October 12, 1492 Natives of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October 12, 1945 Pfc. Desmond Doss became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays. On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them, one by one, down a 400-foot cliff. The guest house at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor. Read more (includes movie trailer)
October 12, 1958 A Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally. From Georgia PBS
October 12, 1967 British zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist’s perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo. Read more
October 12, 1967 “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to do the same.” This document became the main basis for the federal government’s criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. Read the Call
October 12, 1970 Lt. William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident. The full sad story
Lt. Calley
October 12, 1977 “Regents of the University of California v. Bakke” was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke’s application for admission to its medical school? Read more
As I keep saying all these bathroom bills and trans people in the bathroom trash talk is the cis people who don’t look feminine or masculine enough for other people. I have read and watched videos of women who look mannish who get assaulted or harassed for going into the woman’s bathroom. One woman was a cancer survivor who lost all her hair due to treatment and two men were calling her horrific names and threatening to beat her up on video because they were sure she was a man. It all goes on looks for these people. Unless people are going to line up for a genital inspection by these gang thugs before entering the bathroom, how else do these maga think they are going to be able to tell? Oh and this post took me two days to put together. Hugs.
This week I started a drawing that was all vines and flowers and it was fine, but a little boring and so I decided to add Hunter S. Thomcat to it because he’s always trying to add himself to drawings anyway. Exhibit A:
And it was a very good idea in theory but somehow it turned…weird? And I kept trying to fix it and it kept getting worse and I would like this to be one of those stories that ends with, “AND EMBRACING THE FLAWS MADE IT EVEN BETTER” but that did not happen because, well…look:
Why does he look vaguely human?
Anyway, I gave up and started another drawing but I’m not finished with it yet and I was feeling a little disappointed in my myself until I saw this collection of medieval cat paintings:
Turns out cats have been fucking up art for centuries because they are enigmatic and mysterious:
And comparatively, my cat drawing became slightly less unnerving.
It important to remember…they’re not all going to be winners.
Or…you know…always make sense?
But since I don’t have a finished drawing I do have this for you…a drawing a did awhile ago that I added color to before I realized that I’m actually not that great at color combinations.
It’s no medieval cat eating a dismembered penis, but then again…what is?
I bet the next election will be well attended and these people will lose their seats and new progressive inclusive people will win. That is what has happened all over when the right bigots and haters snuck into school board seats, they go too far trying to erase the LGBTQ+ kids / people from existence, then they get kicked out. Sadly by then the damage is done. What they hell do they want people perving on kids in the bathrooms for? To make the kids scared to use them and to make sure the weird kids are not doing weird gay stuff in them, right? Hugs. Scottie.
By the way. We have a hurricane headed right at us. It will be here Wednesday at around noon, but we have three days of wind and rain beforehand. It will hit at a class three. It is projected to hit just above us but could hit us directly. We will be spending the next few days getting as much done as possible, stocking in cat food Ron forgot and getting more gas and propane for the generator. It is unlikely that pole of ours will survive another storm as it is already leaning hard. Repair crews are already stretched thin in other areas so won’t be able to come rescue us in our time of need. Going to be a very long few months. Hugs. Scottie
YORK DISPATCH EDITORIAL BOARD
York Dispatch
At the risk of stating the obvious, South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.
For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.
After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policiesas something to aspire to.
These adults want to make it easier for other people to watch your children while they’re in the bathroom. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.
Gelazela, who’s steadfastly refused to explain the logic here, said in a public meeting that the windows help “[add] privacy in the toilet facility” and that they “increase oversight of the wash area.”
There’s a reason public restrooms tend not to have windows — or, if they do, they have frosted glass.
No one wants to be spied on when they’re relieving themselves.
The parents who spoke to The York Dispatch about the latest bathroom renovations said their children no longer feel comfortable using these bathrooms. One of the parents went to the principal and asked for an exemption to allow her son to use a different bathroom further away from class.
Her 13-year-old doesn’t want to be spied on while he’s in the bathroom.
And we don’t blame him.
It’s creepy and weird.
And let’s not ignore the bigger picture: This is happening at a time when this and other York County school boards are pushing policies that would restrict what books students read, what sports teams they compete on and even which pronouns they use.
All of this is part of an attempt to erase LGBTQ+ people.
Cutting a window into these bathrooms is an intimidation tactic designed to make sure students who use the so-called “gender-identity” facilities — and, let’s be honest, any student who doesn’t fit neatly into the worldview of the school board’s far-right majority — know they’re being watched, controlled and judged.
In their quest to punish LGBTQ+ kids, however, the misguided “adults” on this South Western School Board are doing the things they accuse others of doing.
This is an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
October’s a big month for seasonal/vibe readers, because if there are three things you can count on filling shelves, it’s spooky season reads, Hallmark vibes, and, despite Christmas and Hanukkah being months away, winter holiday romances. This month’s roundup’s got all three, and they are a delight.
