Nicola Pitchford
@npitchford.bsky.social
Immigrant. Winner of the inaugural Nature Chronicles Prize (2022). She/her. In Northern California on unceded Coast Miwok land.
Pinned
Nicola Pitchford
@npitchford.bsky.social
· Mar 19
‘She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which she fled. Flew. From marriage and family. From us.’
Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project…
selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...
Stunning piece by @npitchford.bsky.social for the decade-long collective #BirdsOfFirle project…
selkiepress.com/2025/03/18/b...
Birds of Firle: She Was Always in Flight by Nicola Pitchford
Aerodynamics was her chosen field of engineering. She worked on the Harrier, the Concorde. She had a love of speed and freedom. Sports cars. Like the one in which eventually she fled. Flew. From ma…
selkiepress.com
Honoured to be part of the beautiful, fragile collective work #BirdsOfFirle, created & curated by Tanya. An ongoing project of 100 writers responding with objects & online to a single physical manuscript, circulated by post over the course of a decade. On grief & hope as the things with feathers...
See Dr Amy’s thread on honouring Jamie Normington (aka Lost Words for Cumbria, among others). This time last year I finally got to experience his gracious, warm, upbeat presence in person at @kendalmtnbookfest.bsky.social & he was indeed as gentle, lovely & loved as he had long seemed online. 💚💔
Bea has come up with a way to honour Jamie which will do lasting good. Please visit her Just Giving page for @cumbriawildlife.bsky.social & @pancreaticcanuk.bsky.social, supporting the wildlife he loved, & fighting the bastard disease that stole him from us.
www.justgiving.com/team/teamjam...
www.justgiving.com/team/teamjam...
Team Jamie!
Help Bea Normington raise money to support Cumbria Wildlife Trust
www.justgiving.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:32 PM
See Dr Amy’s thread on honouring Jamie Normington (aka Lost Words for Cumbria, among others). This time last year I finally got to experience his gracious, warm, upbeat presence in person at @kendalmtnbookfest.bsky.social & he was indeed as gentle, lovely & loved as he had long seemed online. 💚💔
Tuesday dawn. The wild turkey has been calling repeatedly; when the light comes, the hawk starts crying too. Someone rode a motorcycle down the hill road before 6, sound winding away in receding curves.
November 18, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Tuesday dawn. The wild turkey has been calling repeatedly; when the light comes, the hawk starts crying too. Someone rode a motorcycle down the hill road before 6, sound winding away in receding curves.
A randy wild turkey calling outside the house at 0545. FFS man it's about as far from springtime as I can imagine.
November 18, 2025 at 1:53 PM
A randy wild turkey calling outside the house at 0545. FFS man it's about as far from springtime as I can imagine.
This is actually possible in life. In some lives.
Stopped to have a hot plum lemonade at the world’s most beautiful café*
*🤷♀️
*🤷♀️
November 18, 2025 at 1:31 PM
This is actually possible in life. In some lives.
Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Single Contact Lens. 🤬
November 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM
Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Single Contact Lens. 🤬
Reposted by Nicola Pitchford
This is SUCH a great story. I know this piece of land well, grew up at a now-closed resort on one side and my brother went to camp just on the far side. I'm so proud of these nuns! (And look how grumpy the Bishop looks). 19thnews.org/2025/11/cath...
For the first time, Catholic sisters return land to a Tribal nation
"This return represents more than the restoration of land — it is the restoration of balance, dignity, and our sacred connection to the places our ancestors once walked."
19thnews.org
November 18, 2025 at 3:43 AM
This is SUCH a great story. I know this piece of land well, grew up at a now-closed resort on one side and my brother went to camp just on the far side. I'm so proud of these nuns! (And look how grumpy the Bishop looks). 19thnews.org/2025/11/cath...
Reposted by Nicola Pitchford
Tip for the Labour Party. If you have to clarify asylum seekers’ wedding rings won’t be seized, your policy is horrific. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Asylum seekers’ jewellery could be seized to pay for processing costs, says Home Office minister
Idea borrowed from Denmark is latest attempt to reduce number of people seeking asylum in UK
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Tip for the Labour Party. If you have to clarify asylum seekers’ wedding rings won’t be seized, your policy is horrific. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Yesterday, reached the final stage of moving where one returns for the big garden cactus in its pot, swathes it carefully in layers of paper & bubble wrap, drives as slowly as possible , taking corners at a crawl, heaves it to the sunniest spot & oh-so-carefully unwraps…
November 16, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Yesterday, reached the final stage of moving where one returns for the big garden cactus in its pot, swathes it carefully in layers of paper & bubble wrap, drives as slowly as possible , taking corners at a crawl, heaves it to the sunniest spot & oh-so-carefully unwraps…
Last night we watched an episode of Department S in which the best bit was a scene where Stewart opens a row of lockers: three in a row are lined with nude pinups, the fourth door has a headshot of an Airedale.
November 16, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Last night we watched an episode of Department S in which the best bit was a scene where Stewart opens a row of lockers: three in a row are lined with nude pinups, the fourth door has a headshot of an Airedale.
This morning’s sunrise photo. Drizzle drifts across in blurry gusts, the far water of the Bay glows dully silver. A hawk cries, followed by angry crows. When the leaf litter scuttles over the skylights from north to south, I wonder whether it’s creatures scurrying.
November 16, 2025 at 2:47 PM
This morning’s sunrise photo. Drizzle drifts across in blurry gusts, the far water of the Bay glows dully silver. A hawk cries, followed by angry crows. When the leaf litter scuttles over the skylights from north to south, I wonder whether it’s creatures scurrying.
