Let’s face it, the last few years have been an absolute trash heap set ablaze by the absolute dumbest people to ascend to power. Perhaps in history.
In the last year alone, we’ve had ICE killing people in the streets, diarrhea lettuce, a cage fight on the lawn of the White House, and Little Lord Fauntleroy chopping down the cherry trees in DC to make way for his stupid golf course. And that’s not even the half of it.

In addition, we’ve lost some incredible people in 2025 and into 2026. Rob Reiner was murdered by his son. Catherine O’Hara died seemingly out of nowhere. Bob Weir. James Van der Beek. Sam Neill. Eric Dane. Hayden Panetierre. Diane Keaton. Robert Redford. Brian Wilson. Pope Francis. Val Kilmer. Gene Hackman. George Foreman. David Lynch. TIM FREAKING CURRY.

Not since 2016 have we had a more tragic run of celebrity deaths.

Just this past week, I was putzing online, as you do, when I caught that the official Dolly Parton Facebook page posted a very ominous-looking video. Something about it immediately made my hair stand on end. Mostly because it wasn’t of Dolly. It was some mustachioed dude in a suit against a plain black background. I caught the posting before it had a SINGLE “like” or comment. 1 minute into its appearance online.

Now, I’m what people would consider a “Death Hag”, which sounds TERRIBLE, but it basically just means I have an interest in celebrity death. HOW they died. Where they’re buried. That sort of thing. I’m a big fan of Hollywood Graveyard on YouTube. It’s not weird.
I swear.
It’s also not that niche. There’s lots of Death Hags.

So, I’ve seen PLENTY of “official announcements”. I knew without even PLAYING that video that Dolly Parton had died.

I played the video. Sure enough. Then I went to my job’s Slack channel and said “Uh….guys…..”
Then I hit the internet looking for an official announcement. TMZ. CNN. Anything. Nothing. Almost 10 whole minutes went by before it hit the news.

Now, celebrity death is nothing earth-shattering. I mean, celebrities….they’re just like us! They die. They die in accidents, of illness, and of old age.

But Dolly Parton was one of those rare people that you thought, against all common sense, would live forever. Because who could imagine a world without Dolly in it? She was a celebrity about whom it would be hard to find negative press. She was someone about whom it would be nearly impossible to find someone with an unkind word to say. She loved everyone, she put her money where her mouth was, she helped others in big and small ways, and, on top of everything else, she was insanely talented.

All of this is why losing her has been such a gut punch to much of the United States. Because we have been going THROUGH IT lately, and now we have to do it without Dolly.

She represented the best of what humanity has to offer our country at a time when we desperately needed it. And perhaps it was selfish of us to ask so much from her? She was just one person. Simply a songwriter. A singer. An actress. Why do we feel that how Dolly lived her life was so outside of the norm that the vibe has to end with her passing?

There are lists that go around. Lists of people who the internet feels must be protected at “all costs”. These lists always included Dolly. If there’s any lesson to be learned from the outpouring of grief for Miss Parton, it is that we can ALL be better. We can all try, every day, to just be a little bit more like Dolly Parton. Give back. Smile at someone. Hell, sing a song with someone just for fun. Encourage your kids to read. Never tell your daughters that they can’t do something just because they’re girls. Be fantastically original. Guard your privacy. Guard your love. Get vaccinated. Learn how to play an instrument. Be independent with your finances. Be staunchly anti-racist.

We’ll miss Dolly. But I believe we can take it from here.

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I turned 40 as COVID was raging and the world was shut down. The only space we had outside of our homes was the internet. There was no shortage of women already well into their 40s warning us about perimenopause, mental load, and the incredible shift that happens somewhere in this chapter that makes us unrecognizable to ourselves. I didn’t think anything would change radically from my 30s. My kids were getting older and, I believed, perhaps easier? (Ha! Enter diabetes……and college….and school systems and moves and…and…and. Always an and!) I expected my forties to be a wind down. A settling.

The opposite happened. Not that it happened all at once, but the other day I woke up and looked in the mirror, and staring back at me was an old person. Bags under my eyes, spots on my skin from years in the sun, wrinkles that ran deep gullies from my eyes to my hairline, and 15 extra lbs. sitting around my middle. No idea how that even happened, given that I spent much of the last year hiking between 50 and 100 miles a month. Email from my doctor letting me know my cholesterol is high, my iron is low, and could I come in for more bloodwork? My diet hasn’t changed much, yet my body has started to cling to every calorie. I mean, I actually LIKE kale. KALE. I’m not over here stuffing burgers into my face and laying around like a slug.

I had tried to convince myself that I didn’t care. I was going to eat the Nerds Gummies. I was going to not fret over going from a size 8 to a size 12. No big deal! I have more to offer than a lack of fat! But I cared. I care each time I see myself in the mirror. Because I don’t look like me. I don’t recognize that person.

It all just sort of happened while I was doing other things. Being an employee. Being a mom. Trying to write a book. Hiking my ass off. Not sleeping. Running errands. Going to appointments.

Taking care of everyone else’s immediate needs.

Because that is what we do. Women consistently loan out their brains and executive functioning for others to use. They organize. They plan ahead. WAY ahead. They anticipate. They project manage. They lie awake at night thinking of all the ways something could go wrong, and then develop plans A, B, and C to make sure it doesn’t.

When you’re in your twenties or thirties and just starting your family, all of this is quite new. You kind of fall into it without realizing the patterns that develop beneath the surface. Soon, it’s just status quo. You’re going to pay the bills, fill out the form, get everything together for back to school, talk to the pediatrician, remember all the dates, and, damn it, you’re going to smile while you do it because that’s just how it is.

So you do it. Because you convince yourself that if you don’t do it, it will never get done. And then the world will end.

But I’ve found that somewhere around 40, you start to realize that while you’re pouring into everyone else, your cup is bone fucking dry. But once you start waking up to this, realizing it, and giving it a name — you suddenly feel like a martyr. You can’t properly explain it to anyone in your orbit. You read the books. You follow the accounts on Instagram that talk about the mental load and emotional labor, and you say YES!!! But, in the day-to-day, you keep trucking, wondering if this has so much discourse around it, why hasn’t anyone found the ANSWER?

You read stories about women your age who are making it ALL happen. Toni Morrison used to get up around 4 AM to write before her children woke and she had to head off to her day job. Author Frieda McFadden (real name: Sara Cohen) started a thriller empire, writing 30 novels since 2013, all while she was a medical intern with a husband, two kids, and a cat. HOW? I have friends who have entered their forties and run for office, done triathlons, and gone back to school to get their Master’s or Doctorate.

I sit awake at night and wonder what information they have that I have missed? What is the secret?

I’m hoping the answer, for me anyway, is a little more hormone replacement therapy and a little less giving a shit. That’s the part that’s going to be hard. The giving a shit part. Because I give a shit about EVERYTHING. Except myself. I have always had this sense of misplaced pride that I am wildly low maintenance. I don’t need anything. Rather, I have spent over a decade trying to convince myself that I didn’t need anything. That way, I had more to give. More capacity to fix. If I made myself small, other people could thrive.

And here’s where it’s led me. Wrinkly, pale-faced, and chubby. Tired. SO tired. Achy. Perpetually annoyed.

In 2023, I took a solo trip to Canada that I had been dreaming about since I was 8 years old. I had saved for a year and just finally bit the bullet and booked the tickets. I was 43, and I thought that it would be just the break I needed to reset everything. While standing on the red cliffs of Prince Edward Island overlooking the ocean was, indeed, life-altering, it didn’t shift things the way I thought it would. I got to PEI that first day, and I was extremely overwhelmed. No one needed anything from me. I could just do whatever. I wasn’t sure I knew how to do whatever. I didn’t have to check with anyone else to see if plans were okay or if everyone’s needs were being met.