Best Hex Ever
Author: Nadia El-Fassi Released: October 1, 2024 by Dell Genre:LGBTQIA, Paranormal, RomanceA kitchen witch with a penchant for baking and a (literally) cursed love life meets someone who’s worth breaking a hex for in this sweet and spicy debut romance.As a skilled kitchen witch, Dina Whitlock knows her way around a pastry recipe. In fact, she runs her very own London café serving magic-infused pastries for her loyal customers. But only a select few friends know about her magical abilities or the hex that has plagued her love life. It’s hard to fall in love when your partner is guaranteed to have a string of bad luck the second they start to have feelings for you.Scott Mason is back from traveling the world and is excited to begin his new job as a curator at the British Museum. After leaving London to heal from a brutal breakup two years ago, Scott only now realizes how much he missed out on. Now that his best friend’s wedding is right around the corner, Scott is determined to be the most amazing best man ever, but he doesn’t expect to be bewitched by the maid of honor, who also happens to be the owner of his new favorite café and, more surprisingly, a witch?!After a weekend in the countryside full of peculiar hedge mazes, palm readings by candlelight, and a midnight Halloween ritual, there’s no denying the chemistry between them. But there’s just one problem: The hex still holds, and Dina knows that Scott is in danger. In the past, she’s always cut her losses, but this time is different. Scott could be the one. Will Dina be able to undo the hex, before it’s too late?Neither this blurb nor this cover gave away to me that this was a queer romance, but in addition to Dina being the first main character of Moroccan descent I’ve read, she is indeed bisexual, which is pretty central to the story. If you love reading cozy, witchy romances in fall, especially with spice (literal and figurative), this one’s got all the delicious autumnal vibes.Add to Goodreads To-Read List → (snip-MORE)
We Could Be So Good RECOMMENDED: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian is $1.99! Thanks to everyone who let us know about this deal; fingers crossed it’s still active! Lara gave this one an A: TL;DR: Read this book if you’d like to be swept along safely in a rising tide of emotion, predominantly love. Nick Russo has worked his way from a rough Brooklyn neighborhood to a reporting job at one of the city’s biggest newspapers. But the late 1950s are a hostile time for gay men, and Nick knows that he can’t let anyone into his life. He just never counted on meeting someone as impossible to say no to as Andy. Andy Fleming’s newspaper-tycoon father wants him to take over the family business. Andy, though, has no intention of running the paper. He’s barely able to run his life—he’s never paid a bill on time, routinely gets lost on the way to work, and would rather gouge out his own eyes than deal with office politics. Andy agrees to work for a year in the newsroom, knowing he’ll make an ass of himself and hate every second of it. Except, Nick Russo keeps rescuing Andy: showing him the ropes, tracking down his keys, freeing his tie when it gets stuck in the ancient filing cabinets. Their unlikely friendship soon sharpens into feelings they can’t deny. But what feels possible in secret—this fragile, tender thing between them—seems doomed in the light of day. Now Nick and Andy have to decide if, for the first time, they’re willing to fight. Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
(I did not find this bit in there, so here it is from my email. It’s a start! There are a few more, all interesting and totally off topic.)
The Times introduces your favorite (?) typeface, Times New Roman.
What font do you write in? People may argue all day on the internet about their favorite typefaces, but it’s a fair wager that the most ubiquitous font of all, whether it’s your personal go-to or not, is Times New Roman.
Whence this towering behemoth, you may wonder? It was invented in the 1930s by type designer Stanley Morison, who, after criticizing the London Times for their dated font, was asked to make them a new one. “Morison enlisted the help of draftsman Victor Lardent and began conceptualizing a new typeface with two goals in mind: efficiency—maximizing the amount of type that would fit on a line and thus on a page—and readability,” writes Meredith Mann, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts at the New York Public Library. Morison’s new font was taller and narrower, but the letterforms were weighted in a new way that made them easier to read, despite the cramped spacing. (The weighting meant that the font also required more ink, which meant more money—a main reason that the font wasn’t immediately picked up by other papers.)
Once the new font was approved, The Times published a pamphlet explaining the switch. “It is evident that there must be changes in typography as long as our social habits are open to variation,” the editors explained. “When it was founded, The Times was largely read in coffee-houses; in the nineteenth century it came to be read in trains; today it is largely read in cars and airliners. Reading habits, dependent on social habits, will not remain constant. Neither must newspaper typography remain constant.”
Indeed not, especially when you’ve got such a splashy new font to brag about. “The new [font] will be employed on and after October 3, 1932,” the notice declares. “The Times, for generations the best printed paper, will, by present-day optical standards, be the most comfortably readable journal in the world.”
