Tag Archive: life


All Of Our Heroes Are Bastards

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March 29, 2026
“All Of Our Heroes Are Bastards” collage art with leftovers from the zine

Lately, I’ve been listening to music a lot more and with more intention. I have grown frustrated with the stupid algorithm and I’ve started making my own damn playlists again…sometimes on the fly, often with prompting from someone who casually mentions something I might enjoy listening to. Occasionally, I will dip my toe into music podcasts to figure out what everyone else is swimming in these days. Every once in a while, I’ll latch onto a random algorithmic miracle and go off on a tangent. But every spring, I revisit “Key Lime Pie.”

Since it’s been approximately 40 springs that this has been my ritual, certain memories and patterns emerge from this practice. I remember even the first spring. I believe I had either just turned 19 or 20, and I was experiencing the crashing and burning of what had been a (temporary) utopia. I could feel myself teetering on the edge of catastrophe, combined with needing to shake the winter blues. It was unseasonably warm in Chicago, and a sunny day walk was exactly what I needed. The things I saw on that walk are still visually implanted in my brain, as is the way the air smelled, and the particular quality of the sunlight. I can even feel the temperature of the still-cool air as I walked under the El tracks on Belmont, emerging, squinting, to be embraced by the warming sun.

I even remember the spring 10 years later, when I related this story to a depressed lover. I described the feeling of emerging into sunshine after the somber grey of winter and gasping at the stark beauty of it all. As we listened to Key Lime Pie together, he steepled my smaller fingers in his hand and told me I was his key lime pie. I loved him, but was secretly terrified of that responsibility, having lost a depressed friend to suicide 9 key lime pies ago.

Spring is that time of possibilities after the limitations and restrictions of winter have been removed. Camper Van Beethoven perfectly captures that feeling on this album. Particularly in one of my favorite stanzas of all time, from “June”:

a drawing of a clothesline with crows flying up above it.

And I wrote you this letter
’cause the clothes were hung on the line
And the crows flew out of the field and up into the sky
I’m lying here in the station
Stretching out on the tracks
Are all the possible places that I might arrive

Springtime reminds us that we can rebuild an entire world, even in the exhaustion of the aftermath of apocalypse. Even when, in the depths of the cold and the darkness, it felt like it would be forever before the sun would break through the clouds. Even if at times it felt like it never would.

I think of all of the other springtimes in my life, and all of the various (physical and metaphysical and existential and hypothetical) places I have arrived in every season of my life so far, and I can’t help but feel like a big old clumsy but faithful puppy, tongue-lollingly drunk on hope, tripping after butterflies and falling in love with tree trunks like all of the springtimes of my past in one endlessly looping filmstrip clacking through my brain like an old-timey projector.

Who needs heroes, when we have each other…and springtime.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the secret agent yet. I highly recommend. It’s a long fucking movie, but it is truly beautiful. And there’s that scene where Armando is driving with Fernando and talking about Fernando’s mother. Wagner somehow is able to convey that tightness of face, and the subtlety of false optimism and positivity that is so frequently required of parents who are experiencing adversity. You can see the almost-tears and feel the subtle catch in his voice. It’s quite lovely. It’s very artful acting.

Link

Only one link this week, as I’ve been busy herding turkeys around, listening to music, living in the past, and not reading so much news.

Oh yay. Yet another opportunity for politicians and their enablers to grift!

“The money flows well beyond large state agencies, to small and obscure agencies most people (including myself) have never heard of. The Point Comfort Police Department in Texas — a town of fewer than 700 people — has a base agreement of $167,525 to supply nine task force officers, plus an additional $5,000 salary modification. The Key Colony Beach Police Department in Florida is getting $119,000 for a single officer once you add its $107,500 base award to an $11,500 salary supplement. The Coward Police Department in South Carolina, also serving a town of roughly 700, has a base award of $107,520 for one officer, with another $15,000 modification layered on top.” – https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-ices-bounty-hunters?publication_id=7677&post_id=192048723

Musical Interlude

Camper Van Beethoven – Jack Ruby: https://youtu.be/-brixuki1kM?si=MB4dPwNei2SY87Rg

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Esperanza / Hope

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March 23, 2026

(cross-posted on my Patreon page)

Three Spanish black turkeys: Ursula (hen), Octavia (hen), and Gerald (tom)

It’s the equinox-ish. And what better way to celebrate balance than by throwing my entire life completely off balance?

My mother had a saying: no more pets or kids. In my adult life, post children, fully in charge of the number of pets and/or children I am allowed to acquire, I am refusing to learn this lesson. Instead, in the midst of a potential world war, on top of the teetering tower of the rest of the current spate of atrocities, I choose chaos. In the form of turkeys.

It started with the roosters. Oh sure! I told my housemate, when she inquired about helping my broody hen hatch out some chicks. Who am I to deprive a caring human the experience of midwifing a clutch? Of course, it’s all fun and games until 3/4 of the baby chicks end up being roosters. As a result, after three years of maintaining and/or slowly decreasing the size of the flock by attrition, I have been thrown fully back into chicken math over here, folks. Plotting to hatch more (hopeful) hens to balance the rooster ratio, my housemate has loaded up the incubator with a variety of DEFINITELY fully fertilized eggs. We all know how this story ends, but, again, what kind of ghoul would I be to deprive a human of this particular kind of joy?