It was very disorientating.

There’s no way just one trip or one time going to get dinner by yourself can change everything, but that trip WAS a catalyst.

If I’ve realized anything since then, it is that I have got to stop waiting for others around me to recognize the outsized mental load and adjust it for me. I have to just start being selfish and be okay with it. I have to adjust it myself. Go on the all-day hike. Lock myself in my room to write for 5 hours. Go to the concert alone. Assume someone else saw the email. Make my kids pay a dollar every time they yell for me and not their dad (ok….maybe that’s a bit much….maybe. But God damn, I’d be rich.)

Be okay with others failing because of their failure to plan.

None of this will happen overnight. I have been programmed to think the way I do since far before I had a family. The thought of anything going wrong on my watch is far too much to bear for someone with a raging case of legitimate OCD.

But I have to try. I’m hoping that if I take baby steps, the solo trip won’t be so disorientating. The sleep will come again. The time will start becoming mine.

I have to try. At least until the person I see in the mirror is recognizable again.

Because this is where we need to lock in and lock in hard, Wisconsin.

After tomorrow, the WI Right is going to have their teeth bared and their claws sharpened. They will be throwing anything they’ve got at the progressive candidate. They are already dragging Hong, and that is to be expected. They are creating a narrative, and their base is lapping it up. Hong is crazy. She’s a communist. She wants to cancel Thanksgiving, and she wants children to have sex change operations in school.

Has she ever even SEEN a cow?

It’s going to get ugly, and we need to be ready.

As difficult as it will be, we have got to stop getting in the weeds with Tom Tiffany supporters. They are lost causes. Every last one of them. They will never be convinced that a young woman of color is a good choice for Wisconsin. They will never be convinced that Democratic Socialism is a positive direction for the state. These are the same people who have been wholly convinced that Donald J. Trump was going to lower prices, not get us into new wars, and make us “great again”. They will never see that none of that happened or will happen.

You have to just let them go.

And that’s just fine. Let them enjoy the last days of Pompeii before we burn this shit down. Because a change is going to come whether they like it or not. MAGA is not sustainable. Christian Nationalism is not sustainable. They are ideologies built on hate, and that goes against what it means to be human.

Taking care of one another. THAT is sustainable.

Center Dems….I want to talk directly to you here. I know you’re scared. I know you’re concerned that if we throw our loyalties behind someone like Hong, we have already lost. You are wringing your hands over the polls. You are listening to what Fox News has to say about Hong and expressing concerns about her electability.

I understand. You don’t want to see Tom Tiffany win any more than we do. WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE.

We have to have some measure of faith and belief. And this is coming from a staunch atheist. But I believe in the progressive movement. I believe in the benefits of Democratic Socialism. I believe WE CAN DO BETTER. We deserve better. We have to let go of the white-knuckle grip we have on the steering wheel and just imagine a better world for a moment.

Tomorrow, let’s get out there and let the people’s voice be heard. Then, let’s buckle down and throw our support behind the people’s choice. For the betterment of our state.

See you at the polls!

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I am a hopeful person going into these midterms. Despite all the efforts on the Right to demonize the person I am backing in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, I am still choosing to believe that YES. WE. CAN. That hope does not need to be deferred.

What is causing a few less-than-hopeful moments is when I see people on the Left, people on MY SIDE, sowing division.

Let’s be clear. There are a LOT of MAGA-coded, racist, Christian Nationalist types in Wisconsin. There just ARE. You can feel the spectre of them around, hidden behind Midwest Nice and You Betcha! sentiment. Tom Tiffany is an election-denying, pedophile protecting, do-nothing who hasn’t made a LICK of positive difference for Wisconsinites the entire time he has been in politics. No amount of cutesy commercials with his mother or his rented cows changes that fact. But people WILL vote for him. He has the backing of Wisconsin billionaires like Diane Hendricks who are CONVINCED they can buy an election.

Because they can buy anything, right?

And you can rest assured that once the primary is over and the race is on, Trump will absolutely be meddling. Remember when Elon Musk came up here and started writing checks?

Yeah, expect more of that.

Hendricks and the Uihleins have allowed Tiffany to grow his coffers to millions beyond what even the most well-funded Left candidate could even dream of.

And they are absolutely convinced this will garner a man with the personality of lip crust the Governorship.

Meanwhile, the fight AGAINST frontrunner Francesca Hong has taken on a certain nastiness this week. As we come down to the wire, people are hung up on everything from her admission that she struggled with mental health to a tweet about cheese curds. Now, yes, I’ve been around long enough to realize that this is par for the course with politics. However, many of these barbs are coming from others on the LEFT.

Now, to be fair, Hong had a not-so-great run of interviews. I strongly feel she could benefit from some media training and practice at brevity. I also get it, being a long-winded woman myself. I see you, girl. So, it didn’t bother me much. SO many of us can relate to the strong desire to over-explain.

However, it has worried me that when the time comes next Tuesday, and the frontrunner wins, we are going to see a fall-off of support from moderates, undecided voters, or die-hard supporters of Roys, Crowley, and Brennan.

I hope they hear this: If either of those three pulls off an upset next week and wins the primary, they will have my support 110%. I will go to bat for them. I will spread their platforms far and wide. I will drum up support for them going into November.

Because whoever wins next Tuesday is going to need every shred of liberal support they can muster. Whether you consider yourself a dedicated member of the DSA or more of a centrist. WE NEED YOU.

I love this state. I love it too much to see it handed over to Tom Tiffany simply because he had more money to play with. We cannot let billionaires dictate the direction of this state. They already have far too much power over our lives.

It is the MANY over the MONEY, no matter who is up against Tiffany.

We cannot get hung up on purity tests, people. Next Tuesday, we have to resist the urge to pick up our ball and go home. Once the primary is over, we have to be all in. Together.

Forward.

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Through it all, one candidate has maintained a calm, collected aura, and that’s Francesca Hong. She’s remained classy, undeterred by constant barbs thrown her way, and laser-focused on the task at hand.

We have spent a decade with the black cloud of MAGA hanging over our heads. All of the pithy posts on X, the letters, the big talk — it has gotten us nowhere. Here we sit, in a SECOND Trump term, no closer to stopping the train from flying off the rails. The farce that was the grilling of Dr. Fauci should tell us something.

These people are not going to stop unless we stop them.

And they’re not going to be stopped by a Chuck Schumer.

Radical action is what it’s going to take to make a difference, here in Wisconsin and in the US as a whole. It started with Mamdani. It’s continuing with Francesca Hong, with Abdul El Sayed, and with AOC rising through the ranks to become quite possibly the most recognizable — and some may say most powerful — progressive in politics today.

We CAN do this.
We HAVE to do this.
Wisconsin, if we allow Tom Tiffany access to the governorship, we will be leaning into traveling backward.

Tom Tiffany and the Fox News talking heads will say she wants to “defund the police” — all the while stumping for “no property taxes” which — guess what — defunds the police.

Tom Tiffany will say he is for “common sense” — all the while denying the results of the 2020 election. STILL. Which is anything BUT common sense.

Francesca Hong is the ONLY candidate on either side to call for an AI data center moratorium.

She is the ONLY candidate addressing AI misuse through her FIREWALL initiative, protecting data and privacy in the age of AI. Under her LABOR SHIFT initiative, she calls for HUMANS to make employment decisions over AI programs, calls for an end to AI surveillance in the workplace, and calls for an end to AI-set wages.

