“A few months ago, I put myself between a man of color and two police officers who were harassing him. I was able to do this calmly and automatically because my mother trained me how to do it and I've spent years thinking about how to react if I had to use my whiteness this way.

The first thing I did: I pulled out my phone. I made sure the officers SAW me pull out my phone. I made sure they saw me turn on the voice recording.

The next thing: I calmly but firmly contradicted the officers. They insisted that they had gotten a call saying that this man was following people trying to get them to sign petitions. I told them I had been there for a half hour and he had not done anything of the sort.

The officers then tried to get me to be quiet. I said that I would be quiet, but that their reports were wrong, they were not listening to an eyewitness, and I was not moving from this spot until they left this man alone.

I then made a VERY BIG SHOW of taking down these officers names and badge numbers on my phone. I made sure the one next to me could see that I had texted this information to someone (my mom). I'm talking craning my neck to look at their badges, tilting my phone to show the screen

Then, I just fixed the one across with me with a stare. The bitchiest, don't fuck with me, I'm a femme white lady stare I could summon. And I did not stop staring or move from that spot until they left. And they did leave.

And then I gave the guy my phone number just in case and I called activist friends up in the community and made sure people were in the parking lot in case the cops came back so he could continue his petition work in peace.

You've got to be prepared. Keep your phone charged and in easy access. Know where your recording apps are. Who will you text badge numbers to so there's a record? Go through it in your head until it feels as natural as holding your keys between your fingers in a parking lot.

This is the work we must do. Those officers never would've touched me. I was never in danger for a moment. Use the enormous privilege you have for good if a time comes where you need to step up and be an actual shield.

And a final thing, remember: this is not about YOUR anger. Your anger has no place here. Your job is to be calm and never escalate a situation the officers are looking for a chance to escalate. Because you won't be the one they will escalate on. The person of color will be.

Your job is to remind the officers that white ladies can be a damn nuisance. And a lot of paperwork. And what if this one is related to somebody important? What if this one writes letters to the editor? She's texting someone my badge number, is this really worth it?”

it feels better than drugs when i finish making a thing—and then show it off or gift it.

and then so people my age say to me ‘well—i can’t draw/paint/knit/etc. like you can. my stuff would be terrible.’ yeah, well duh—a part of developing skill is sucking at something and then practicing it over and over and over again until you suck less. u’ll have a hard time feeling lonely or bored when you can’t stop thinking abt a technique you want to try or something you want to make for someone else. making things has SAVED MY LIFE. it gave me a reason to keep living day after day when i wanted to die.

making things improved my generational relationships (when i worked for the newspaper i would talk to customers abt jamming recipes or cross-stitch, one of my grandmas always gives me pattern books and tell me abt when she knitted things for mom, my other grandma is giving me a wedding quilt that HER grandma gave her 50 years ago because she knows i will appreciate it). it also got me likeminded friends who also make things.

lancelot was very literally raised in a lake

gawain has a talking fox sidekick who shows him how to cross the river of the dead

morgan le fay’s best frenemy/gf is an ancient greek oracle who slept with alexander the great

gawain has to investigate his own murder not once but THREE times because people just will not stop faking his death

arthur has a pet parrot

one time mordred ate a dead body

gawain said he wanted to be turned into a maiden to be able to love lancelot as a maiden could. he was very high on painkillers at the time

lancelot’s birth name is galahad and his son’s name is galahad and his ex-boyfriend’s name is galehaut and his grandfather’s name is lancelot and his uncle’s name is bors and his cousin’s name is also bors.

there are upwards of ten characters named yvain

gawain was kidnapped by pirates as a child. this explains a lot about him i think

I want to see a production where Horatio just stares at us, and screams “Now cracks a noble heart!” with the subtext “You fucking fuckers. He was better than all of you, you watched him die, and you just stood there.

Then, he just silently cries over the body. For like FIVE MINUTES. And the courtiers peel away into the wings, one by one, until Horatio is alone on stage with a lot of dead bodies. It starts getting uncomfortable. You’re thinking… is the play over? Am I supposed to go? (hamlet is just about the *only* play where the final scene is cut about 50% time, so use that uncertainty, use that ambiguity.) Maybe some people do get up to go. There’s definitely muttering. And then there’s smashing sounds coming from the direction of the box office, and Horatio looks up, with an expression like something’s gone wrong. 