View from the new house, part II.
November 16, 2025 at 12:28 AM
View from the new house, part II.
Going to use this phrase as a constructive suggestion to irritable people.
"It’s a fact of life, isn't it? You grow up and find ways to alchemise your negative trigger points into positivity. Otherwise you are ultimately just fighting with yourself.”
November 15, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Going to use this phrase as a constructive suggestion to irritable people.
(Don’t) Let me know when I start boring you.
Perhaps I can make this a game, to write a few sunrise words every* morning. (*Rain due tomorrow.)
Perhaps I can make this a game, to write a few sunrise words every* morning. (*Rain due tomorrow.)
November 15, 2025 at 2:52 PM
(Don’t) Let me know when I start boring you.
Perhaps I can make this a game, to write a few sunrise words every* morning. (*Rain due tomorrow.)
Perhaps I can make this a game, to write a few sunrise words every* morning. (*Rain due tomorrow.)
First dawn view from the new home. You’re going to be seeing a lot of these. Also, I heard owls — so perhaps I won’t miss the redwoods outside the house too badly.
November 15, 2025 at 2:21 PM
First dawn view from the new home. You’re going to be seeing a lot of these. Also, I heard owls — so perhaps I won’t miss the redwoods outside the house too badly.
We were busy moving house yesterday, one of the privileges (albeit UGH) of having an able body & some financial security — so I missed this great loss until waking to it this morning. RIP Alice Wong.
“With so many marginalized communities, we’re basically the oracles…we’re the ones who see shit before it happens.” In June 2020, I interviewed Alice Wong for TVU before she lost her ability to speak. I asked her how she’d first learned of SARS-CoV-2. She began with the 2016 election of Trump:
November 15, 2025 at 1:54 PM
We were busy moving house yesterday, one of the privileges (albeit UGH) of having an able body & some financial security — so I missed this great loss until waking to it this morning. RIP Alice Wong.
"If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus." 🧀💛🤤
I wonder if Chesterton ever heard of this book. There would have been a three year window before he died.
November 13, 2025 at 8:56 PM
"If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus." 🧀💛🤤
Oh look I’m also repping #TransAwarenessWeek 🏳️⚧️
On a lighter note... Don't let the fact that you're onstage at a professional gathering keep you from showing off your @weratedogs.com sticker.
November 13, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Oh look I’m also repping #TransAwarenessWeek 🏳️⚧️
On a lighter note... Don't let the fact that you're onstage at a professional gathering keep you from showing off your @weratedogs.com sticker.
November 13, 2025 at 6:34 PM
On a lighter note... Don't let the fact that you're onstage at a professional gathering keep you from showing off your @weratedogs.com sticker.
I know California City, the remote "town" in the high Mojave desert where this is happening. It's a wild place with an eccentric history of dreams, fraud, & exploitation. It also has a brutal climate, with freezing winter nights & triple-digit summers. It was never a place for a prison, ever.
I don't have sufficient mental resilience just now to feel that stories like this are in any way bearable. US government & for-profit prison corporations are deliberately & knowingly driving people with no criminal convictions to self-destruction & mental crisis & allowing the ill to die untreated.
People held in ‘decrepit’ California ICE facility sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions
Lawsuit against US government alleges ‘life-threatening’ medical neglect and says residents frequently go hungry
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 5:50 PM
I know California City, the remote "town" in the high Mojave desert where this is happening. It's a wild place with an eccentric history of dreams, fraud, & exploitation. It also has a brutal climate, with freezing winter nights & triple-digit summers. It was never a place for a prison, ever.
I don't have sufficient mental resilience just now to feel that stories like this are in any way bearable. US government & for-profit prison corporations are deliberately & knowingly driving people with no criminal convictions to self-destruction & mental crisis & allowing the ill to die untreated.
People held in ‘decrepit’ California ICE facility sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions
Lawsuit against US government alleges ‘life-threatening’ medical neglect and says residents frequently go hungry
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 5:48 PM
I don't have sufficient mental resilience just now to feel that stories like this are in any way bearable. US government & for-profit prison corporations are deliberately & knowingly driving people with no criminal convictions to self-destruction & mental crisis & allowing the ill to die untreated.
Reposted by Nicola Pitchford
As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history.
Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX
Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX
November 13, 2025 at 11:33 AM
As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history.
Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX
Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX
My (British) co-worker only recently discovered this & it has brought the joy home like new. It can move one to happy tears to see a young (ahem) person experiencing the full familiar beauty for the very first time.
November 13, 2025 at 1:40 PM
My (British) co-worker only recently discovered this & it has brought the joy home like new. It can move one to happy tears to see a young (ahem) person experiencing the full familiar beauty for the very first time.
The pigs are in an enclosure, I should add. The peacocks wander about inspecting & adding their wails to the industrial din.
The best part about visiting our municipal waste dump is seeing the pigs & peafowl that live there.
November 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
The pigs are in an enclosure, I should add. The peacocks wander about inspecting & adding their wails to the industrial din.
The best part about visiting our municipal waste dump is seeing the pigs & peafowl that live there.
November 12, 2025 at 5:50 PM
The best part about visiting our municipal waste dump is seeing the pigs & peafowl that live there.
Well. It’s possible I’ve seen more exciting & evocative things than the Aurora as rendered by my iPhone.
November 12, 2025 at 4:59 AM
Well. It’s possible I’ve seen more exciting & evocative things than the Aurora as rendered by my iPhone.