PicoBlog

Yesterday we bought a bookstore. We are now the proud owners of Nooks, a wonderful little place on North Prince Street in Lancaster. I’m stunned. Nervous. Excited. Amazed. Talk about The Surrender Experiment? This is it. When I was around eight years old, we lived in an old farmhouse in the middle of hundreds of acres of cornfields, in Lancaster, PA. I was the tenth generation of my family to be born and raised in the area.

In as much as substack should consider publication’s health, I believe that we should all give @substack a round of applause. Why? Two platforms I have been at and people focused on both in building just readership and enjoying themselves, Clubhouse and Bitclout, today don’t exist. Substack is a business, they have tried and sometimes I struggle to figure how long before the investors start getting on their neck and they stop listening to writers completely.

From what you say here, you believe the falsehoods that stream from the mouth of a convicted felon, as repeated by Fox, Newsmax, and OAN. Also from what you say here, you have received your opinions and talking points from the same sources. I’m certain you believe that they are very good indeed. No president has ever had absolute immunity. No president has never needed absolute immunity to act decisively, especially in times of war.

I ended up being very opposed to war. I have other stories to tell, but I'll save them for later. My all-time favorite comment on the willingness to serve, and the idea of the duty of a citizen to serve, was expressed in a Democratic rebuttal to President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech in 2007. Here is the relevant excerpt. "...Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country.

I am glad you brought up the matter of temperament, because this is a factor that may color our spirituality, but not a moral failing. We do need to spend some time in lament to motivate repentance, and to have healthy fear of God’s judgment to seek refuge in Jesus. But there is happiness when justice is done, even if it is only by faith—that is, we can be assured that promise of justice and redemption will one day be fulfilled

In early 2004, a few weeks before Sherrod and I were married, I wrote a column about my search for the gay couples who were trying to undermine our heterosexual marriage. Far-right, self-proclaimed Christians were insisting this was a thing, as if strategic flirting could coax a straight person to burst into glorious gay bloom. In that same year, the Bible Belt had the highest divorce rate in the country, and Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage was already legal, had the lowest.

When my son came out as trans I had to admit that part of my own emotional response to the whole thing was a feeling that he had "gone over to the other team." That despite the fact I primarily sleep with men, I didn't really like or trust them. This was clearly a me problem which, though understandable given misogyny and my own personal experience with actual shitty, violent men, I had to grapple with in order to be unequivocal in my support of my son.

Beautiful story, Heather. I to have a lot of “mothers” but, ironically, of my mother, all my aunts, grandmothers, the one I think about on this day is the lady that actually raised me. The lady that actually molded me to what I am, what I became. That lady was our maid, Jennie Warren. A black lady whose husband, Frank, worked for my dad on the farm. Every morning, when I was young, in school, she would see to it I had breakfast and was well dressed for school.

A gorgeous, painful meditation on finding meaning and community, particularly in early adolescence, and where professional sports play a role in all of that. I remember rooting for the Chicago Bulls throughout late elementary and early high school. Pittsburgh doesn't have a basketball team, and when I saw the way Derrick Rose played at Memphis, I told myself I would root for wherever he ended up. Flash forward to now and I'm half and half, Penguins & Steelers, Sixers and Phillies (sometimes Pirates).