#riverby

A few years ago, I was on my way home from visiting friends out of state, when a freak rainstorm made visibility an impossibility. I had to pull over and get a hotel, and I just happened to be in Fredericksburg, VA. The next morning, I got up after maybe two hours of sleep (I never sleep well in unfamiliar places) and even though I had to get home and get to work for my evening shift, I decided to explore downtown Fredericksburg. And that’s where I found Riverby Books, a wonderful indie bookstore.

Fast forward to when I started reading the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater: I always imagined the Crooked Shelf bookstore in the series as Riverby Books.

I just finished Forever, and found this in the author’s note. The serendipity makes me want to scream. If I hadn’t gotten stuck in a rainstorm, exactly in Fredericksburg, woken up with time to explore, and decided to fight my exhaustion and do so instead of going home to catch a nap before work, I never would have found the bookstore that inspired the fictional one in a book by one of my favorite authors, which I imagined as the fictional one before even finding out what store it was based on.

June 10, 2021: Smart Mouth by Riverby

*Bandcamp here

Because it’s Pride Month:

Here’s some queer history from around the world, not just the United States.

Here are some LGBTQIA+ GoFundMe campaigns: Rent Fund For Black LGBT Family, Help Roze get somewhere safe (Non-Binary LGBTQ), Survival and Gender Affirming Needs for Black Enby, College Fund for a Black Trans Woman, Tito’s top surgery and recovery fund, Omi’s Transition Fund: Health, Housing, & Security, Help Emmett Pay for Emergency Surgery

If you’d like to get involved with stopping the atrocities against Palestine, here’s where you can start (text in bold for readability):

DONATIONS: This Carrd is full of information, petitions, and places to donate, these are some additional organizations to which you can donate and a list of corporations to boycott, and this post has some information about the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and a list of other organizations.

PETITIONS AND ACTIONS: This is a petition for the UK government to formally recognize the State of Palestine, this is a petition for them to introduce sanctions against Israel, and this is a petition for them to condemn Israel for their treatment of Palestine and Palestinians. This is a list of actions you can take (somewhat UK-specific) and a reading list of texts.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION: This is one Jewish person’s explanation of the conflation of Jewish identity with the modern Israeli state. They mention the Nakba – read about it here. This 2016 Vox video and this 2015 CrashCourse video both give an overview of the conflict from its inception until the mid-2010s, this video explains the history of the Israeli settlements in Palestine, and here are some podcast episodes about Palestine. Decolonize Palestine has an FAQ about Palestine here and this post has some resources with background information and updates about the current situation.

PRESENT DAY: This is the Wikipedia overview of the current iteration of the crisis, this is a report about U.S. foreign aid to Israel, and these are the Wikipedia pages for Palestine-United States relations and Israel-United States relations. Here are some perspectives from on the ground in Gaza; this also explains why spreading the Palestinian point of view is so important. Vice News has a series of videos entitled “The Israeli-Palestine Conflict”. I particularly recommend “Life Inside Gaza After Nearly 2 Weeks of Bombings” (June 4, 2021), “Israel Is Vaccinating ‘Everyone’ – Besides 5 Million Palestinians” (January 28, 2021), and “Why Evangelical Christians Love Israel” (May 15, 2018). The latter provides some insight into why Israel is such a big talking point for the religious right. This Vox video from October 6, 2016, discusses one way that Palestinians are being pushed out of East Jerusalem: gentrification.

Black lives matter and here are some ways you can get involved in the  fight against racism, specifically anti-black racism (text in bold for readability):  

This Linktree and this Carrd are full of ways to confront and fight against anti-black racism: places to donate, advice for protesting, educational resources.

Donate to: Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, the Racial Justice Network, Communities United Against Police Brutality, the Bail Project, the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Okra Project, the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, For The Gworls, G.L.I.T.S., the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, the Black Trans Travel Fund, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective.

GoFundMe: Justice for Breonna Taylor, In Memory of Jamarion Robinson, Rent Fund For Black LGBT Family, Esperanza Spalding’s BIPOC Artist Sanctuary, Survival and Gender Affirming Needs for Black Enby, Jaya and Dylan’s Move out Fund, Janet and David’s apartment burned down, Help Revay get to medical school, Help Dai Parker Get Back into College Fund, Help Send Howard to Berklee College of Music, A Home for Harriett’s Bookshop