Mamdani: "New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant." SAY. THAT. SHIT!

you can win without billionaires supporting you you can win without party leadership endorsing you you can win unapologetically standing with every persecuted minority pundits say are too politically toxic to touch we could do everything about this process differently if we wanted to

Goddammit, this feels like hope.

Maybe there’s a little bit of magic in the air tonight.

Also playing dress-up for the day. C’mon CA & NYC let’s go.

I am an immigrant & I vote. Fear me. (Privileged to be a citizen also.)

Take that, you “5-second rule” purists. (Some of us drop our food so frequently we’d starve if we were fussy.)

Just watched a coyote, trotting neatly down the suburban sidewalk, half-jump to snap at a golden leaf drifting down. Really, that level of Nature Twee is a bit much before breakfast on a Monday.

Grateful today for the regathering-in of the morning light — & for the clean clear whistled notes of the golden-crowned sparrow (no kings but), with its accrued layers of winter memory.

Oh yes, the autumn light from this window. I had forgotten. It feels lonely to me, makes me think of my mother in this room.

As one who has come late in life to a passionate admiration for Spark’s novels & the intelligence behind them, I look forward very much to reading this. I mean, just look at that photo.

Apologies but I cannot wait until #SmallBeautiesHour to share this pic of my great-nibling in Halloween costume. In case you need a squee.

Melissa Harrison captures beautifully the priceless pain of life with an old dog. That time when the heart melts with tenderness, over & over again, & the secret waves of premonitory grief surge up in the chest. A rare & enormous privilege for us humans to get to dwell in such tenderness for a time.

I look back wistfully to my granny, who was a modest northern Methodist but had two habits of her generation that now strike me as extraordinarily indulgent & enviable: 1) paying someone to wash her hair every week; 2) butter AND cheese on biscuits. (She lived to be almost 100.)

This glorious morning. I think the Nicasio Valley is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen. And there in the mist was the ancestral village of Etcha Tamal, on land recently re-acquired by a group of Huukuiko Coast Miwok people.

Does the fact that I just ate one of these November surprises mean I’m going to have to spend the next 6 months in Hades? (Wouldn’t mind a 3-headed dog tho. More to pat.)

The phone camera really can’t capture the intensity of it, but it’s as if I’ve stepped onto a stage set of Miss Haversham’s garden, done with all the stops pulled out.

The damp woods have decorated themselves everywhere with mist-hung cobwebs for Samhain. Entirely biodegradable!

Much to love in this article in celebrating Equiano & the history of his Abolitionist community in the UK, but I would have been intrigued to know a little more about that 1970s A-level student & her original research!

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice" turns out to be absolute nonsense. It only bends towards justice if you keep twatting the Nazis so hard, as they pop up, that they are perpetually too afraid to speak.

British Muslims "feeling like they're experiencing levels of hate that their parents experienced in the 70s & the 80s." For those who don't believe in white privilege, look at me having realised in my 6th decade that the whole assumption of a progessive arc of history with which I grew up is false.

Wishing a blessed #Samhain to all those celebrating today. May the turning of the Wheel of the Year bring much needed rest and new beginnings to us all, and may the coming year be a damn sight better than the passing one.

The usual office menagerie was enhanced today by a bee & a penguin. Much more cuddly & less fishy-smelling than one might expect.

Now I have a Peter Hammill earworm.

The lack of racial diversity in my favourite spectator sport is striking & still going largely unaddressed (despite all the muttered good intentions in 2020). There are notable exceptions worth celebrating, but the structural barriers remain & individual Black cyclists continue to report racism.

British govt (as well as US folks) should be responding furiously to this. A British national on a valid US visa has been incarcerated for his words only, after a recent court ruling explicitly affirmed foreign visitors’ full right to free speech protections. It’s illegal & outrageous. #SamiHamdi

Irresponsibly posting my location on social media

The depth of the shame of a country this wealthy and abundant allowing its people to go hungry is impossible to measure. The fact that a handful of people could fix this by paying their fair share of taxes while still remaining obscenely wealthy makes it even worse.

Hey fellow contributrixes to Clare's 'if trees were lone women what would they sound like' installation, there's a fabulous opportunity for the work to be reimagined/restaged with Peruvian women/nb/gender-expansive artists also collaborating at the end of November. Check your messages!

👍🏼

The two weeks of darkest mornings of the year, here in America (where the clocks don’t change yet). Trying to make this a time of small deliberate ritual, not just chilly reluctance.

Autumn colours from the wet garden this morning. I ate the first sweet orange from our tree & made a single jar of rosehip syrup for winter sniffles, to be amended/supplemented with brandy when the doctor orders. (Doctorate in literature counts.)

Fellow USians, we should be aware that the government is (among many other things) continuing to deny basic free speech rights to international guest speakers. And enforcing that with abduction, incarceration, & likely long-term bans on re-entry.

Having just finished listening to all 4 volumes of the Diary of a Provincial Lady (which I loved), I now need to thoroughly cleanse my inner monologue of the language of a 1930s toff.

Finest set of antlers I’ve ever seen on a blacktail deer around here. Long may the King of Autumn reign.

This time of year — when the intruding trailside greenery has collapsed soggily on itself & the baked-clay earth softens — is just perfect for trail running. I even tasted the all-too-rare runner’s high for a bit this morning.

I do rather love turkey vultures — but I can’t help taking it a bit personally when they await me en masse.

Spot the watcher. (So handsome.)

All Hallows tree.

I almost always feel compelled to say a gentle “hello there” to deer at the roadside — which equally consistently leads to their hastening away & my feeling like a weirdo.

Geese overhead, the odd digital trilling of redwinged blackbirds in the reeds, & another of the small landmarks in my personal calendar of the seasons: the three ponies in the field I pass each weekend (two in one pasture, the other separated by a fence) have been taken away/inside for the winter.

This was exactly the post I needed to stop the doomscrolling & head out out out.

The face of an adorable squish who had just head-butted my OH & kicked him in the groin. (And the hand of my OH, who is tolerant of such enthusiastic mistakes)

Mamdani: "More than one million Muslims in this city, existing while being made to feel that we are guests in our own home. No more."

Light just picking out the distant water.

California was the right place for my father, a prescient Water Man, to immigrate to decades ago. One grows obsessed with water here.

It’s subtle still, but with very early rains (more due tonight) the hills have begun already their annual journey to re-greening. Doesn’t guarantee we’ll get enough water this winter, but it does reduce dramatically the risk of major autumn wildfires. Such a relief in this mild-desert ecosystem.

Extraordinary glow filling the valley down there. I wonder how it feels.

As I took this, the air above me was suddenly filled with a rush of movement as a great flock of dark birds flew over.

A moment of butter-yellow light as I head into the mist & cloud.