GOOD NEWS

We’re force-fed a daily narrative that the world is burning, that humanity is hopelessly fractured, and that the only way to survive is to build a higher fence and hoard your resources. It’s a strategically marketed lie designed to keep us exhausted, isolated, and compliant.

But if you look past the deafening roar of the establishment, there is a quiet, radical rebellion taking root. People are slowly walking out the back door and building a new reality with the earth. Folks are trading the hollow pursuit of hyper-individualism for the messy beauty of community.

Here are seven small but meaningful reminders from around the globe that the revolution won’t be televised—it will be planted, shared, and lived.

1. The Great Rural Reclamation

The concrete hustle is losing its grip. After decades of draining into major metropolitan areas to chase the corporate carrot, young adults are fleeing the cities and pouring into rural towns at the highest rate in nearly a century. They aren’t moving to isolate; they are moving to insulate. They are buying land collectively, sparking a surge in cooperative new businesses, and trading extortionate rent for the space to actually breathe. They are proving that a life anchored in nature and local community is wildly superior to being a lonely, overworked cog in a high-rise.

2. The Mutual Aid Renaissance

Communities are taking care of their own. In Pittsburgh, grassroots organizers and Black-led mutual aid networks looked at systemic food insecurity and simply bypassed the establishment. By partnering with local networks to distribute surplus food directly to the people, they managed to drop emergency food assistance calls in a major public housing authority from dozens a week down to absolute zero. Zero. It’s not charity, it’s solidarity. It’s the profound realization that we are all we have, and that is more than enough.

3. Europe’s Ecovillage Explosion

Thousands of humans are preparing to gather at places like the Nature Community in Schönsee, Germany, for the European Ecovillage Gathering, and it’s not just a feel-good retreat. It is a rigorous masterclass in surviving the collapse of the old world. They are training each other in cooperative economics, conflict resolution, regenerative agriculture, and shared governance. They are actively prototyping the next iteration of human society—one where trust, shared responsibility, and ecological repair replace the exhausting demand for endless consumer growth.

4. Indigenous Sovereignty and the Return to the Dirt

Indigenous communities are aggressively cutting ties with the fragile, industrial supply chains that have consistently failed them. Backed by grassroots initiatives, communities across North America are reclaiming ancestral village sites and building massive community gardens—even in the freezing climates of the Arctic—to stop relying on chemically-treated food flown in from thousands of miles away. By saving seeds, sharing knowledge intergenerationally, and reviving traditional harvesting, they are taking their power back from colonial structures and anchoring it right where it belongs: in the land and in each other.

5. The Death of the Isolated Nuclear Family

The suburban dream told us we needed our own private lawn, our own separate walls, and our own private island of exhaustion. People are officially calling bullshit on that. Cohousing communities are exploding everywhere. From rural spaces to urban setups in North Carolina, strangers are pooling their resources to build shared neighborhoods. They own their private homes, but they share the land, the gardens, the childcare, and the meals. They are curing the modern epidemic of loneliness by quite literally tearing down the fences between them.

6. The Rise of the Debt-Free Desert Compounds

There is a growing wave of people looking at the predatory housing market and walking away entirely. In the remote mountains of the American Southwest, families are quietly opting out of the lifelong debt sentence of a 30-year mortgage. Starting with little more than a tent, they are piecing together off-grid family compounds with solar power, water catchments, and handmade cabins. They are choosing the hard, beautiful work of self-reliance so they can live entirely debt-free and fiercely devoted to the people right in front of them.

7. Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Micro-Societies

From the lush heartlands of Bali to the fertile black-soil farms of Qifengshan, China, a regenerative ecovillage movement is taking deep root across Asia and Oceania. People are weaving ancient philosophies—like the Tao Te Ching—with modern regenerative ecology to build intentional micro-societies. They are learning to make decisions by deep consent rather than majority rule, prioritizing the nervous system of the collective over the GDP of the state. They are proving that you don’t need the establishment’s permission to build a radically supportive world.

The old paradigm is suffocating under its own weight, but a new one is already breathing. It’s happening in the quiet spaces, in the dirt, and in the deeply brave act of reaching out to a neighbor. The world isn’t ending. The broken parts are just making way for something wildly, unapologetically sustainable.

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The Turning of the Tide

We are at the turning of the tide. The violent, oppressive, old world is dying. We are being asked to be better, but how do we do that? How do we create a world where everyone is taken care of? What do we do to have a peaceful and just society?

Changing the world is simple, but it’s not easy. That’s because it has nothing to do with changing your environment, your job, your home, or your partner. It’s not about making tons of money. It’s not about fame. It’s not about winning contests or living a life of luxury. Believe it or not, it’s not even about voting.

It’s all about the work you must do to change yourself. All healing must start from within. It’s very simple but incredibly challenging. The more you look within and accept, come to terms with, and celebrate what you see, the less the external matters. The less it has any effect on your mood. The less it has control over you.

The physics of our social order is remarkably straight-forward. We have the society we have because we are the people we are. If you can’t see your hand in the present unpleasantness, you’re not being honest. It’s not just the people who voted in the “president”. We have what we have because this is what we have accepted. This is what we have tolerated.

Society isn’t something that just happens. Society is a collaborative sculpture we each have a hand in making. In 2026, we don’t believe we deserve better because that is what we have been trained to believe. We have been educated into nothingness. We have been hypnotized into cruelty.

I used to be cruel. I would walk up to tall white guys in bars and punch them in the face for no other reason than I was afraid of their rejection. I was creating what I expected to receive and not giving people a chance to prove me wrong. I was jealous of what I didn’t have, even if I had the power to get it for myself. I was envious of people who were comfortable in their own skin but would do nothing to help myself get to that place.

What changed? My perspective. I stopped blaming the world and started taking responsibility. I began to see others as mirrors. I started seeing opportunity in my shortcomings, mistakes and failures. I changed my perspective. I faced my fears about myself. I stopped attacking what made me jealous. I freed my heart from the messages I believed that limited me.

I stopped waiting for permission and started creating my own opportunities.

I practiced. I got it wrong. I tried over and over. I spoke to my inner child every night. I learned to love myself. I learned to forgive myself. I realized that I didn’t have to hold shame in my body.

Now, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’m free. It’s not that I get it right every time. It’s that I have the tools I need to come out of any situation feeling good about myself. If I don’t use them, this too is freedom, because I suffer for my choices by my own hand.

Decide who you want to be. Work toward that. I don’t mean what job you will have, the money you will make, or the pets you will own. I mean, who will you be in hard situations? Who will you be when you are challenged? Who will you be when you don’t get your way? Will you sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole, or will you sacrifice entire groups of nameless, faceless people for a little bit of comfort for yourself? Will you be proud of yourself in the way you treated others?

How do you want to feel after any interaction? Do you want to feel like you helped someone or hurt someone? Do you want to feel sad, ashamed, or miserable? Or do you want to feel like you have created something wonderful? How do you want to enter the room you will be spending time in? Do you want to be happy in that room or would you like to set yourself up for a hostile experience? Do you want to see yourself as an inspiration or a cautionary tale?

These are big decisions and ones we all make whether or not we are conscious of them. And being unconscious is no longer any excuse. If you are miserable, (with the exception of severely traumatized and chemically imbalanced people), it’s because you have not put in the work to do anything about it. It’s because you still believe you aren’t worth the effort. But you are. I don’t know you, but I know that you are worth the trouble. You are worth the effort.

You get to decide. Decide to be kind. Decide to have compassion. Decide to be of service. Decide that you are worth the effort, because you are.

The basic truth of the matter is that you cannot achieve anything if you do not believe in your own potential. Let me help you with this. I believe in you. I don’t know you, but I believe that you can change things.

It’s time for you to start.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. Families who come take pottery lessons together

2. Seven-year-old kids who say things like, “that was sooooo long ago, I was like, four!”

3. Soft serve chocolate vanilla twist ice cream in a plain cone

4. Missing my friends

5. Getting dressed up for work

Thanks so much for following, subscribing, reading, and supporting. You rock.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

Here are five pieces of good news about labor, collective action, and grassroots power making real waves:

• The South Just Got Handed a Massive Loss—By Auto Workers. The union-busting political bosses in the American South love to pretend their workforce is too brainwashed to organize. Well, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just locked in their historic first union contract with the UAW. They didn’t ask nicely; they organized, stood their ground, and forced a massive, anti-union corporation to sign on the dotted line in a region where politicians swore unions go to die. Proof that class consciousness isn’t regional—it’s universal once people realize who’s actually holding the leverage.

• Nuns House Homeless College Students to Spite NYC Rent Crisis

  The Win: Nuns at the Convent of the Sisters of Charity in the Bronx stepped in to house college students from the University of Mount Saint Vincent who were facing literal homelessness, charging them a modest $250/month.

  The Fight: Facing a parasitic real estate market that prices young people straight out of an education, these nuns looked at their empty convent and said, “Not on our watch.” Rather than letting corporate landlords squeeze students to the point of dropping out, they weaponized empty square footage for direct community relief. Radical hospitality over real-estate speculation.

• Target and Home Depot Found Out What Happens When You Cross the Working Class. Corporate boards thought they could cave to far-right executive orders, roll back DEI policies, and look the other way on ICE enforcement while keeping our money. Bad math. Consumer boycotts and sustained direct actions—including months-long picket lines and “Target fasts”—hit these retail giants right where it hurts: their earnings reports. With target sales taking double-digit stock dives, organizers proved that ethical consumption is a tactical wrecking ball when organized collectively.

• Approval Ratings Plummet to Historic Floor

  The Reality: The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll dropped this week, showing Trump’s presidential approval rating plunging down to 33%—tying the absolute lowest mark recorded across both of his terms.

  The Pushback: The public patience for endless escalation has officially run dry. With nearly six months of drawn-out conflict with Iran causing pain at the gas pump and spiking domestic inflation, voters aren’t buying the grandstanding anymore. Over 80% of Americans now see through promises of quick fixes, acknowledging the reality of prolonged military entanglements and actively souring on the administration’s foreign policy playbook.

• The Young and the Organized Are Driving Union Membership to 16-Year Highs. The official numbers are in, and the capitalist narrative that “nobody wants to work anymore” is officially dead—turns out, nobody wants to be exploited anymore. Union representation jumped by nearly half a million workers, driven almost entirely by Gen Z and Millennial organizers under 45. Over 70% of young adults now view labor unions favorably. The kids aren’t buying the middle-management hustle culture bullshit; they’re building solidarity, withholding their labor, and demanding the whole damn pie.

• Democrats Reclaim the Lead on the Economy for the First Time in a Decade

  The Reality: For the first time in roughly ten years, major national polling shows voters explicitly trust Democrats over Republicans to handle the economy and the cost of living.

  The Pushback: The myth of economic invincibility has broken down. Telling struggling working-class families that paying “a tiny bit more” for basic life necessities like food, gas, and healthcare is worth ongoing foreign conflicts has severely backfired. The narrative that conservative policies inherently protect the average wallet is collapsing under the weight of daily financial pressure, shifting the economic argument entirely.

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Dreaming Up a New Reality

Last night I dreamt that I was training my brain and body to live in the future. It felt so real that when I woke, up, part of me believed that I was almost ready to travel forward through time. The first thought in my early morning mind was actually about meal planning in the future.

Later in the day someone told me something about AI. Something depressing that I won’t reproduce in any form here, but I will say that the future that she conveyed to me, as predicted by/about AI seemed just as feasible. Much more horrifying, but just as feasible.

In any case, there is no way to control the future. There is no way to predict it, there is no way to forge it to your will. The only way to take care of the future is to focus as much as you can on the moment you’re living in. The best way to do that? Watch a horrible 80s movie and see how well it holds up.

I chose, for my viewing displeasure, Three Men and a Baby. To say it didn’t hold up would be…well, a vast understatement. In fact, the best thing about this particular re-watching was that I discovered that Leonard Nimoy of all people produced and directed it.

Vastly sexist, incredibly vapid, and intensely uninteresting, the best thing about this movie is Ted Danson, who is conspicuously absent from most of the movie. That movie was popular, and boasted genuinely handsome TV and movie stars. The story centered on a baby left to the devices of three bachelors living their collective dream life in NYC. It was the highest grossing movie of 1987. It beat out huge 1987 blockbusters like Fatal Attraction, Beverly Hills Cop II, and Good Morning, Vietnam to take the top crown for the year.

This might not seem like it has anything at all to do with my dreams of time travel or the predictions about or by AI, but I will tell you, if Three Men and a Baby was considered the best of the best in 1987, it just goes to show you that everything that seems real and true in this moment will most likely look like absolute shit in forty or so years. So take heart good people, and don’t believe all the bad shit you hear. It’s created to make you give up. It’s composed to keep you paralyzed. It’s carefully curated in order to make you believe that humankind is hopeless.

But if we learned anything at all from Three Men and a Baby, we know that tomorrow morning we might find a brand new opportunity right outside our lavishly decorated front door.

THINGS I LOVE

1.

2. Buying used. It keeps money in your community.

3. Buying local. It keeps money in your community.

4. Keeping your money in Credit Unions. It Keeps money in your community.

5. This song is everything.

Thanks for reading, thinking, walking and talking. AI cannot do any of those things and that’s why it’s a jealous-ass bitch.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Love you.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. The EPA Hit the Brakes on Forever Chemicals (U.S.)

For decades, chemical giants operated under the assumption that out of sight meant out of mind. Not anymore. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established the first-ever legally enforceable, nationwide limits on toxic PFAS (“forever chemicals”) in drinking water. This regulation forces water utilities to test, monitor, and treat contamination, cutting chemical exposure for over 100 million people and setting a vital precedent: clean water is a fundamental right, not a luxury.

2. Native Tribes Regain Control Over Ancestral Lands (U.S.)

Land back isn’t just a slogan—it’s actively reshaping conservation policy. Through historic co-management agreements between the federal government and Tribal Nations, millions of acres of public lands across the U.S. are being returned to Indigenous stewardship. By combining traditional ecological knowledge with modern conservation tools, these partnerships are restoring ecosystems, protecting sacred sites, and shifting power back where it belongs.

3. A Massive Win for Frontline and Essential Workers (U.S.)

State after state across the country is pushing back against predatory labor practices. Recent legislative pushes have expanded mandatory paid family leave, raised minimum wages for low-income service workers, and introduced strict heat-stress protections for farmworkers and outdoor laborers. It’s a crucial reminder that economic justice and basic human dignity go hand in hand.

