“‘It’s proof of our existence’: This lesbian archive is recording history as it’s erased”

This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

CINCINNATI — The Ohio Lesbian Archives in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood started with a friendship.

Phebe Beiser said that when she and co-founder Victoria “Vic” Ramstetter met in the 1970s, they bonded over being “hidden, secret, teenage lesbians,” growing up in what was then a conservative city and region where there were few gay role models. For a time in their 20s, they shared group houses in Clifton, where they now joke that they “survived the lesbian commune together.” They were young and idealistic. They wanted to “turn being an activist lesbian into something fun and interesting, and maybe help change the world.” Beiser, now in her mid 70s, told The 19th that they had a mantra: “We never wanted to be invisible again.”

When the Crazy Ladies Bookstore, named for the women who history brushed off as “crazy,” opened in Northside in 1979, it became the center of gravity in the Cincinnati lesbian community of which Beiser and Ramstetter were a part. Women bought homes in the neighborhood, gathering at the feminist bookstore for coffee, tea and conversation about being women, and about being gay. In 1989, the Archives opened on an upper floor.

It seemed that the visibility of the Crazy Ladies Bookstore and the Ohio Lesbian Archives — and of the women who made them happen — would be cemented in history in 2023, when the Ohio History Connection, the state’s nonprofit historical society, “embarked on a three-year project to diversify Ohio’s historical markers to include ten new stories of LGBTQ+ Ohioans” via its Gay Ohio History Initiative, or GOHI. At the time, there were roughly 1,800 historical markers in Ohio’s program, but only two commemorated places, events or people from the state’s queer history. A third, recognizing Summit Station, a lesbian bar in Columbus that operated from 1970 to 2008, was dedicated during Pride Month that year. The Archives and bookstore were selected for joint recognition.

That long-overdue acknowledgement has been derailed by the Trump administration’s sweeping war on DEI, which extends beyond diversity, equity and inclusion programs to seemingly include anything that acknowledges the country’s diversity of experience. But the archives — and the volunteers who sustain it — are undeterred, carrying on as the queer community has throughout history, documenting their existence.

We never wanted to be invisible again.” Phebe Beiser

Archival image of filing cabinets and boxes — The Ohio Lesbian Archives first began in 1989 in a small room on the third floor above the Crazy Ladies Bookstore in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library)

The Marking Diverse Ohio program was financed by a $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent agency created by a Republican-led Congress in 1996 that is the main source of federal funding for libraries and museums. Beiser and Branstetter were interviewed for an oral history. Ohio History Connection researchers visited the Archives to peruse the collection. A location was secured in a city park near where the since-shuttered Crazy Ladies Bookstore once was. By early this year, preparations to forever commemorate the Archives and bookstore with a plaque were all but complete. Its installation was expected in June, Pride Month.

Then, in late March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order regarding “The Continuing Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” singling out seven agencies for elimination — including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS. Nearly all of its employees were put on leave and their emails were disconnected. Days later, his administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, canceled $25 million worth of already-awarded IMLS grants, including the $250,000 for Ohio History Connection’s Marking Diverse Ohio program. The federal agency’s seemingly final Instagram post stated: “The era of using your taxpayer dollars to fund DEI grants is OVER.” The last photo listed erecting “LGBTQIA+ historical markers across Ohio” among the alleged government excesses that would be cut.

Svetlana Harlan, a former project coordinator for Marking Diverse Ohio, recalled that when she looked at the list, and saw the program with other projects she admired, “it almost seemed like a positive thing, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, these are nice initiatives!’”

“And it turns out that [DOGE] was just taking over the account. So then I was like, ‘Oh, they’re cutting those. Oh, our name is on the list,’” she said.

DOGE’s cancellation of the $250,000 IMLS grant to Ohio History Connection threw into question the future of the markers that were supposed to ensure that Ohio’s public displays of its history include LGBTQ+ people. Along with the Ohio Lesbian Archives and the Crazy Ladies Bookstore, there were markers in the works for an LGBTQ+ district in Akron; the first professor of gay and lesbian studies at Kent State University; 19th-century sculptor Edmonia “Wildfire” Lewis; LGBTQ+ journalism in Ohio; Toledo’s first LGBTQ+ member of city council; a Columbus hospice care center for HIV and AIDs patients; an open lesbian pastor in Athens; the screen-printing company Nightsweats and T-Cells in Lakewood; and the Rubi Girls, a Dayton-area drag group that has raised more than $3 million for HIV/AIDs and LGBTQ+ causes since the 1980s.

