30 Jan. Feeling Ranty.
Everything I ate for supper on Monday was orange—and none of the things was an orange. This observation brought to you by way of reading a post on Mouse Reads Books about a hypothetically historical novel about Babylon that used the color orange to describe a color that was not, historically, known as “orange.” (Go down the colors in history/citrus development rabbit hole, I dares ya.)
What were the foods? Roasted sweet potato & carrot slices, diced canteloupe, grilled chicken dusted with chili powder …and Cheetos. And the Drink Of the Day was peach kefir, which was orange-adjacent in color.
Which is my roundabout way of saying there are good things in this world that are orange in color. The United State President is not one of those things.
Everything after this point is rambling politically-related or politically-adjacent processing(which I have evidently been doing since I was 18, judging by my freshman year journal…) Written at various points this week where I had to write something down or my head would’ve exploded.
I lurves y’all for keeping up with my brain bubbles, whether you wade though this particular batch or not.
You have been warned. Happy cat pic at the end.
So, the world is coming apart at the seams, and I should get a medal for not opening the window every day and yelling, “I FUCKING WARNED YOU SO MANY TIMES” at the neighborhood. But I never yelled my warnings in the past, only voiced them when the topic came up in social situations, which wasn’t often because I’m Gen X and politics was a Verboten Social Topic and got shut down when it was raised.
Since I failed to speak up more often than I did speak out, over the decades leading to this point, so maybe it’s hypocritical to feel like doing that. I still want to, though.
Yeah, the rage and disappointment with my fellow Americans is clearly still too fulminating and white-hot to allow coherent writing. ONWARD.
If you read only one thing about how to survive US politics right now, let it be On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, and if you follow only one radical activist (trans and queer anarchist sheep farmer, technically) on Bluesky, let it be @neolithicsheep because you’ll get gobs of practical, action-oriented ideas, analysis, and zero helpless handwringing and doomsaying.
I am scared for so many of my friends, but my worry doesn’t help them. My default mode in crisis situations is to step in if I see a clear, immediate way I can help, otherwise, get out of the way of people who know what they’re doing, and wait for someone to express a s[ecific need, then run to address that.”
In most cases, I’ve trained myself to ask people outright how they want to be helped, but unfortunately I’ve scrolled past too many people online yelling at others for doing exactly that, so now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
And I’m feeling mighty salty about the still-ongoing online griping from hi-visibilty trans accounts berating cis allies for not checking on them enough in these miserable “Everything Going To Hell In A Handbasket” days. Because there’s no such thing as intersectionality, apparently, wherein those cis allies are also facing existential erasure such that retreating offline and out of human contact is a necessary mental health defense. But I guess that isn’t valid. (She says with maximum salty sarcasm)
Political rants online are frustrating me. Being angry all the time isn’t sustainable, and stoking up the anger leads to exhaustion, exhaustion leads to apathy and a sense of helplessness, and apathy is what the authoritarian regime wants. (That, and compromise. There are things that simply should not be compromised on. A point the Democratic party is way overdue for learning.)
I am a literal card-carrying member of the ACLU, I donate to a variety of causes near and dear to my socially progressive heart. I don’t donate my time so much, and I’m not gonna explain why, because as soon as I explain, I start to feel like I’m not justified in not doing more, and then I feel guilty, and guilt is exhausting. (See above on exhaustion leading to helplessness.)
Whatever. I am doing what I can. Am I doing ALL I COULD? No. Hence the perpetual guilt. There is so, so much I do not do.
But I keep reminding myself about the whole, “put on your oxygen mask before helping others” advice, that doing one’s ALL is not a sustainable activity, energy is a finite and only semi-renewable resource, resisting evil is not a competition, and I push it all to the back of my brain for a while.
Anyway. CAT PIC.
Heart-shaped, fluffy Pippin curled up on his favorite fleecy blanket, guarding the remote control.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)