What is flash? Flash is what we call predawn tattoo designs. They are ready to be tattooed as is, just pick the one you want. Typically they can be tattooed multiple times on different people (though I always find ways to make them unique from person to person).

What is a flash special? A flash special is what I call it when I launch a set of flash designs centered around a particular theme and offer them for a limited time with a limited number of appointments.

Who can participate? Anyone! Existing or new clients are welcome to get these designs. In fact, it’s one of my favorite ways to meet new clients.

When do they happen? Randomly, when I have the time and inspiration. I announce them on my instagram, website, and through my mailing list (sign up at the bottom of this page).

 

VITAL ACTIONS FUNDRAISER: Flash Special and Art Raffle

A portion of tattoo proceeds will go to benefit sea turtle conservation efforts in Southern Nicaragua. For a full explanation of why I chose this organization, keeping reading.

To participate without getting a tattoo, enter the raffle to win an 8 x 10” hand drawn copy of this flash sheet! All details below.

 

TATTOO BOOKING INSTRUCTIONS:

Spring flowers for hope, four leaf clovers and pearls for their 1 in 10,000 chances of occurring: the same odds that a baby sea turtle has of surviving to become a breeding adult.

  • Irises - medium or large

  • Tulips - medium or large

  • Baby Sea Turtle - medium or large

  • Four Leaf Clover - small or medium

  • Four Leaf Clover with Flower - small or medium

  • Clam with Pearl - small or medium

  • Oyster with Pearl - small or medium

RAFFLE INSTRUCTIONS:

  1. Click here to donate to Vital Actions using any of the methods on their site.

  2. Email proof of your donation (a screenshot of your confirmation or venmo transaction works great!) to JenuineRoseTattoos@gmail.com with the subject RAFFLE

  3. For every $5 you will get one raffle ticket for this 8 x 10” drawing.

  4. I will take donations until Friday April 18th at midnight and select a winner over the weekend. I will ship artwork to any winner who is not local.

VITAL ACTIONS: Conservation, Social Justice, and Hope

I recently had the immense pleasure of attending a yoga retreat in Nicaragua. It was an absolutely dreamy experience on many levels and I have a lot to share, but today I really just want to talk about the sea turtles. I'd been told there was a turtle hatchery on the beach and that every Monday night the guy who runs it gives a talk. I attended, hoping to see baby turtles hatching. I wasn't so lucky as that but had an experience so meaningful that I didn't mind.

I don't know what I expected of the CEO of Vital Actions, but it wasn't Tim - a punk surfer with XVEGANX tattooed across his throat. Tim has no formal degree, no flashy credentials. He learned how to care for turtle eggs by shadowing a fellow conservationist and then came to Nicaragua, where he started out living in a hammock on the beach. Now, over ten years later, Tim lives in a small home made out of a donated water tank, and his organization - Vital Actions - is responsible for approximately 600,000 turtle hatchlings making it to the water. His earnestness and excitement for his work lit something in me that I was grateful to take home in my heart.

Tim immediately disclosed his neurodiversity and told us that coming out to do these talks can be difficult for him. He'd rather be surfing, with animals, or alone. But his infectious passion for conservation has him returning each week to speak to guests. To get settled in for the talk he moved a wet rash guard from where it hung on a wooden post, explaining that he wanted to hold on the post for grounding while he spoke and wouldn't be able to concentrate with wet fabric touching him - something I found deeply relatable. He apologized for bouncing from subject to subject, for getting carried away on tangents, for getting too radical, for potentially being distracted by a whale sighting or butterfly. He had nothing to be sorry for. I don't think I'm interested in getting to know anyone who *isn't* distracted by the sight of a whale. If he had been any other sort of person, I probably wouldn't have retained half of the information I am about to share.

I learned from Tim that the biggest threat to sea turtle nests in Nicaragua is poaching. Nests are dug up and the eggs are sold to restaurants, where they are served as local delicacies. It's illegal, but the law doesn't do much to prevent poaching. Nests can go for around $50, which could be more than a week's wages in Nicaragua - too great a reward to pass up for a struggling family. Even the beaches under the government's protection get wiped clean of turtle nests. The armed guards are bribed, or poachers simply risk the consequences. We heard of one man who spent 3 years in prison without being told where he was being held, and with his family not knowing what had become of him.