4. Solar and Wind Are Steamrolling Fossil Fuels (U.S.)

Despite political noise, the numbers don’t lie: clean energy is crushing record after record. Solar and wind installations across the American grid reached historic highs, driving coal consumption down to levels not seen in over half a century. Communities are reaping the benefits through lower utility costs, cleaner air, and localized green jobs.

5. Amazon Defense: Ecuador Bans Drilling in Vital Rainforests (Global - Ecuador)

In a landmark moment for climate action and Indigenous sovereignty, Ecuador’s highest court upheld historic referendum results to halt all future oil extraction in Yasuní National Park—one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. Driven by Indigenous-led activism, this decision permanently protects uncontacted tribes and keeps hundreds of millions of barrels of oil safely in the ground.

6. Corporate Accountability Just Got Real in Europe (Global - EU)

The European Union officially passed the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, making corporate greenwashing and supply chain exploitation far riskier for massive firms. The law holds large multinational corporations legally and financially liable if their global operations cause environmental destruction or human rights abuses, setting a new global benchmark for corporate responsibility.

7. Greece Leads the World in Banning Bottom Trawling (Global - Greece)

In a historic move for ocean preservation, Greece became the first European nation to ban bottom trawling—a destructive fishing practice that literally scrapes the ocean floor—in all of its marine national parks and protected areas. This decisive act creates safe havens for fragile marine ecosystems and establishes a blueprint for coastal nations everywhere.

8. Colombia Slashes Amazon Deforestation Rates (Global - Colombia)

Proof that intentional policy works: Colombia achieved a historic drop in deforestation across its Amazonian regions. By shifting away from militarized enforcement and investing directly in forest-dwelling communities, local land grants, and sustainable agriculture, the nation showed that protecting nature starts by empowering the people who live in it.

9. A Miracle in Public Health: Millions Reached with Malaria Vaccines (Global - Africa)

In one of the biggest human rights and health triumphs of the century, the global rollout of groundbreaking malaria vaccines reached millions of young children across Sub-Saharan Africa. Decades of research have culminated in a lifesaver that is actively slashing childhood mortality rates and giving families a real future in regions hardest hit by the disease.

10. Kenya Proves a Clean Energy Transition Is Possible Right Now (Global - Kenya)

While wealthier industrial nations drag their feet, Kenya is giving the world a masterclass in clean energy transformation. Running on nearly 90% renewable electricity—primarily powered by geothermal, wind, and hydro—the nation is expanding its decentralized mini-grids to bring clean, reliable power to off-grid rural communities without relying on fossil fuels.

AT LES SCHWAB AND LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT

Benjamin has been shaking a lot lately so I am at Les Schwab this morning to see what’s up. I am also bringing him into my mechanic next Tuesday. I just want to be thorough. Now that I have a job, I want to put my money into taking good care of the love of my life. I had an appointment for 8 am. Evidently, so did ten other people, though they don’t have a full staff until 9.

I am sitting in the lobby attempting to write over the sound of the TV squawking the morning news interspersed with a long litany of commercials that are mostly made up of lawyers encouraging people to stand up for themselves in court and all the great stuff that is happening at the local casinos. The news is mostly garbage- covering with laser accuracy what the government is and isn’t up to- ignoring science and removing regulation so that the American People are as vulnerable as a hairless cat on a hot tin roof at the height of summer in Macon, Georgia. It’s these very special moments that remind me that giving away my TV was the best thing I have ever done.

There’s a 93 year old lady in the lobby, watching the news and reacting to the ridiculousness of the U.S. Government with intermittent “oh my gawd” and “oh no” every once in a while. I don’t think it’s good to be any age in the U.S. right now, but imagine after living a long-ass life getting through untold conflict and progress only to see in the end that the whole thing is getting tossed into a dumpster fire. She is upset because there is a woman putting tires on her car. She’s concerned that the woman doesn’t have the strength to put the tires on. She wants to know where the manager is. Evidently only the manager is qualified to put new tires on her car. Man I love public spaces. Oh man. Now the Les Schwab dude just told her that AI will be taking over tire replacement in the next ten years because, “no one wants to be blue collar anymore”. Her response? “My dog can do better than AI.” You tell him, Phyllis!!!!

She also walked over to my table to let me know everything that just transpired between she and the Les Schwab dude. I love people.

I’m not gonna lie, I mostly like staying inside and getting things done. I don’t wanna go out. But these last 20 minutes at Les Schwab have been incredibly exciting. This, in addition to the news that Washington State gas prices are about $1.11 over the national average is incredibly entertaining. I picked the wrong week to quit smoking crack.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. Wanna laugh?

2. Turning off all notifications on my phone

3. Bejamin

4. People

5. David Bowie

Thanks so much for reading. Take good care of yourself. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

The Counter-Trend: Signs of Stabilization & “Democratizers”

• Plateauing Decline: The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reported that after nearly a decade of continuous global decline, democracy scores stabilized globally, with nearly three-quarters of countries holding steady or making slight gains.

• Active “Democratizers”: Around 18 to 20 nations are actively undergoing significant democratic recovery or turnaround—often driven by high voter turnout and civic engagement. Recent examples of democratic progress or recovery include Poland, Brazil, Guatemala, Botswana, and Mauritius.

• Increased Civic Participation: High public engagement in local elections, press freedom campaigns, and anti-corruption movements continues to act as a major buffer against further backsliding.

Substantial Drop in Global Terrorism Deaths

• Lowest Level in Nearly 2 Decades: According to recent Global Peace Index data, global deaths from terrorism fell to their lowest level since 2008.

• Key Driver: The continued territorial defeat and fragmentation of major transnational terror groups (like ISIS core bases) led to a significant drop in high-casualty terrorist attacks globally compared to the peak years of 2014–2016.

Strong Regional and Country-Level Improvements

While global averages can look grim, individual nations demonstrate that rapid turnaround is possible through diplomacy, institutional stability, and civic peace building:

• Notable Turnarounds: * Poland recorded the largest single-year peace improvement in recent index data, jumping 23 places globally following a 9.1% boost in its overall peacefulness score.

  • Türkiye made significant gains driven by sustained peace efforts and dialogues regarding long-standing regional insurgencies.

  • Nations like Gabon, Lesotho, and Mauritius have also recorded notable upward leaps in stability and conflict reduction.

• The Global Haven: Countries like Iceland (ranked #1 most peaceful for 19 consecutive years), New Zealand, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Ireland continue to maintain extraordinarily high baseline levels of societal safety and low violent crime.

UN Peacekeeping & Institutional Gains

• Funding Support: The indicator measuring international support and funding for UN Peacekeeping recorded the largest positive shift among safety indicators in recent index tracking, reflecting renewed financial commitment from international bodies to stabilize active zones.

Non-Conflict Violence & Homicide Trends

• Outside of active war zones, everyday societal violence in many parts of the world—such as domestic homicides—remains far below late-20th-century historical peaks in many industrial and developing nations, backed by better community policing and social support networks.

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Singing with Soul

I recently wrote a piece on Medium. You have to be a paying member to read it so I thought I would copy and paste it here.

White Men are in The Penalty Box

And there they will stay……

“Can I count on your support in the upcoming election?” This question from a young white guy, reaching out on Instagram after he saw that I was friends with one of his supporters pushed me to make this decision. It was not only this, but his reaction to my response:

“I’m sorry, if you have any political power or pull, I would prefer that you put that to good use and support a person of color. I am reticent to support, either publicly or privately, a white man who is wanting any position of power. More of you than not ever use your power for helping people other than other white guys, and we are in the situation we’re in now because of that.”

His response was typical:

“Fair enough.”

As far as I’m concerned, white men are officially in the penalty box, and in order to get any type of recognition or support from me, they are going to have to do the work. When I say “the work”, what I mean is that they as a collective and individually will have to start behaving as if the world depends on their ability to show true compassion, empathy, and care for people who don’t look like them. They will have to start behaving as if their ability to put other people first is their superpower.

I’m not talking about “all of them except my brothers”, or, “all of them except my partner”. I’m talking every last one of them. *Not one of those snakes is getting through the door until they demonstrate over a sustained period that they are for creating a just society centered on compassion, justice, and equity.

If this sounds extreme to you then I think you might try to crawl out from the rock under which you have been living. Every single woman I know has either been harassed, abused, or killed by a white guy. Most of them has had to leave a job due to a white guy doing everything he could to undermine, backstab, or otherwise throw her under the bus at any opportunity he could find. Many have had to leave their children’s father due to the fact that the guy couldn’t get it together and participate in things he found distasteful.

I’m not a man hater. I wish I was. I wish I could say that I have not loved men all my life. I can’t. I have done everything I can to make it work with a wide variety of white guys in friendships, at work, in love, and in every other area of my life I can’t quite locate in this moment. I have tried, but after fifty plus years of trying, the effort must shift, because while I have been working my ass off trying to make this workable, most of the white men I know have been lying around in their own filth waiting for me to bring them their next beer, metaphorically speaking.

The bar is closed, white dudes, and until you get your individual and collective shit together, closed it will remain until you decide to join the rest of us in liberating our collective from the present unpleasantness to which you have so willingly and in some cases, enthusiastically brought us.

*In a 1971 interview with the BBC’s Michael Parkinson, Muhammad Ali responded to the common argument that “not all white people are racist” by using a vivid metaphor to explain why such a defense is ineffective. He said:

“There are many white people who mean right and in their hearts wanna do right. If 10,000 snakes were coming down that aisle now, and I had a door that I could shut, and in that 10,000, 1,000 meant right, 1,000 rattlesnakes didn’t want to bite me, I knew they were good… Should I let all these rattlesnakes come down, hoping that that thousand get together and form a shield? Or should I just close the door and stay safe?” NewsOne+2

I have been writing about this for decades. Yes, decades. I have played my part by making excuses for the men I know and love. I hold many of these men in high regard and love them dearly. But it doesn’t mean I want to elect any of them Mayor. It doesn’t mean I want them running the electric company or even the post office. Leave that work to the people who have proved over and over again that they can be trusted.

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1. Mia Mottley (Prime Minister of Barbados) — Global Climate & Economic Justice

• The Impact: Created the Bridgetown Initiative, a groundbreaking global finance proposal that rewrites how international institutions support climate-vulnerable, developing nations.

• The Outcome: Shifted international policy to allow nations suffering from climate disasters access to immediate debt relief and concessional funding, protecting millions of citizens in vulnerable island nations from cycle-of-debt poverty.

2. Jacinda Ardern (Former Prime Minister of New Zealand) — Compassionate Crisis Management & Safety

• The Impact: Championed empathy as a core political metric. Following the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, she acted within days to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.

• The Outcome: Swift legislative action led to a massive nationwide buyback program that removed tens of thousands of assault weapons from circulation, prioritizing community safety and interfaith solidarity.

3. Sanna Marin (Former Prime Minister of Finland) — Structural Family Equity

• The Impact: Spearheaded a historic overhaul of Finland’s parental leave system to equalize gender roles in caregiving.

• The Outcome: Granted both parents nearly seven months of paid parental leave (with the flexibility to transfer days), dramatically reducing the corporate workplace penalty women face after having children and incentivizing shared parenting.

4. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Former President of Liberia) — Economic & Democratic Rebuilding

• The Impact: As Africa’s first elected female head of state, she took over a country devastated by 14 years of civil war and massive national debt.

• The Outcome: Successfully negotiated the complete erasure of over $4.7 billion in Liberian international debt, restored basic infrastructure, and established peace and democratic transitions of power after decades of violence.

5. Tsai Ing-wen (Former President of Taiwan) — Human Rights & Civic Resilience

• The Impact: Led Taiwan through significant social and economic shifts while navigating extreme geopolitical pressure, making Taiwan a beacon for human rights in Asia.

• The Outcome: Successfully legalized same-sex marriage—making Taiwan the first in Asia to do so—while expanding the social safety net, raising the minimum wage, and strengthening democratic institutions.

6. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Director-General, World Trade Organization) — Equitable Healthcare Distribution

• The Impact: Prioritized trade policy reform to support developing nations and marginalized communities, particularly during global health emergencies.

• The Outcome: Navigated fierce international opposition to secure historic intellectual property waivers on health tools, allowing developing nations to manufacture local medical supplies and essential treatments during global crises.

7. Dr. Wangari Maathai (Founder, The Green Belt Movement, Kenya) — Environmental & Economic Empowerment

• The Impact: Founded an grassroots movement empowering rural African women to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life.

• The Outcome: Mobilized women to plant over 51 million trees, reversing deforestation, protecting local water supplies, and providing impoverished rural women with sustainable income and civic leadership training.

8. Mary Barra (CEO, General Motors) — Workplace Pay Equity

• The Impact: Took actionable, transparent steps to dismantle gender disparities within one of the world’s largest industrial manufacturing corporations.

• The Outcome: Under her leadership, GM became one of the few global corporations to achieve an audited 1:1 equal pay ratio across gender lines worldwide, setting a benchmark for equitable corporate governance.

9. Mayor Michelle Wu (Boston, USA) — Community-Centered Urban Reform

• The Impact: Focused on actionable, local quality-of-life policies centered around families, public transport, and environmental health.

• The Outcome: Championed fare-free public transit routes serving lower-income neighborhoods, invested heavily in municipal mental health support, and enacted strict housing stability measures to protect long-term residents from predatory displacement.

10. Tarana Burke (Founder, The ‘Me Too’ Movement) — Healing & Systemic Accountability

• The Impact: Founded a global movement centered on empathy, healing, and systemic accountability for survivors of sexual violence, long before it became a viral hashtag.

• The Outcome: Built actionable support frameworks for survivors in underserved communities, creating a cultural shift that forced global institutions to hold powerful perpetrators accountable.

This footage documents former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressing the nation with empathy and clarity following the Christchurch tragedy, illustrating compassionate leadership in action: Jacinda Ardern’s Christchurch Speech.

If none of this is striking a chord with you then ask yourself, how many men encourage you to express yourself from your soul? How many men do you know would look at the video about fairies dancing and delight in it? How many would make fun of it? The world is the world. It has turned us all into what we are to some extent, but we also get to choose who we want to be. We get to choose how we want to treat people and how we want to be treated.

