Have been clearing brush the past couple weekends.

The past couple weekends I've been clearing brush to free local parklands from invasive Asian plant species in the hopes of eventually restoring tall-grass prairie habitat that will provide the necessary seeds and grains to encourage native migratory bird species.

(Phew.)

So, two weekends ago we were lopping down mulberry trees and felling poplars in a thickly-wooded patch of trees, and this half-drunk black guy walks down the nearby path, stops, looks, and is like, "You take away somebody's love spot."

A little while later this one woman is walking by with someone and was asking me what everyone was doing, so I told her, and she was like, "Oh," and then I told her she should come out some weekend and help out if she wants. "Can teenagers help?", she was like, and when I said I wasn't sure and she should talk to the supervisor, she said her son needed to do some community service and she was looking for places for him.

This past weekend I was working in a different park with some people that included a white guy around my age named Michael Jackson. I was asking him if he had visited nearby Gary, Indiana, home of the Jackson Five, and he said he had always meant to, but he's never got around to it. He then added that he had talked to someone from there once and they said all the kids used to try to beat the shit out of the Jacksons before they got big since they were in a pansy-ass band in their garage. The supervisor was then like, "My boyfriend, who's black, is from Gary and said that all he remembers is the Jacksons having to jump fences and run home right after baseball practice got out," which I took to mean that as soon as the adults were gone the other kids used to try to kick the shit out of the Jacksons.