Every night on the beach, Tim told us, they save turtle nests from poachers. He asked us the envision how we thought that might play out. I admit that I was surprised, the beach seemed so peaceful. Were the flashlights I'd seen scanning the beach the night before actually part of a tense stakeout? Could there be nightly confrontations between poachers and conservationists here at Costa Dulce? And how does Tim have more success at dealing with poachers than the government?

The answer is incredibly simple.

Tim talks to them and gives the potential poachers another option: letting Vital Actions buy their eggs.

The people digging up eggs don't hate turtles; they love their families. The first person Tim spoke to even apologized, saying he didn't care for the work he did, but he didn't have much of a choice. That man is now the general manager of Vital Action's sea turtle conservation efforts. He is one of many former poachers who have now been trained and fully employed by the organization, people from the local community who were just seeking a way to have their basic needs met.

Now the guys are invested in the outcomes of their clutches. They want to know how the eggs doing, if the nests they brought in hatched and how many babies there were. New people brought on are allowed to give a fake name, but they must give the same name every time so the organization can track their results and identify those who need additional training on how deliver the eggs safely.

Buying the nests isn't just to prevent their delivery to a restaurant. They are better off in the care of Tim and his team, who monitor the nests carefully for temperature and humidity. In nature, only 10% of turtle eggs actually hatch. Of those hatchlings, only 50% survive their journey to the water. Under Tim's care 80% of eggs hatch and 100% make it to the ocean (except for the 3 hatchlings he lost to black hawks in the first year). Additionally, he is able to achieve a nearly 50/50 female/male ratio. This is crucial because temperature effects the sex of turtle hatchlings, and climate change has led to increasingly female dominate clutches. Since sea turtles imprint on the geomagnetic field of the beach they enter the ocean from and return there to nest, Vital Actions can also release hatchlings on other beaches to rebuild their nesting populations.

Vital Actions does more than work with sea turtles. They are actively reforesting land in Southern Nicaragua with native trees, increasing biodiversity, protecting habitat for wildlife and generating more food for the community.

Tim also has his hands in what seems like any and every opportunity to help an animal that comes his way. When we visited, he had recently released two rehabilitated yellow-naped amazon parrots and was providing the male with supportive care after release by feeding him a piece of banana every evening (for which Tim is rewarded with the only bit of human language he allowed the young wild birds to hear: in a whisper, "I love you"). At the end of the week, Tim sent me a picture of a baby deer being bottle fed at the rescue center. The joy and hope that Tim for what he does was inspiring.

My anxieties around climate change and global politics have deeply affected my relationship with conservation efforts. I grew up loving nature documentaries; the voice of David Attenborough pretty much narrated my childhood. Now every new documentary comes with the grief of increasingly dire messages about human impact on the planet. Additionally, we are seeing global conflict, egregious human rights violations, genocide, and other human issues that make it hard for me to feel justified in focusing on animal conservation. At the same time, I know that the health of our ecosystems is at the root of everything. When they collapse, humans suffer, which will only lead to more conflict and more injustice.

The message delivered to us that evening is that conservation and social justice can and must be linked for either to succeed. It's easy to judge from where we are, and to ignore the role that human suffering has on the relationship between local communities and endangered species. To change that relationship, we need to address the root issues keeping people from being invested in the ecosystem around them. Tim was adamant that we should turn away from language that vilifies humans. It's an easy pattern to fall into, but humans are animals too. We don't wish each other unhappiness, we wish to re-integrate ourselves with the planet in a way that sustains our existence here.

Tim isn't the only person doing work like this (in fact, he would tell you that you could do it too, he might even teach you if you ask). There are promising efforts going on across the world that integrate community with conservation. But this visit to Nicaragua was the first time I got to personally see conservation efforts like this in practice. I walked through the gardens of edible native plants, I saw the growing trees, I ate the fruits harvested from the land around me, I met people who have long had a relationship with their environment and community that we will need to learn from in coming years. It had been such a long time since I felt genuine hope or excitement about conservation that the feeling overwhelmed me, and I teared up as I crouched in the sand next to the neat rows of turtle nests in Tim's hatchery.

So, for my birthday this year, (it was the 11th, but I got super sick and couldn't write a comprehensible essay until today), I would love donations to be made to Vital Actions.

The efficiency of how Vital Actions uses donations is incredible. Tim hitchhikes, gets food shares, lives in a converted water tank, and doesn't even have a bank account. Dollars spent are directly used to buy eggs, to plant trees, to rehab animals, and to reinvest in the community. The organization runs on very small donations, you can and should feel really good about how much your 5 or 10 dollars will do.

Thank you!

 

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