She calls for a FAIR tax code that extends to the richest people in Wisconsin, so they pay their fair share for the betterment of the state we ALL love.

The average Wisconsinite pays between $11,088 and $18,239 PER CHILD PER YEAR for full-time childcare. It’s INSANE. State college didn’t cost that much back when I was college-age. Hong calls for universal childcare in Wisconsin, which could give thousands of families breathing room.

Hong has called for the expansion of veterans’ benefits, especially where healthcare is concerned. She wants to make homelessness among veterans a cabinet-level priority.

Francesca Hong is exactly what democracy looks like. Peel away the Fox News rhetoric and the accusations coming from people who couldn’t define Democratic Socialism if you paid them, and it is ALL COMMON SENSE. You know that phrase Tom Tiffany keeps using?

Wisconsin, our motto is FORWARD.
Let’s keep it that way.

Vote Francesca Hong on August 11th and again on November 3rd.

We can do this, Wisconsin. YES. WE. CAN.

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In the midst of a rambling speech where he hit on his favorite topics (transgender people, the ‘fake news’, the ballroom), he busted out a bright red Trump 2028 cap and plopped it atop that tumbleweed he calls hair. “I won three times, and I’m going to do it again!” he slurred.

Awww shucks, Grandpa! Such a joker.

The response from the crowd was lukewarm. A few awkward claps.

The old man’s garbled speech was mostly met with awkward silence. This morning, the press has framed his 2028 announcement as a joke. CNN, USA Today, The Guardian, Newsweek….all using the same language. Joke. Quips.

Have we learned nothing?

This is a man who is currently building a whole-ass bunker where the East Wing used to be.
This is a man who has a bevy of Trump 2028 hats made and ready to go.
This is a man who in March 2025 told NBC he was “not joking” about running again.

Although the Constitution stipulates that, legally, Trump cannot run again — Constitutionality hasn’t stopped this administration in the past. I mean, this is a man who stoked an insurrection, was impeached, and was allowed to run again. He has tried to end Constitutional birthright citizenship. He has frozen federal funds without Congressional approval.

He started a WAR without Congressional approval.

How could anyone think that Donald Trump gives a damn about the Constitution?

In response to this madness, House Democrats have been posting on Threads… such effective zingers as “Trump and Republicans are trying to rig elections because they know they’re unpopular with the American people. It’s pathetic.”

Whoa there, House Democrats. Let’s not get TOO crazy.

We are absolutely NOT. ANGRY. ENOUGH.

We have a man who is monologuing about his evil plans like some B-movie villain, and we are content to sit back, convince ourselves that he is joking, and that when push comes to shove, he will suddenly follow the law.

He has never followed the law, people. He has never done anything that wasn’t 100% selfish. He has pushed the boundaries and been allowed to proceed every single time. We have the majority of Republicans in positions of power unwilling to admit that he lost in 2020. You think they’re going to suddenly have scruples when he announces that he’s running in 2028?

So what do we do?

Well, first things first, centrist Democrats and their milquetoast takes that they offer online and in their “strongly worded letters” do not serve us anymore. They are just as tangled up with AIPAC money, fraud, and selfish priorities as the Right may be. They’re just a bit better at maintaining a facade of empathy and concern for the plight of the American people.

There have been standouts offering a different way. And they are scaring the shit out of people like Mike Johnson. Democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani and Francesca Hong here in WI. Leaders who lean farther left of center and have common sense takes on what’s going on in the country, such as Jon Ossoff and AOC. These are the next generation of leaders. But they are having a hard time evicting the establishment right now. Old, OLD (mostly) white men who are clinging to their positions and refusing to give up. Men so afraid of death that they will burn it all down without a second thought.

All we need to do is look at what the Right is doing with Mitch McConnell right now to see how screwed we all are. The man is CLEARLY either incapacitated or dead……and they are lying right to the faces of the American people.

And we just take it.
Over and over and over we just take it because we are not in power and we have no idea what to do.

So he puts on the 2028 red hat. He slurs through his ill-fitting dentures about running again. He builds his bunker. He ignores the Constitution he pledged to defend. He starts new wars after running a campaign on “No new wars”, he rolls back regulations and we have to avoid lettuce all summer, he denigrates transgender people and women and journalists — he continues to abuse us, the people he is supposed to be serving.

And we just take it.

I am just as lost as you guys. While I’m not willing to weakly laugh at what the Right is calling “peak trolling”, I’m also bereft of ideas. I’m a 46 year old middle class mother in the Midwest with no political power outside of my one vote and access to Substack. I’m not even sure how helpful any of that is.

But, I strongly feel, in my bones, that if the Left doesn’t wake the fuck up and stop with this mamby-pamby response to this wanna-be dictator, that very soon we are going to be completely powerless to stop anything he wants to do.

When you go to vote this November for the midterms and start thinking foward to 2028, perhaps we can think outside the box we have built around ourselves. Status quo is not serving us. Democrats with allegiance to centrist Right ideals, those who are willing to roll over and vote for things such as funding the DHS or handing over tax dollars to further fund this unconstitutional war, these people need to lose their jobs.

We have a voice. These people work FOR us. It’s time that those with a platform start to remind them.

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Hoan is considered a bright spot in Milwaukee political history. A shining example of Democratic Socialism at work. So popular for making Milwaukee more livable, more stable, and more efficient, especially for the working class, that they named a bridge after the guy.

In January of 2026, Zohran Mamdani became Mayor of New York City, a metropolitan area with 8.5 million people, a larger population than 38 of the 50 states.

In six short months, Mamdani has secured a $1.2 billion investment in universal childcare, secured $9 million in restitution for workers and small businesses, delivered over $30 million in repairs, settlements, and judgments for tenants, expanded protected time off for NYC workers, managed 100,000 pothole fixes in his first 100 days, and has built a profile as a champion for worker’s rights, child care, and affordable housing that has made him more popular than Trump nationwide.

Before his election, Mamdani was up against an onslaught of hate and scare tactics from the Right. They said that the billionaire class would leave NYC in droves, causing the city to crumble. They called him a terrorist. They tried to guilt New Yorkers into not voting for him by bringing up 9/11. They called him a Communist. They called him illegal. They posted doctored photos of him — as a child — with Epstein. Most of which the pearl-clutchers said would happen if he was elected hasn’t come to fruition.

Shocker.

If you’re in Wisconsin, all of this anti-socialist rhetoric should sound familiar, which is curious because socialism is in our ROOTS. Wisconsin Socialists helped form the nation’s first workers’ compensation program and unemployment compensation law in the 1930s. They formed farmer co-ops and credit unions that are still going strong today. Our parks, public works, and cooperative economics carry on that legacy.

So, I have to assume that the people yelling about “communism” and “Marxism” on Facebook today never learned about Sewer Socialism. They are taking their cues from the billionaire class, for whom Socialism poses several problems. For one, they may have to start paying their fair share of taxes, treating their workers well, and making sure the people whose labor they depend on to keep their empire going are taken care of. They don’t want to do that. If they did, they would be doing it already.

The head-scratcher is the people willing to argue FOR the billionaire class. Because they are still holding fast to the promise of trickle-down economics. Many of us grew up in the 1980s and watched Wall Street (“Greed is Good!”). We watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The lesson that if we just worked hard enough, got an education, and pulled ourselves up with a little of that Horatio Alger gumption, we too could have a fabulous yacht or a McMansion in the burbs someday was pounded into our tiny child brains. Tax cuts for the 1% were going to surely benefit us, right? It meant growth, jobs, and positioning the US as a superpower for tech and manufacturing.

