Going back to work tomorrow but still haven’t touched my mom’s hoodie.

"Too often, when it comes to U.S. Cold War interventions, the official curriculum is sanitized & disjointed, leaving students ill-equipped to make sense out of their nation’s global bullying." -- by @ladyofsardines.bsky.social (same true now of mainstream media) www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-o...

If we were given the time to grieve properly, what might we decide to change? — @sarahljaffe.bsky.social

Decided in this moment to reread some Galeano. First page: “The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.”

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism? -- Howard Zinn @zinndigital.bsky.social #HandsOffVenezuela Check out the lesson, Whose “Terrorism”?https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/whose-terrorism/

Open Veins of Latin America would be a terrific book to read with others if you have the bandwidth to organizing a book discussion.

Please read this. Whether you are an educator or not, listen.

What a time to be a social studies teacher in the middle of a unit on colonialism & imperialism.

Am lucky to have crossed paths with Michael—& to have talked Reconstruction with him for several hours on several occasions. 💛

This summer, I took myself to the beach for two days & wrote a letter to my fellow educators about “AI.” My mom asked to read it; I told her, “Not yet. Let me get another draft done.” Welp. I should have let her read the first draft because she’s not here to read this one.

Like I said, we talked about death all the time. And still of course also: this is so hard & I ache ache ache with longing for her.

The irreplaceable ordinariness.

If we were given the time to grieve properly, what might we decide to change? — @sarahljaffe.bsky.social

My mom this morning: “I am so tired of people trying to be great; I just crave the ordinary and useful.”

From the comrade card archives. “Grief is and will always be a reflection of our capacity to love, and it is our grief that will keep us human in these times, as fascism attempts to grow where solidarity belongs.” — Tanuja Devi Jagernauth

From the comrade card archives. “Utopia is on the horizon: when I walk two steps, it takes two steps back…I walk ten steps, and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking.” — Eduardo Galeano

Look, we are not unspectacular things. We've come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder? - Ada Limón

My mom — who has showed me again & again how to be disciplined, tender, honest, vulnerable, steadfast, & loving.

“And while we are thinking about quick breads — how about Anne’s scones —“

Friends, I don't know how to say this any other way. She was a stone cold fox. Baltimore, 1959.

Well, it appears I am not done mom-posting yet. She kept holding me for all of my fifty years. I am so lucky.

Today will be one week since she was killed. Right now, a week ago, she had just woken up & written her remembered dream snippets on a post-it sized slip of paper; she would be washing her face & "cleaning" (she never said brushing) her teeth; in a minute she'll roll out her yoga mat to stretch.

Today we posted an insufficient, workaday obituary. It will take me (only) the rest of my life to draft & write a more complete one. I am going to end my mom-posting spree (for now) and try to stay off here until after the new year. We'll see. Thanks for all the kind messages. 💛

The grief baking continues unabated.

Pretty OK with this being the last time I posted about my mom before her unexpected death.

Cannot sleep. But haven’t stopped cooking in 3 days. “Dear Urs—OK Let’s start with bagels”

Also my mom.

My one-and-only mother was hit & killed by a car on Wednesday. I am all the adjectives you can imagine: shattered, devastated, bereft. And no hour has passed in the last 48 where I have not felt unbelievably lucky, overwhelmed with gratitude for all the time I got to be her daughter.

My mom dancing to the Jimmy Cliff record in our living room (in front of a big window!) is one my core my-parents-are-so-embarrassing memories.

On my last official day of summer it’s gonna be a two comrade card day. First, some advice from my mom.

Comrade card for 5/12/2025. (Following a sweet conversation with my mom about death over the weekend.)

Familiar! My mom ground her own wholewheat flour in our basement (next the sensory deprivation tank) & there was always cheesecloth hanging everywhere from the homemade yoghurt…it was a lot for a kid who just wanted some capri sun & Doritos.

My pleasure. My mom really got into the ransom notes — her eyes are not good enough to do one herself, but we collaborated on the ideas!

Maybe I'll make Community Muffins when I get home from school. (My mom was part of something called The Learning Community in the 60s/70s here in Portland — thus the name.) These are like cake doughnuts. The ultimate comfort food. My mom's atrocious handwriting is deciphered in the alt-text.

Told my mom I thought she would want to read this. She did & left me a note: "Urs, I am full of tears, not sure the proportion of joy to grief."

My 87-year-old mom over dinner on Friday: "I have been thinking a lot about the guillotine lately."

One of many things I learned (& continue to learn) from my mom is the importance of expressing (not just feeling) appreciation & gratitude to the people who make our lives, selves, futures possible.

The new Ursula K. Le Guin exhibition at Oregon Contemporary is a sprawling love note to Portland's most far-out visionary. The exhibition compiles her hand-drawn maps, and features a reproduction of her NW Thurman writing room... plus doodles of cats!!

Wild @pioneerpress.bsky.social article by @frederickmelo.bsky.social and @maragottfried.bsky.social Hit by tear gas/OC or police projectiles today: State Rep. Athena Hollins (St. Paul), Rep. Liish Kozlowski (Duluth), St. Paul City Council VP HwaJeong Kim, and at least 3 journalists.

Someone give me $500,000 so I can offer 1 year fellowships to young people in 2026.

If you live in #StPaul, or you know anyone who does, print out zines or send a link to Twin Cities "How to Report ICE": drive.google.com/file/d/1hnxV...

"We’re struggling to figure out how we can help and support our students who are impacted, as well as make meaning out of it in our own classes and curriculum, to meet the moment." —Liz Winfield, a teacher at Benito Juarez Community Academy whose student was abducted by ICE (and later released)

Since May, Israeli soldiers and American subcontractors have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinians seeking aid, according to a September tally by Gaza health officials. interc.pt/4rm9o1G

"McMinnville High School students staged a walkout Monday to protest federal immigration enforcement, days after agents detained a high school senior on his lunch break."

While ICE abductions, often in broad daylight, have provoked fear and outrage, the escalation is also unleashing a less visible form of economic treachery on Chicago’s immigrant working class: wage theft, lost income, work speedups, and economic slumps that spread through neighborhoods. My latest.

I got a new library card yesterday! (Learn more about this radical mobile library in Portland here: www.freesocietylibrary.org)

Conferences, day 2. Looking forward to the sweet parade of parents, aunties, uncles, siblings, grandparents, godparents, cousins that show up to find out if we’re doing right by their kids.

NEW: Since the start of this year, more than 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE. That number, which has not been previously reported, is the highest since recordkeeping began a decade ago.

In Morrow County, healthy adults were coming down with unexplained medical conditions, including diseases that usually afflicted the elderly. In a survey of 30 homes, at least 25 miscarriages and a half dozen people living with one kidney were reported. 🔗 www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

That was quick. A federal judge has ordered the Coast Guard to immediately return a rescue helicopter it quietly moved away from Newport last month. www.opb.org/article/2025...