Her enthusiasm gave me a mild fever that spiked when she mentioned a friend had a trio of Black Spanish turkeys she was looking to sell. Two hens, and a tom, about seven months old. Y’all? Y’ALL?!?! I have been looking for a lady friend for Tom, unsuccessfully, for YEARS. I figured maybe I could take all three in and rehome the tom, or maybe the tom and one of the hens, if they didn’t mesh with the flock, or with Tom.

Well, they seem to be meshing pretty well with the flock of chickens, but Tom and the new tom (who is called Gerald. AKA Jerry the tom, just to make it even more confusing) are only interested in fisticuffs.

So, I have basically been coming up with different solutions every day to keep the toms apart. At first, we had a dog crate in the middle of the yard that we covered with a blanket. Gerald the Tom lived there at night and for part of the day, while Tommy strutted around and around, taunting him. Completely ignoring the hens, but strutting and preening and taunting the tom. Sigh.

It didn’t take long for the toms to start tangling with each other through the bars of the crate, so I let Tom out of the yard to strut around the driveway. However, the minute he wasn’t being supervised, he strutted back over near the yard and got tangled up in the fence. I found him wrapped in poultry netting, taking a pummeling from Jerry. Poor Tommy. This, of course, would not do.

To tell you the truth, Tom doesn’t even seem the slightest bit interested in any of those turkeys. However, by this time, Ursula has already endeared herself to us by quickly figuring out how to escape the pen through a hole in the fence, following us up on the porch and sitting next to us, chirping happily, waiting to be petted like a dog. And, though not quite as sociable, Octavia is inquisitive, intelligent, and sweet; and Gerald is completely non-aggressive – even in the midst of his Tom-pummeling, he relented to being picked up and carried away with no argument. All three of them figured out how to put themselves up in the coop with the chickens within three days of living here. In other words, I am smitten with the lot of them, and will simply have to find a solution.

Before the snow returned, I was herding Tommy into the back yard with Ursula (who followed like a dog, singing me her happy little chirpy song the whole way) for the day, then herding them back to the coop at night, after putting Gerald back into his crate. Which is a lot, and not sustainable when I’m working until 9 PM.

I could try to leave the turkeys in the back yard, but the problem with this plan, long-term, is Wilbur. While Wilbur is not aggressive, he has chased and pounced on chickens who have flown back into the yard before. I’m not sure how much of that was caused by Lulu’s insane prey drive, or his own. When I have Wilbur out on a leash in the yard, he pays no attention to the birds, but I fear if they startle him, it may trigger something. If he were to chase down Tommy, I can’t be certain who would win that fight. Have you ever seen a turkey talon? And did you know they also fight with their wings? Those wing feathers are like daggers!

When the storm hit, I just set up a crate on the porch for Tommy and he’s our temporary porch turkey now. My brain is still churning a myriad of other solutions, but it’s back to work for me tomorrow, so Tommy might remain a porch turkey for the forseeable future. It’s a pretty big porch, and he’s a fairly sedentary bird, so he should be ok. In the meantime, I’m bringing Wilbur out on the porch, leashed, to get everyone acquainted and used to each other while I scheme various living arrangements.

As of now, my plan is to build some sort of aviary back there for Tom and maybe Ursula, as well as a few of my older hens who really don’t deserve to have to live with a bunch of roosters. For crying out loud, I was out in the yard the other day, and a harried Little Nellie literally flew a hundred yards and landed on my forearm like a falcon just to get away from one of the horny offspring THAT SHE RAISED!

It will be really nice if I can train the chase/pounce tendencies out of Wilbur so I can give him a job as poultry protector instead of my 24/7 shadow. So, that’s what I’ll probably be doing all spring/summer when I should be gardening.

Anyway, maybe my mom wasn’t right about EVERYTHING, and what good is balance in a perpetually imbalanced world. I choose tur-chaos!

A tom Royal Palm turkey named Tom

Links:

(minimal links because I’ve been herding turkeys all week)

Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment: https://organizingmythoughts.org/why-libraries-matter-in-a-fascist-moment/?ref=organizingmythoughts-newsletter

In Contempt #5: Anarchism & Solidarity on Trial in Texas, Free the Prairieland Defendants, Free Them All!: https://incontempt.noblogs.org/2026/03/21/in-contempt-5/#Free-the-Prairieland-Defendants

Musical Interlude:

Esperanza: https://youtu.be/Vfr7_coR0iE?si=m9cDfsTlrrAXPzx3

Hope: https://youtu.be/S9_cq_WdKbs?si=BxPSkew6UQR342xp

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Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body?

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May 5, 2023

I’m watching spring slowly seep into the landscape. Winter was so hard, and the warmer weather, along with the life it brings, is more than welcome. I’m absorbing. Breaking icy shackles. And at the same time, suddenly so many of the loose ends of my life have managed to come fully apart and in so doing somehow managed to bring everything back together again.