I do not choose terror. I do not choose manipulation. I choose love, compassion, and creative freedom. I believe everyone should get this choice and it is up to me to make sure that I am working toward that for myself and for everyone else. Everyone.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Equity

2. Freedom

3. Justice

4. Compassion

5. Sci-Fi movies

thanks so much for reading and responding to this very unpredictable newsletter. It helps to know that someone has the patience to read it. I’m glad it’s you.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. The Fish are Back, and Restoration Actually Works: Maine Counts 20 Million River Herring

If you’re sick of hearing that ecological damage is irreversible, throw this in the face of the nearest doom scroller. Maine just recorded over 20 million river herring during their annual run—the highest count in decades. This isn’t a fluke; it’s the direct result of tireless local activists, indigenous land stewards, and conservationists removing outdated dams, restoring waterways, and giving nature a damn chance to breathe. Proof positive that when humans stop choking natural ecosystems, life fights its way back with a vengeance.

• Source: Maine Department of Marine Resources / Good News Network (July 2026)

2. Stanford Scientists Found a Way to Literally Regrow Human Cartilage

For everyone living with worn-out knees, chronic joint pain, or the slow burn of arthritis: medical science just pulled off something extraordinary. Researchers at Stanford Medicine discovered that blocking a specific age-related protein ($15\text{-PGDH}$) unlocks the body’s ability to reverse cartilage loss and regenerate functional joint tissue. Instead of replacing ruined joints with titanium and plastic, we are on the precipice of teaching our bodies how to repair themselves.

• Source: Stanford Medicine / Rest Less (2026)

3. Coho Salmon Return to California’s Russian River for the First Time in 30 Years

Speaking of stubborn ecological resilience: after three decades of near-total absence due to human interference, Coho salmon are officially spawning back in California’s Russian River. This milestone comes after years of heavy-lifting by local community restoration groups, improved fish passages, and aggressive habitat protection. It turns out that decades of community-driven gritty, unsexy environmental work actually yields quiet miracles.

• Source: California Department of Fish and Wildlife / Good News Network (2026)

4. North America’s Massive Wildlife Crossings Are Open—And the Animals Are Already Using Them

In a rare moment of actual infrastructure sanity, major wildlife bridge projects across the country—including massive new corridors in Colorado and California—are officially open and operational. Within days of completion, camera traps caught mule deer and local fauna casually trotting across multi-million-dollar overpasses built specifically to keep them out of highway traffic. It turns out when we design infrastructure with empathy for the living world around us, everybody wins.

• Source: Colorado & California Departments of Transportation / Good News Network (June 2026)

5. Artemis II Broke Deep-Space Records and Expanded Who Gets to Reach for the Stars

NASA’s Artemis II crew pushed deeper into space than any human flight in history, traveling over 252,000 miles from Earth and proving that deep-space crewed exploration is no longer sci-fi nostalgia. More importantly, the four-person crew shattered the historic, exclusionary mold of 20th-century spaceflight—featuring Christina Koch (the first woman on a lunar mission), Victor Glover (the first Black astronaut on a lunar mission), and Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American). It’s a reminders that when we venture into the unknown, we can finally leave the old prejudices behind.

• Source: NASA / Britannica (April 2026)

And something that I have been marveling at from India

6. How India’s Gen Z Just Showed the World How to Flex True Democratic Muscle

If you need a masterclass in turning systemic disrespect into raw political power, look no further than the young people of India.

When a top official casually dismissed unemployed youth as “cockroaches,” a generation fed up with leaked medical entrance exams, institutional corruption, and blatant government apathy didn’t just get mad—they co-opted the insult, built a viral movement called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), and mobilized millions of students online and in the streets.

Here is what India’s Gen Z just pulled off in a historic, weeks-long masterclass of sustained, peaceful disruption:

• Forced a Cabinet Minister’s Resignation: After weeks of sustained nationwide protests centered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and powered by millions of young voters on social media, the Indian government buckled. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was forced to resign—marking one of the rare times in recent history that a top-level cabinet official was directly ousted by student-led pressure.

• Secured Immediate Justice for Students: Gen Z didn’t stop at a high-profile resignation. They held the line until the government conceded to their core demands: dropping all police charges against peaceful student protesters, establishing financial compensation for families of students lost to exam-related stress and suicides, and introducing strict legal reforms against exam fraud.

• Forced Systemic Exam Reforms: The movement pushed the government to announce a high-powered national task force (headed by tech leader Nandan Nilekani) and introduce anti-paper leak legislation to completely overhaul the country’s compromised public examination system.

• Rewrote the Rules of Political Engagement: Armed with satire, viral memes, protest art, and relentless digital organizing, a generation routinely ignored by an aging political establishment proved that real power still belongs to the people willing to stand up and demand accountability.

“The bottom line is we won. Your struggle, hard work, and patience paid off. The young generation is here—this is a win for the constitution.” > — CJP Organizers & Protesters at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi

• Sources: The Independent, Asian Times, Dawn, Reuters / India Today (July 2026)

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Finding the Present Moment

This last week I noticed something. I would find myself in far-away places. Very often, upsetting places. Places where I had no control over feeling bad about the world, about myself, about my choices. Places where I was beating myself up. So I made a decision. I would pull myself back into the present moment by noticing something, anything, around me that I could appreciate. This is how I fell in love with Benjamin.

I am driving more these days, to and from work, about a 25 minute drive. As I come down from the tall hills of Anacortes and into the valley, I often look ahead at the expanse of mountains to the northeast, intermingling with the clouds and the mist. This view stuns me every time I see it. I cannot fathom a more beautiful vision exists in the world. I see this every morning, with Benjamin. He takes me where I need to go reliably, with little fuss, and he carries all the crap I need carried without complaint. He is old fashioned, a proper gentleman. His crank handles for the windows still work perfectly.

Sometimes though, the view isn’t so great. Sometimes I’m in my head inside of Benjamin, and I begin to beat myself up. Or I begin to beat up the world or the people in it. That’s when he reminds me to be present. He says, in his best Yoda voice, that I must unlearn what I have learned. I have realized, on my many trips in Benjamin, that beating myself up is a learned behavior, and all I have to do is pull my mind and heart back into my body and find one thing, just one, that I can fall in love with. It’s pretty easy to do on my drive, between the mountainous visions and the sun rising in the east, the expanse of the Skagit Valley to gaze upon, the glimpses of the Pacific through the trees, I easily find a variety of wonders to distract me from my unnecessary self-flagellation.

But I also realize how much I love the sturdiness and the worn-in nature of my little truck. I honestly don’t think I have ever loved any car more. When I come out of my job at the end of the day and I see him, I feel true comfort. When I leave the studio, arms full of pottery, I am bolstered in knowing that he has plenty of room to carry anything I need to transport. In the last month, I have been pulled over three times for a variety of reasons, but not once have I received a ticket. I believe I owe this to the magic of my odd little truck. He is humble. He doesn’t have much power, but he uses well what he has. He isn’t as handsome as he once was, but he has a solid kind of integrity that sustains him. He isn’t fast or even clean, but he is honest. His odometer is broken and his speedometer is failing. His lights work, but at different angles.

Maybe I have fallen in love with him because he reminds me of myself. I don’t know. But I do know that anytime I beat myself up, all I have to do is think of him, if nothing else, and I feel lucky. I feel grateful. I feel hopeful.

Not bad for a mid-nineties ford pick-up.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Old Henry

2. Finding new artists and their art

3. Writing

4. Oil pulling. I haven’t had a cavity in 15 years.

5. Turning off notifications on my phone. Again.

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I know things are ultra tough right now. But I urge you to find the things you love. Find the people you love, and celebrate them. Hold fast to your love for the good in the world. It truly is transformative. Be good to yourself and your neighbors. Save your energy for good work. Do not linger in anger because this is where you waste your precious energy.

Don’t let the bastards get you down- when I write that, this is what I mean.

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GOOD NEWS FIRST

• Despite political pushback and corporate lobbying, reality wins. U.S. solar and wind generation hit record highs, officially surpassing coal in monthly electricity output. Over 90% of all new U.S. grid capacity being built right now is pure renewable energy and battery storage because economics and physics don’t care about outdated fossil fuel dogma.

• Women aren’t asking for rights anymore; they’re writing them into ironclad law. Mexico elected its first female president while federally enshrining gender parity, and France became the first country in history to explicitly write abortion rights into its constitution, providing a template for protecting bodily autonomy against reactionary bullshit.

• The archaic system of burning toxic rocks for power is dying a fast, beautiful death. Over 75% of planned coal projects worldwide have been scrapped over the last decade, with major global financiers pulling out entirely. The old-guard energy monopolies are losing their grip to cheaper, decentralized clean power, whether they like it or not.

• The corporate chokehold on working people is getting choked back. Federal consumer protections have aggressively dismantled billions of dollars in predatory junk fees, capped credit card late penalties, and wiped out massive swaths of predatory student and medical debt, striking a direct blow to financial systems designed to keep people broke.

• Environmental doom-scrolling takes a rare, massive loss. Thanks to fierce indigenous land sovereignty and aggressive government enforcement, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped by over 50%, proving that dedicated political willpower and frontline enforcement can halt ecological destruction in its tracks.

• While critics whine that modern governance is fundamentally broken, Estonia is running circles around the world. Over half of their entire electorate now votes online via secure digital IDs, driving voter turnout to record highs and rendering bureaucratic voter suppression completely irrelevant.

• In a massive win over industrial extraction, federal protections banned new oil, gas, and mining leases across millions of acres of pristine public wilderness and sacred tribal lands—including major Arctic sanctuaries and critical watersheds—keeping greedy corporate drills out of irreplaceable ecosystems.

• Bigotry continues its slow, painful march into the steaming turd pile of history. Thailand became the first nation in Southeast Asia to fully legalize same-sex marriage, joining a growing global wave of nations legally codifying human rights and dismantling archaic social hierarchies.

Before and After

As you might or might not know, I have a new job. One of the things I’m doing to keep it light is making something before I go to work and after. This might look like making a post-modern postcard, like you see above, or going to the clay studio and making, trimming, or glazing pottery. It might be writing my book or, this newsletter. It’s one of the ways I keep myself on the straight and narrow, and to be completely transparent, it’s one of the ways I practice my own personal spirituality. If you had the opportunity to watch the short film I created, Ode to Joy, you watched the character in the film get so fed up with the world’s contradictions and falsehoods that she created her own religion to practice.

I have done much the same for myself. It’s based in creativity and making and it serves me well. Just like the character in the film, it is a religion of one. NO proselytizing, no spreading the “good word”, no persuading people to see things my way. This is where I think most religions fall short. They believe their way is the only way to see the world, which in my opinion is as believable a premise as the US government being ethical. It borders on comedic.

Making feeds my soul by getting me better acquainted with it. Things come up that surprise the fuck out of me. I love that I can still surprise myself with my endless depths. As a traveler on this journey of now six decades, I’m still excited to learn new things about myself. I started searching at the age of nine and I’m still on that search. It’s because just like you, dear reader, I contain multitudes, and I won’t stop exploring them until the day I die.

Also, I got a haircut.

I like my haircut for many reasons, the most fun reason is that it’s just like Arya’s hair as she traveled the countryside of Westeros with The Hound and practiced her sword skills.

One of the things I discovered about myself this week is that I would rather send my post-modern postcards than sell them, so as I make these, I’m sending them out to friends and family all over the US. Who knows? You just might get one if I have your address.

The other thing about making is that it keeps me off of my phone. Though I have to be honest, I have tricked every algorithm into sending me dance, music, and art, in addition to whimsical treachery that is neverendingly delightful. Sometimes my friends send me stuff about politics from FB, but I just thank them and move on. I have no time for such tomfoolery. I get my news as nature intended it: through Heather Cox Richardson. Yet one more element of my religion which I cling to for dear life.

THINGS I LOVE

1. My religion. I practice it religiously.

2. My lists of things I love. I make them every morning.

3. Great Blue Herons. They visit my yard every morning and eat from the pond.

4. Free will. Just like Getty Lee sang, “I will choose the path that’s clear, I will choose free will”.

5. Flexibility, in mind, body, and spirit.

Thanks so much for reading my weekly thoughts, meanderings, and goings-on. It’s a rare gift to communicate these thoughts to this humble group of readers. I deeply appreciate your replies, likes, and general support.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

• State-Level Reproductive Freedom Locked Onto Fall Ballots (July 2026)

  • The Breakdown: While politicians keep trying to legislate bodily autonomy out of existence, grassroots organizers just handed them a reality check. Measures guaranteeing constitutional rights to abortion, contraception, and healthcare autonomy officially secured certified ballot placement in key battleground states (including Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia), putting the decision directly into the hands of voters this fall.

  • Source: KFF / ACLU Reproductive Freedom Report

• State-Supported Safe Houses & Legal Aid Activated for Survivors in Haiti (Late June/July 2026)

  • The Breakdown: Against brutal humanitarian headwinds and severe international funding cuts, UN Women and local grassroots leaders successfully opened the first state-backed safe houses and frontline legal assistance networks in Haiti to protect women and girls against weaponized gender-based violence.

  • Source: UN Women Official Press Release

  Legal Action Wallops Illegal Grand Jury Subpoenas of Trans Youth Health Data (Late June/July 2026)

  • The Breakdown: Overreach met its match when federal grand jury subpoenas attempted to forcibly seize private medical records of transgender youth from hospital systems. Legal heavyweights (ACLU, Lambda Legal, and NYCLU) stepped into federal court, filing critical injunctions that halted the dragnet and reaffirmed that intimate patient privacy isn’t a political playground.

  • Source: ACLU Legal Update

• Court Victories Block Workplace “Don’t Say Gay” & Erasure Mandates (Late June/July 2026)

  • The Breakdown: Grassroots organizing and relentless legal pressure successfully neutralized state-level legislative attempts designed to punish inclusive workplace speech, ban LGBTQ+ symbols, and penalize municipal Pride events, forcing lawmakers to back off extreme enforcement measures.

  • Source: Equality Florida Resistance Report

  upreme Court Reaffirms Birthright Citizenship as Unshakable (June 30, 2026)

  • The Breakdown: In Trump v. Barbara, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down executive attempts to erase birthright citizenship by decree. The Court held that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee isn’t subject to executive temper tantrums—reaffirming over a century of legal precedent that if you are born here, you belong here. Period.

