Rosana Francescato

Thinking About Bodies Again Can't live with them, definitely can't live without them!

This week, I took my body from San Francisco to Paris. That got me thinking about bodies once more, so I thought I’d repost this piece from a while back.

I keep coming back to the feelings I expressed here.

Happy Birthday to Flower Child! My Substack turns three.

Three years ago on September 27, I started writing Flower Child, which examines life’s persistent questions from the perspective of the hidden generation between the Boomers and Gen X: flowerchild.substack.com/p/happy-birt....

Will you join 487 others & subscribe? All my posts are free.

When I'm Sixty-Four Wait, it's when?

When I was young, the age of 64 meant nothing to me — other than some vague idea about extreme old age from a Beatles song.

What can I expect as I continue aging? Who knows, who knows. But so far, so good. I hope we can shift our culture’s view of aging.

Ask Is a Verb It's active; it's vulnerable; it's a thing we do. But some of us have to learn to do it.

Learning to ask for what we want and need is a process. I’m still learning!

How can we learn to ask?

Spoiler: It’s the same way you get to Carnegie Hall.

More in this week’s Flower Child: flowerchild.substack.com/p/ask-is-a-v...

It Was 40 Years Ago Today It wasn't raining in the city by The Bay. Because I moved there in September.

It was 40 years ago today. It wasn't raining in the city by The Bay — because I moved there in September. San Francisco was really something in the 1980s — a place for misfits, affordable, exciting. It’s still wonderful, but it’s not the same. More here: flowerchild.substack.com/p/it-was-40-...

You Can't Take the Semicolon and the Em Dash Away from Me! They're not dead yet!

Semicolon use is down; em dash use is up — but we're told not to use it so people won't think our writing was done by AI.

YOU'LL HAVE TO PRY THE SEMICOLON AND EM DASH OUT OF MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-semico...

I'm So Over AI But it's just getting started.

For a while now, I’ve been wondering what technology of the future will leave me in the dust when I’m older.

And I’m starting to realize that may already be happening, with AI. Is it all it's cracked up to be? I have concerns.

And Just Like That ... I watched all three seasons.

It was the best of shows ... it was the worst of shows. Whatever you thought of Sex and the City, it was a revolutionary show.

And Just Like That? No. But yes, I watched it all.

Learn what I discovered when I went back to where it all started:

Walking Through Life There's much more to it than counting steps.

It was such a crazy and odd week that I forgot to share my latest Flower Child piece. It's all about one of my loves: walking.

Check it out here:

Hanging Out The lost pleasure of being together without plans.

Why has it gotten so hard to just hang out with our friends in modern American life?

How can it change? Will it ever change? Do we have to wait for retirement?

For the lack of answers to these and other questions, check out this week's Flower Child.
flowerchild.substack.com/p/hanging-out

The Secret Life of Clay An experienced potter goes back to basics in this guest post from my friend Susan.

My friend Susan makes and sells amazing ceramics, some of which you can see here. She can also write! Today’s guest post by Susan reveals some beautiful and unexpected stories from her work with clay. Be sure to read to the end; you’ll be glad you did.

flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-secret...

Let that sink in for a sec.

The Power of Place There's no place like home.

The pull of home is strong.

Only in recent years has the idea of leaving the U.S. started to appeal to me, as life here gets shittier and shittier. What might stop me is knowing how hard it would be.

More in this week's Flower Child: flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-power-...

YouTube video by Jesse Welles The List

youtu.be/KYbb_e6NHWU

Fentanyl smuggling: Most seizures occur at ports of entry where U.S. citizens are the primary smugglers - American Immigration Council Most fentanyl enters the U.S. through ports of entry, not via migrants. U.S. citizens are the primary smugglers, often recruited by criminal networks. Effective solutions focus on better screening at ...

REPORT: Most seizures of fentanyl occur at U.S. points of entry, not via migrants. In reality, U.S. citizens are the primary smugglers.

Where I'm From What place can I call mine? What place do you call yours?

I’m from a university town oasis in the middle of a vast patchwork of flat corn and soybean fields. I’m from a large city in South America. I’m from the city of misfits that is San Francisco. And now, from across the bay in Oakland.

Where are you from?

One more quarter of negative growth is full recession. We will call it TRUMPCESSION!

The Door of Compassion It's not an easy one to find — or to open. But it's worth trying.

Compassion feels more necessary than ever — and so much harder to access than ever. This past week didn’t help.

But I’ve seen that things go better, and I feel better, when I lead with love and compassion.

More in this week's Flower Child: flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-door-o...

You Took My Joy I want it back.

Theodore Roosevelt said comparison is the thief of joy, and he was right, but these days, MAGA is the ultimate thief of joy.

They want to take our joy, and I don’t want to let them.

More in this week's Flower Child: flowerchild.substack.com/p/you-took-m...

Anticipation Making us wait isn't a bad thing.

I wrote about rats for the 3rd week in a row. I promise this will stop!

But it turns out rats can teach us about anticipation. We love to teach rats to do unexpected things like driving cars; now it’s time for us to learn from them.

More here:

flowerchild.substack.com/p/what-rats-...

Smoke season is not normal. Stop pretending it is. For me, living through wildfire smoke with young children — knowing it was preventable — feels like a kind of slow-motion moral injury.

The scariest part of climate collapse is how ordinary it’s starting to feel.
This week, I wrote in Canada’s National Observer about smoke season, moral injury, and raising kids in a world that shrugs it off.

#ClimateSky

Trump’s numbers just fell off a cliff and he’s taking the GOP with him.

📉 Fox News Poll:

–30 on inflation
–18 on the economy
–17 on foreign policy

That’s not a margin of error—that’s a political obituary in the making.

2026 isn’t just looking bad for Republicans—it’s looking biblical.

Okay, yes to all she says — but it doesn’t seem to matter. The insanity continues unchecked.

Share share share

I say again: men are clearly too emotional to be in leadership.

Mike Lee is vile, disgusting man. He SHOULD be be expelled. But he won’t be. Looks like he isn’t even going to apologize !

If you haven’t heard of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove… you have now.

When she stepped out from the back without missing a beat, I knew it was on🔥
@kamlager-dove.house.gov

Rat Patrol Our rat problem was actually a cat problem.

Our rat problem was actually a cat problem.

Sparky, red in tooth and claw but not always willing to finish the job, had brought the rat into our house and then let it escape the jaws of death.

Check out this week's Flower Child to learn what happened next.

flowerchild.substack.com/p/rat-patrol

It is definitely hard to see how we get out of this mess. For sure, hard to imagine that. Crazy thing is that a lot of what’s behind making them mad is the billionaires and the whole white supremacy patriarchal capitalist machine, though they don’t see that.

The weird thing is that much of white America doesn’t seem to care if they get destroyed too, in the process. It’s so sad and horrifying seeing this happening.