The paper held onto the exclusive rights to Times New Roman for a year, and after that, other publications—once they’d decided it was worth shelling out for—began to follow suit. By now, it’s trickled down into just about everybody’s personal computers and for many, simply become the default.
“Times New Roman is a workhorse font that’s been successful for a reason,” writes Matthew Butterick, author of the impressively niche Typography for Lawyers. “Yet it’s an open question whether its longevity is attributable to its quality or merely its ubiquity. Helvetica still inspires enough affection to have been the subject of a 2007 documentary feature. Times New Roman, meanwhile, has not attracted similar acts of homage.”
Why not? “Fame has a dark side,” Butterick writes. “When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, ‘I submitted to the font of least resistance.’ Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.”
(Or perhaps you are merely a novelist, who knows that if your paragraph looks good in Times New Roman, it will look good in anything. Too often have we been fooled by the slender affections of Garamond!)
By the way, Butterick points out, lawyers should beware: though it’s as much the standard font for them as everyone, the highest court in the land (such as it is) forbids its use. Something to remember for when you get there.
The republican’s know their policies and ideas are very, very unpopular. They can’t win on them, so they are forced to cheat and drum up fake fears to scare voters to vote for them. Hugs. Scottie
‘Congratulations’ the fake letter reads, ‘you have been selected as a Wayward Steward exchange home for homeless immigrants and victims of foreign wars.’
A Bala Cynwyd couple received a fraudulent letter from the Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs this week informing her that she’d been selected as a “wayward steward” to house five refugees. The office does not exist, nor does the program. Elizabeth Bennett holds the letter on Sept. 27, 2024.Read moreCharles Fox / Staff Photographer
A Bala Cynwyd voter got a detailed letter this week from the made-up Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigration Affairs notifying her that her household had been selected to house five migrant refugees.
No office exists, nor does such a government-mandated housing program, but the letter, doctored to look like an official government document, provided specific details designed to mislead someone less attuned to a scam — and laid the blame for the fake program at the feet of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a heated and close election in which immigration has increasingly become a focal point.
“I’m concerned to find out how many people might have actually gotten it and to make sure the record’s set straight so people aren’t getting fearful or angry and deciding to vote another way,” Elizabeth Bennett, 62, said.
The letter says Bennett was selected as a “wayward steward” as part of “US5Ca12-B … written into Law by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.” No such law exists.
It advised Bennett she’d been selected based on property and income records and would receive an $80 weekly stipend for food costs. The letter suggested a “minimum of one bedroom be prepared with a minimum of 5 beds,” with a link to “government-approved” bunk beds.
The return address listed is for an intersection in front of the Capitol building in Harrisburg.
Neither the governor’s office nor the department of state immediately returned a request for comment.
Bennett is unsure why she was targeted. She has a large Harris/Walz sign in her front yard. Ironically, she’s also done volunteer resettlement work with immigrants for the last 30 years but she assumes that was just a coincidence.
“Of all the people they could send this to, I would be the one who is like, ‘OK let’s get the room set up, we gotta take care of these people,’” she said. But as she read on, she realized the program was fake and intended to scare people.
“I could definitely see, even for me reading this letter it felt threatening even though I’m very pro-immigrant because it felt like something that was being imposed on me,” she said.
It’s unclear if other Pennsylvanians received the letter. Bennett posted about it in small Facebook groups but hasn’t heard from others who received it.
But whoever created the letter took time to make it look like an official document, including an imprint of a fake Pennsylvania seal on the letterhead and a stamped date informing Bennett when to expect the migrants.
A listed phone number for the fake office, with a Harrisburg area code, goes to a voicemail for the named office where a messaging service invites the caller to press one for housing vouchers, two for reimbursements, and three to “expand your footprint to help more people.”
The letter Bennett received went on to specify garages or sheds without electricity and running water could not be used.
“Thank you for your dedication to the health and safety of these future Americans!” it concluded.
Misinformation about migrant resettlement and illegal immigration has been rampant in the campaign. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have made it a focus of their bid for the White House claiming that migrant resettlement has drained resources from small towns and that illegal immigration has driven crime and economic hardship, with little evidence.
The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement does invite people to be part of a government hosting program but participation is entirely optional.
State Rep. Joe Hohenstein (D., Philadelphia) is an immigration attorney who called the letter “a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country.”
“It’s definitely designed to make people think that there’s a broader government program to resettle refugees and my guess is that the intention is to stir up fear of immigrants and refugees,” he said. “That’s reprehensible It’s a betrayal of the actual spirit of our country of being a welcoming beacon to people who are seeking freedom.”
In the next week, Hohenstein is cosponsoring a bill to establish an Office of New Pennsylvanians, which would help provide support services for refugee businesses and migrants fleeing persecution in Pennsylvania.
“This would provide help to people who need it,” he said. “It would not be a mandate to anyone.”
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Scottie's Playtime 