*air guitar solo*

“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐈 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡. 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞. 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨.” -𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐲, 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟓 Remembering acclaimed lgbtq+ artist David Hockney who passed away on June 11th, 2026 in London, England at the age of 88. Hockney's sun-drenched paintings regularly featured positive aspects of queer life during an era when the lgbtq+ community was encouraged to dwell in the shadows by an intolerant and unaccepting status-quo. The 1972 painting featured in this post entitled Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sold during a 2018 Christie's auction of Hockney's works for $90.3 million in November 2018, establishing the painting as the most valuable work of art created by a living artist at the time.

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

https://people.com/jane-yolen-author-of-450-childrens-books-dies-at-87-11996432

If you didn’t become acquainted with the work of Jane Yolen as a student being assigned her famous, award-winning Holocaust time travel novella “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” it’s likely you will once you become a parent, reading one of her many, many, many books for kids. My young boys are especially partial to her “How Do Dinosaurs?” series with its captivating, realistic dinosaur illustrations and snappy, funny text (and yes, there’s a Hanukkah “How Do Dinosaurs” book).

The prolific children’s book author, who was the recipient of multiple children’s book awards and six honorary doctorates, passed away this week at age 87. She was just about to release her 450th book. “Monsters of Fife: Terror Birds” will come out posthumously on July 14.

Yolen wasn’t raised particularly Jewish, and her exposure to religion was mostly at relatives’ homes, she recounted in a piece for the Jewish Book Council. As a teen, she did become fascinated with Jewish texts and traditions, getting confirmed at her local Reform synagogue; she was one of the first girls to read from the Torah on the bimah at that temple. And she minored in religious studies at Smith College.

But it took a while for Judaism to become part of her children’s book-writing career. In fact, she was two decades into her career when she got “noodged” into writing Jewish tales.

It all happened in the 1980s, she wrote in her essay for the Jewish Book Council: “One of my edi­tors, who hap­pened to be a rabbi’s wife, asked me why I had nev­er writ­ten a Jew­ish book. And I had to think long and hard about that. And she noodged. Boy! Was she an expert noodge. The result was ‘The Devil’s Arith­metic.’ And then the Jew­ish sto­ries began to tum­ble out.”

The books that came tumbling out were as gripping and wonderful and magical as the rest of her oeuvre.

There came magical stories about Jews and dragons and golems (co-written with her son, Adam Stemple).

She published illustrated books about Miriam and other biblical women (and even the children’s book adaptation of the famous “Prince of Egypt”).

She came up with her own twist on the tales of the Wise Men of Chelm.

She perhaps became most known for her three young adult tomes that tackle the Holocaust in novel ways. She wrote the “Sleeping Beauty” inspired “Briar Rose” and the “Hansel and Gretel”-esque “Mapping the Bones.” And of course, she penned the Nebula Prize Winning “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” about a Jewish teen who finds herself transported to 1942 Poland, which continues to be taught in schools to this very day, even as one Texas school district pulled it out of the curriculum for AI-detected “DEI content.” The book was famously turned into a 1999 film starring Kirsten Dunst, Brittany Murphy, Paul Freeman and Mimi Rogers.

Yolen also wrote books about Jewish holidays: “Milk and Honey,” and the lovely “Jewish Tale Feasts” (with her daughter, author Heidi Stemple), a book that my Jewish food-loving family adores.

Heidi, Adam and their brother Jason were all by their mother’s side when she “passed gently with no pain or stress,” Heidi shared on Instagram. Adam was playing his music while Heidi read from her mother’s book “Owl Moon.”

“As you all probably know, she had one of the most brilliant creative minds of our time,” Heidi wrote of her mother. “She has mentored, inspired and nurtured so many authors and illustrators through her words both on the page and off. But, beyond that, she was our mother and grandmother.”

1) Figured this out.

there’s sixteen Colorado counties that their most searched was “wolf furry”, plus thirty-odd counties (not counting either Arapahoe or any of the ones marked here as “Insufficient Data”) which may well have had plenty of searches for “wolf furry”, just fewer than for whatever they’re labeled here

and “skunk furry” searches in Arapahoe County outnumbered “wolf furry” searches in the entire state of Colorado

^ embroidered a net onto the front pocket of these overalls

Nick Barlow, Clusterfuck/Keep It Together, 2022