Decided to say fuck it to my congestion. Closed myself in the guest bathroom, blocked out all ventilation, turned my massive humidifier on full blast and ran myself the hottest bath i can stand.
This is my enclosure. I live here now. I have recreated the water cycle in a matter of minutes and can finally breathe.
There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.
I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.
As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.
The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.
As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.
I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.
I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.
All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor …. according to the best of my ability.
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
Sources:
• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text
I’m sitting here with Bug on my lap preening as we play Minecraft, and I hear…. scribble scrabble scribble scrabble out in the kitchen. Bug stops and watches, and I stop to see what I can see, thinking maybe it’s a mouse that got in the house.
And then a bird goes zipping past us to land on Bug’s crate.
It’s a Carolina wren that looks as confused as I am. How did you get in here? The doors and windows are all closed. The only door that we go in and out of is an atrium setup, though, it would have to go through 2 doors to get into the house proper.
So I get up and go to see if I can grab it, and Bug leaps to her feet in excitement.
The wren sees me coming, panics, and tries to fly back to the kitchen
Except
She has to get past Bug, and Bug is a hunter.
So this wren flies, and Bug leaps into the air, and karate kicks this wren out of the air.
Right into a nearby granola bar box
Trapping it when the flap falls shut behind it
Absolutely flawless capture.
Of course, I fucking dropped the bird while carrying it to the door to let it go, because I was untangling dust bunnies from its feet, and had to spend 15 minutes chasing it around before it could go out. But that wasn’t Bug’s fault. She performed flawlessly.
faux leather is pleather, which is plastic. the process of mining, refining, and fabricating plastic causes enormous environmental damage at every step of the way. oil refineries regularly cause massive die offs of birds, small mammals, and EVERY local invertebrate. the degrading plastic from pleather garments (which break down after only a few years) produces microplastics and leads to groundwater contamination, killing off amphibians and, later, sea life. faux leather can’t be repaired or recycled, only replaced by a new, equally toxic product.
tanneries are not exactly fountains of health, but a leather jacket uses the skin of a domestic cow that was already killed for meat. leather jackets can also be refurbished or recycled. once entirely discarded, leather will rot in place, rather than fragment into toxic forever particles.
leather is the product of an animal’s death in a tangible, recognizable form that you can immediately assess. one jacket, one cow. you touch the skin of that dead animal and you flinch from it.
pleather can tell you that no animals were harmed, because it harms animals that you will never see. it outsources responsibility. you’re not touching the skin of the birds that drowned in oil spills and the tadpoles that hatched into toxic rivers. the fish that will choke on the microplastics of your new jacket aren’t born yet when you walk out of the shop. the material of the jacket is so abstract and your culpability is so obscure that you can believe what you are told: it is clean. you are clean. no harm, no foul.
but that’s still not true.
in order for something to live, something must die; make peace with the messiness of life, that it is full of death and the reminders of it. if you don’t want to eat meat or use leather, that’s fine! good, even! but don’t pretend that your choice to use plastic in the place of skin means that your choices are without harm
especially faux leather. so you are okay with the aesthetic of the death you pretend to abjure, but not the living reality of it? at least leather is honest about what it is and not a fraud.
one day we may be able to create a faux leather that isn’t made of petroleum plastic. we’re not there yet. every plant-based or mushroom-made faux leather is still plastic just swapping the filler with something else.
the harsh reality is that there is no more ethical clothing than the ones that already exist.
I think one of the reasons drag kings aren’t as popular as drag queens, aside from the fact that straight women don’t like us, is that people are uncomfortable acknowledging masculinity as a performance. Like we as a society know that femininity is a performance, with its own costumes and rules. Masculinity is also a performance, and nothing makes that more clear than someone making an exaggeration of it
To everyone saying that “uh actually it’s cause drag kings aren’t as visually interesting”
Even more 🙂 If you dont see visually interesting and amazing drag kings on your feed you are not paying enough attention, go and find them! Here’s some that I know!
Showponii (from brooklyn, femgay drag king and AMAZING performer!)
KLONDYKE! One of the most amazing performance artists i’ve ever had the pleasure of watching
ZANAX ! Philly and NYC, some of the coolest visuals in drag right now
And that’s that follow more kings on insta thats where the drags all post for event promotion :-))
I’m adding onto this post to give you THROB ZOMBIE, the Horror Himbo ™, aka my hometown intro to drag. He’s pretty big now after coming in 2nd on the Dragula show, but even his early stuff was so creative and weird and interesting (and a big part of my gender coming-out process lol)
*goes to egg your house but I find out you’re vegan so I ¼ cup of unsweetened applesauce your house instead*
Okay I hear you, but that’s not going to work. As always, when you’re thinking of vegan egg substitutes, it’s important to think about the purpose of the egg in your recipe.
Eggs are used in this recipe because they smell gross and don’t come off easily (due to their tendency to harden/cook in the sun). This is not a situation for applesauce, which will come off in a light rain.
While unconventional, the substitute you’re looking for here is sourdough starter. It’s goopy, it’ll smell atrocious in the hot sun, and it’ll harden onto the walls like cement. If you try to get it off with water, you’ll end up with a sticky dough.
Just make sure to respectfully ask your target if they have a gluten allergy before doing this – wouldn’t want to trade one evil for another.
This can also be solved by letting some ground flaxseed sit in water until it becomes gelatinous. Vegan, gluten-free, and there’s no way that shit is ever getting off your house once it dries.
ALT
amhrancas 