Buttons and other archival materials spread out. — Ephemera collected at the Ohio Lesbian Archives include buttons from past Pride marches, political campaigns and other symbols of lesbian life.
(Courtesy Ohio Lesbian Archives)

Preservation on hold

Marking Diverse Ohio and other programs recognizing specific communities weren’t the only programs impacted in the state when DOGE cut IMLS grants and the federal agency essentially shuttered. And, given that more than $250 million is granted annually to libraries and museums nationally, the economic chaos at the country’s museums, libraries and historical institutions wasn’t confined to Ohio.

In Ohio, other entities that received recent IMLS funding include the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Westcott House in Springfield, for post-pandemic, on-site programming; the Cincinnati Zoo for a big cat breeding program; Dayton Metro Library programs that helped low-income Ohioans secure Internet access; and Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center, which lost $175,000 slated for programming aimed at the 3,000 or more teens it serves each year.

Institutions in Pennsylvania warned the economic upheaval could scuttle the digitization of The Rosenbach museum’s collection of rare books and manuscripts; the Woodmere Art Museum was mid renovation on a building to house its collection and expected to be reimbursed. In Wisconsin, small-town libraries said without the $3 million from the IMLS they’d received the year before they would have to reduce staff and therefore services. The American Library Association, or ALA, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, the labor union representing government workers, sued the Trump administration. ALA President Cindy Hohl said at the time that, “Libraries play an important role in our democracy, from preserving history to … offering access to a variety of perspectives.” AFSCME President Lee Saunders added: “Libraries and museums contain our collective history and knowledge.”

Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration could continue dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services as the case continues.

For now, Ohioans who want LGBTQ+ history represented among the 1,800 markers in the state will not get the federal funding that was granted and must search for alternative resources in their communities. A couple of the markers look poised to move forward with outside funding from community foundations and other organizations. Others, like the Ohio Lesbian Archives and the Crazy Ladies Bookstore, are still waiting. The remaining cost to install the marker would likely be $3,000-$5,000.

When The 19th reached out to Ohio History Connection to ask if any alternative funding sources were being explored to install the Archives’ marker, spokesperson Neil Thompson said that he was “not able to provide any additional information for an Ohio Historical Marker application that is not in the public domain” and that it is only considered in the public domain once “the markers are finalized, cast and ready to be installed and dedicated.”

A row of people lean into each other while seating on the floor in front of stacks of books. — Phebe Beiser (far left), who co-founded the Ohio Lesbian Archives with her longtime friend Victoria ‘Vic’ Ramstetter, with Janice Uhlman, Elizabeth Van Dyke, Cathy McEneny, Morgan Kronenberger, and Ruth Rowan (left to right) at the Ohio Lesbian Archives in 1989. (Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library)

‘A reflection of themselves’

The Ohio Lesbian Archives has always been a DIY endeavor, powered by a group of passionate volunteers.
When the Crazy Ladies Bookstore’s founder, Carolyn Dellenbach, moved out of the area, she handed it over to its patrons to be run as a feminist collective. A lesbian newsletter called Dinah operated out of the upper floor — they referred to the National Organization for Women’s Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism, established in 1973, as FOSAL, or fossil, and Dinah was a play on dinosaur. Beiser laughed explaining the name: It was the 1970s; maybe there were drugs involved. For a time she wrote for Dinah and loved interviewing famous arrivals from the “women’s music circuit” when they came to town.

At some point, the women working shifts at the bookstore, writing for Dinah and organizing talks and other events related to feminist and lesbian issues, realized that the community they had built, and the ephemera they were collecting and creating, were an important part of history — theirs, lesbians,’ Ohioans,’ and women’s.

“We held on to them because we knew they could not be replaced,” Beiser said of the collection. “It’s proof of our existence … so we held on to these things to never be invisible again.”

