I bring most excellent news, in case you haven't heard. That dapper man in the New York Times photo after the Louvre break-in? He is a dapper 15-year-old. How did I learn this? He's a friend of my nephew (by marriage) who is also 15. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

OH MY GIDDY AUNT

Now the postmark happens routinely not the day you hand over your letter or ballot or whatever, but at some later date someplace else. You can ask the postal clerk at the counter to hand postmark it right then, though!

A blatant attempt to disenfranchise voters and degrade USPS services generally. Plan accordingly. Do not let these 🐎🕳️s win.

Lots of birders were there with long lenses. So, pictures!

Saw a snowy owl this weekend. Friends came and got me so I wouldn't miss it. Fluffed up. Swung its magnificent swivel head and looked right at me.

Waterfall by Cris Williamson. Feeling love for some of my teachers and beloveds: old dykes. youtu.be/ix5_TBUxSJ4?...

"The thing about -- the holidays, but -- deep winter ... is, who are we in the stillness that's been waiting for us?" Saeed Jones, Vibe Check podcast.

Martha Moody by @susanstinson.bsky.social spotted!

Lucy, Martha, Rufus and Loudon did Merle Haggard's If We Make It Through December on Kimmel last week, an evergreen as it were. youtu.be/vxx2i9hkHKE

If you see this please share (i.e. repost, not just like)! The Barbellion Prize is a unique award for writers with disabilities. We need to raise £20k to secure its future, so please make a donation, no matter how large, no matter how small, here: barbellionprize.org/donate/ Thank you!

Snow is pretty. Other things, too. Still.

"For those who don't have community (and for those who do), I'd offer that a pod of a few or more folks can help in the years to come...Even those part of a strong community can find pods useful, esp during a time that will be rife w constant crises which may drain many community members’ capacity."

I had just heard that Stephanie Vaughn, author of Sweet Talk, an enormous influence on me, had died. She was so brilliant: she only published one book, but it was an immortal one, fictionwritersreview.com/essay/the-en...

Posted this on IG for my dear Alice last week. "One of the things I’ll remember most about you was how you gave your love away so freely to those you cared about. You just gave. You just kept showing up and reaching out. You just loved." www.instagram.com/p/DRQk9vhjxO4/

Also: I am appearing tonight with my dearest dearest Paul Lisicky & Yiyun Li at the 92nd Street Y. www.92ny.org/event/elizab...

Sea, Poison might be the weirdest book you'll read this year, maybe any year. But as absurd as Beilin's story of brain lasers, stuffed leopards. polyamory, pop culture references, art monsters, & art failures, is Beilin's book really more absurd than the American healthcare system?

Today, when the current US government is suppressing World Aids Day, I point you again to new and brilliant When We All Get to Heaven podcast. It's about a gay church in San Fransisco in the 1990s grappling with AIDS. My friend @thislynne.bsky.social narrates (and much more.) www.heavenpodcast.org

This is a great essay.

I learned this weekend that the first concert that my parents ever saw together was Ernest Tubb in Lubbock, Texas.

A wonderful, resonant essay from @thesicktimes.org about how we can better listen to anyone going through something catastrophic. "Avoiding the topic feels absurd — like I’m standing in quicksand, and we’re chitchatting over glasses of lemonade as I slowly sink." thesicktimes.org/2025/11/28/y...

The Mass Senate passed "An Act Regarding Free Expression," which protects the right to access books in MA and safeguards creators, librarians, educators, and book professionals. The bill is now moving to the House! Visit www.massfreedomtoread.org/act and follow the steps there to show your support!

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965: 20-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1990: 75-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio today: 280-to-1 Trickle-down economics was always a sham. Nothing has ever trickled down.

Love and solidarity always to people with a suspicion of or distaste for Christianity, especially the many who have been harmed by its practices and people. I've gone back and am finding communities committed to resistance and (imperfectly, messily) loving strangers. Including queers. Good article.

Nice to see a Democratic Senator speak directly about Trump administration criminality without couching it in careful consultant-speak or trying to force it into an economic frame. But Hegseth won’t be fired for war crimes. He was appointed *because* he advocates war crimes. It’s up to Congress.