I feel like I say this every year around springtime…and also in autumn…but I am so glad to be living in a geographical region that has all four seasons. While I love the brutal beauty of winter – I am always pleased when spring arrives…and I’ve never been a fan of summer, except for the fact that it ends in autumn…but it’s the liminal seasons that have my heart. There is an energy – a moving towards something – lacking in the full stops of summer and winter.

And it is in this season of spring that I am emerging from a mourning period of sorts. I put my youngest little birdy on an airplane away from here at the end of March…it feels like forever ago and just yesterday…and am learning how to have life with an empty nest. It’s something I have needed for a very long time. In spite of my fierce love and adoration for my children, I am a person who requires a great deal of solitude, and I have had none for a very long time. Until now. And I am definitely soaking in it. Wondering if I will EVER want to live with anyone ever again. Woe is the anti-social socialist!

Maybe I’m just not paying attention, but I don’t remember seeing a lot of people talking about how fucking painful it is when your last one moves out and you are taking those first few steps of single-nonparenting. For the first few weeks, I broke down several times a day in a heap of “I miss my babies.” Bereft was the word I was feeling. The last few cold weeks of winter were appropriate, but every once in awhile there was an unexpected sunshiny spring day…or week. I could feel normal mostly, until a certain song came on. Or until I encountered something that he left behind (which is much.) When I cleared off the side of the counter where he piled all of his random drawings. It’s the worst kind of breakup, because there are no sad love songs about your kids moving out. That would be creepy. But I definitely felt a great deal of grief and loss. And unlike when my eldest moved out, I didn’t have another child here to distract me.

But I have the dogs. And the cats. And the chickens. And the turkey. And a couple of nice friends…and projects here and there that I spend time on. I’m slowly figuring out how to meal plan for one, and trying to save money on food. The garden is still going to be a bit sad this year. I’m working some of that “single mama budgetary magic” on some unexpected cash inflow…seeding several different little things that need addressing…hoping to stay afloat.

Over the past few years, I feel like I have disparaged motherhood a great deal. The experience of it, that is…not those who undertake it. They were difficult years, and perhaps my ire was misplaced. Perhaps motherhood is a season, and as such is meant to prepare you for the coming season, as well as use what you learned from the season before. I hope with all my heart that my children weather well out there, flying around the world on their own. Being their mom has been occasionally brutal, but infinitely beautiful. Like all challenging experiences, motherhood has made me who I am, and I am cool with that.

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Wish you were here…

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February 9, 2014

Me: The birds look like apostrophes

Him: What are the words if the birds are apostrophes?

Several of us gathered today to say goodbye to a friend who passed away. We met at City Hall, where most of us originally entered one another’s lives. And we walked together to the tree on the other side of the river on which little medallions were pinned to mark the deaths of  others who, like our friend Chris, were houseless but not without friends in life or in death.

Several people told stories of their friendship with Chris. Universally, we agreed he was a gentle man. A quiet man. A man who forced us to slow down and think. And rethink. And as I listened, I realized I was not only mourning the loss of Chris, but also the loss of that time. That time when we all gathered several times a week to slow down, sit down…and talk. And listen. And plan together. And just to gather with a group of people from disparate backgrounds and experiences – a group of people who, under normal circumstances, might never get a chance to meet – and become aware of each other as fellow humans…and struggle together. And learn from each other. And totally fuck up in the presence of each other. And forgive each other. And try again.

I didn’t tell any stories today. Today, I listened. The truth is, I didn’t have a lot of stories to tell about Chris. I cared about him. I tried to look out for him the best I could. I respected his growth and his journey. I remember him.  I will miss him. But it’s not enough to miss someone like Chris. It’s not enough to mourn and be sad and go on living and forgetting all that I have learned through my friendship with Chris, and through all of the other unlikely companions I’ve been blessed to come to know over the past few years. There were so many lessons learned. So many I forgot. It’s time to remember them now. It’s time to come out of hibernation and be present in the world again, and open to listening and sharing and relating.

The things I have learned as an occupier are lessons I have needed to learn my whole life. And I’m not merely talking about social and economic justice. I’m talking about taking the time to really see people. To see AND hear them. Taking the time to be present in public spaces and share with people. I don’t think I’m done learning those lessons yet. I don’t think I’ve learned them well enough, and I think they are too easily forgotten. I still have a too-frequent tendency to hide myself away. To hurry from one thing to the next without stopping and giving time to appreciate the unexpected. I still frequently neglect the things that are most important while freely frittering time on things that have no soul-nutritional value.

This is how I know that Occupy is not dead. Because we haven’t learned these lessons yet. We are too easily distracted and divided. And until we can learn to come together and be present, we will continue to Occupy where we should be Living.

Rest in Peace, dear Chris. I hardly knew you, but I certainly loved you. In honor of your memory, I plan to spend at least an hour every Sunday occupying the steps of City Hall with my sketchbook and journal. People watching, and hopefully conversing. Maybe I’ll bring a sign…maybe I’ll go incognito. It’s not 3 General Assemblies a day, every day…but it’s something. Maybe I’ll see you there.

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