RIGHT?

But that was 40+ years ago. And I have to ask — Have the benefits started coming because I must have missed it? We welcomed our first trillionaire this year. How are the rest of us doing?

While the US was playing the Gordon Gecko game and Donald Trump was bankrupting casinos, the rest of the industrialized world was looking at how they could both compete and care for their people. It seemed almost second-nature, especially in countries like Norway, which married a capitalist economic system with strong social programs. Private ownership and markets remain central, but social democracy contributes to things like strong education systems and a robust universal healthcare system. It should be a no-brainer.

But, Amanda, they pay through the NOSE for that! You ain’t raisin’ my taxes! Grumble Grumble (I’m sure you can fill in your own loud mayonnaise noises here).

If you are comparing apples to apples, Americans pay more out of pocket for taxes + healthcare + education than the Nordic countries. While we pay less in taxes for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, we pay far more for private health insurance and costs that insurance doesn’t cover.

One healthcare emergency can easily bankrupt an American — a situation that is completely foreign to countries with universal healthcare coverage.

So, when people start clutching their pearls and yelling that “Nothing is free! Someone is paying!” when confronted with the work of Mamdani or the platform of someone like Francesca Hong, I have to question if they understand math. Because more is more, no matter when you’re paying it or what it’s called when you pay it.

Countries that have found a way to merge capitalist sensibilities with strong social support have longer life spans, better health outcomes, and fare better in education. Their social programs also contribute to less violent crime, because as Francesca Hong has been trying to get the people of Wisconsin to understand, you don’t attack crime by bolstering the power of the police. You remain proactive. You focus on the source: poverty, illness, education, and mental health. That is where you direct your public funds.

Are the structures held dear in places like the UK, Canada, Japan, or the Nordic countries perfect? Not by a long shot. They are run by human beings, and human beings are deeply flawed. There’s going to be fraud. Complaints. Mix-ups. Heavier wait times at emergency rooms. Just like we already have here in the States.

The difference is this: For over 40 years, the United States has tried really hard to be the very best capitalists we could be. It has left us performing the WORST out of wealthy countries worldwide in health outcomes. It has left us with 11 million children living in poverty, far higher than countries like the UK or the Nordic countries. It has left us trillions in debt and grappling with a life that is increasingly unaffordable. We have no paid maternal leave. We have no recourse when we get sick, and insurance decides not to cover our bills. We have no way of accessing higher education without going into mounds of debt, accepted through a predatory process.

I think it’s time to call it, folks. Reaganomics failed.

So, maybe we consider a different route. Maybe we consider taking care of each other instead of making one another the enemy? Maybe, just maybe, Democratic Socialists like Mamdani and Francesca Hong are on to something.

Each time our country has leaned that direction, it’s been a net positive. FDR and the New Deal (so popular they just kept reelecting the guy). Medicare and Medicaid under Johnson. JFK and the New Frontier. Public pensions, unions, the ADA, SSI — these programs reduced poverty, protected seniors and children, and assured that the middle class could make it without going bankrupt.

For people who want to wax nostalgic about the “good ole days” of the 1950s, that economic prosperity was the direct result of federal spending on things like highways and schools that benefit ALL, GI Bill benefits, low-interest home loans from the FHA and VA, and a robust labor market with jobs that provided pensions and union protection.

These were not communist principles. In fact, they are BARELY socialist. They are, however, social programs that helped people get ahead and live better lives.

Our country is deeply fractured, but we’ve been here before. And we’ve come together, we’ve healed, we’ve moved away from fascism and Christian Nationalism because that’s what we are supposed to do.

As a unified nation, we are supposed to find a way to take care of each other. It’s not through rugged individualism or listening to the talking heads on Fox News (because they financially benefit from your anger, folks)…..it is through considering a different way. A better way.

People like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Mamdani have lit the fire. Now all we have to do is carry the torch.

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Unless you’ve been under a rock the past few days in Wisconsin (or one of those folks who still swears you’re just ‘not into politics’), you’re aware of the recent shakeup among the Democratic candidates for Wisconsin governor.

Sara Rodriguez, someone many considered the most logical choice, weathered a storm among her own election team, discovering that her campaign manager was mismanaging and misreporting her campaign funds. A few days after this announcement was made, Rodriguez dropped out.

There was a near-immediate fervor among the Hong fans, myself included. This was clearing the pathway even more. Wonderful. Hong herself issued a classy statement, thanking Rodriguez for her work toward the cause of democracy in Wisconsin. Everything seemed hunky dory as the Feral for Fran clan continued to count down towards the primary election day in August.

Then — everything went sort of sideways.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who had dropped out of the race on July 9th after poor polling, jumped back into the fray — with an endorsement from Governor Tony Evers.

“He’s not just a candidate who can win in November, but he’s the kind of person who cares about doing the job right; he has the experience to make tough decisions, and he’s proven he can work together with others to get good things done,” Evers said in a post on social media announcing his endorsement.

Now, a few issues, right off the bat.

Crowley was polling at a paltry 3% through the heavily relied-upon Marquette University Law School Survey when he dropped out on July 9th. In comparison, Francesca Hong held a strong 14% support through the survey. A staggering 65% of those polled remain ‘undecided’, leading the remaining candidates — now with Crowley back in the game — to battle for the attention of those voters.

Another issue was Evers’ endorsement. At one point, the sitting Wisconsin governor said he wouldn’t endorse a candidate in the race. With both his former Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes and current Lt. Governor Sara Rodriguez both vying for the job, it was easy to see how an Evers endorsement could get messy.

But now, with a mere 23 days to go before the primary, he is kicking the hornet’s nest a bit and throwing his support behind Crowley. And that sent everyone on social media all a-twitter.

Why not Barnes? Was there an issue with Barnes?
And why not front-runner Hong — clearly the overwhelming favorite?

To many commenting on platforms like Threads and Facebook, the Evers endorsement spells trouble for the Left. It speaks to instability and gives the GOP, which doesn’t have nearly the grassroots support or the solid platform of someone like Hong, a chance to slither its way in and point out cracks in the foundation.

Across the country, Democratic Socialists like Hong are rising in popularity and electability. The national attention that Mamdani has managed to garner has made Democratic Socialists a viable choice for the first time in recent history.

What we are finding is a lot of misinformation (no one seems to really understand what a Democratic Socialist IS online) and a whole lot of scare tactics and incendiary language from the Right. A recent commercial released by the Republican Governor’s Association (I betcha THEY have some rockin’ parties) calls out Hong as TOO liberal for Wisconsin. It points to past statements she has made about “defunding the police” and her lack of support for ICE. While the ads stand to just make Hong MORE popular among Wisconsin Progressives, people point to the ulterior motives they believe the GOP has with these ‘attack’ ads.

They WANT Hong to win. They believe she is the only one that Tom Tiffany can reasonably beat. Because Trump and his cronies have gone full-boar crazy about “communism”, they think the country folk, the farmers, the good Christian people of Wisconsin’s redder areas will never go for a Democratic Socialist. They are also betting that the more Centrist voters will shy away from her as well.

They are positioning Wisconsin Dems — and Hong in particular — as “crazy” versus “common sense”.

Whether their plan is working remains to be seen. If Facebook comment sections are any indication of the temperature of the room, there are plenty of voting-age people who are all too happy to repeat their “COMMIE HONG” talking points — along with some other comments that dive right into out-and-out racism.

Some have bought the narrative hook, line, and sinker. And those people vote.