We held on to them because we knew they could not be replaced. It’s proof of our existence.” Phebe Beiser

Bookshelves crammed with books — Books on lesbian history line the shelves of the Ohio Lesbian Archives. (Courtesy Ohio Lesbian Archives)

In a 1991 issue of Dinah, letters to the editor included one from “Ma” who updated the “wimmin” in the community — they often spelled variations of their gender in ways that did not include “man” — that she was homesteading outside the city with her partner and building a log cabin. Another was from a woman who said she was “shocked” to find out that her being fired for being a lesbian was not a violation of civil rights laws and she was disappointed that the LGBTQ+ community did not come out to support her recent picket, writing: “I hope that in my lifetime I will see the gay and lesbian community get off their asses and together start fighting for their rights.”

Across from the metal filing cabinet at the Archives that houses the Dinah issues, a modern-looking poster from before the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020, which extended employment protections to LGBTQ+ Americans, reminded Ohioans that it was still legal for them to be fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Today, Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is aiming to curtail those hard-won workplace protections established by Bostock.

Lüdi Rich, a 27-year-old librarian, was working a recent Sunday afternoon at the Archives’ twice-weekly open hours, organizing books and research materials while the space was open to members of the community to drop in.

When Rich moved to Cincinnati nearly two years ago, she didn’t know anyone in the area, so she looked online for queer spaces so she could start building her community. When she attended a panel on local queer history, one of the speakers was Beiser, a longtime librarian herself in the country’s second-largest public library system.

Beiser mentioned at the panel that the Ohio Lesbian Archives would be having an open house that night at its new location next to Over-the-Rhine’s Washington Square Park, where Beiser was among those who met to march in Cincinnati’s first Pride Parade in April 1973. Rich asked Beiser how she could volunteer.

A couple months later, Rich showed up for her first shift, “And I’ve been here working ever since,” she said.

Nancy Yerian, the 34-year-old president of the Archives’ board, said that when she graduated from college in Massachusetts, she didn’t know if she could return to Cincinnati, where she grew up — until she discovered the Archives. “I thought that to live the kind of life I wanted to lead, I had to get out of what I thought was a very conservative place,” said Yerian, who has been volunteering at the Archives in some capacity since shortly after she finished school.

“Finding the Archives and the people I’ve met through the organization and the community we’re creating, as well as the history we’re preserving — it gave me a lot of hope that I could create a life for myself here,” she added.

It really is just us, preserving our history.”Lüdi Rich

Archival image of people marching down the street for Pride. — The Crazy Ladies Bookstore marched in a Cincinnati, Ohio Pride parade. (Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library)

The Archives’ volunteers have helped digitize old photos, some of which are now in a collection at the Cincinnati Public Library. They organize the books, arranged by first names instead of last, since so many women, especially in those early years, published works after taking on their husbands’ surnames. There are filing folders of Dinah newsletters. A cabinet holds multiple VHS and DVD copies of the early aughts television drama “The L Word.” A collection of buttons includes those from past Pride marches; supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns; and one with “REMEMBER” and an inverted pink triangle, the Nazi symbol that Adolf Hitler used to identify gay and trans people. There is also one with the logo of the Crazy Ladies Bookstore, the silhouette of a woman reading while reclined in a chair, a cat by her side.

“Many people who are coming to the archives are looking for a reflection of themselves and in many ways that’s why Vic and Phebe started it. It shows models of ways to be in the world and a feeling of not being alone and not being the first queer person or lesbian,” Yerian said.

The Ohio Lesbian Archives, marker or not, is and will keep doing what it always has: making sure that lesbian Americans are visible in the country’s historical record.

“It really is just us, preserving our history,” Rich said.

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Clay Jones, Open Windows

A big, beautiful bill for a big, ugly police state by Ann Telnaes

If passed, ICE would get $45 billion more for detention. Read on Substack

(I love Ann Telnaes’s depiction of Sec. Noem. Flawless caricature-the hair! And the rest. -A.)

======================

DEI Cavalier by Clay Jones

The wrong prez got forced out Read on Substack

With its thuggery, bullying, and Nazi-like tactics, Donald Trump’s racist and weaponized Justice Department, led by the corrupt Pam “Eva Braun” Bondi, has forced out the University of Virginia’s president, James Ryan.

