Every Day, a New World of WTF
So I got a message from my Congress rep the other day, thanking me for my calls and alerting me that he’s put up an accountability web page detailing what opposition actions he’s taking. He’s also started collecting constituent stories about how badly the illegal government takeover has fucked up their lives. (My phrasing, his was understandably more politic.)
Why Im mentioning this: if you’re not a calling kind of person but want to contribute to The Resistance, it’s worth checking out your rep’s online presence to see if they have something similar. (Or if you’re in Mike Quigley’s IL-5 district like me, the stories portal is on his accountability page.)
Yay for a shiny silver thread of governance set against the bleak national backdrop of fascist destruction & malevolent foreign influence.
I can’t remember if I already wrote up my elation over finally figuring out two new characters’ powers—or only thought about writing about it. Do I want to go skimming through old blog posts to find the answer? Not really.
Big thanks to those who reached out with IRL contact info after Sunday’s post. My reconstructed list is slowly growing. And while I wouldn’t recommend it, I feel zero remorse or regret for doing the nuke&pave. I had 400+ entries of which at least 200 were duplicates, and it was ridiculous unwieldy.
Oh, BTW, if you want to find out what your Congress reps are doing to defend the Republic from enemies domestic, House.gov provides website addesses, office phone & street addresses etc, for reps. Senate.gov has the official pages for your senators. Contact info is usually at the bottom. 5calls.org also has this info, plus a handy list of scripts for calls or emails.
And if you live in a state where you can’t trust your state reps to have your back, you can use www.usa.gov to find their contact info.
As with most things in this Age of Dismantling, I highly recommend downloading & storing this information OFFline if you want to keep it safe & available, even to the point of printing out :gasp: paper copies.
Anyway. Onward.
I have obtained New Fun Tools for playing with my faux shoji door project. I also spent a happy half-hour daydreaming around the lumber section of the hardware store. So many neat lumber bits and pieces that could become projects of some kind. I was kinda gobsmacked at the relatively inexpensive prices for things like oak moldings & other shaped pieces.
Mind you, this was before the whole Tariff Situation blew up completely. I’d bet prices are already going up, because that’s how retail does things. And I really feel for anyone doing home remodeling or construction this summer. (I’m informed 30%+ of the softwood lumber used in the US comes from Canada. So that’s gonna be A Thing.)
Meanwhile, I will keep puttering with the wood projects I already have. Because that is fun and soothes my soul.
Can’t stop thinking about the discomfiting “How Life Really Works” conversations I had with my dad a million years ago (he worked from home when he was at home, and he typed up all my school reports for me, which meant I had to sit there and basically dictate from my rat nest notes. )
He was a cynical curmudgeon, I was a teen full of weird questions, and we’re both massively neurodivergent, so Iheard lots of RealLife™️ remarks.
This one: “Social Security is a tax. Don’t rely on getting any of it back. Don’t expect to ever be able to retire from working,” always stuck with me, along with one that probably had the opposite effect he meant it to have: “You’re only independent because your mother and I raised you to be, and because of the feminist movement.. If you’d been born a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with the world the way it was then.”
Pretty sure he was wrong about the second point. I certainly made it my goal to fight harder for independence and equal rights after that. I am a competitive shit that way.
He’s looking pretty prescient about the whole Social Security thing, tho.
Okay, that’s more than enough rambling. I’ll probably grump about politics next time. Or talk about my house projects. Or maybe list s’more truths. For now…cat pics!
Look at that big floof sitting proudly atop the new worktable.
Every time I take yet another pic of Pips in his basket, I wonder if I should make one of those “Spot the 5 differences” games out of them.
Okay, that it until later.
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)