  • Source: ACLU / Global Strategic Litigation Council

• Federal Appeals Court Revives KKK-Act Lawsuit Against Voter Intimidators (July 8, 2026)

  • The Breakdown: The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals handed a massive victory to the League of Women Voters and the NAACP. The court ruled that extremist groups conducting door-to-door interrogation campaigns against voters can indeed be held accountable under historic anti-Ku Klux Klan civil rights laws, ordering a brand-new trial to hold perpetrators accountable.

  • Source: League of Women Voters Official Statement

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THE WEEK THAT WAS

As you can see, I have found a new brand of pickle that I just adore. As a pickle aficionado, I can say that this is in my top five pickles. I guess something good did come from having diverticulitis! A new sad girl clown cup came out of the kiln, I’m testing brown and red clay bodies and this one is a hard pass due to too much iron coming through and interfering with color and flow. Now that I’m working at a museum shop, I’m creating a look that is either professionally quirky or quirkily professional. The look above is from my second day on the job. Shooting into the sun never really works out for me, yet I continue to do it. Actually, I had just parked my trusty steed, Benjamin, and put my phone on his bumper to get this shot. It was really more his fault than mine.

Quiet Moments

I realized recently that I have fewer quiet moments, and I want them back. This week’s efforts have been and will be focused into putting my phone away and sitting or laying? lying? laying? silently either staring out the nearest window or at the closest ceiling. The results have been mixed so far, but I feel like if I give this more effort for just a little bit more time, I will reap the rewards I’m seeking. The rewards being calm, peace, and internal justice.

New Job Elation

I was speaking with a friend the other day about how much I love my job right now and he warned me that it won’t always be like this. I responded that it is never always like anything, and it’s these sweet pinnacles in life that create the immense joy I feel when I look around my life, and think to myself, “self, you are so punk rock. Landing on your feet seems to be your superpower.”

Not long ago someone very close to me told me that I was too old to continue to land on my feet after leaving a job to go around the country and spread whimsy via origami butterflies to whoever is available. It’s the third time I’ve pulled this off, and I have to say that I might actually be getting better at it as I get older. Really. I’ve returned to a life where I’m teaching ceramics, selling art, writing articles, working at a museum, living rent-free on property in the most beautiful part of the country, and house sitting in beautiful homes for wonderful animals. Oh, also, I have a truck named Benjamin that makes me happy every time I get in to drive him.

Happiness, thy name is trust.

While there were people who supported the Butterfly Rebellion project I completed, there were some who were angry with me, fearful for me, and not super helpful when it came time to actually do the thing. I now wrestle with letting go. The heartbreak from this event was real, and now, I’m faced with releasing the pain that I chose to feel around this. In truth, it’s about my ability to live my life unapologetically. It’s about my desire to be loved and supported first and foremost by me. I might be upset because I doubted myself. I might have misgivings because there were times on the trip that I allowed this pain too much space and time in my body. This is the internal justice of which I speak. I must be just with myself. I must not allow the doubts of others to creep in and alter my behavior. I can only love them and trust that their doubts are safe and sound in their own bodies and don’t need to take purchase in mine.

That’s the other thing I’m working on this week. No biggie.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Driving through the Skagit (soft G) valley. It’s the most beautiful place all the times.

2. Magpies

   

   3. Surprise phone calls from long lost friends

   4. Free healthcare

   5. Good haircuts- I just got one

Thanks for reading, liking, commenting, and questioning. KEEP IT UP.

And don’t let the bastards get you down. That’s their goal, so don’t let them. Hope is everywhere.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. In a massive win for bodily autonomy, New Jersey officially made it illegal to interfere with reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare. The legislation acts as a bulletproof vest against out-of-state investigations and hostile overreach, making it crystal clear that a person’s body is their own goddamn business.

2. At a summit in Jamaica, UNESCO teamed up with regional governance experts to launch “Blocking is NOT Enough.” It’s a comprehensive, aggressive legal framework designed to hunt down and penalize technology-facilitated gender-based violence—specifically targeting AI-generated deepfakes and algorithmic harassment meant to silence women online.

3. Grassroots medical initiatives just reached a major milestone this week, successfully expanding mobile screening networks to immunize thousands of young girls against HPV in remote global sectors. It’s a quiet, fierce victory for preventative healthcare, ensuring that institutional neglect and geographical barriers don’t dictate a young woman’s physical future.

4. The government of French Polynesia just banned industrial fishing and seabed mining across a massive 30% of its marine waters. It is a stunning, high-stakes rebuke to corporate extractive industries that treat the Pacific like a private cash register, preserving vital marine ecosystems from systemic corporate vandalism.

5. For the first time in a continuous 12-month stretch, electric vehicle sales completely overtook petrol car sales across the United Kingdom. Consumer habits are shifting faster than fossil fuel executives can lobby against it, marking a massive structural pivot toward burying the combustion engine for good.

6. Italy’s woodlands now cover a larger surface area than its agricultural land—a landscape dynamic that has not been seen since the Middle Ages. Spreading across 60,000 square miles, primarily in the rugged mountain regions, nature is aggressively reclaiming the peninsula and pushing back against centuries of human encroachment.

7. More than 250,000 Californians are about to find out their predatory medical debt has been completely wiped off the books. A massive private donation targeted and bought up half a billion dollars in outstanding healthcare arrears, exposing the absolute absurdity of the system while giving a quarter of a million people room to breathe again.

8. Following an unyielding civil rights complaint over environmental racism, Chicago finalized a network of 227 air monitors. This local grid bypasses generalized city-wide metrics to pinpoint exact pollution hot spots in historically exploited neighborhoods, giving communities the raw, unpolished data they need to hold industrial polluters accountable.

Another of My Firsts

Yesterday was my first day as the manager of the museum shop and visitor experience at The Museum of Northwest Art. I wanted to wait until after my first day to write this to let those of you who know me that it was as good of a first day as I have ever had at any job. I’m very excited to be a part of a team that seems pretty functional at this point and I’m looking forward to bringing my own unique flavor to the role and the museum. I WORK IN A MUSEUM!

I also came down with a nasty case of diverticulitis last week on Wednesday which I suffered with through Sunday. I ate almost nothing but sugar for two weeks straight just to see what would happen. That’s what happened.

Due to this unfortunate situation, I have nothing to report on but my binge watching, and I’ll just say that the Elle series is quite good, as is the Sense and Sensibility series from some time ago. Last of the Mohicans holds up. I’m priming myself for the new Sense and Sensibility that is coming out soon to theaters. Oh. I have also decided to go to a theater to see a movie at least once a month in order to not let that genre die. Once I start making a bit of money I will go twice a month. And it’s my goal to support arthouse films as well.

A NEW PATH

I have mentioned this in previous newsletters, but thought I might dive into it again. I have been working on myself as a human since I was about nine, when I realized I was super messed up. For decades, I felt like I was getting nowhere. Always the same pain, always the same mistakes, always the same results. Then, at 40, things started changing. It felt sudden because I had been working for so long, but really, it wasn’t. I didn’t see that all this work would lead me to a place where I have become a very different person than the one I used to be. I have, in fact, had a number of spiritual awakenings in recent years that have led me to a path that is completely alien to me. There are moments when I’m quite frightened of the level of the unknowable, and also excited and proud of the work I have done. Most of the time, I’m focusing on trust. Trust that I am where I’m supposed to be, trust that I am the path, trust that everything will work out.

There are people who have not been super supportive of this new path, and that, frankly, has been heartbreaking. I have had to wrestle with a lot of childhood trauma and unearthed demons over the last 6 or so months, but I’m feeling better, for now. I realize it’s maybe a little bit delusional to think that people might not be happy for me as I walk a path that is not what they want for me, or a path that seems to them to be reckless, but it’s also painful to not have the support from people who have, to this point, been part of my support system.

Weirdly, my father warned me about this a long time ago. He knew of the work I was doing on myself, and was a source of wisdom and guidance a lot of the time. He told me I might end up finding myself in a lonely place if I kept working on myself, because so many don’t do the work I was and am prepared to do. At the time I laughed at him. Not to his face. That would have been rude. But his words have been coming back to me lately, and while I feel a bit lonely at times, I also feel proud of myself for the work I have done. I know this might sound odd, but I really didn’t expect that I would end up here. In this place.

I think that’s why I loaded up on so much sugar that it got me sick- because I’m dealing with an awakening that kind of freaked me out and I didn’t know how to handle it. So, as with all other things, I believed cake to be the answer. I guess that’s a remedy best left in the past, unfortunately.

Lesson learned.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. Cake. Now and forever.

2. My favorite mug. I got it out of storage and I’m so happy we’re reunited.

3. Kara Walker. She and her work are quite wonderful.

4. Oversized clothes. I’m in my oversized clothes era.

5. Comfort.

Thank you so much for subscribing and reading. I will have more to report next week, I’m sure. July is a huge month, astrologically speaking, and I believe I’m just beginning to see the fruits of my labors.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS.

1. In Seattle, the Community Corner spotlight highlighted the ongoing success of the Community Connector program at El Centro de la Raza. Rather than requiring folks to navigate a complex maze of public assistance programs alone, individual navigators are physically embedded right inside local food banks during operational hours. This week's feature showed how this direct, face-to-face approach is successfully bridging the gap for families—helping neighbors access vital utility discounts, healthcare, and food benefits right where they already gather.

2. The Reynolds Journalism Institute highlighted a major win for grassroots community engagement this week, tracking the success of innovative, hyper-local news projects. Multiple independent outlets have successfully adopted the promotoras (community outreach worker) model—originally used in public health. By training local residents to act as information ambassadors and hosting direct community text-messaging circles, these projects are bypassing massive corporate algorithms to rebuild trust and keep communities deeply informed from the ground up.

3. Smart Growth America highlighted major milestone updates for community-first urban design projects across the country. A standout celebration includes the BLVD Transformation Project, which successfully used sustainable, walkable streetscape designs and public art facilities to revitalize a commercial district—rapidly generating thousands of local jobs and proving that prioritizing community spaces directly boosts local resilience.

4. In Washington D.C., city leaders and local neighborhood advocates broke ground on a massive, highly anticipated new community center. Designed with extensive input from local residents, the space is built to serve as a physical anchor for neighborhood organizing, youth programs, and collaborative spaces—proving that even in digital times, physical spaces for human connection remain vital.

5. National housing advocacy networks reported fresh momentum this week on local and state levels. Activists and local organizers are successfully forming "strange bedfellow" coalitions—uniting creative artists, grassroots organizers, and unlikely political allies to streamline funding for community-led housing developments. The focus has shifted toward bypassing old, rigid systems to build smaller, community-centered housing initiatives.

6. In positive news for local food security, community-owned grocery cooperatives are successfully resisting the urge to move to cheap, isolated commercial highway strips. Updates from independent co-ops showcase a commitment to remaining in downtown cores by building innovative, multi-story green buildings that pair local grocery spaces with affordable apartments above them—keeping healthy food and community classes entirely walkable.

7. A new wave of creative community building has emerged from independent creators transforming empty, discarded commercial office spaces into vibrant neighborhood hubs. These spaces are being repurposed to give local schools and community members free access to audio and video training tools, giving a literal voice back to areas that have been left in geographic media deserts.

8. Community organizing groups, including United Power, celebrated significant progress this past week in their ongoing, multi-year mission to reclaim and reinvest in historically overlooked neighborhoods. By focusing directly on community-led building initiatives and local construction, these neighborhood coalitions are successfully adding affordable units and keeping investment dollars entirely within the local economy.

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THE UNTHINKABLE HAS HAPPENED.

I got a job. I know. It’s crazy. A job with a paycheck. Not a very big paycheck, but something standard, where I’ll be working regularly. I’m a bit taken aback if I’m being honest. I just found out and my head is spinning. I will be running a museum shop and managing visitor experience for The Museum of Northwest Art. So, I will have some money. Ish. I still qualify for low income housing, though, so that’s nice.

It’s a compelling idea, having a job and feeling like I’m going to be earning a lot of money, because I have so few expenses, but I don’t think most people could live on it. It’s thrilling when the planets align and I get an opportunity that puts so many of my work/life strategies into perspective. If I weren’t so poor, this job would not pay me enough to live. If the job paid more, I’m sure way more people would have applied, people without spotty job histories and problems with authority. I might not have gotten the job if I hadn’t been looking for artist opportunities for my PNW Artist Support newsletter. FATE TAKES A HAND.

This week I have been working on my sculptural clay projects. Magical animals for an online class I’m making, and face plant(ers) for a face pot class I’m teaching IRL. I’ve been working quite regularly on clay stuff in both of the ceramic studios I now occupy. I’m back at Burnish in Bellingham. My plan for the rest of the week is to get as much stuff finished as I possibly can before my job starts. Wish me luck!

BUT THE WORLD STILL TURNS

I know that a lot of the news is bad. But the other day, I went to a playground, and I played. I swung on a swing. I climbed a rope ladder. I played these crazy playground musical instruments. I had fun. I know that shit is very real right now, but part of not letting the bastards get you down is not letting them steal your joy. We must cling to it like it’s our chance to save our humanity in this crazy violent world. We must seek it out. We must be irreverently joyful. Figure something out today that you can do that will make you smile. Or make your heart sing. Take a break from the bullshit they’re feeding you.

There are more of us than there are of them, and we cannot go gently into that good night.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Swings

2. Angel food cake with berries

3. My brothers

4. Watching swallows fly

5. Theo of Golden. It’s a book I didn’t want to like but I did. Not my fault.

6. Destiny

On the other side of the paywall are two pics of some of my most recent work. If you subscribe, you will see them!!!

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Thanks so much for reading. It means the world to me.