Ryan, who had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse, was forced out to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

Ryan said, “I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld. This was an excruciatingly difficult decision, and I am heartbroken to be leaving this way.”

DOJ had demanded that Ryan step down as part of an agreement to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices, as Trump has weaponized the government agency by using its investigative powers to implement his hateful political agenda. DOJ held the university hostage to force Ryan out. (snip-MORE)

Alligator Alcatraz by Clay Jones

Mmmmmm, MAGAts. Read on Substack

(I saw “Alligator Auschwitz” somewhere over the weekend, not in conjunction with DeS bragging about the camp’s showers, but brrr, and I’ll never think of this prison as anything but Alligator Auschwitz now. -A.)

In case it seems cruel to put undocumented immigrants, and in several cases, documented immigrants, that’s the point. Cruelty is the point with this regime and the entire MAGA agenda.

Alligator Alcatraz is the name for a detention, processing, and deportation camp for undocumented migrants in the Florida Everglades.

White House spokesbarbie Karoline Leavitt said, “The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain. When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.” My first question for her is, where are all these legal murderers?

The regime loves the optics of a prison in the middle of a brutal swamp. It sounds like a bad Burt Reynolds movie (as if there were any good ones).

Border czar, Tom Homan, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “Can’t wait for it to open, and we’ll put aliens in there as soon as we can.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described the facility as a “one-stop shop” in a Fox interview. Trump has the most horrible people on this.

The “prison” sits along an 11,000-foot runway at an airfield mainly used for training flights, and will soon house 5,000 migrants in a tent city. This sounds as evil as the tent prison racist and corrupt Trump-pardoned sheriff Joe Arpaio erected in the Arizona desert.

Trump is visiting the site today, thinking it’ll make him look tough. Captain Bonespurs isn’t tough. The regime is mistaking being an asshole for being tough.

The Florida GOP is already selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merch, and they had to be fast to beat the Trump Organization to it. The legacy of this may match the internment camps where the US government housed Japanese Americans during World War II. Trump is also planning a new camp in Guantanamo, and I’m sure DeSantis and Noem are eyeing other sites that provide great potential for tough-guy photo-ops. If nothing else, they’re thinking of the merch.

(snip-MORE)

500 bird species at risk of extinction in next 100 years

(The planet needs all its species. -A.)

June 30, 2025 Evrim Yazgin, Cosmos science journalist

Helmeted Hornbill (Buckeroos vigil) male and female. Credit: Hello my names is james,I’m photographer / iStock / Getty Images Plus.

Researchers analysed different threat factors such as habitat loss and climate change to find that 500 bird species could go extinct in the next century. Unique species are most at risk.

This would be a level of extinction 3 times higher than the previous 500 years of bird extinctions.

The study, published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution, warns that the loss of unique birds could harm ecosystems around the world.

Vulnerable birds include the bare-necked umbrellabird found in the forests of Costa Rica and Panam, helmeted hornbill from Southeast Asia and yellow-bellied sunbird-asity endemic to Madagascar.

“We face a bird extinction crisis unprecedented in modern times. We need immediate action to reduce human threats across habitats and targeted rescue programmes for the most unique and endangered species,” says lead author Kerry Stewart from the University of Reading, UK.

The researchers studied the behavioural and morphological traits of about 10,000 bird species – representing nearly all known bird species – using data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Applying a statistical model, the researchers were able to show that large-bodied species were more at risk from hunting and climate change. Meanwhile, birds with broad wings suffer more from habitat loss.

“Stopping threats is not enough, as many as 250–350 species will require complementary conservation measures, such as breeding programmes and habitat restoration, if they are to survive the next century,” says senior author Dr Manuela Gonzalez-Suarez, also from the University of Reading. “Prioritising conservation programmes for just 100 of the most unusual threatened birds could save 68% of the variety in bird shapes and sizes. This approach could help to keep ecosystems healthy.”

“Many birds are already so threatened that reducing human impacts alone won’t save them,” adds Stewart. “These species need special recovery programmes, like breeding projects and habitat restoration, to survive.”