So, what now? Has Crowley’s re-entry and the endorsement for Evers left the door open for a GOP strike? Or do people still have their eye on the ball? Is what they have happening in NYC, where Zohran Mamdani has helped fuel a 66% favorable view of Democratic Socialism nationwide, resonating with people here in Wisconsin?

Centrist Democrats have stayed the course for years. What may have worked well in the 1990s and through the Bush years no longer serves us. Fascism has started to seep into the fabric of our country to the point where it has torn families apart. It has fractured our trust in the stability of our own government. It has made us a joke on the global stage. We have lived ten years under the shadow of MAGA. Instead of fighting back with any amount of gusto, the Democrats in positions of power have largely sat on their hands and bitten their tongues.

I ask Wisconsin: If not now, when?

If we don’t pull off a major upset by being a bit radical this November, we may as well resign ourselves to becoming a Red state. And I don’t think we want that. I think everything we love about Wisconsin will be sullied under the leadership of someone completely beholden to Trump and MAGA politics. Beholden to billionaire donors like Diane Hendricks.

Hong is electable — IF WE ELECT HER

A win for Francesca Hong doesn’t mean the state of Wisconsin goes completely Democratic Socialist overnight. It does, however, mean we would have someone at the helm who is working for the people, not for the interests of billionaires and the psychopath that somehow wormed his way into the White House.

She has earned the support of the Left. All of us. She IS one of us. And if we screw this up, if we leave the door open for Tom Tiffany, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

It is time to stop being scared of what could happen if we try a government by the people and for the people and start asking ourselves what could happen if we give up altogether.

Yesterday, I was diligently working away in my office when I spotted a lanky figure creeping up my driveway. I love our house, but it has a fatal flaw in that there are massive windows in the front, along with a front door that is all windows. We cannot hide from door-to-door salesmen or people trying to sell us on God.

Or, as it happens, Tom Tiffany shills.

This guy approached my door sporting a Pro-Life Wisconsin t-shirt, religious necklace, and a beard that suggested he buys “tactical” themed coffee. I reluctantly opened the door and noticed he had a handful of Tom Tiffany door hangers.

”Nope. Not-uh. Not Tom Tiffany. Absolutely not.”

With that, I shut the door. Rather forcefully. Annoyed. The dude stood there for a second, then stuck one of those door hangers on the handle. I opened the door, snatched it off the handle, and ripped it into tiny shreds.

The height of maturity? Perhaps not. But this is not a normal election cycle, and people are tired. I’m tired.

Tonight, our President is going to go on TV and try to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Again. He’s scared of the midterms — as he should be. People are pissed. People are motivated. And right here in Wisconsin, we have our own little election denier to contend with. And he has people with deep pockets in his corner.

So let’s talk about Tom Tiffany. Who is this guy, and what do we, as voters, need to consider in this upcoming gubernatorial election? Is there a way to change the minds of hard-and-fast Right voters, and do progressives like Francesca Hong stand a chance against a Trump endorsement and the level of funding Tiffany is bringing in?

2020 Election Denier

Probably one of the most disturbing tidbits about Tom is the fact that he is a dedicated 2020 election denier. STILL. After 60+ court cases and rulings by judges, many of whom TRUMP appointed, Mr. Tiffany is still straightening his tin-foil hat on the regular. This alone should disqualify him from any sort of political position, especially one that puts him in charge of a whole state, but — you know — crazier things have happened.

Tom Tiffany voted against certifying the 2020 election results, backed legal efforts to challenge the outcome despite there being not a shred of evidence, and continues to hold fast to conspiracy theories.

Healthcare cuts

I find it funny that Mr. Weird Beard came to my door yesterday representing both Tom Tiffany and a Pro-Life organization, given the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that Tom has supported. Providing healthcare to sick people and food support for children are two of the most “pro-life” things you can do. But we all know the “pro-life” movement isn’t really about LIFE at all. It’s about forced birth. After the kid is born, they don’t care what happens.

Support for tariffs

All of Tom Tiffany’s campaign ads, thus far, have attempted to paint him as this ‘aw shucks’ Midwestern ‘Everyman’. He talks to us in flannel shirts standing next to a cow. He trots out his elderly mother at a picnic where they drink milk and eat cheese. He talks about supporting farmers. He says “You Betcha!” — which is annoying. But he doubles down on support for Trump’s tariffs, which directly hurt Wisconsin farmers by shrinking export markets and squeezing farmer income on both the sales side and the cost side. WI farmers rely HEAVILY on export markets for crops like soybeans, dairy, and beef. Trump’s unpopular tariffs kicked off retaliation from trading partners like China, reducing the purchase of WI farm goods or stopping them altogether.

So, standing by some rent-a-cow while saying things like “You betcha!” may appeal to some, but his beliefs and what he will promote from the Governor’s office will continue to harm the very farmers he is trying to cosplay.

Environmental protections

Wisconsin is lovely. From the Driftless Region to the Apostle Islands, Wisconsin is a hub for natural beauty. But, while many of us see ample green space and opportunities to frolic in nature, Tom Tiffany sees an opportunity to sell us out for profit. He has long backed mining-friendly policies, some on tribal lands, and supported bills that would weaken environmental protections. He will always favor industry over protecting Wisconsin’s waterways. He wants to roll back what he calls the “red tape” of regulations, but let me tell you... the federal government has already done that, and now we have diarrhea lettuce.

Education and support for public services

Early in Tom Tiffany’s 10+ year career in Wisconsin politics, he supported deep cuts to education in our state. Currently, Wisconsin sits about 6th in the nation in K-12 education. Despite what some may want to tell you, we have excellent schools here in Wisconsin. Even after Scott “Scooter” Walker decimated the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin’s teachers, they carried on delivering top-notch education against people like Tiffany DEAD SET on making it more difficult year after year.

He claims he wants to ‘strengthen schools’ and ‘improve teacher pay’, but his record points to support of voucher programs which siphon funds away from public schools and deep skepticism about public school spending.

Tiffany has also been sucked into the culture war rhetoric surrounding issues of “woke” in schools (insert eyeroll here) and ‘indoctrination’ at the University level. He presents himself as a reformer, but his track record shows anything but.

Given all this, you may have already made up your mind about Mr. You Betcha. But if you’re still on the fence, may I present the primary reason why Tiffany irks me.

He has no plan.

He talks and talks, and there is absolutely nothing actionable coming out of the guy.
He says he wants to ‘freeze property taxes’ with absolutely NO PLAN on how things like public schools, utilities, police, and fire will be supported financially.

He says he wants Wisconsin to be more “affordable” without saying how he intends to make that happen. Also, given that he’s backed by Donald Trump, someone who thinks affordability is bullshit, it’s hard to believe he is going to care about affordability once he is in office. His take on the matter is so vague, and that is by design.

He says he supports ‘conservation’ programs, but at the same time he is pushing to designate the Apostle Islands as a National Park without considering the environmental impact to the area. The people who live there, including the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, strongly oppose this matter. He’s not listening.

His basic plan is a blend of promises to ‘cut taxes’, ‘cut property taxes’, and lean in heavily to culture war issues like ‘boys in girls sports’, taking a cue directly from Donald Trump.

A vote for Tom Tiffany is a vote for someone willing to do whatever Trump and the billionaire backers deem necessary. If you love this state, if you want to see it stay as incredible as it is, please consider the viable alternatives.

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This morning I woke up to the news that Senator Lindsay Graham, Trump lapdog and Memaw’s very special boy, had died suddenly at 71.