Don’t let the bastards keep you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS (I’m feeling particularly petty, Solstice Edition)

• A federal judge just absolutely bodied the Trump administration’s attempt to bully local leaders, rejecting Department of Justice subpoenas issued to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the mayor of Minneapolis. It turns out trying to legally strong-arm blue states into executing a chaotic federal immigration agenda is a fantastic way to collect an embarrassing courtroom loss. (Source: The Washington Post, June 22, 2026)

• The administration’s audacity level reached an all-time high with a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund explicitly designed to payout Trump’s loyalists and January 6th defendants, but the whole grift imploded spectacularly. Facing a massive wave of public fury, an active federal court freeze, and a rare moment of Republican lawmakers actually finding their spines because they lacked the votes to pass a massive Homeland Security funding bill, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had to publicly tuck his tail and announce the administration is completely scrapping the fund. (Source: Associated Press / Oregon Public Broadcasting, June 2, 2026)

• Trump’s self-proclaimed magical touch in political primaries just slammed into an Iowa-sized brick wall. Despite dropping a late-stage, full-throated endorsement for Representative Randy Feenstra in the Republican gubernatorial primary to try and flex his kingmaker status, Feenstra still managed to lose the race to Zach Lahn—proving that the royal decree doesn’t carry quite the same weight it used to when voters actually care about local policy. (Source: Associated Press / PBS News Hour, June 3, 2026)

• The golden goose of the MAGA coalition is officially showing signs of severe mental fatigue, as recent polling reveals massive cracks in Trump’s white, blue-collar base. Driven by fury over 4.2% inflation, a loss of 68,000 manufacturing jobs since he re-entered office, and the deeply unpopular military escalations against Iran, a new CBS News poll shows that a staggering 54% of white voters without a college degree now actively disapprove of his performance—leaving Republican pollsters panicking about the upcoming midterms. (Source: The Guardian, June 22, 2026)

• The Supreme Court is currently sitting on a ticking legal time bomb for the administration, with justices poised to rule by the end of June on four critical cases testing the absolute limits of executive overreach. Legal analysts are already projecting major, uphill battles for Trump’s team on flagship policy fights, specifically his authority to arbitrarily strip protections for immigrants and his highly controversial push to restrict birthright citizenship. (Source: Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, May 20, 2026)

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FROM THE ARCHIVES:

The article below is from March of 2025. It is as pertinent today as it was then.

I have listened to friends as they have told me their stories of different services they no longer have access to, other friends who have told me their businesses will most likely have to close this year, and still others who have suddenly lost their jobs. This is fascism. This is tyranny. And there are protests happening all over the US, even the world, in response to what’s happening. This is a good thing, but the one thing that would make the most difference is peaceful non-participation. If you haven’t read or watched Erica Chenowith, I highly suggest that you do. She has done quite a bit of research on political change and how to make it happen. As I am a “Walk-my-talk-er”, I have done the following things as a form of revolt:

Stopped paying taxes. I did this in 2016, I have not paid since the first time The Orange Cheetoh took office, legally.

Quit FB and IG. While I had a nice little following and connections with old friends on those platforms, my participation in them supports fascism. (I still run the PNW Artist IG under Makers Rebellion).

Quit Amazon. Same as above.

Created designs on stickers and shirts to inspire peaceful non-participation. I sell these and hand them out when I’m dressed as a giant bee.

I give people resources that help them to peacefully withdraw from activities that support fascism.

I buy extremely local and rarely if ever buy anything new.

Make no mistake, this country is being run by corporate interests, and it has for a very long time. In most historical contexts, when a president/leader of a country is killed, it’s most likely a sign that “the powers that be” wanted him out and wanted their own guy in. If you trace the failing of the middle class back far enough, you will see it starts around the Nixon/Kennedy era, and since that time:

Minimum wages, and most other wages have been stagnant, wages of CEOs have skyrocketed.

Social services, while making some gains, have been, for the most part, stagnant or cut.

Villainization of people who use social services as a “drain on the economy”.

Villainization of people of color in order to create division between the masses.

De-regulation of industries meant to serve the population, such as food and health care.

The constitution has over and over been ignored by the very people elected to uphold it.

The political system is a two party system, inhabited by people who all take money from different industries to pass regulations that are ultimately in the best interests of multinational corporations. This two party system is serving corporate interests, including religions, before it serves the will of the people.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. If you are still on the fence consider the story of Dolores Huerta:

“In 1955 Huerta began her career as an activist when she co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics. She also founded the Agricultural Workers Association. Through a CSO associate, Huerta met activist César Chávez, with whom she shared an interest in organizing farm workers. In 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW), which formed three year later. Huerta served as UFW vice president until 1999.

Despite ethnic and gender bias, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that followed. Throughout her work with the UFW, Huerta organized workers, negotiated contracts, advocated for safer working conditions including the elimination of harmful pesticides. She also fought for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Huerta was the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycotts in the late 1960s that led to a successful union contract by 1970.

In 1973, Huerta led another consumer boycott of grapes that resulted in the ground-breaking California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which allowed farm workers to form unions and bargain for better wages and conditions. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Huerta worked as a lobbyist to improve workers’ legislative representation. During the 1990s and 2000s, she worked to elect more Latinos and women to political office and has championed women’s issues.”

Huerta’s efforts led to 7 million american consumers boycotting grapes. Imagine that in the 60s, people cared enough about migrant farm workers to stop eating grapes so that they could work in humane conditions. Ask yourself if this would ever happen today. Ask yourself if Americans of today care as much about migrant farmworkers as they did in the 60s. There is a reason for this and it’s because our politicians paint these people as villains.

You have it in your power to go to your HR person and tell them you want to fill out a new W-4 that does not take any withholding for taxes. When it’s time to pay taxes, take an extension. If enough people boycott paying taxes, it will change things. Want to do one better? Talk to people about this. It’s perfectly legal.

No Taxation Without Representation

The phrase originated as a slogan during the American Revolution. It expressed the colonists’ belief that taxes imposed by the British Parliament were unconstitutional.

The Founding Fathers believed that the House of Representatives should be accountable to the people. The Origination Clause of the Constitution was included to ensure this.

The No Taxation Without Representation Act is a bill that would require Congressional approval for any tariffs that significantly impact American businesses and consumers. This would strengthen the system of checks and balances

These are the things I’m working on. Because Fascism. If you need more resources, let me know. I have them. The quote about Dolores Huerta was taken from the National Women’s History Museum website. The No Taxation Without Representation piece was taken from Google search on Firefox.

There are many things we can do in this time. The best thing we can do is be in a community of support by providing help, comfort, and resources to those in need. Above all else, we must stand against the tyranny that is the US government. The people of the world are suffering at the hands of the multinational corporate pigs who pull the strings. It’s time to take our power back, we have been giving it away for too long.

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Don’t let the bastards get you down. They will continue to be bastards unless we collectively do something about it.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. On June 2, civil rights organizations filed a class-action lawsuit (Coe v. Blanche) in the Southern District of New York. Over the last week (with court actions and briefing updates extending through June 11), the court moved forward with an Order to Show Cause for a Temporary Restraining Order. This legal action successfully paused and pushed back against federal grand jury subpoenas that attempted to force New York City hospital systems (specifically NYU Langone and Mount Sinai) to hand over the private medical records and identities of transgender patients who received gender-affirming care as minors.

2. On June 11, a coalition of major medical associations—including the American Academy of HIV Medicine, the HIV Medicine Association, and the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care—represented by Lambda Legal, filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The lawsuit directly challenges a new federal funding restriction that bars clinics from using Ryan White program funds if they recognize transgender patient identities or provide gender-affirming care. By hitting back via the Administrative Procedure Act, the medical community is actively using the courts to shield low-income, vulnerable LGBTQIA+ patients from disruptions to their primary and mental healthcare.

3. On Tuesday, June 9, a coalition of U.S. Senators—including Catherine Cortez Masto, Sheldon Whitehouse, Patty Murray, and Kirsten Gillibrand—officially re-introduced the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act ahead of the upcoming four-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision. The bill sets up a clear legal framework empowering individuals and healthcare providers to bring civil action against any state or local official who attempts to track, restrict, or penalize interstate travel for medical care.

4. The European Union's sweeping Pay Transparency Directive officially reached its implementation deadline in June 2026, triggering active compliance mandates for employers across member nations. Under the active 2026 rules, if an employer’s mandatory reporting reveals a gender pay gap of 5% or more, they are now legally required to conduct a formal, joint pay assessment alongside worker representatives and are subject to state-enforced financial penalties if they fail to rectify the disparity.

5. On June 9, the National Partnership for Women & Families, alongside MomsRising and the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, officially published the fourth national survey of maternal healthcare experiences, tracking data from nearly 4,000 new mothers. By mapping exactly where hospital systems are failing pregnant women—with a specific focus on structural disparities affecting women of color—the data is being actively deployed to push for the immediate passage of the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act and to safeguard Medicaid funding expansions for postpartum care.

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WHAT WE CALL OURSELVES MATTERS

As a teacher, an artist, and a general pot stirrer, I’m a big promoter of making and general artistry. In this way, I get to hear my least favorite phrase on a pretty regular basis: “I’m not really that creative.” If you know me at all, you know that if anyone says that around me, I argue. Why? Two very important reasons.

1. Everyone is born creative. It’s like saying, “I’m not much of a thinker”, or, “I’m not much of a feeler.” Being creative is a part of the human experience because it is an expression of who you are. Creativity is not just about art. It’s about an approach to life.

2. We believe what we say, and very often, we say things that other people have said to us that was really about their own insecurities and feelings of inadequacy. When we repeat things like, “I’m not really that creative,” we believe it more and more, until at last, it becomes true, because pivotal to a creative life is a deep trust and belief in one’s self.

You don’t have to call yourself an artist anymore than you have to call yourself a hammer or a toaster, but by god, you are creative because you are human. We are all inherently creative. BUT, some of us live in fear of our creativity. Why? Because we are afraid that we will discover entire galaxies of ourselves we had not known existed. Using our creativity accesses our souls. Yes, our SOULS. It doesn’t have to result in a painting, a piece of music, or a stand-up routine. BUT, it will, inevitably, put a little piece of your humanity out into a world that is in desperate need of it. So please, the next time you hear someone around you say that they are not creative, remember this little piece of writing, and let them know that whoever told them that might not be able to be saved, but they still can be. From the fear of knowing themself.

Creative endeavoring, whether it’s painting a house, arranging a room, baking a cake, or creating an outfit, feeds the soul because it accesses the soul. The more you use your soul, the more of it will be revealed to you. It’s simple physics.

Do me a favor on this new moon in Gemini. Remember that the world is burning. The US is in a state of collapse. And YOU, my friend, have nothing to lose by spending a little bit of time with yourself today plumbing your depths. Drop a line into your psyche and see how deep it goes. Pay yourself the compliment of focusing on the breadth and the depth of you. I don’t care what you call it. You don’t have to call it art or creativity or even ham on rye. It doesn’t matter. But take some time today to pull some crazy shit out of you. It might give you a giggle or something to ponder deeply while you’re sitting on the shitter.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. Kintsugi

2. Good Hang with Amy Poehler

3. Black Licorice

4. 3:10 to Yuma

5. The Will to Change

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your support, your likes, your shares, and your kind messages. I appreciate all your efforts to let me know this newsletter means something to you.

Don’t let the bastards get you down. They are bastards because they let other bastards get them down.

Sara

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On the other side of the paywall is another sample of my book, The Practical Guide to Personal Rebellion. I will be piecing it out down there over the next few months along with any other creative endeavoring I happen to do. If you want to see, all you have to do is

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GOOD NEWS

• Historic Tony Award Win for Trans Visibility: On June 7, prominent trans activist and designer Qween Jean made history at the 79th Annual Tony Awards. She became the first openly transgender person to win the Tony for Best Costume Design of a Musical for her acclaimed work on Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a production that heavily incorporates ballroom themes and honors historic trans icons.

  • Source: Gay City News

• Illinois Passes Sweeping LGBTQ+ and Foster Youth Protections: As its spring legislative session concluded, the Illinois legislature passed a robust series of measures aimed at safeguarding LGBTQ+ individuals. The new legislation protects access to gender-affirming care by removing hormone medications from the state’s prescription monitoring program and requiring state-licensed insurers to cover hormone prescriptions by 2028. It also establishes a protective framework giving LGBTQ+ youth in foster care a say in out-of-state placements.

  • Source: National Partnership for Women & Families / Capital News Illinois

• Federal Judge Signals Skepticism Over Idaho Bathroom Ban: During oral arguments on June 5, a federal district judge sharply questioned state attorneys over a strict new law criminalizing transgender restroom usage. The judge’s skepticism offers hope to LGBTQ+ advocates and plaintiffs who are seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the law before its scheduled July 1 implementation, arguing it is unconstitutionally vague and unenforceable.

  • Source: Boise State Public Radio / Oregon Public Broadcasting

• Historic Episcopal Appointment: Marking a massive milestone for religious inclusion, a Southern Episcopal Diocese announced the appointment of its first openly lesbian bishop, signaling a continued shift toward LGBTQ+ affirmation within traditional faith structures.

  • Source: LGBTQ+ News Broadcast via News Is Out Network

• Progress Pride Flag Raised Over the Wisconsin State Capitol: On June 1, Governor Tony Evers officially ordered the Progress Pride Flag to be flown over the East Wing of the State Capitol building for the month of June. Alongside the flag raising, Evers declared 2026 the “Year of the Neighbor” to emphasize community inclusion and double down on his commitment to vetoing discriminatory legislation.

  • Source: Official Office of the Governor of Wisconsin

• Michigan Launches Historic First LGBTQ+ Reception at Mackinac: On June 2, state officials and the Detroit Regional LGBT Chamber of Commerce celebrated the launch of Pride Month by highlighting the state’s first-ever official LGBTQ+ Reception at the prestigious Mackinac Policy Conference—a major step forward for queer executive and economic visibility in the Midwest.

  • Source: State of Michigan / Office of Governor Gretchen Whitmer

• American Medical Association Expands LGBTQ+ Clinical Frameworks: On June 5, the AMA held its 2026 LGBTQ+ Section Annual Meeting in Chicago. The medical authority advanced critical institutional work, hosting educational sessions on ethically translating emerging clinical evidence into standards of care to protect transgender and nonbinary patients, while actively reviewing national policies affecting queer medical students and physicians.

  • Source: American Medical Association (AMA)

• Presidential Recognition at the Stonewall Awards: On June 7, the Philadelphia Gay News hosted its Stonewall Awards brunch, celebrating legacy activists and icons of the movement. The event drew national focus to grassroots equality efforts, featuring a keynote address by President Biden affirming the cultural and civil importance of the LGBTQ+ community.