But then he says, “Why do the drums come hither?” Fortinbras enters though the audience, and the play continues. 

by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore 

never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.

find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.

talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore

picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else

Like every time I trip and fall, instead of saying “l’m just a disaster human” I say “I’m the epitome of grace and beauty”

Or like, when I draw a picture I’m not 100% happy with, instead of saying “my art is trash” I say something like “you know I think it’s time we replaced the Mona Lisa”

When you do that you get to make a joke, but you’re ALSO getting practice building yourself up, y’know?

I replaced “I’m stupid” with “I’m a God damn genius.” “Move over newton” “another masterpiece”

I replaced “gross/ disgusting” with “sexy/attractive” “the hight of elegance”

I replaced “I suck/ that sucked/ this is bad” with “fantastic”, “a lovely time”, “ swell/jolly good”

Replace every negative with a positive. Say it so sarcastically. Make it complicated make it entertaining have fun with it.

I’m a firm believer that books should always have illustrations. It makes the reading experience even better.

(This is written entirely within the dominant white/western culture - about traditions that have neglectful stewardship rather than those actively suppressed)

The anxiety makes sense. You’re seeing, too late to do anything about it, that there’s no foundation - no space - for the traditions you expected to pass on. Your kids _can’t_ take your mom’s fine china. So now instead of enjoying what you have you worry about its future.

I see a pattern in these op-eds though - a pattern in what’s left unsaid. There were responsibilities tied to these traditions. You collectively assumed they _would_ be passed along. So collectively, what did you do to ensure those traditions _could_ be passed along?

Op-eds never speak for everyone, but it’s worth acknowledging the pattern in what speech is deemed worth sharing widely.  And in this particular pattern, there’s an answer: that answer looks like “nothing.”

You want the china passed down but your kids have no room in their rentals. You want grandkids but your kids don’t have the financial stability. You want that cross-country RV neverending road trip but you’ve had decades of wanting lower taxes more than you wanted infrastructure.

The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them. The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?

The bleak outlook for traditions is a direct result of the unmaintained foundations for them. The second best time is always now - if it’s important enough to op-ed about, what are you willing to change to get it back? What will you give up or re-prioritize?

I follow a Facebook group of “Memories of …” for my hometown - a rustbelt community that has gone from a thriving hub of industry to a much-less-thriving place.

The group is a collective lament.   Decades-old pictures of well-kept churches.  Aerial shots of the main intersection downtown, lined with big cars.    Scanned advertisemetns from local stores featuring pictures of their interiors.   These alternate with the drumbeat of news:  the Catholic diocese is closing churches.  Selling them.   Tearing them down.   STores downtown are closing.   The traffic light has been replaced with a four-way-stop.

“That’s the church my parents were married in!” “How could they tear down that beautiful building.  Such memories!” “All the businesses are closing.  It must be the taxes.” ”They’ve sold the old lodge downtown.” “They’re not opening the skating rink this year.  We always used to go.”

And sometimes I chime in. 

“Do you attend that church?  Do you give? Or do you just want the building to look pretty for you? “ “Do you volunteer at that park?  Why not?” “Did you vote for that recreation bond issue?” “Are you a member of that Lodge? Why not?” “Do you shop downtown?   Or did you start shopping at Walmart and Amazon to save a few bucks?”

If you feel something is worth preserving, why do you not participate in its preservation?  

With that in mind, we’re all gonna remember that JKR is a terf who has literally been cited by legislators engaged in legislation that actively harms trans people, and we’re not gonna give her any more money.

That means not streaming the new show on Netflix, because regardless of how much influence she has on the production, she gets paid for it.

We’re gonna make the show flop. We’re gonna show Warner Brothers that we don’t forget (of course, how would we forget, it isn’t as if she’s stopped), and that their business association with terfs is no longer profitable.

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”