My stepfather was fond of arbitrary rules that seemed to shift all the time. There really wasn't a way to follow them. He also gave poor guidance. This is a story about 6 year old me attempting to bond with him over his favorite thing -- Playboy Magazine. geoffcordner.substack.com/p/bosoms?r=2...

My latest, a Christmas story about alcoholism, denial, and family secrets. geoffcordner.substack.com/p/whiskey-ja...

This is a short memoir piece about family, loss, ghosts — a box of photos, a fatal crash, & the rituals we use to keep spirits at rest. It’s called Zimmerman, after the town in Minnesota where my sister’s final boyfriend lost his life & she nearly did too. geoffcordner.substack.com/p/zimmerman?...

🍄🍄‍🟫. 📷 @geoffcordner.bsky.social

it is hard to think of another political figure in my lifetime I have turned on harder than Hillary Clinton. I am exactly the right flavor of Middle Aged White Lady to have been DEEPLY emotionally invested in her way back when, but every time she opens her mouth now I’m like “holy shit lady 🤯”

Great article from High Country News on how heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet nation. It's about Indigenous headbangers finding catharsis, community, and coping skills while a string of suicides rips thru the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. www.hcn.org/issues/57-11...

Train Songs: a compact, lyrical memoir about a kid, me, imagining escape from an unsafe home. It’s about trains & vastness. The horizon is a much greater distance away on the Canadian prairie than it is anywhere else. I wanted to get to the other side of it. open.substack.com/pub/geoffcor...

At Myriam's @lesbrains.bsky.social urging, I've started writing a memoir... about someone else... the family history around it, a story of settler colonial violence, patriarchy, intergenerational trauma, a few comical drug store heists. Trying out ideas on substack. open.substack.com/pub/geoffcor...

Tomorrow Nov 8 at the Altadena Public Library: Myriam Gurba, Carla Rachel Sameth, Angela Peñaredondo, Veronica Reyes, and others! 2 - 4pm 600 E. Mariposa Street Altadena, California 91001 @lesbrains.bsky.social

TURKEY VULTURE Cathartes aura Family: CATHARTIDAE Order: CICONIIFORMES Class: AVES. 📷 @geoffcordner.bsky.social

So many people here have developed panic disorder in response to our abandonment...and the landscape doesn’t just “look” apocalyptic. It is.

🌿💘🌿

Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings launches this week! I hope to see you at Skylight Books ! Come say hi and share your favorite plant name in exchange for a small botanical gift. If you can’t make it to the Los Feliz launch, please check out the other tour dates! 🌿💕🌿

NYC: this Wednesday, Oct. 22, I'll be seeing Myriam Gurba's book launch in Dumbo at 7pm. Swing through and say hi, and we'll keep our jealousy of California's high-quality produce at appropriate levels:

Featured in our latest Personal Narrative is an excerpt from Myriam Gurba’s “Poppy State,” a wildly inventive work of narrative nonfiction that is part botanical criticism, part personal storytelling, part study of place. (@lesbrains.bsky.social)

Katie Ellison interviewed me for The Stranger and we had a fun conversation about plants, California, warriors and the taste of dirt. 🤤 www.thestranger.com/books/2025/1...

Feed: "Electric Literature" By: Myriam Gurba on Thursday, October 16, 2025

Highlighting a few of my fav non-fiction 📚 #HispanicHeritageMonth 1-Photographic-The Life of Graciela Iturbide. 2-Creep: Accusations & Confessions. A collection of essays on how people & institutions perpetuate harm. 3-Land Of A Thousand Dances. A history of Chicano Rock n Roll.

I’m totally all for abolishing the police but at least in Portland today they were hamming it up with the No Kings crowd

the postcard cited in judge young's ruling isn't just at the top, it's a framing device. the whole opinion is a letter to the postcard writer. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

You do know that only believing and surfacing privileged voices is how we got to this point of fascism. It’s not “good marketing” It’s signaling to fascists you agree that policy and government is only for certain people The core tenet of fascism

i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.

A Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted on Wednesday after US immigration officials were accused in court of lying about the incident. www.msn.com/en-us/news/w...