  • Source: Philadelphia Gay News / News Is Out Collaboration

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THE WEEK THAT WAS AND WASN’T

This week, very little happened, outwardly. That is to say that the sweet pup that I have been caring for ate some bad seafood (read: road oysters) and had to have some medical attention-type experiences. The good news? She is completely fine. The bad news? For some reason, the people in the neighborhood continue to throw oyster, mussel, and crab shells onto the road. So I’m staying frosty. Due to this turn of events, this newsletter might not be as “eventful” as it usually is. In lieu of this, I decided to research and write about the epic shit my mom did to further LGBTQIA+ rights in the state of Illinois and in my home village of Oak Park.

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The Firecracker of Oak Park: Remembering Ethel Cotovsky

Ethel Cotovsky was a goddamn force of nature. She didn’t just walk into a room; she commanded it with the absolute certainty of a woman who knew exactly who she was and exactly what the world owed her community. To the state of Illinois and the history books, she is a foundational pillar of suburban LGBTQ+ liberation. But to me? She was Ma. And she left a legacy that is nothing short of legendary.

When Ethel passed in 2006, she didn’t just leave behind memories; she left a literal void in the activist landscape so massive that the Illinois State Senate had to pause, take note, and pass an official resolution (Senate Resolution 0685) just to honor the sheer scale of her footprint.

Here is how my ma shook the system and paved the way for queer rights in Illinois:

Co-Founding and Steering OPALGA

Ethel was the fierce, beating heart of the Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Association (OPALGA). At a time when being queer in the suburbs meant hiding in the shadows, she stood squarely in the light.

• She served as the organization’s co-chairwoman during two critical eras (1992–1994, and again in 2004), keeping the machinery of the movement running on pure grit and radical love.

• She wasn’t content with just a nameless network; she aggressively championed the dream of a physical OPALGA LGBTQ+ community center. She knew the community needed a sanctuary, a place to gather, plot, and just be—and she fought like hell to make it happen.

The 1989 Human Rights Ordinance

Ma didn’t ask for permission to be protected; she demanded it. In 1989, she marched into local government chambers and delivered crucial, unwavering public testimony to force sexual orientation into Oak Park’s Human Rights Ordinance. Because of her voice and her refusal to back down, Oak Park became a progressive sanctuary town long before the rest of the country caught up.

Dragging Queer Culture into the Sunlight

Ethel understood that politics without culture is a dead end. As the leader of OPALGA’s Outreach Committee, she decided that if the neighborhood wasn’t ready for queer joy, she’d force them to watch it anyway.

• She launched the Oak Park Cultural Arts Festival, taking over Scoville Park for five straight years, and birthed a legendary series of Gay Cabarets.

• She dragged queer art, theater, and visibility out of dark city bars and planted them right on the manicured lawns of suburban parks. It was bold, it was beautiful, and it was entirely her doing.

Spotting the Elephant in the Room

Long before “intersectionality” became a trendy buzzword for academics to throw around, my ma was living it. Born into an activist Jewish family on Chicago’s West Side and armed with a social work background from UC Berkeley, she flatly refused to compartmentalize justice.

Whether she was operating within the Village Manager Association (VMA) or the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Ethel was famous for pointing out “the elephant in the room.” You couldn’t talk to her about gay rights without also talking about racial equity, poverty, and workers’ rights. She knew every single one of those fights was connected, and woe to anyone who tried to tell her otherwise.

She was loud, she was uncompromising, and she was unyielding in her refusal to play by respectable societal rules. She didn’t just witness history—she bent it to her will.

Sources & Documentation of Her Legacy:

• Illinois General Assembly: Senate Resolution 0685 (94th General Assembly), officially recording her civil rights achievements and community impact into the state archives upon her passing.

• Historical Archives of OPALGA (Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Association): Documenting her multiple tenures as co-chair, her foundational role on the Outreach Committee, and her decades of municipal policy advocacy.

Believe it or not, I didn’t know until after she had died that she had done all this. And I found out because the newspapers called my brother for a quote after her death. Then we dropped a Goog on her. (Google was pretty exciting back then). So it wasn’t just her cancer that she hid from us. It was her achievements as an activist. My mom was a fighter. Just like me.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. That picture of my mom. I might put it on a t-shirt.

2. Walking around a flowering neighborhood in the spring.

3. Writing

4. The Pacific Ocean

5. Things that are well used

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your support, your likes, shares, comments, questions, etc….

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. The eastern shelf of the Thwaites (Doomsday) Iceberg is disintegrating. It’s expected to completely go by the end of the year. Will it be enough to dump the iceberg into the drink? We will see.

   

2. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) concluded its landmark 75th annual clinical meeting by installing Dr. Camille A. Clare as its 77th president.

3. Miami Federal Judge Kathleen Williams took the unusual step of reopening Donald Trump’s civil lawsuit against the IRS. The move, prompted by a bipartisan brief from 35 former federal judges, allows for closer judicial scrutiny of the $1.8 billion settlement, amid third-party assertions that the deal lacked transparency and could constitute a fraud on the court. (The Guardian)

4. In Alabama, a panel of three federal judges blocked a newly drawn, Republican-friendly congressional map, ruling that it intentionally discriminated against Black voters. Separately, South Carolina state senators defied a push from the administration by voting 26-18 to reject mid-decade redistricting, defeating an effort to dismantle Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn's district. (The Washington Post)

5. In California, the State Senate passed landmark state-level voting rights legislation explicitly designed to protect access and prevent discriminatory redistricting independent of federal statutes. (Asian Law Caucus)

6. In Missouri, a state court blocked newly proposed voting restrictions, citing explicit state constitutional protections for free speech and the right to vote. (Brennan Center for Justice)

7. Engagement ahead of the 2026 midterms indicates a highly mobilized electorate. In recent special elections, such as a high-stakes race in central Michigan, voter turnout led to definitive results that maintained a competitive legislative balance, defying historical trends where the party out of the White House sees lower off-year participation. (PBS)

8. A three-judge federal panel in Alabama recently blocked a newly drawn congressional map on the grounds that it intentionally diluted minority voting power, reinforcing the role of the judiciary in policing fair representation. (AP News)

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BIGGER.

One of the wonderful things about happening upon art in unexpected places, besides the event itself, is that it reminds you that there are great hearts and minds out there doing epic shit. Sometimes, it might even remind you that going all in is the only way to approach making and art stuff. This was the thought that kept running through my head when I happened upon the Duchamp show in NYC during my Butterfly Rebellion Project. Believe it or not, I think it’s time to go bigger.

I’m definitely going to do that right after I finish my book, The Field Guide to Rebellious Behavior. If anyone reading this wants to be a guinea pig and give me feedback, I would sincerely appreciate it. If not, I’ll do it the old fashioned way and use my editor-ish person.

As I’ve been writing, I have revisited projects I have created over the course of my professional artist career so that I can use them in a story telling capacity. It’s been nice to see that even though there were spans of time where I wasn’t making a ton, (thanks, love and romance!), I was still dabbling in a satisfying way. A lot of found object work and a bit of commission painting work during the creatively lean times. I completely forgot that I had created my own religion, which is extremely rebellious. One of the central tenets is that only one person can practice, so no proselytizing. It’s the best feature of that belief system, IMHO. That and the very lean size of the document on which the system is based. A Holy Bible, it ain’t.

POTTERY REPORT (Pronounced Rapport)

Since I’m in a new studio, I’m using different clay bodies and glazes. The new stuff looks…..intensely whimsical. Maybe that’s what I’ll call the line: Intense Whimsy.

I’ve been doing stripes and polka dots more often since my return from the rails. These aren’t colors towards which I would normally gravitate, but I think they work on a certain level. More stripes and polka dots coming down the pike. I’m revisiting my candelabra phase this month as well, and as soon as I have pics, I will post them. I’m selling this work at Cafe Velo in Bellingham and at The Lucky Dumpster in Edison.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Freedom

2. Turtle sundaes

3. A good hot cup of spicy chai tea. My current fave is at Cafe Blue in Bellingham.

4. Spring dog walks among the blooming flowers of the PNW

5. Sunsets through the trees over the far edge of the Pacific ocean.

6. I didn’t let my youth pass me by without doing everything I really wanted to do. I’m very lucky in that way. I intend to live the rest of my days in the same manner.

Thanks again for reading, commenting, liking, and sharing. It means a lot.

If you have been thinking about committing to a paid subscription, here is your chance.

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Don’t let the bastards get you down. That’s what they’re trying to do, so please don’t let them.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan (May 24th), his 85th. Born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota, Dylan renamed himself after the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

2. The UK arrested its prince.

3. Littering has declined in the US 34% since 2020.

4. Korea sentenced its former president to life in prison

5. Magnolia Mother’s Trust provides 1K per month to black mothers for the first year of baby’s life. This is the longest running guaranteed income program in the US.

6. Brazil sentenced its former president to 27 years in prison.

7. Over 400 independent bookstores opened in 2025. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. jumped by 70%.

8. Peru arrested and jailed its former president.

9. A Houston re-training program trains the formerly incarcerated to install solar panels and provides a path to stability.

10. The Phillipines arrested its former president.

11. The Alice Austen House in NYC has planted The Queer Ecologies Garden. Many of the plants are non-binary or sex-changing species.

    The Pollinator by Sara Young is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I Don’t Think Anyone is Surprised.

As you might have noticed from the image above, I’ve started a new project on YouTube which has been informed by The Butterfly Rebellion that I wrapped up a week or so ago. One of the more stunning revelations I had during the project was the amount of effort we put into comforting or buoying victims of cruelty. I went over the content I created while I was a bee, all the videos I made attempting to inspire joy, love, and kindness, and then considered this work in the context of my experiences on the train, in the libraries, and on the streets of the cities in the US.

The level of desperation in this country is high. It is certainly higher than the last time I completed a project of this nature. The more I spoke to people on the streets, and the more I considered in what ways I could help people, something kept coming back to me. The system has failed. The rubric of unregulated capitalism trains us to behave as if the good of the many is not a worthy goal.

I thought back to what brought me from the miserable life I once led to the life I lead now, and a few distinct conversations came back to me, which were all of a “tough love” nature. These conversations happened with different people, friends, relatives, co-workers, and people with whom I attended art school.

I decided that for now, the best way I can help is to teach spiritualism through the lens of the asshole. While this is meant to be light-hearted, it is also a tact I believe could actually help. I’m approaching it as an “asshole in recovery” giving other assholes a little enlightened advice on how to not be such assholes.

As with all my other social media projects, I will do it until I decide to do something else. It’s quite freeing to use social media as less of a method of possible income and more of a philosophical whetstone. The channel, the Hard Edge of Kindness, refers to the harsh truths we must embrace about ourselves if we are to become better people. It’s been my long held belief that if we want a better society, we must be better people. I’m going to give this a shot for a while and see if it works out.

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The Philosopher is Stoned

Last night I had two very different conversations; one about the state of the political environment in the US today and what has precipitated it and where it might reasonably go, and one about alchemy, astrological omens, and the nature of the cosmos. I can sum up both conversations with one phrase:

“Today’s magic is tomorrow’s science.”

-Steven Gammon

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THINGS I LOVE

1. Amethysts

2. Conversations with people who know more than me

3. Flowering trees

4. Endings

5. New ideas

Thank you, you stone-cold weirdos. I am so lucky to know you. I am even luckier to be able to write down my thoughts, feelings and strange ideas for you.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

P.S. I’m more resolved than ever to not be held back by the realities of our present unpleasantness, in fact, current events are pushing me to move in a way that conveys this mindset.

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GOOD NEWS

1. The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly is being brought back from the brink of extinction in a women’s prison in Washington state.

2. Past Lives is a thriving makers’ space in Portland Oregon, founded by a formerly incarcerated man who gained skills while incarcerated to create the space. The center provides access to tools, spaces, and materials for 200 per month, and there are 200 members, some of whom were also formerly incarcerated.

3. Operation TRAP is reducing waste getting into streams and waterways across the US through high and low tech waste trapping mechanisms.

4. “Together against the far right” movement shattered a record on Saturday, March 28th in London. 500,000 people showed up to demonstrate.

5. Spain’s conservative People’s Party lost its absolute majority. The leftwing Adelante Andalucía party climbed from two seats to eight, and the leftist coalition Por Andalucía held on to the five seats in won four years ago.

6. On May 14, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency stay that temporarily blocked a lower-court ruling from Louisiana. This ensures that women can continue to legally access mifepristone via telehealth and mail-order pharmacies nationwide while the broader litigation continues. (Source: Associated Press / PBS News, May 14, 2026)

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The Self Portrait in Art

They say that everything you create is some form of a self portrait. Staying at my brother’s house this past weekend gave me time to ruminate on that, as so many of the surfaces of his house, walls, shelves, and tables, are covered with my work from the past 40 years.

These many items pushed me to reflect on the processes I moved through to create the work I have produced. Through time, I have learned to trust my voice more and more. The more recent work is much stronger, visually, and also, seems more like me. The older work is pretty clearly in search mode, vaguely pleasing, but not significantly interesting.

In the later work, it feels more like I am trusting my voice and allowing more of myself to come through. Making the work, no matter what it was, pottery, painting, drawings, sculpture, was a method I used to find myself. I don’t know if anyone else could tell by looking at my work, but I sure can.

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Trust and Self-abandon

I’m still reeling from the dissolution of my last relationship. How was I not able to see the cruelty? Was I ignoring it because it wasn’t yet aimed at me? Either way, I’m in a place again where I am working back up to trusting myself, and doing quite a bit of work around guarding myself against self-abandon. I have been heartened to look at the work I have created and see all the ways I have trusted myself in the past. It comforts me to know that the last straw was when he asked me to do less art so that I could spend more time with him.

AWAKENED BEE

Something happened between Everett and NYC. During my first stop in Spokane, I felt very sick, and I decided to sit with it and figure it out. Realizing that the illness I felt stemmed from emotion was not a revelation, but understanding the sadness and the specific situation the illness arose from was stunning.

I have come to see that my body will no longer tolerate self abandonment. I have done it all my life. For parents, friends, partners, relatives. All to be loved. All to feel the comfort of camaraderie. If I choose what is not best for me, if I choose someone else’s self interest over my own, if I ignore my needs in order to fulfill some obligation, my body will rebel. It feels a lot like the other things my body will no longer tolerate: too much alcohol, sugar, wheat, dairy, or lack of sleep. My aged body will no more allow me to ignore my emotional needs than it will my physical.

And the voice that I have been honing inside myself, ever since I picked up the Tao Te Ching when I was 20, is the voice I want to listen to, because it’s the voice that knows me, loves me, and listens to the universe running through me.