This amid a month-long vigil over the probably-dead Mitch McConnell.

This amid Iran lobbing a threat to Trump’s life. Again.

This amid the trial for Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer kicking off in Utah.

This amid — everything else.

We’ve entered a moment in time in this country where absolutely nothing fazes us. Something like our government’s Far Right covering up the death of a sitting Senator to avoid a special election would have been MASSIVE news just 10 years ago. Every major news network would have been covering the hospital, the family members, the big players on the Right, trying to smoke out the truth.

But now? Crickets. The Governor of Kentucky issued one of the Dems ’ famous “strongly worded letters”……but the farthest legacy media outlets have been willing to push the issue is to ask Fox-News-type questions so they can have deniability when faced with Trump’s wrath. “IS Mitch McConnell awake?” “So and so SAYS they talked to Mitch McConnell……Who’s to say he didn’t?” and THE most hilarious choice by a legitimate news outlet: “Mitch McConnell releases statement…..”

No, he most certainly did not.

We are living in Bonkersville. Nothing makes sense. No one is outraged enough. If they are properly incensed, there seems to be absolutely nothing we can do. And we all seem content to deal with this madness through humor. Because laughter, man. It may be all we have left.

When it eventually comes out that Mitch McConnell was dead the whole time, as I’m sure it will, we will be gaslighted into oblivion, told what is “fake news” and what is the “truth” by the very people who carried out the whole scheme in the first place. People will move on to some other trending tidbit.
None of it will matter.
This seemingly never-ending hellscape will continue to smolder.

We really don’t have to live this way.

I’m just not sure anymore if we can stop this train and all get off en masse. It’s barrelling forward, day in and day out, picking up the most bananas news stories along the way. And we’re all just supposed to hang on for dear life as a megalomaniac and his band of sycophants (minus two) drive us off a cliff.

As we come into the midterms and our President is openly trying to keep people from voting, openly saying he’s just going to say it’s fraud if the Dems sweep, and OPENLY COMMITTING CRIMES while he sends his Cabbage Patch Doll-faced Vice President to MY state to lecture US on fraud, I have to question ANYONE who would sign up for more of this.

Do you enjoy the constant chaos? The dwindling affordability? Our shittastic healthcare? The new wars? The secret police in their masks taking people off the streets? The Patriot Front marching 200-strong for our 250th birthday? The absolute madness this man has wrought?

I have to think that you do. You just enjoy the drama. Otherwise, what reason would you have to keep this going? Is it simply sunk cost? Are you too far in to see a way out? Because I cannot wrap my head around it ever being that you think this guy, who has made everything insane, is doing a good job.

Leaning into chaos, lies, and trolling us is going to be the sad last whimper of this country if we don’t get our shit together.

The old white men who refuse to relinquish power, fearful as their lives are coming to their inevitable ends, need to pay close attention to the response to Lindsey Graham’s death. To Mitch McConnell’s death (whenever they decide to own up to it). To the eventual response when IT happens. We are in the position we are in as a country because the old white men were SO afraid of not being in control anymore that they were willing to tarnish their legacies for life for just a shred of power. A crumb.

When they die, it becomes clear that no one mourns the wicked.

So, is it worth it?
The chaos? The insanity?

We are all going to die someday. And we don’t get to tell our stories after we’re gone. It is what we do here, earthside, that matters. Graham’s legacy, McConnell’s legacy, and Trump’s legacy — they are sealed. No matter what people say to the contrary, history will not be kind to those who fed the insanity for their own personal gain.

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The night that it became clear that Trump was going to win the 2024 election, I went to bed with a feeling of such abject defeat and despondency that I didn’t know what to do with myself. We couldn’t do this again, could we? Would our country survive another four years of that man in charge?

I Slacked my boss and told her I needed a mental health day for the following Wednesday. She understood.

I spent the whole next day in bed, feeling that if I got up and started my day, it would be real — and I would have to accept it.

By then, we had been in Florida for three years. I was WAY over it by that time. I had battled schools, traffic, noise, construction, strange personal interactions, rising prices on everything, Nazis taking up residence outside the gates of Disney, and my favorite hiking trails being threatened by a freeway expansion. I had weathered the “Stop Woke Act” and Don’t Say Gay debacle, multiple hurricanes, and several other incidents that, when I think back on them, all seem like such a weird fever dream that it’s hard to believe we were ever really there at all.

Taylor Swift’s “I Hate It Here” was the soundtrack of my life at that point.

But I had other people to consider. Logistics. Feelings. Emotions. Connections.

It was all very complicated.

At the risk of courting martyrdom, my baseline is to worry about everyone else before I “secure my own oxygen mask”, even though I know full well what women have always been told. It’s simply how I operate. I thought about taking my kids away from their grandparents (who had moved to FL the previous year). I thought about the friends my kids had made. I thought about the job I loved. I thought about the 3% interest rate on our mortgage. I thought about my husband’s dreams for family togetherness in the shadow of Spaceship Earth. I considered it all, and then considered where my unhappiness ranked among it.

About a month before the election, Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene both barrelled into the Orlando area. Throughout both storms, my husband began to show cracks in his “Let’s make Florida work” facade. After the election, it was clear that we could not stay. If that guy was going to be running things, we had to live someplace normal. Calm. A place we knew. A place that offered a bit of insulation from the horrors of EVERYTHING.

Guys, we started watching Woodman’s commercials on YouTube. Charlie Behrens videos. Kwik Trip content. We leaned heavily into homesickness. Then, my daughter got a REALLY good scholarship along with her acceptance into MIAD, and I took that as a sign. Lake Michigan, the Kettle Moraine, the rolling hills of the Wisconsin countryside, and, yes, Kwik Trip, were beckoning us home. (The picture below was the haul we brought back to Florida after a visit to Wisconsin in late summer of 2024).

I feel like the sale of our house in 7 days amid one of the worst real estate slowdowns in recent history solidified the fact that we were doing the right thing. Florida was rejecting us like a bad organ. We didn’t fit. It was a square peg/round hole situation from the get-go.

We’ve been home for just over a year now — and I still smile when I run into a Kwik Trip. We still mention the lack of traffic and the abundance of greenery with awe every time we drive from Pewaukee to Beloit. I have logged over 200 miles on the Ice Age Trail — determined to soak in everything I had taken for granted about Wisconsin in the past. We survived our first winter back with minimal bitching from everyone (besides my husband). We dipped our toes in the big lake. We went to the holiday events downtown. I even made it to Summerfest.

I don’t regret our time in Florida. After all, it brought me a job I love. I also probably never would have met Lin-Manuel Miranda had we not been living down there, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Priorities, folks.

The other day I went to my closest Walmart to pick up some random things: conditioner spray for the girls, dog food, and some Cherry Lemonade Nerds Gummy Clusters (don’t judge me). There was this big painted sign by the entrance/exit that just said DELAFIELD WALMART, surrounded by all the hallmarks of lake country: boats, waves, buoys, what-have-you. I suddenly had a flashback of the Lake Nona, Florida Walmart, a place I always tried to avoid if possible because it was so overstimulating. To me, the Lake Nona Walmart was where all the traffic frustration, anger, annoyance, and bad juju congealed. It, too, had a big painted sign. One that said LAKE NONA WALMART.

Guys, I stood and stared at that Delafield Walmart sign for a beat and found myself grinning like an idiot. I was just so damn happy that it said Delafield. Not Lake Nona. Not Orlando. Not Winter Park. Certainly not Reunion or Celebration or Kissimmee.

