Rachel Louise Martin

There have been some wild moments since then, but I think the most important for me have been hearing from the many readers who saw in the story a message of resiliency and perseverance for today.

The book A Most Tolerant Little Town propped behind a carrot cake with a candle

A Most Tolerant Little Town is 2 years old!

Two years ago, I woke up wondering if anyone would bother to read the book I'd spent literal decades researching and writing, then I got a Google alert for a New York Times review ...

I'm so glad it connected for you. It meant a lot to me as I wrote it. Thanks for sharing it!

PS. Did you know there are no good synonyms for blood?

These Dis-United States The country and the nation: Fifty writers and artists report on the states of our dis-union.

Periodically The Nation commissions writing and art from around the United States, assessing the state of our (dis)union. I was flabbergasted when Richard Kreitner asked my perspective for Tennessee. What I had to say is live online today and will be in print soon!

www.thenation.com/politics/the...

In an absolutely devastating ruling, the Supreme Court has allowed the transgender military ban to go into effect.

This is shocking - the ban explicitly called transgender people dishonorable for being transgender. It is as clear as day soaked in animus.

www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docke...

STEM fields, economics, law, polisci etc. are full of conservatives. Universities have incredible diversity of thought. The criticism is failure of imagination, boils down to the writer defining “university” as a few humanities depts. Business schools aren’t hiring Marxist economists for balance. 😂

Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been sitting in a Salvadoran prison for over a month because the Trump Admin made a mistake.

Now, the Admin is defying SCOTUS & refusing to bring him back.

If we allow Trump to violate Kilmar's rights, none of our rights are safe.

Kilmar is all of us.

Empowering an Audience-Centered Museum: Comprehensive Learning and Evaluation at the Mark Twain House & Museum Project Justification: What do we plan to do? IMLS goals met, Strategic Plan connection The Mark Twain House & Museum (MTH) in Hartford, CT, preserves and interprets the 1874 family home of Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and works to ensure that Twain’s legacy is relevant now and in the future. In our 50th year of operation as a public museum, the MTH is embarking on an ambitious project—and the primary goal of our 2023-2025 Strategic Plan--to realign our operations to center visitors in all that we do, making the audience and community engagement a central component of the work of the museum. To paraphrase Stephen Weil (1999) 2, we want to be a museum that is not just about someone—Mark Twain—but is for someone—the community right around us and our regional, national and international audiences. Well aware of the magnitude of this kind of shift, The MTH staff are seeking an IMLS Museums Empowered grant for $228,709 to create a comprehensive all-staff learning and capacity building initiative. Over a three-year period, all full and part-time staff will work with members of the board of trustees, consultants, and each other to: • Cultivate knowledge about; audience-centered museums and community engagement as processes, and the practice of audience evaluation as a crucial tool for learning about our audiences. • Build internal capacity to practice evaluation. • Remediate our lack of audience data through quantitative and qualitative audience evaluation. • Apply learnings and evaluation data by piloting new public offerings in the interpretation, education and curatorial departments; and ultimately develop abilities in audience-centered operations and community engagement as core functions of our museum. • The entire project will be evaluated for its impact on the staff, board and organization as a whole.

In case you want to know some of what IMLS funds in the museum world, here's what we have cooking at the moment at The Mark Twain House & Museum. We are in the first year of what was supposed to be a three year project.

Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

This, by the by, is an effing disaster if it holds up. The number of public libraries that will go under if IMLS is shuttered is mind-boggling. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

New Yorkers and DC residents trying to talk with @schumer.senate.gov are having to push notes through a locked door with police posted outside.

... The element that binds us together is the very freedom of open discussion and criticism which you produce. I hope that discussion and criticism -- that debate -- will always be as open, as vigorous and as free as it is today. I love you -- I don't love you. I praise you and commend you -- and I get very angry with you. That's democracy. That's my country -- the country that I love -- the United States of America. Handwritten note: Jane -- this was RSC's idea at the last minute

Rosalynn Carter often had a prickly relationship with the press. In March 1979 she addressed the Gridiron Club, DC's media elite. Some respected comics wrote most of her speech, and then she added her own ending on the importance of uncensored free journalism in a democracy.

It resonated with me...

DAMN IT!!!!!!!!!

Five stunning new picture books that celebrate Black culture While the new administration takes aim at DEI initiatives, there's one place where diversity is alive and well: Children's literature.

Five stunning new picture books that celebrate Black culture

While the new administration takes aim at DEI initiatives, there’s one place where diversity is alive and well: Children’s literature.
www.fastcompany.com/91274433/fiv...

I had been talking myself into applying for an NEA grant this year. Nevermind ... This is appalling!

A few of the people suffering as a result of the president's actions:

they are mostly targeting black employees so this is quite literally just a repeat of woodrow wilson’s segregationist purge of the federal government

a drawing of a fist with a purple bracelet around it ALT: a drawing of a fist with a purple bracelet around it

Happy Black History Month, and yeah, we're still doing that.

Tennessee passes sweeping immigration law to support Trump’s mass deportations Gov. Bill Lee wants to create a new state division to enforce immigration laws, mirroring a push from President Donald Trump to expel migrants.

Shit.

wpln.org/post/how-ten...

While reading the news last night, I broke out in hives for the first time in 18 years. How's your body dealing with this onslaught of prejudice and hate and incompetence?

It is distressing to spend the day with Rosalynn Carter and then return to our present reality.

Questions I didn't expect to have while researching Rosalynn Carter (an ongoing list):

1. Who was Chubby Cherub (also called just Chubby)?

I grew concerned last year when they scaled back their pride and Black history month store displays. Cutting DEI says those initiatives are finished, so then it is time for me and my meagre buying power to move on.

I assume all the box stores are bad. Costco fights unionization, for instance. So then it's a matter of weighing the bad choices against each other. I appreciated that Target selected small brands for some of its stores, and had often found Black women-owned companies to highlight and stock.

Off to blow through my $85 in Target gift cards, cancel my Circle account and sign up for a Costco membership.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Happy to see this teen fashion mag is continuing the fight they lodged so persistently during the first Trump term

When I was a child,
I learnt to count to five
one, two, three, four, five.
but these days, I’ve been counting lives, so I count

one life
one life
one life
one life
one life ...

From "The Pedagogy of Conflict"
By Pádraig Ó Tuama