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THINGS I LOVE

1. this version of Across the Universe

2. Creating hope

3. Maya Rudolph

4. Hot fudge sundaes

5. wool socks

Thanks you stone-cold weirdos. I appreciate you reading my ramblings. I use them to understand myself as much as for anything else.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

• Corporate Accountability Mandates: Legislative shifts in several major economic hubs now require transparent, audited reporting on pay equity. By stripping away the veil of proprietary data, these laws are forcing an end to the calculated undervaluation of labor based on gender and race. Companies found lagging are facing immediate fiscal penalties rather than empty PR reprimands.

• Grassroots Legal Precedents: Various advocacy groups have successfully challenged gerrymandered districts that historically diluted the voting power of marginalized communities. New, independent redistricting commissions are being established, ensuring that political representation actually reflects the demographic reality of the population rather than the strategic whims of those in power.

• The Diversification of Venture Capital: Data indicates a significant uptick in funding for startups led by women of color. This isn’t charity; it’s a market correction. Investors are finally acknowledging that ignoring these founders meant leaving billions in untapped innovation on the table. The shift is dismantling the old boys’ club gatekeeping of the tech and finance sectors.

• Educational Curriculum Overhauls: Multiple school districts have integrated comprehensive, intersectional histories into their core requirements. By rejecting the sanitized versions of the past, these institutions are equipping the next generation with the critical tools necessary to recognize and dismantle structural biases before they become entrenched.

• Healthcare Equity Initiatives: New federal guidelines are prioritizing the elimination of maternal mortality disparities. By funneling resources into community-based care and mandatory bias training for medical professionals, the system is finally addressing the lethal negligence that has historically characterized the treatment of women of color.

Where The Power Lies

I’m in the last couple weeks of The Butterfly Rebellion Project. I’m in San Francisco now, having just been in Oakland and San Luis Obispo. I’ll be back May 13th ish in Washington state, though I don’t know for sure where I’m going to settle down.

This project has shown me that most people want to have hope-in themselves, in each other, in the future. No matter who we voted for or what god we believe in, we all want to believe that things will get better- but we have been led to believe in “the other”. There is always a “them” we can blame for the situation we find ourselves in. Equally, there is also a “them” from whom we are waiting to get permission.

For those of us who have never wanted El Presidente in place, we are busy blaming the large group of people who believed the lies about his greatness. But we are, in one way or another, all to blame. We are all lie believers. Our political system is thoroughly corrupted by a small group of people who want total control, and we are giving it to them. If our society is a reflection of who we are, it is clear that we must become better humans.

As I have walked the streets of these cities, smiling, waving, and handing out butterflies, I have felt a collective hope, a shared desire for a system that supports everyone. But it seems that no one is prepared for what must happen first, though it’s entirely necessary to get to where we’re going.

The system is crumbling. So many people think that it’s a bad thing, but no system that supports oppression, manipulation, exploitation, and terrorism should stand. This system must go away for us to build something that is truly equitable, just and compassionate. It’s going to have to get worse before it gets better, but this horrible system must fall.

I’ve been wrestling with the idea of power dynamics ever since I left on this 53 day journey. I’ve been working with many ideas of my future- what I can do, who I can be, and how I can help people once I’m there. I’ve been applying for jobs and strangely I’ve been getting job interviews. But most people I talk to hate their jobs. Not everything about their jobs, but they have enough of a disdain that it taints the rest of it. Why? The people managing them are awful bottom line people. Most are in the familiar system that rewards the bad workers with less work and punishes the good workers with more- and often more than they can handle. The premium our society puts on wealth borders on sickness. The blindness we have to the importance of love and community borders on debilitating.

If we are to have a better society we have to wake up from the sickness of greed and move into the mindset of community. How? We each have to do the work. There is nothing more beneficial right now than to look at ourselves honestly. We must stop giving away our power, and more importantly, stop waiting for permission to do what our hearts pull us toward. We have been trained into believing in authority, trained into believing that weak, manipulative threatening behavior is strength. Our ideas of leadership have been skewed by our society’s propensity to see cruelty as fortitude.

If the people in power must lie in order to acquire and keep their power, they no longer deserve our allegiance.

ART AND THE NEED FOR MAKING

If you have the time and opportunity, start a practice. You don’t have to monetize it or really even tell anyone about it. But, if you spend some time every day on making, you will see parts of yourself that are unknown to you. You will glimpse insight, brilliance, and skills you had no idea you possessed. You will have access to a part of your spirit that has been lying dormant waiting for you to use it. This deep hidden segment of your being is your inner knowing, and the more you make, the more you trust yourself with any creative process, the more you will activate this knowing, and the more your confidence, self-esteem, and self-trust will grow.

Making isn’t about earning space in galleries or shops. It’s about human potential. Art is about what you are capable of feeling, seeing, and expressing. These abilities are pivotal to a healthy human spirit. They are the key to self love. They are what this world needs from its inhabitants. I recently came upon a quote in The Wisdom Letter:

If you have any inkling of a need to start baking, singing, writing, knitting, or piano playing, do it. You will be so happy at the depths of your dimensionality this practice will reveal. Being better humans includes being whole. Having some type of making practice is just something that humans do.

Speaking of which, I’m up for The People’s Artist, which would include a show and a feature in an art magazine. I would love your vote for The People’s Artist. It just takes a minute. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your support.

Chin up. There are so many wonderful things happening in the world. Find those things and celebrate them. Fill any of your social media feeds with good news. The bad news you are being fed is very often not true and nothing you can do anything about, anyway.

This is what I mean when I say

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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THE END OF THE ROAD

“I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel thin... sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.”

Can I get an AMEN?

While the above quote from Fellowship of the Ring pertains to a very particular situation, and maybe not very similar to what I’m experiencing, I must say, traveling by train for this long, wearing a bee costume constantly, and always being “on” for strangers is very challenging. I will be feeling the effects of this project for years to come. It has shown me dimensions of myself I had not to this point known, and has shown me the world in a different spectrum of light.

One of the more potent realizations is that human engagement is sacred. The ability to engage, to commit to a moment, is a meaningful way of being human, and being privy to the engagement of others waters down its power. Giving away my connection to others, even selling it to get likes or subscribers, feels cheap. I can’t do it anymore.

At the beginning of this project, I really wanted to capture everything on film, every interaction, every smile, every wave. But the more I attempted to capture these things, the more I realized I was distracted from the true power of the project. The more I attempted to capture “social proof”, the more watered down and meaningless my interactions became, and the interactions are the whole point of this project. Being distracted from the very human I’m attempting to reach out to in order to show other humans that it’s happening feels ridiculous. When I stopped, everything blossomed, including my ability to get everything from the moment I needed to carry on.

This is grueling work, and it was made more grueling by my self-doubt in the first week or so of this project. The remedy to this was the magic in the conversations I had with strangers.

For instance, yesterday on the bus I had a very interesting conversation with a two year old. She really loved my antenna. As I got off the bus, she yelled out, “BYE BEE!!” and everyone laughed. I will never forget that moment.

I might be home next week at this time. Thanks so much for following along and supporting this project. It means the world to me. And, if you have time, please do vote for me as The People’s Artist. It would give me opportunities that might propel this work even farther.

Thanks again for your support. It means the world to me.

Sara

Good News

1. Cherie DeVaux becomes first trainer to win the Kentucky Derby while Womaning.

2. Philadelphia passed an ordinance that requires employers to provide accommodations for periods and perimenopause. While typing this I had the opportunity to add the word perimenopause to my computer’s dictionary. So everyone is winning.

3. Christina Koch orbited the moon while Womaning.

4. Today the Supreme (?!?!) Court preserved temporary access to the abortion pill, mifepristone. This ensures the pill will remain available while legal challenges abound. The medication accounts for almost 2/3 of US abortions. The decision blocks lower court decisions that would have required in-person doctor visits.

5. As of 2026, women make up the majority of the US non-farm workforce. This means that women are effectively the backbone of the current US economy. My guess is that this won’t change the pay inequity that still pervades our society. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

6. It’s Women’s Health Week. As a way of marking progress, I can report that researchers at Yale and Harvard are presenting data from human-organ-on-a-chip tech tuned to female biology. This is important because to this point, women have been treated as “small men” in research and trials.

7. As of this spring, the number of people who work as college presidents and chancellors while Womaning has jumped 27% since 2017. The number of people who are athletics directors while Womaning have jumped 82% over the last decade.

8. After experimenting with using AI for reports of good news, I’ve decided that I will no longer be doing that. This practice takes away one of the great joys of my week.

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THE END OF THE ROAD

This morning I find myself in one of my favorite spaces, Olympia Coffee Roasters. I’m getting some work done while I wait to get into my Air BNB so that I can do even more work.

I have come to the conclusion that some things should be kept sacred. Many of my interactions on this project have been incredibly powerful, and would have been watered down if I had been distracted by recording them. This means I either need a camera person or I will continue to record the interactions I have in my social engagement projects with the written word.

Why is my mother at the top of this newsletter? Because after decades of pain and torment, I have finally come to the realization that she was the exact mother I needed to get me to where I needed to go, and for this and so many other reasons, I have made my peace with my childhood under her watch. After thousands of hours of therapy, tens of pieces of furniture wrecked, many phone calls violently ended, and a wide variety of alternative therapies, I have come to this rather obvious realization in a pretty unremarkable way. I must add though that if I were a crack addict I might not feel this way. One more reason to be glad that I’m not a crack addict.

I’m giving myself a couple weeks to let things settle before I make any big decisions, but there are a few things I know for sure:

1. I’m not coming back to Bellingham unless something crazy and unexpected happens.

2. It might be time for me to make a final decision on my life path.

3. I will be focusing more keenly on my writing for the foreseeable future.

4. It’s not true that whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. Suffering in order to get where I’m going isn’t a requirement for me anymore. That’s a capitalist patriarchal mantra created to keep people poor and desperate. I’m declining that.

5. Watching The Devil Wears Prada 2 at the end of my tour of the US was a bummer. The disgusting level of luxury and wealth was too much for me to stand after traveling around the US talking to the working poor for two months. I can’t bear to look at any of the reports from The Met Gala. My head might explode.

6. There are all kinds of ways to resist. The level of cruelty and corruption in our society makes it easy. I will be spending my spare time figuring out more glorious and creative ways to resist as the empire crumbles.

7. I’m going to continue making art so that I don’t lose my mind.

The Butterfly Rebellion

Like so many of my art projects, I have discovered parts of myself that I had either forgotten about or had no awareness. The biggest part of this project has been speaking with people from a specific income class, most of whom are desperate for some type of hope. Many are weary from ill treatment, crushed dreams, and a world that more and more seems impossible to recognize. It’s a scary time. The system is crumbling. The people of the world are rising. I spend a lot of time looking for good news, and I can tell you, there is a lot of it. If you are focusing on the bad, you’re missing a lot.

It’s up to you, ultimately. Looking for hope, approval, permission, or even magic outside of yourself is less productive than spending the time it’s going to take to find those things within you. If you need hope, create it. You have the capacity. Then, share it. Demonstrate your ability to put something into the world that is inspiring. When you do that, you will create your own hope. Stop waiting for someone outside of you to provide it because even if it comes, it won’t be anywhere near as powerful as the stuff you do to provide your own type of hopeful world.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Olympia, WA

2. Not coffee. (Yes, I love that I don’t like coffee. Especially in the PNW)

3. I’ve come back around to Joe Pug. He is brilliant.

4. Portland. Again. I’ve come back around.

5. Freedom

6. Sam Cooke

Don’t let the bastards get you down. Seriously.

Last week for some reason my newsletter didn’t get sent out properly so you might be doubling up this week. Sorry.

Sara

Thanks for stopping by and reading this stuff. Let me know what you think if you’re moved to do so.

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GOOD NEWS

• Corporate Accountability Mandates: Legislative shifts in several major economic hubs now require transparent, audited reporting on pay equity. By stripping away the veil of proprietary data, these laws are forcing an end to the calculated undervaluation of labor based on gender and race. Companies found lagging are facing immediate fiscal penalties rather than empty PR reprimands.

• Grassroots Legal Precedents: Various advocacy groups have successfully challenged gerrymandered districts that historically diluted the voting power of marginalized communities. New, independent redistricting commissions are being established, ensuring that political representation actually reflects the demographic reality of the population rather than the strategic whims of those in power.

• The Diversification of Venture Capital: Data indicates a significant uptick in funding for startups led by women of color. This isn’t charity; it’s a market correction. Investors are finally acknowledging that ignoring these founders meant leaving billions in untapped innovation on the table. The shift is dismantling the old boys’ club gatekeeping of the tech and finance sectors.

• Educational Curriculum Overhauls: Multiple school districts have integrated comprehensive, intersectional histories into their core requirements. By rejecting the sanitized versions of the past, these institutions are equipping the next generation with the critical tools necessary to recognize and dismantle structural biases before they become entrenched.

• Healthcare Equity Initiatives: New federal guidelines are prioritizing the elimination of maternal mortality disparities. By funneling resources into community-based care and mandatory bias training for medical professionals, the system is finally addressing the lethal negligence that has historically characterized the treatment of women of color.

Where The Power Lies

I’m in the last couple weeks of The Butterfly Rebellion Project. I’m in San Francisco now, having just been in Oakland and San Luis Obispo. I’ll be back May 13th ish in Washington state, though I don’t know for sure where I’m going to settle down.

This project has shown me that most people want to have hope-in themselves, in each other, in the future. No matter who we voted for or what god we believe in, we all want to believe that things will get better- but we have been led to believe in “the other”. There is always a “them” we can blame for the situation we find ourselves in. Equally, there is also a “them” from whom we are waiting to get permission.

For those of us who have never wanted El Presidente in place, we are busy blaming the large group of people who believed the lies about his greatness. But we are, in one way or another, all to blame. We are all lie believers. Our political system is thoroughly corrupted by a small group of people who want total control, and we are giving it to them. If our society is a reflection of who we are, it is clear that we must become better humans.

As I have walked the streets of these cities, smiling, waving, and handing out butterflies, I have felt a collective hope, a shared desire for a system that supports everyone. But it seems that no one is prepared for what must happen first, though it’s entirely necessary to get to where we’re going.

