something different? Is this just growing pains from new players? Should I just stop?
6 PCs, 4 are fine/didn't have complaints. 1 PC accused me of being unfairigid/etc. The other PC is the one who is confused but some reason doesn't ask questions.

I know that multiplayer games aren’t exactly this sub’s forte, but as someone who enjoys and basically only plays competitive multiplayer shooters, I might as well add my discussion.
I originally played Rainbow Six: Siege a couple years after it came out when I built my first PC in 2017. I was hooked, and put in hundreds of hours over the summer with friends before I went off to college. Eventually, I stopped playing as much going into my sophomore year of college and dropped off for a few years. In the past month, I’ve gotten back into the game with some friends, and the game has not changed substantially since I stopped, and is honestly in a much better place in regards to balance and map design.
One of the immediate things that I found very nice when coming back was the more widely spread meta, which to some may be annoying, but I prefer it as it makes learning maps much easier. With the “homogenization” of map design, it’s quick to pick up on how to play each bomb site between maps; I mainly played Unranked, so only the “good” maps are in rotation. With how many operators are in the game, it’s nice to be able to pick a site a immediately know which operator you’re going to play for it. There are new maps in the game like Nighthaven Labs and Emerald Plains, but they get banned constantly and rarely see play, seems that that aspect of the community has barely changed.
The changes to weapons are my favorite thing so far. Instead of weapons having a small set of sights, every weapon can equip any of the 1x zoom sights, with defenders having rare access to a 1.5x zoom and even rarer a 2x, while attackers all have the 1.5x and sometimes a 2x or above. The weapons themselves feel much more balanced as well. There is less recoil across the board and attachments are doled out as needed to keep an operator from being too strong. I can’t think of a single operator whose gun is annoying to fight against, only some who maybe need some more options.
The worst change is to the community. It was kinda toxic before, but it’s way worse now. They’ve added in auto chat/voice mute for toxic players, but it seems like no one actually wants to report people for being obnoxious in chat, so there’s still plenty of players who are shitheads who I have to report. Removal of team kick and the reverse friendly fire system is so much better, and the removal of friendly fire during the setup phase helps immensely with some of the truly cancerous behavior that went on before. If someone is toxic on mic, I will either mute or just not respond, because most of the time they’re already dead so their complaints are worthless.
Comms are still rare, and I feel bad for people solo queueing. I duo-trio mostly, and having someone actually give you calls or drone you in is magical. There are a lot of people who have mics but will only turn them on to complain or bitch about how you’re playing. You’ll set up drones or cams for flank watch or info, ask a random if they can watch it, get no info and die. The meta right now is very fast for attackers, and my friends and I do not play that way, so there’s a lot of whining about it.
We play some ranked, but the new system is not great. It has the same problem that Apex Legends has by resetting at the new season, so the bottom rank is flooded with every single player, and is basically unplayable for a couple weeks unless you hate yourself. The idea of Hidden MMR to get smurfs out of low ranks faster is fine, but in practice, it means you’re in Copper III playing in a Plat+ lobby. You have to 50/50 every game, which actually slows your progression up the ranks. Instead of getting a 75% win rate with increased Elo gains to get up to your real rank faster by only playing people who are also in your rank, you get a 50% win rate where you have to deal with playing 40 minutes in a Plat lobby to lose 8 Elo because the game knows you should be a higher rank. In the end, it takes more matches to get where you should be.
Overall, I’m having a lot of fun coming back to the game. A friend had this to say about it: “It has the highest highs of any game I’ve played, but some of the lowest lows.” And I suppose that’s about right.

I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.

Hi, I'll be moving to Sugar Land this July and looking to move into a 2B2B or affordable 1B1B apartments around the Fort Bend County.

I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.