I was so happy to be home that I didn’t even mind that I was at a Walmart. I started out the door, and this lady who was gathering baskets and greeting people called out to me, “You have a great holiday weekend!” in that chipper, Midwest Nice way. Her thick Midwest accent just added a layer of preciousness to it all.

“You, too!” I called back.

And damn if there wasn’t a skip in my step as I walked to my car.

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Leading up to our move, I had read about how the public school system in Florida was subpar. Overcrowded, underfunded, and besieged by Moms 4 Liberty devotees who would just as soon rid the schools of any undesirables — including disabled students.

I’m not sure why I thought everything would be fine. Maybe I imagined that people were just being overly dramatic. Surely they couldn’t be that bad.

When we bought our house (again….SIGHT UNSEEN like absolute maniacs), our realtor sang the praises of the school district. A-rated schools. Best in the district. Incredible test scores. Blah blah blah. All I really wanted to know was if the elementary school had a nurse.

They did. And, in all honesty? The one bright spot out of our entire dealings with the Orange County Public School system. Miss Marcia. Great lady.

But my middle kid, the one who needed access to a school nurse, was in 5th grade, meaning that shortly after we were settled in FL, she moved on to the Middle School. We knew we were in trouble the day we went to pick up her tablet during the “open house”. The lines were out the door. The entire process was a shitshow. Just to get a tablet.

I decided to be proactive and reach out to the Principal and VP about possibly meeting with them and starting the process for my kid’s very necessary 504 plan. I remember clearly when I called, and the front office ladies acted very confused about my request to meet. Like….why? It was also at this time that I found out there was no school nurse. There was a health aide. A health aide with not a lick of medical training.

Sigh.

I finagled my way into a meeting and, I’m telling you readers, these people could not be MORE disinterested to meet me or my kid. I tried explaining her various medical issues, what we had done in Wisconsin, and asked all the questions about how they wanted to approach things like dosing, handling lows, her hearing loss, and her non-verbal learning disabilities (NVLD). I was hoping we could start the process for a 504. A written health plan. SOMETHING.

The VP spent the entire meeting scrolling on her phone. She didn’t look at me once.

I met the health aide. She was entirely unpleasant. She made it clear that my daughter could not carry her insulin. Could not carry her emergency Glucagon. Could not carry her anti-nausea medication. Nothing. They also let me know that while they would allow her to have her phone on her (it’s connected to her CGM), they were not thrilled about it, and they better not ever see it out.

So……I guess you could say we started on a great note.

I walked away with a hastily written health plan that stated when my daughter would go to the nurse’s office to dose and the plan for lows, which was explicitly written that she had to be accompanied if treating a low (This will become important information to remember later). I fought for seats closer to the teacher so she could hear instruction better. I fought for written instructions instead of verbal. I thought they heard me. I didn’t have a good feeling in the pit of my stomach, but part of me told myself that I was just the proverbial fish out of water. I wanted to trust that they knew what they were doing. Look for the helpers? These were the helpers. Right?

From the jump, my daughter’s experience at Lake Nona Middle School was a disaster. The health aide, I’m convinced, was a bridge troll in a past life. She outwardly disliked my kid. My daughter would go to the nurse’s office to dose before lunch, and the lady either wouldn’t be there or would be hostile toward her need for insulin (the insulin they wouldn’t let her dose herself with). At one point, the health aide became so annoyed by my kid’s needs that she stuck her hand in her face and said, “I’m really tired of you coming down here.”

Relying on Bridge Troll put my daughter late for lunch nearly every day. So, she would try to rush through eating, all the while the lunch monitor teachers would admonish her for being so slow. The few times she tried to bring the rest of her lunch to her next class with her — to avoid her blood sugar crashing — her teacher lost her shit.

This particular teacher was probably the one area of comic relief in this whole tale. She was visibly pregnant and, as she told my kid numerous times, had gestational diabetes. This made her a diabetic expert. She told my kid on several occasions that dosing for a high was not necessary and that eating the food she had already dosed for was also unnecessary — and simply a ruse cooked up by my kid to sneak food into class.

Yeah.

I was fielding calls from the school almost daily. Kid had her phone out. Kid is too slow when eating lunch. Kid doesn’t seem to be understanding instructions, but we are not seating her near the teacher nor giving her written instructions, despite her hearing loss. Kid is being physically pushed around in the super crowded hallways. Kid is being picked on by a group of girls because her condition makes her look like she’s about 8 years old.

Eventually, my daughter started eating lunch and holing up in the room of the guidance counselor. Not ideal.

She lasted about two months. It all came to a head on a random day. I had become accustomed to daily disruptions from the school for one thing or another. I was in communication with all of her teachers; I was trying my damndest to navigate this strange world we found ourselves in. It was hostile. That was the best way I could describe it. Hostile. Every day it was something. And every day I had to explain what I had already explained a million times before: She has her phone for her Dexcom readings. No, we can not shut off the alarm; that’s what it’s for. She’s not ignoring you; she can’t hear you. Yes, she has to eat what she has dosed for, or she will crash. That’s how diabetes works.

On the day it all crashed and burned, I received a notification on my phone through the Dexcom app that my daughter’s blood sugar was dangerously low. As was routine, I shot her a quick text and asked if it had been addressed.

No response.

I shot her another text. This time in CAPS.

YOU GOT THIS???

Three dots…..waiting.

“What color should I eat first?”

Then a picture of my kid’s hand with three gummy bears in it. BEEP BEEP BEEP. Critical low. It just said LOW. Double arrows down.

Not good.

I shot back, “What are you talking about? Just eat the bears. Who is there with you?”

“No one,” she texted.

No one.

I was starting to feel panic rise in my chest. She was making no sense. I hopped on the phone and called the front office of the school. No answer. NO. ANSWER. In the middle of the damn school day. In a school fanatically against cell phones for kids. So, I jumped in my car and sped to the school. The Dexcom continued to alert. I was getting more irritated and was so pissed off by the time I reached the parking lot that I had to do some deep breathing before I walked into the office. “Just don’t end up on YouTube, Amanda,” I told myself.

Once in the office, the first person I laid eyes on was Bridge Troll, who turned on her heels so fast you would think she was on roller skates or something. She comically booked her way out of the office. Maybe it was the fire in my eyes. Maybe it was clear
I was raging.

The front office lady, who I had absolutely no beef with besides her inability to answer a phone, asked if she could help me.

”My daughter is having a critical low. She is somewhere in this school. She is alone. I need someone to find her. Right now. Then, you get me the highest ranking person in this school that is currently in the building, and you bring them to me.”

It was all very Liam Neeson.

Meanwhile, my kid was trying to make her way to the office. A random person found her in the hallway, white-faced and covered in sweat. She had downed handfuls of gummy bears and was starting to come around, but was still clearly out of it. Turns out, she had been left in a locker room. Alone. Told to go “fix her low” by some gym teacher.

One of the twenty or so Vice Principals met me in the office and I unleashed hell. He had no idea who my kid was. He had no idea what her needs were. He just stood there and stammered out some pitiful “I’m sorries” as my kid finally made it to the office. I pointed to her and said, “Does she look WELL to you?!? What the hell is wrong with you people?”

That was the last day my daughter attended Florida public schools. I pulled her and we virtual schooled for the rest of our time in the state.

I have at least fifty other stories of how the Florida schools let us down. Honestly, I don’t know where blame should be placed. Their funding has been gutted, the voucher system is rampant in FL, and that doesn’t help public schools at all. At one point, our district had a shortage of 5000 teachers. THOUSAND.. I’m sure there were some absolutely incredible educators within the system. However, administration? Support staff? Disability services? All a nightmare.