The system is crumbling. So many people think that it’s a bad thing, but no system that supports oppression, manipulation, exploitation, and terrorism should stand. This system must go away for us to build something that is truly equitable, just and compassionate. It’s going to have to get worse before it gets better, but this horrible system must fall.

I’ve been wrestling with the idea of power dynamics ever since I left on this 53 day journey. I’ve been working with many ideas of my future- what I can do, who I can be, and how I can help people once I’m there. I’ve been applying for jobs and strangely I’ve been getting job interviews. But most people I talk to hate their jobs. Not everything about their jobs, but they have enough of a disdain that it taints the rest of it. Why? The people managing them are awful bottom line people. Most are in the familiar system that rewards the bad workers with less work and punishes the good workers with more- and often more than they can handle. The premium our society puts on wealth borders on sickness. The blindness we have to the importance of love and community borders on debilitating.

If we are to have a better society we have to wake up from the sickness of greed and move into the mindset of community. How? We each have to do the work. There is nothing more beneficial right now than to look at ourselves honestly. We must stop giving away our power, and more importantly, stop waiting for permission to do what our hearts pull us toward. We have been trained into believing in authority, trained into believing that weak, manipulative threatening behavior is strength. Our ideas of leadership have been skewed by our society’s propensity to see cruelty as fortitude.

If the people in power must lie in order to acquire and keep their power, they no longer deserve our allegiance.

ART AND THE NEED FOR MAKING

If you have the time and opportunity, start a practice. You don’t have to monetize it or really even tell anyone about it. But, if you spend some time every day on making, you will see parts of yourself that are unknown to you. You will glimpse insight, brilliance, and skills you had no idea you possessed. You will have access to a part of your spirit that has been lying dormant waiting for you to use it. This deep hidden segment of your being is your inner knowing, and the more you make, the more you trust yourself with any creative process, the more you will activate this knowing, and the more your confidence, self-esteem, and self-trust will grow.

Making isn’t about earning space in galleries or shops. It’s about human potential. Art is about what you are capable of feeling, seeing, and expressing. These abilities are pivotal to a healthy human spirit. They are the key to self love. They are what this world needs from its inhabitants. I recently came upon a quote in The Wisdom Letter:

If you have any inkling of a need to start baking, singing, writing, knitting, or piano playing, do it. You will be so happy at the depths of your dimensionality this practice will reveal. Being better humans includes being whole. Having some type of making practice is just something that humans do.

Speaking of which, I’m up for The People’s Artist, which would include a show and a feature in an art magazine. I would love your vote for The People’s Artist. It just takes a minute. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your support.

Chin up. There are so many wonderful things happening in the world. Find those things and celebrate them. Fill any of your social media feeds with good news. The bad news you are being fed is very often not true and nothing you can do anything about, anyway.

This is what I mean when I say

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

Share

THE END OF THE ROAD

“I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel thin... sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to.”

Can I get an AMEN?

While the above quote from Fellowship of the Ring pertains to a very particular situation, and maybe not very similar to what I’m experiencing, I must say, traveling by train for this long, wearing a bee costume constantly, and always being “on” for strangers is very challenging. I will be feeling the effects of this project for years to come. It has shown me dimensions of myself I had not to this point known, and has shown me the world in a different spectrum of light.

One of the more potent realizations is that human engagement is sacred. The ability to engage, to commit to a moment, is a meaningful way of being human, and being privy to the engagement of others waters down its power. Giving away my connection to others, even selling it to get likes or subscribers, feels cheap. I can’t do it anymore.

At the beginning of this project, I really wanted to capture everything on film, every interaction, every smile, every wave. But the more I attempted to capture these things, the more I realized I was distracted from the true power of the project. The more I attempted to capture “social proof”, the more watered down and meaningless my interactions became, and the interactions are the whole point of this project. Being distracted from the very human I’m attempting to reach out to in order to show other humans that it’s happening feels ridiculous. When I stopped, everything blossomed, including my ability to get everything from the moment I needed to carry on.

This is grueling work, and it was made more grueling by my self-doubt in the first week or so of this project. The remedy to this was the magic in the conversations I had with strangers.

For instance, yesterday on the bus I had a very interesting conversation with a two year old. She really loved my antenna. As I got off the bus, she yelled out, “BYE BEE!!” and everyone laughed. I will never forget that moment.

I might be home next week at this time. Thanks so much for following along and supporting this project. It means the world to me. And, if you have time, please do vote for me as The People’s Artist. It would give me opportunities that might propel this work even farther.

Thanks again for your support. It means the world to me.

Sara

GOOD NEWS

1. The No Kings Energy is Going Mainstream

We’re seeing a massive pivot in how people resist. In the U.S., the No Kings movement has mobilized millions, and it’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a horizontal, leaderless structure—the nightmare of any autocrat because there’s no single head to cut off. When a movement stops being about a specific politician and starts being a national resistance to tyranny, it becomes an immune response that a regime can’t simply arrest its way out of.

2. The Great Democratic Boiler Room Successes

While the national stage looks like a dumpster fire, the plumbing of democracy is actually getting an upgrade. In the 2025 local and state elections, voters ignored the authoritarian noise and focused on the ground game. We’re seeing competitive authoritarianism meet its match in boring, effective, local victories. Autocrats hate local power because they can’t control every school board and city council from a gilded tower.

3. The Collapse of the Infallible Leader Myth

Look at South Korea and Hungary. When leaders tried the old martial law or restrictive NGO laws playbook, it fractured their own bases. In South Korea, even the conservatives balked at the overreach. When the people who are supposed to be on your side start looking at you like you’ve lost your mind, the regime isn’t just under attack; it’s hollowed out from the inside.

4. The Resilience of the Un-Purgeable

The attempt to turn the U.S. civil service and military into personal loyalist squads is hitting a wall of institutional muscle memory. There is a deep, quiet resilience in the non-state sectors—media, civil society, and the legal system. Even with a compliant Supreme Court, the sheer volume of lawsuits and whistleblowers acts like sand in the gears of the machine. They wanted a smooth takeover; they got a bureaucratic quagmire.

5. Global Freedom is Catching its Second Wind

Despite the doom-scrolling stats, 2025 saw countries like Syria, Sri Lanka, and Bolivia recorded the largest gains in freedom. Even in the middle of a global authoritarian push, people are fighting back to regain their rights. Autocracy is a high-maintenance system that requires constant repression to survive. Democracy, however, is the default setting of a population that’s tired of being told what to do. The autocrats have to win every day; we only have to win enough times to break the spell.

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THE BIGGEST LOSER

Riding on the train exposes you to all kinds of people you might not normally run into in your daily life. This is the blessing and the curse of Amtrak. The exposure can be a tonic or a toxin. Largely, it depends on mindset.

I was enroute from Denver to Reno the other day when the two older men across the aisle from me began talking about their various pains and injuries that have sprung from a life in law enforcement. This was a segway from the lamentations they shared about no longer being able to say certain words in public and how challenging that was for both of them.

One of the gentlemen told a long and circuitous tail about back pain and nerve damage which resulted in one of his four daughters suggesting he try CBD or some alternative to that to manage his pain. After he conveyed to her that said possible solution was a little too “New Age-y” for him, she was able to convince him to try it, and to his great surprise, worked well to reduce his pain. He then went into a long monologue about how challenging it had been for him to get off the many different opiates, (which he had not questioned and had no problem consuming), his doctors had prescribed to help him with his pain.

As I sat there in my bee suit, rolling my eyes and judging them for this and so many other things they had been saying, I realized the hypocrisy in my judgment, and began examining my own beliefs around “those types of people” and their “world view”. I also had a cartoon image flash in my head of the three of us sitting across the aisle from each other, one of us dressed in a bee suit judging the more regular-looking people across from her as “crazy”.

Since then, I have been ruminating on all the ways people look for solutions to reduce their own suffering, physical, emotional, and spiritual. My very long and winding road with various healing modalities has brought untold numbers of strange and wonderful new experiences into my life only because I was willing to try anything to alleviate the suffering I was feeling. Some of my decisions, made in haste and extreme pain, might not have been the best for me, but my mindset was not one in which a solid decision could be made. Like so many people, I did the best I could with the energy, funds, and information I had at the time.

This is why suffering is a powerful tool. It’s a powerful human condition that unites us. If we allow our prejudices to keep us from healing, if we allow our fear of the other to keep us from justice or equity, we suffer further. If we can open ourselves up to the nature of the universal consciousness of suffering, we can heal ourselves and our communities. We can heal the planet.

We have a tendency to let our suffering divide us. We believe that no one has suffered as we have, no one has had to struggle the way we have. But suffering is suffering to the one who feels it, and in an effort to heal and bridge the divide between us, considering the suffering of others must be part of our own healing. We cannot go on blaming others for the situations in which we find ourselves. We cannot go on judging those who choose different paths to relief. Acknowledging our own suffering and addressing it honestly can be a path to addressing the suffering we might inadvertently cause.

We are in a time of possibility. The old world is crumbling. Systemic hatred is being called into question. The inequities of this world are being addressed. It’s time to acknowledge our suffering as a shared experience, and not one that makes us different from each other. The path through this is the acknowledgement that we all create and endure suffering, and in that shared experience is an avenue to understanding and compassion.

Thanks so much for reading. Want more? There is way more on the other side of the paywall. Consider supporting the work with a small monthly donation.

And don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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GOOD NEWS

1. The Hungarian Ousting: A Masterclass in Ending Entrenchment

In April 2026, the world watched as Viktor Orbán—the architect of the modern illiberal democracy playbook—was decisively unseated after 16 years. This wasn’t a narrow win; it was a total rejection. The Tisza Party secured over 53% of the vote with a staggering 80% voter turnout.

Why it matters: Orbán had spent over a decade gerrymandering districts and capturing the media. His defeat proves that even the most sophisticated authoritarian “fortresses” have a breaking point when the grassroots stop playing by the regime’s rules and start building their own infrastructure.

2. The No Kings Mobilization across the American Heartland

On March 28, 2026, the No Kings Day protests saw over 3,300 coordinated events across the United States. While the media often focuses on coastal hubs, two-thirds of these RSVPs came from outside major urban centers—surfacing in conservative strongholds like Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

Why it matters: This wasn’t just partisan bickering. In places like Little Havana, Miami, the movement united local residents fighting evictions with activists protesting federal overreach. It signaled a rare, cross-ideological fatigue with centralized executive dominance that transcends the usual red-blue divide.

3. The Signal-Led Sovereignty of the Twin Cities

In response to the aggressive Operation Metro Surge early in 2026, the people of Minneapolis didn’t wait for a court to save them; they built a digital and physical shield. Local organizers have integrated nearly 5% of every neighborhood into encrypted Signal communication networks—roughly 12,000 active participants—to monitor and deter federal raids in real-time.

Why it matters: This is the system falling apart in the best way possible. When federal institutions fail to protect residents, the residents become the institution. It’s a shift from top-down advocacy to proximity-based power.

4. The Democratic Resilience of the “Partly Free”

While the headlines often scream about the death of democracy, Bolivia, Fiji, and Malawi all defied the trend in late 2025 and early 2026 by being upgraded from “Partly Free” to “Free” status. Each country saw a surge in judicial independence and the strengthening of the rule of law driven by mass popular demand for transparency.

Why it matters: These aren’t just statistics; they are proof of course correction. They show that the authoritarian wave is not an inevitability, but a choice that can be revoked by a citizenry that refuses to be intimidated.

5. The Rise of “Constitutional Local Autonomy”

In early 2026, a burgeoning legal and social movement centered on Local Autonomy Guarantees (LAGs) began sweeping through various U.S. states. Tired of state legislatures overriding municipal decisions on everything from healthcare to housing, cities are increasingly invoking Home Rule provisions to bypass centralized state control.

Why it matters: This represents a fundamental fracture in the hierarchy of power. People are no longer asking for permission from the capital; they are reclaiming the constitutional right to govern themselves at the level where they actually live. It is the ultimate antidote to authoritarianism: making the top irrelevant by strengthening the “bottom.”

The Magic in New Orleans

The Amtrak trains are almost always late. This is not a complaint, I’m simply stating a fact, and as I board every train, I wonder what might happen during the trip that will cause me to change/alter plans in order to do the things I need to do for the next pollination. Will an engine blow up? Will a freight train get stuck ahead of us? Will some type of storm slow the train down? Will the train lose electric? It’s all part of the wonderful guessing game that is riding on Amtrak.

In the case of NYC to NOLA, my train was 2 hours late. Due to this event, I took a lyft to my hotel, the car, somewhat broken down and shabby, was driven by a cheerful young man studying for a nursing exam via audiobook. As we drove to the hotel, a five minute ride, the woman on the speaker asked at one point how to diagnose a person who believes in magic. “Schizotypal” was the word that flowed from the young man’s lips, in sync with the word the woman also stated. I couldn’t help but laugh, sitting in the back of his car dressed in full Pollinator attire. I wondered what he might diagnose my various beliefs as.

This is something I have been working through over the last few weeks, the widely varying world views we all carry and how those inform our interactions and relationships. In the last several months, I have been focusing on releasing expectation and watching where my judgment pops up to limit my view of people or places. I had been practicing this in my various making projects as well as with my interactions with new people and events. The various interpersonal challenges I had to work through to come to a place of peace were significant, but all pointed to the same thing, I wasn’t truly being myself with some of the people in my life.

That said, the choices I’m making are quite unconventional. A lot of what I do flies in the face of logic and reason, not to mention economic realities. But, ever since I have been listening to and responding to my intuitive system, my life has been transforming in the most, yes, magical way, and I don’t want to stop. Last night, as I was writing my field guide and applying for various jobs, I came to the realization that I don’t really have to live anywhere, because I live in my heart. I am partly horrified at writing those words, but it’s the truth. I have one hundred percent become the person I used to ridicule in my youth. And apparently I rhyme when I write about it.

THINGS I LOVE

1. Walking around museums as The Pollinator so that my art is in fancy museums all over the country. It’s an inside joke I have with myself. I laugh every time.

2. Kara Walker. I saw a piece of art IRL at the NYC public library. Frankly I’m still reeling. My art was right next to hers. Hee hee hee.

3. This song. RIP

4. Synchronicity. Not the album. The experience. It’s been happening a lot on my travels.

5. Magic. I’m okay with being seen as insane in a crazy world.

6. Moleskin has come out with LoTR notebooks. I am complete.

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Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Sara

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