The authors say that “functionally unique” species – i.e. species that fill highly specialised ecological niches – are the most vulnerable. Likewise, the loss of such unique species could cause a cascading effect of harm for broader ecosystems.

“Effective targeted recovery programmes that explicitly consider species uniqueness hold great potential for conserving global functional diversity as a complementary strategy to threat abatement,” they write.

Originally published by Cosmos as 500 bird species at risk of extinction in next 100 years

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/birds/500-bird-species-extinction-risk/

I Don’t Mean This In A Rude Way, But I Thought He Was, Already. I Learn New Things Every Day. RIP.

Evangelical Sex Scandal Pioneer Jimmy Swaggart Is Dead by Rebecca Schoenkopf

God murdered him, and he died. Read on Substack

Televangelist Jimmy Swaggart is dead at the age of 90.

He was a man of many contradictions and continuity errors. He was a fiery televangelist who had a whole lot to say about other people’s sex lives and immorality, but who also famously enjoyed the occasional lady of the evening.

Swaggart surely served as a role model and inspiration to many future evangelical preachers, like Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell Jr., Tony Alamo, Douglas Goodman, and so, so many others others who would go on to follow in his very holy/pervy footsteps.

In 1988 — not long after he had publicly dragged his fellow televangelist Jim Bakker for having used church funds to pay $279,000 in hush money to his former secretary Jessica Hahn after he raped her, committing multiple acts of fraud for which he was later imprisoned, as well as for owning a waterpark — a rival evangelist of Swaggart’s sold photos of him going to a motel with a sex worker, after Swaggart refused to stop accusing him of being an adulterer. That picture you see above is from his very famous apology. (snip-MORE, with a trigger warning regarding disturbing info)

Updated: You Know The Numbers; Get On The Phones With Your US Reps

Yes, this passed in the Senate, thanks to the VP’s tiebreaking vote. However, it’s still got rows to hoe in the US House; Spkr. Johnson wants to vote tomorrow. The thing to remember about our US Reps is, they’re up for election each 2 years. So, while firmly directing them in dealing with this dreadful bill, also firmly yet lovingly remind them that the OBBB will be hanging around their necks every step of the way of their campaigns like a bubblegum machine golden giant dollar sign necklace, if they vote in favor.

(Actually, if you didn’t when you contacted your Senators last week, you can still remind them of the same thing, unless they voted against, in which case, Thank Them. It took bravery to vote against, and they need to know we have their backs. And thank you very much. Now call.)

We Really Hate The Billions for Billionaires Bill

Civil Unions in VT, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 7/1

I hope everyone and their pets enjoy at least some peace these next few days! I hate fireworks, though I don’t mind them far away or on TV. I did used to like them, when I was a kid. 🎆

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july1

Resource & Information for Grief Processing

Several of us have/have had older pets. Maybe this can come in handy. From the MUTTS blog.

On Pet Loss and the Rainbow Bridge: A Conversation With Animal Chaplain Patricia Denys About Grief and Healing

Losing a pet is a unique kind of heartbreak, one that can feel both profound and invisible. To help bring comfort, we spoke with Patricia Denys, MFA, a compassionate voice in the world of pet grief and healing.

Patricia is an artist, animal activist, creative director of Animal Culture magazine, educator, yogi, vegan, and an interfaith, interspecies animal chaplain ordained by the Compassion Consortium. She’s also a great friend of MUTTS.

In this conversation, Patricia shares her perspective as an animal chaplain on navigating loss, offering support, and finding gentle ways to honor the journey. Whether your pet recently crossed the Rainbow Bridge or you’re reflecting on a loss from long ago, we hope this conversation brings you some clarity, comfort, and connection.

Understanding the Role of an Animal Chaplain

Can you explain what an animal chaplain does?

An animal chaplain helps animals live their fullest lives and helps them transition when it is time. They offer help to animal parents, animal care workers, and animal people in general, navigate stress, grief, and compassion fatigue. Animal chaplains also encourage stronger human-animal (interspecies) bonds, individually and communally. Animal chaplains offer help with end-of-life care, decisions and rituals (interfaith), and bereavement support. An animal chaplain is also there for celebrations and victories for all animals and our planet!

How did you become an animal chaplain, and what drew you to this work?

