Libby

I know I’m actually kind of acclimating when my go-to pronunciation has shifted from “Wait-rose” to “WAY-trose.” I hope the Brits are proud of me.

I know a lot of people think they're ineffective as a result, that you don't win with big happy protest events, but I think it's actually really important for people who feel lost and alone with everything that's happening to this country to be able to go and see that they aren't alone at all

I have been to two No Kings protests and they are filled with normies and people with funny signs and families and they are just the most wholesome protests imaginable

that's all people are going to see, man - their friends and neighbors out there saying we don't want this

The “No Kings” logo. A crown crossed out on a yellow background.

Very happy to have found several No Kings protests in the UK that I would be able to go to. Now I just need to pick one. Channeling ALL my far-away American terror into this, thanks.

I have seen no better theory.

Apples in a box! The cardboard sign says “APPLES… DELICIOUS EATERS! Please help yourselves 😊.”

These apple boxes can be found everywhere right now. It’s definitely in my top ten of favorite things about England in the fall. I guess a lot of people have apple trees, and they offer the extras to anyone who wants them? And I sure do take them up on it.

I’m doing a bit better with the homesickness — it was like a fever that just broke one day — but I still very much feel like I was randomly plunked here and cut off from the real world, even though 1) this is the real world, and 2) I did this to myself (for a good reason!)

I had a really bucolic, fairytale-ish sort of day reading in the countryside (I’ve been trying to find ways to destress; this qualified), and as I was walking through a field eating locally grown apples, I happened to look at the news. Everything is so surreal these days.

Have the courage of your convictions for Christ sakes.

Anyone who signs this pledge is not a journalist.

Would just love for someone to ask the simple question "What is communism, can you please define it since you use it so much"?

Since many of us are cancelling streaming services, now might also be a good time to support writers and artists. Times are extremely tough for creatives, so why not buy a book, commission an art piece, sign up for a Patreon, tip your favorite creators. Everything helps.

MY GOD, I HAVE A NEW HERO. SHE HAD THEM SO HOOKED AND THEN BAM, SHE ATE THEM, BONES AND ALL.

Tabby cat, awake!

A different tabby cat, asleep!

Took a wee trip to Bristol today to visit the cat pub. This was a good choice.

Also, do you know how much I miss my roommate’s cat? It’s nuts. I think about her for half a second and the waterworks are ON. Granted, I’d lived with her since she was adopted in 2020, so she was mine-ish in a sense as well. But she’s fine! She’s healthy! I’ll see her again!

Anyway, cried a lot today, for some reason. (I guess it makes sense. Have I ever dealt with big change well, even when I’ve chosen it? No.) I keep thinking about what might happen politically at home while I’m over here, and I keep trying to get control over it by planning what I’d do. All bad.

Nationalism is, at its core, just bizarre. I mean, even borders are, if you zoom out. You’re saying, as a tiny transient dot on a massive planet, that what makes best sense to you is if all the other tiny transient dots just never move from the bit of the planet they started out in? It’s ridiculous.

I am not terribly impressed with British grocery stores so far. What I wouldn't give for a Trader Joe's over here.

One week and one day until I get on the plane. It feels absolutely impossible to get my apartment fully undone in that time, and even more impossible to imagine saying goodbye to my roommate of eight years. But here we go, I guess, kicking-and-screaming emotions and all!

If you are not to become a monster, you must care what they think. If you care what they think, how will you not hate them, and so become a monster of the opposite kind? From where then is love to come—love for your enemy that is the way of liberty? From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go free of you, and you of them; they are to you as sunlight on a green branch. You must not think of them again, except as monsters like yourself, pitiable because unforgiving.

#Poetry
#Poem
#BlueskyPoetry
#WendellBerry

Enemies by Wendell Berry

Remember how if a kid choked on a little plastic toy they used to stop selling the toy

Consider the AI bro. They fundamentally don’t understand the following:

• Why people enjoy creating things.
• Why people enjoy learning things.
• Why people sometimes like their work.
• Why people sometimes genuinely like one another.

What a miserable way to live.

Walz: "It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military takeover of our cities, the flaunting of the rule of law, that the press finds the need to talk about, 'Oh, there's a division in the Dem Party.' There's a division in my damn house & we're still married and things are good. That's life"

OOH that is a vibe, though! I would totally read that!

Honestly it sounds like you actually could use it as a comp! I’m definitely all for it when it fits!

Yeah, I’ve almost gone off the word “cozy” because of how its meaning has shifted lately (which is sad as a person who really enjoys being cozy!) I do think her books can feel cozy in a sense, but it’s such a wildly different vibe from what the book community means now when they use that word.

DWJ was sharp and clever and dark and droll and acerbic and often convoluted. But “cozy,” in the way of today’s cozy-fantasy trend (a trend, honestly, that I usually find painfully twee)? Not once.

I really dislike people trying to make money by invoking her name in places it does not belong.

I don’t know how I thought I’d deal with all this (probably with pretty much the same amount of teariness as I’m currently experiencing), but leaving home just as it’s becoming occupied and militarized is NOT HELPING.

I kind of lost it for an hour there last night, when the taxi pulled into my neighborhood. Took a shower, cried a bit. Even at Christmas, I’m not coming back to my apartment or my roommate (who I’ve lived with for EIGHT years) or her cat I adore. I’d like the emotions to stop walloping me, please!

I’ve just spent a week on an island in Maine with very little WiFi, and now I’m back in the D.C. of current goings-on for three weeks before leaving the country for a year. Surreal doesn’t begin to cut it. I’m saying goodbye to my city whilst simultaneously Saying Goodbye To My City, it feels like.