The Good Old Bad Old Days

Rachel Ann Bovier is a Pittsburgh legend who has been publishing her poems in city newspapers for decades. In more recent years, she started putting up these bill boards along major roads. For what reason? I have no clue. But I would often pass them on my way to Oakland for therapy. They never failed to cheer me up.

As a young trans writer, they gave me this precious little spark of joy. There was someone like me, a writer, a Pittsburgher, a trans person, who was confident enough to put their face on a bill board! I would always smile as we passed by and my mom took note.

Fast forward a few years and it’s my 21st birthday. My mom has been super excited about my gift and teased me about it over and over again. She said it was the best gift she’d ever gotten me and in many ways she was right. It was a custom poem she commissioned from Miss Bouvier! It congratulated me on my birthday, my academic success, lots of little stuff. It was simple and sweet and perfect.

(For one of the positions in the zine I'm working in, it is required to set the resolution of the canvas to certain values, and at such settings my favorite chalk brush turns into literally pixel dust.,

So I drew with another brush, which, however, is also funny and pixelates and flattens, but there is something in it. You can see

I will be downloading everything I purchased from Bandcamp and keeping an eye on it.

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

I do too. But it lives its whole life. So you have to take it seriously eventually, right? And be respectful and shit.

Pope Leo is letting American bishops entirely ban trans healthcare for both minors and adults in all Catholic-owned hospitals and clinics, and stop coverage for trans healthcare through Catholic-affiliated health insurance plans!!

People are having surgeries, for which they were on waitlists for years, suddenly cancelled. Hormones no longer covered, their clinicians no longer able to prescribe them. Considering in some states Catholic-owned healthcare organizations make up to a third of the market, as it were, this is a HUGE issue.