Our magazine, Animal Culture, interviewed Reverend Sarah Bowen, co-founder of Compassion Consortium and Executive Director of their Animal Chaplaincy Training Program. The program is interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies, which was important to me. Sarah was a wonderful interviewee, and I became quite interested in the program after connecting with her. It seemed intriguing and intelligent, and an organic next step on my path of a lifetime working with animals. It was quite a commitment of study and well worth it. My fellow students were amazing, compassionate people. It was a very positive experience.

What kinds of support do you offer to people who are grieving the loss of a pet?

The first thing is listening, while being a calming presence for different needs from different people. Using gentle questioning to see what arises for someone. Reminding people that laughter is good and healthy, and part of healing. And, working on realizing that one does not stop loving someone after the transition.

Hospice and Palliative Care for Companion Animals, edited by Amir Shanan, Jessica Pierce, and Tamara Shearer, is an excellent book. In one of the essays, the writer calls mourning, “…a transition from loving in presence to loving in absence.” We work on that as animal chaplains.

Why Saying ‘Goodbye’ to a Pet Is So Painful

Why do we often feel that losing a pet is just as painful — if not more so — than losing a human loved one?

Those of us who have experienced the pain of the loss of a companion animal, or any animal, know this pain all too well. Humans have intense bonds with an animal they love or one that is a part of their lives somehow. Animals’ lives are shorter than humans’. The shock of that short life being over can be very hard to process.

Companion animals also demonstrate stability and routine. A big void is created when these things come to an end. Animals are sentient. They are aware. We see that time and time again. We want to be with them and protect them; they are our family.

How can we respond to people who say, “It was just an animal” or who don’t understand pet grief?

It is very disappointing to hear, “It was just an animal,” from anyone, especially someone you respect or that is close to you. It is the last thing anyone wants to hear since it is so insensitive to one’s feelings and to the memory of the one who has passed. What someone grieving needs is validation that their feelings of loss for such a profound bond with an animal, are understandable and real. You may choose to say that or not.

What are some healthy ways to process and express grief after losing a pet?

Definitely seek support from friends, family, your veterinarian, and/or an animal chaplain. Animal grief is in our mainstream now. There is no shame in asking for help, ever. One needs to talk about the loss. It’s real.

Consider taking a workshop on animal loss or creating a shrine, memorial, art piece, or photo book. Volunteering is also a great, healthy way to heal.

Do you have any advice for someone who feels stuck in their grief or like they should have “moved on” by now?

“Moving on” is a very individual thing. There is no time limit on processing through one’s grief. Accepting the loss and adjusting one’s life accordingly takes time. You need to take your time. If you feel that you are experiencing symptoms of prolonged grief, a therapist can be of help.

Helpful Ways to Honor a Pet’s Memory

How can rituals or memorials help with healing? Do you have any suggestions for meaningful ways to honor a pet’s memory?

Oh, there are so many wonderful things you can do! Humans have always embraced rituals. It is a way to connect to something. A ritual may be something within your religious practices, your own spirituality that you find comforting, or the daily ritual of taking a walk with your dog. That is a ritual for both of you!

A memorial can be a powerful took for healing. It is a coping tool. It is a way to process. Creating an altar on a table for the one you have lost that includes photographs, something that was meaningful for that animal such as a toy, or adding flowers can be a positive expression of your feelings of loss. Re-wilding a small garden that encourages other animals to visit, or creating a small shrine you can carry with you are other ideas. Keeping a journal of your thoughts or sketches can also have a profound effect on healing. The simple act of writing to your loved one — what they meant to you, how much they are missed, what you enjoyed most about them, for example, is often a comfort.

As an artist and a teacher of art, I know creating art can be cathartic and healing, I conduct art workshops on loss and celebration of animals and the planet. They are for non-artists especially. It has been an incredible experience to see what people can create as a way to work out their feelings, and usually, how anxious they are to share with each other. It is a bonding experience about the power of love.

(snip-a bit MORE; click through on the title above)

Enjoy Some Eye Candy + Snark, 7/1 Fun

This one is especially hilarious-go see it! 🤣 🤣 🤣

Cover Snark: Saint Nick the Oil Slick

Moving The Window

I cannot add up the number of times I’ve been told by good, liberal Dems that these issues won’t float. And that was back in the 1980s and 90s, not to mention the 2000s. Anyway, take a look!