Overcrowding is also a significant problem. My oldest went to one of the A-rated high schools, and there were roughly 4500 kids in the school. Her graduation ceremony took three hours. This kind of overcrowding absolutely impacted her experience. Same with my youngest and the elementary school. There was no personalization. No community. I would go to the school to pick up the kids for an appointment or to conferences, and the people who worked at the school would have no idea who my kid was. They were numbers. Bodies. Indistinct faces.

When we got back to Wisconsin, I was absolutely gun-shy about the school situation. Maybe this was just how schools were post-COVID? Florida or not. I thought I was perhaps asking for too much, expecting them to lasso the moon for my kid.

I met with the counselor at my daughter’s new high school with understandable trepidation. I explained her needs, explained that she could self-dose and self-monitor her diabetes. They were cool with all of it. They gave her a special button that let everyone in the school know why she had her phone. She could carry any medication she needed during the day. That same day, the counselor got started on a brand new 504 for her.

When conferences rolled around, I went to the school and met with each of my daughter’s teachers. She was pulling excellent grades, and each teacher I met with showered her with praise. She’s such a good kid. Just a pleasure to have in class. The way she handles her diabetes? It’s just amazing! I got to the last teacher, lump firmly lodged in my throat. “She’s just great. What a cool kid. She’s making friends and participating in class. She’s handling herself and is just a pleasure. If there is anything she needs, please don’t hesitate to ask,” he said.

I started to cry.

These people saw my kid. After three years of her being holed up at home, learning on a computer, because our experience was so awful……I was among people who were safe for her. People who were willing to make space for her. Who wanted to understand her and wanted her to have the best high school experience possible.

My youngest’s experience at our local elementary school has been similar. It is true community. Absolutely the “village” everyone tells parents to look for.

It can be this way. And it showed me just how dysfunctional Florida has allowed its school system to become.

I’m not sure what ever became of Bridge Troll or the rest of the people we ran across in our time mired in the murky swamp that is Lake Nona schools. I did fire off a letter expressing my absolute outrage to the Principal, but didn’t receive much of a response beyond “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Honestly, I’m just glad it is in our rearview mirror.

However, experiences like mine didn’t end because we left. Other kids with differences and disabilities can’t just up and leave. They’re still there. Bridge Troll may still be in charge of doling out the medicine, sticking her hand in people’s faces, letting them know they’re unwanted. Now, with the federal government making it clear that they would like disabled people to be separated from the rest of the population, things are unlikely to get better for kids like mine in GOP strongholds like Florida.

So, although we have made it to safety, telling the story keeps the conversation alive. They have to do better. For kids like mine and for everyone else.

It was about 3 weeks into our Florida adventure. The decision to move was made quickly. I was exhausted from over a year of trying to immigrate. My resources for thinking of new ideas and adventures were depleted. I was also aware that my husband had supported the Canada dream, no questions asked. I thought I at least owed him the same — even if I had some heavy reservations.

So, we got new jobs.
We sold our country home.
We said our goodbyes to friends and family.
And in November of 2021, we packed everything up and drove 18 hours to Orlando. To a house we had purchased, SITE UNSEEN ON THE INTERNET.

Yes, folks, site unseen. We had put our trust in a local realtor, researched a particular up-and-coming area of Orlando that boasted ‘the best schools’ and amenities, including proximity to the Parks, and plunked down an obscene amount of money (to us) to buy the house, which boasted 4 bedrooms and a pool. I mean, what could go wrong? Right?

I probably don’t have to tell you that buying a house you’ve never set foot in probably isn’t the wisest move.

Yeah. We know.

The house was not at all what it looked like in the pictures. It needed a TON of work, and we had to put thousands into it before we could even move in. I’m talking huge holes in the wall. Dirty carpet. A broken pool pump. An HVAC system that puked 3 months after we bought the house. Then, a shady Florida contractor botched the fix. It was a mess.

We finally got our stuff in by the second week of December. Around the same time, the neighborhood we had moved into, a cookie-cutter, typical Florida HOA neighborhood, was hosting a holiday get-together at the park.

Hey! Cool….great time to get to know our neighbors, right?

We herded the family over to the fire-ant hill-laden green space between a playground and a dog park. They had set up one of those inflatable movie screens and were handing out popcorn.

The guy putting the whole thing together met us with a grin and a handshake. And then he said it. The words stick in my head on a tape loop to this day.

“Welcome to the free-est state in the nation!”

Ugh. I exchanged a withering look with my husband — but we played nice. No use making enemies on day one. We just politely nodded and made our way over to watch the movie.

I realized, then, that we were strangers in a strange land. We knew we would be blue dots bobbing up and down in a red sea, but we hadn’t anticipated just how much the political climate of Florida colors everything. Some people deeply buy into Ron DeSantis’ “Free State of Florida” rhetoric. They ain’t gettin’ no jabs! Don’t tread on me! Here’s my gigantic American flag flying off my lifted truck that has a family sticker on the back window where all the family members are guns. It is a culture that almost seems like it’s making fun of itself, but these folks are dead serious.

I feel like our new neighbor’s greeting was a test of sorts. Were we the “good” kind of transplant or something else entirely?

We had talked about the political conundrum before we moved. Being both dyed-in-the-wool liberals, it was something that concerned us. We had convinced ourselves, once we were committed to the move, that Orlando was the blueberry in the tomato sauce. The progressive sanctuary among the rest of deep red Florida. If we just stayed within its confines, we would be okay. It was gay-friendly with a robust immigrant population, a handful of liberal leaders (hello, Anna Eskamani!), and a vibrant arts culture. Surely we could find our place there.

What people don’t really realize is that, even as blue as Orlando is, it’s Florida blue. Florida blue is not Wisconsin blue. It may dress up as it from time to time, but come Election Day, you’re still going to get the antivaxxing Moms 4 Liberty crackpot on your local school board (wassup, Alicia Farrant!)

It was disheartening. I went to two protests, Maxwell Frost’s Mad Soul Festival featuring AOC, and a Moms Demand postcard writing event, but each time I felt like the writing was on the wall for the state of Florida. It was one place where….yes….there really WERE more of them than us. In droves. And they were loud and proud. You could get hints of the way Florida COULD be driving around the Milk District or Mills 50, but where we were? The “City of the Future” in Lake Nona? No dice. It was Teslas and flags and guns in Chanel handbags.

We were there for the “Don’t Say Gay” debacle. There for Ron DeSantis villainizing Disney and having full-on Nazis protesting at the front gates.

There when Trump won again.

The prevailing mood around politics in Orlando was slightly hopeful, but mostly resigned to the status quo at the end of the day. It never reached the level of “Yes. We can DO this!” that I was hoping for. If you ever wanted to feel completely powerless, I could suggest being a liberal in Florida. Because…..woof. It started to impact other aspects of our life in the state, from the rampant development by Tavistock DIRECTLY behind our house to my daughter’s rights in her school under the ADA. It seeped into our lives, little by little, and then all at once, until the dam broke the night Trump won his 2nd term. No amount of our Pride flags, protests, or postcard events could hold it back.

I knew, at that point, that our days in the state were likely numbered. Everything that had been needling me about politics in Florida for three years at that point was going to be turned up to an eleven.

And I wasn’t wrong.

Stay tuned for Part III, where we dive into the hot dumpster fire that is the Florida public school system

“Florida? Are you serious? I mean…..it’s…..Florida.”

I’m pretty sure that was my exact response to my husband on a random night in Spring of 2021 when he suggested we consider moving to Florida.

Let me back up.

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