Book Moon is a wonderful, beloved local bookstore. Now they are working to buy their building. We can help them by buying books there!

Local small independent bookstore in Milwaukee said exactly this in a recent social post, circling back on the point they might not make it to 2026 if they don't have a big holiday weekend, and it got shared by basically every record store and small business concern over the last week.

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: Oh, the many bears. The many, many bears yellow bellied marmot mountain goat efts lampreys

I am on a layover on a Peter Pan bus in Springfield, coming home from Boston. I used to ride this bus every other weekend to see my beloved forty years ago. Today was sweet, but, oh, my body is different. My head is different. But we're heading out now.

Live in Massachusetts? Send a letter to your state senator and legislator in support of this bill Prohibiting Body Size Discrimination! Show up in writing, on video or in person at the State House hearing at 10 am on THIS Tuesday 11/25! Do something good for fat people! Please share.

@biggerbodiesboston and @naafaofficial will cohost a virtual testimony prep session THIS SUNDAY 11/23 at 11am EST for those who want help getting ready. Visit naafa.org/sizefreedom for details, sign-up links, and more!

I just listened to a Radiolab episode from Sept 26, 2025 ("Voice") in which Alice was featured and spoke so powerfully about what it means to lose your voice and yet retain a clear grasp on your own and everyone else's humanity rest in power and strength of being heard radiolab.org/podcast/voice

One way I have found to mourn someone is to set up a monthly sustaining donation to a mutual aid effort they cared about. If you can join me in honoring Alice Wong, @sfdirewolf.bsky.social with a sustaining donation today, please do. Thank you Alice, and I will not let the bastards grind me down.

Alice Wong taught us that disabled people don’t just leave memories behind—they leave infrastructure. Lineages of care. Methods of collectivity, survival. She named the connective tissue that holds our communities together, even across death, even across the losses that come too fast and too often.

"You know us...So please trust us now when we say that what is happening in the Chicago area is wrong." Powerful letter from retired Chicago broadcast journalists about what ICE/CBP is doing to our city: "it is terror" www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/13/l...

Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:

The podcast "When We All Get to Heaven "is narrated by my friend Lynne Gerber, who spent more than a decade researching, writing, and producing it in an intense collaboration with others. I want to talk about it with somebody. It's so intense. Start at the beginning or with the making of interview!

obviously this is bad, but it’s long been true of other countries we praise to the skies for their healthcare and a lot of progressive Americans don’t want to acknowledge that as a huge vector of oppression. there are a lot of places I couldn’t emigrate to even if I wanted bc they have BMI limits

More on this—quite a lot more on this—soon, but in the meantime: If you're a writer of fiction (and/or maybe simply a writer or a person), you really need to preorder @elizmccrack.bsky.social's A Long Game, which is both enthralling and inspiring. (And sharp as a stiletto.)

I just made my calls to Sen. Warren and Sen. Markey to tell them to call for Schumer to step down. I have their numbers in both my phones and I usually just call them, but this time I did it through the Indivisible form (previous post for link) because I want to be sure that these calls are counted.

a script from @indivisible.org! (I'm probably going to add how harmful this will be in Ossoff's reelection campaign, bc we'll be blaming the entire party when people's healthcare premiums are so high they can't afford insurance)

I got back to my office after the vote last night and recorded this. There's no way to sugarcoat what happened. And my fear is that Trump gets stronger, not weaker, because of this acquiescence. I'm angry - like you. But I choose to keep fighting.

No health care, no deal.

I will not support a deal that does nothing to make health care more affordable. We are in a health care emergency. A simple one-year extension of these tax credits would cost less than Donald Trump’s $40 billion bailout for Argentina. A vote for this bill is a mistake.

Thread. Call your senators!

I just called them, too. You?

"Hyde language" would be a ban on anything related to abortion. So, any Senate Democrat that caves is agreeing to vote to implement a nationwide abortion ban in exchange for healthcare subsidies.

Hey! 25% my Martha Moody! And so very many other excellent books from Small Beer Press. Until the end of the year.