Mamdani And The Left Are Moving The Window – Good by Oliver Willis

Shift Your View Read on Substack

What if everything you believed since you have been politically awake is wrong? It isn’t that you have bad intentions or you’re fundamentally stupid, but what if instead you believed for so long that the existing menu of political options was one group of beliefs but in reality, that was a really limited menu that excluded some really tasty items you never considered before?

When a rising progressive figure like Zohran Mamdani makes bold statements about what he wants to achieve, it can make regular old mainstream Democrats/liberals like myself wince. Government supermarkets? We shouldn’t have billionaires? Immediately that kicks in concerns about how Democrats are perceived. It isn’t just Mamdani. Ideas like defunding the police, universal basic income, free health care, etc.? Sure, we say, they may sound good on paper – but they also sound like left wing fantasyland, they’re just not “practical.”

And maybe they are impractical, unworkable, and election losers. But – what if not? We should at least have the conversation, I think.

Because for decades now American political discourse has been operating within the parameters set by the right wing, not the left. Since 1980 we have had 20 years of Democratic presidents and while I think they did a decent job of domestic politics between the three of them (Clinton, Obama, and Biden), much of what they did was within the narrow paradigm of what was acceptable behavior.

Clinton frequently talked about cutting the size of the government, Obama spoke about lowering the deficit, and Biden also used the language of “fiscal responsibility” as the right envisions it. All three men accepted the existence of billionaires and even pushed policies that would theoretically create even more of them. None of them would argue that the police needed to be defunded, and in fact they all oversaw federal spending that sent billions to police departments.

I was among the millions who supported these three presidents, along with other Democrats who ran for office with a similar world view both at the presidential and congressional level to varying degrees of success.

But these people have all been operating within the right’s paradigms. Collectively we never openly debated how we could have it all wrong. Maybe the prison system should be abolished? Maybe billionaires should be taxed out of existence?

Even if we don’t ultimately reach those conclusions, these are debates worth having.

Because while we have been limiting ourselves, the right hasn’t. Since Barry Goldwater in 1964, the right has been shifting the Overton Window – what is considered acceptable public discourse – steadily to the right. We have gone from Republicans like Nixon creating agencies like the EPA to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cutting funding for vital agencies to Donald Trump trying to completely destroy agencies like the Department of Education.

Things that Trump treats as uncontroversially right-wing today would have been laughed out of the room as the ravings of lunatics in 1958. The right has mounted serial challenges to what was the liberal orthodoxy (not on every issue but most issues) in the 1960s and they have molded public perception of what acceptable dialogue is.

We are worse off for this. One can praise what Democratic leaders have accomplished in a progressive manner (health care, infrastructure, overall policy) and still admit that the thinking has been severely limited and inhibiting.

Voters are making this clear to the party. They keep showing in multiple federal and state elections that they are unhappy with the status quo and in some instances, like with Trump, they are far too eager to flirt with fascism versus maintaining the system as-is.

Think about the world that millennials and Gen-Z have lived in for their entire lives. Not only has it been shaped by Reaganism and Trumpism, but it has also been peppered with Democratic leaders like Obama, Clinton, and Biden who didn’t fundamentally challenge the bedrock of what the right laid but instead focused on (well needed) nibbling at the edges.

It has been a very long time, probably not since the Great Depression, where Democrats articulated the notion that something beyond the acceptable was possible. When Franklin D. Roosevelt first took office, the consensus was that bad stuff just had to happen and that the government had to lie back, helpless. Herbert Hoover couldn’t truly conceive of a universe where the government swooped in and actively combated the forces making things worse for ordinary Americans. Roosevelt shifted the window and set up the infrastructure of the safety net that still exists today (for now). (snip-MORE, + Kal El photo. Click through!)

The US Ratifies The 26th, Spain Got With The Program, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 6/30

Also, to commemorate the final day of PRIDE month 2025, here’s an historic dance music video to celebrate. No matter what, we should never not dance again! 🎶 🌈 🎶 🫶