Mindy

Seemed like a good day to sign up to volunteer with the local rapid response organization, so I guess I’m canvassing next weekend to hand out know your rights materials in neighborhoods with a lot of recent ICE activity.

If the US can abolish USAID, we can sure as shit abolish ICE.

Happy for NYC, or course, but actually thrilled for my own city which totally flipped the city council to people that appear to care about and understand us, despite a huge difference in campaign funding and resources. Aurora’s such a great place to live, happy that our council thinks so too now.

I put a little basket of snacks in the LFL at the elementary school by my house this weekend. Every night this week, I’ve checked in on it and refilled what got taken. I kind of love being the snack fairy? It’s like a tiny magic making goldfish and applesauce appear every morning.

Brown dog out for a run on a perfect fall day, maybe he’s thinking about how proud he is of all of you.

Maybe Bluesky is too earnest for some people, but I really like how everyone is talking about donating to food banks and mutual aid today. What a nice corner of the internet, remembering in this stupid time, we have to take care of each other.

@ellearee.bsky.social and I were talking once about growing up in NPR families and how good it was for our brains to hear the news coming from women. Like, riding around to softball practice listening to the founding mothers was a subtle lesson that women were voices of authority.

Happy birthday to me!!!!!!

High alpine vista of mountains and pine trees. Wilderness lands, this belongs to you.

A brown dog on a leash looks at a rushing mountain stream. National forest land, this belongs to you.

Sunset over purple mountains, cottonwoods in the foreground. State park lands, this belongs to you (Coloradoans)

There are many things to be said about the state of things, but here I am, a single woman at 44, taking a week off her career to camp, hike, read, and rest, all on public lands, with just my dog for company. Historically, not a lot of that was possible/safe, and it’s worth fighting for.

I (already a dedicated fantasy reader) had a hard time with them and realized later that there were only 3 female characters and I think that put me off.

Fellow Denverites, if you have not seen the Kent Monkman show at the Art Museum, get yourself there this week before it closes. Moving and remarkable.

A blue and white Columbine blooming in front of a rotting log.

Rolling mountain vista from a rocky outcrop under afternoon cloudy skies.

An orange sun dips behind distant mountains and closer in grass and houses.

A happy brown dog lies in the grass.

Happy Colorado day! I’m so lucky my parents moved us out here in 1989 so I could grow up in one of the nicest places on Earth.

This came out when I was in grad school in MD and I showed it to my classmates and they were “oh, this is your entire personality.”

Can you get stuff from IKEA there? They have a bunch of comforter options for different temps. I have a medium one (CO is cold but not Alaska cold) and I love it.

Brown dog walking on a paved path with high grass and a orangey sunset in the distance.

Thank you for all these years! I’ve been listening since Trey was your 4th chair. I save all the episodes for Friday night dog walks because I remember when it would only drop on Fridays and I’d always listen while walking the dog after work. This dog and the one before him.

Bunch of us trying to get to DEN got routed to Amarillo. Is the weather passing over? Plane full of folks trying to figure out if we’re getting home tonight. Thanks!

Of course! Miles loves his admirers. He came to me after a challenging time in his life in April of 2020, so we were alone together for a year. We’re quite a pair.

A vizsla with white face and a turquoise harness looks lovingly at his human making him pose on our path in front of an orangey sunset between our neighborhood and a school.

I’ve always been a lurker of an ugly dog. Shy IRL and online. Miles and I are here though, enjoying a solstice sunset together.

Everything is terrible but I went for a really nice run today, and I thought about Maggie Smith’s Good Bones. We could make this place beautiful.

Agreed, it would be better to have it on the even years, but I’m just excited this year to have an opportunity to get rid of some of them.

I’m pretty pumped for city council elections this year. I live in Aurora and some of them really need to go.

We are almost never any good and this year we have managed to be even worse? I guess if we’re going to lose a lot, we might as well lose in a record setting way.

I’m out on vacation in southern Utah this week and it is so beautiful.

Rep Jason Crow drops an f bomb describing the story of the US national security team with no security or sense.

My representative also did some cussing.

@ellearee.bsky.social and I have been saying all along that Q is the red lantern in our hearts, but it was true! There was a light on all this time.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon when I got much of my breaking news from the VOA, including the results of the 2004 elections. It’s hard to imagine being 23 and so far from home without it.

You made a little spot for joy and dogs on the internet and the truth is, even now, people are looking for a little joy, and a way to help, and sometimes things ripple out in ways we don’t expect, but is really fun to watch.

It’s March in Colorado, so it snowed and the sun came out and was warm then, and then the wind tried to blow us away, and then it snowed again, and now the sun is out, and I love this chaotic season, even though I have to carry all the clothes I own with me. You never know when the wind will change.

I’ve been trying to pay more attention to my local government since some of them made us national news. Three months of going to or listening to city council meetings really hasn’t inspired my confidence in these folks.

The NIH paid for some of my graduate education and half of it happened on their campus. And then I spent the next 11 years at an academic safety net hospital in the South, where I clinically took care of all kinds of folks and trained students for a decade.

One of my co-workers got her first library card this week after I told her how much I loved the library. She took out a paper book and set Libby up on her phone!