I am just going to keep posting that the TX governor recently pardoned a political murderer. The dude texted "I'm going to shoot protestors", then went and shot a Black Lives Matter protester. He was convicted in a jury trial. Hard to find a more blatant example of celebrating political violence.

The Wall Street Journal needs to issue a full retraction and apology to the trans community for this. Nothing less will suffice. They put us all in danger and recklessly put out incorrect information.

Remember how confident everyone was that US soldiers wouldn’t follow illegal orders?

Myriam Gurba @lesbrains.bsky.social "the brilliant if sometimes controversial critic and cultural writer" & "a master of language, and her books are a delight to read because of it" interviewed in Lithub @lithub.com.web.brid.gy lithub.com/myriam-gurba...

Re-reading Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies 📷. @geoffcordner.bsky.social

This is a picture of some of my family – inlaws – taken at Lake Onamia, Minnesota. Onamia means “dancing ground” in Ojibwe. Please do not try to tell me these scary ass men look like Minnesota natives. They’re not. They are settlers, the children and grandchildren of settlers. 1/7

Donald Trump could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and Democrats would say “he only committed murder to distract us from his failure to lower grocery bills for working families.”

This US veteran burnt an American flag in protest of the EO Trump signed today that contradicted 2 SCOTUS rulings (1989 & 1990).

F*ck James Dobson and every Christian pastor who tells parents to whup their children! The world is a better place when people like him DIE. Read here: drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/james-dobs...

De veras.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ordered the ICE raids that terrorized LA to stop. Over to you, Chief Justice Roberts!

A lot of people are learning that cowardice won’t save them in real time. Might as well be brave.

new @teenvogue.com: Florida officials claimed they wouldn't hold minors in mosquito- and sewage-ridden Alligator Alcatraz, but a bombshell report in July found a 15-year-old was detained there in July. young people in Florida are afraid. said one, "If it happens once, it’s going to happen again.”

I've seen people get mad at folks who won't vote for political candidates who throw trans people under the bus [INCLUDING AT TRANS PEOPLE THEMSELVES WHO SAY THIS WHICH IS BONKERS] & I just want to say that you are ridiculous. "Don't you want to overthrow fascism?" My question to them is: Don't U?

I am far behind the people at the front of the class. But at least I am *in* the class. And the lesson is--and I guess always has been--that you gotta have solidarity with everyone. Because once you agree with the principle that some people are disposable, then you're just quibbling over who.

It is not possible to find the words for this.

Thank you to @monachalabi.bsky.social for this powerful graphic, which starkly pictures the severity of the Israeli government’s policy of mass death through forced starvation.

Leaked documents confirm that Microsoft is providing millions of dollars worth of cloud computing and AI surveillance tools to coordinate airstrikes which have killed over 50,000 Palestinians so far. Microsoft employees demand an end to ties with the Israeli military. Eko.org/microsoft

Not guilty verdicts like the ones in the Diddy case aren’t just a statement of disbelieving women. They are a statement that even if you are believed, that does not mean men should be held accountable for abuse of power.

Let's be clear on exactly what a leading member of the Democratic consultant class is saying here. Because it is important. He is saying that as he sees it, the biggest problem the Democrats face is that organized, engaged members of the party base are the biggest problem the Democrats face.

JUST CALLED AND LEFT HIM A MESSAGE TELLING HIM TO KEEP HIS ISLAMOPHOBIC BULLSHIT TO HIMSELF AND STOP ATTACKING HIS OWN PARTY MEMBERS

Us: "Your candidate's a genocidal right wing monster." Them: "You don't like the candidate but you must support them! Criticizing them is for AFTER the general. Blue NO MATTER WHO." Us: "That sucks. But here's our candidate. He just won." Them: "No matter who doesn't mean EVERYONE."

Pasadena: ICE agents eyeing Villa Parke's soccer fields. The city cancelled summer programs bc it's too dangerous for Latino children to gather. We rallied. Assorted rabbis, imams & preachers stirred the crowd, reversing Go Down Moses: "Let my people stay!" open.substack.com/pub/geoffcor...

This mad rush to support Cuomo hurts the entire Democratic party. Tone deaf

Ladies and gentlemen...Andrew Cuomo! capitalandmain.com/cuomo-receiv...