Trump’s failure with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is a perfect example of how this regime operates.
He said he wants to beautify Washington DC, though the city is already beautiful. This is like when he came into office in 2017, and before the afternoon was over, he took credit for rebuilding the military. We were spending over $800 billion a year on our military before Donald Trump came into office, so trust me…. We already had a military. If anything, our military is weaker today because Donald Trump just wasted a lot of its armaments on his stupid chosen illegal war. It’s also being led by a chauvinistic, racist, white Christian nationalist with the brain of a moldy sponge.
Back to the pool. Trump wanted to beautify it before July 4, when our nation celebrates its 250th birthday, not to be confused with June 14, which is Donald Trump’s birthday, which will now be commemorated every year by having shirtless men pummel each other in your backyard. (snip-MORE)
The UFC event at the White House last Sunday was not supposed to be political, even though it was held on Donald Trump’s birthday. But after winning his fight, UFC fighter Josh Hokit was being interviewed by podcaster and ring announcer, Joe Rogan, when he grinned and looked into the camera, and said, “And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”
Of course, he is not right, and his racist and sexist conspiracy theory shouldn’t be given the dignity of a defense because it is just too ridiculous and stupid. But what Hokit did wasn’t just disrespectful to Michelle Obama and President Obama, but also to the White House, where he made the comment (hasn’t that place suffered enough during Trump 2.0?), and the country, as this was supposed to be for America’s 250th birthday.
The event itself was disrespectful enough to the White House and the Oval Office without Hokit’s hateful comment. (snip-MORE)
The bar she drank at, the bed she recuperated in, the canals she daytripped to, the studio she stormed out of, the easel she painted her final masterpiece at … ahead of a major Tate show, our writer finds Kahlo’s spirit alive in Mexico City
Today you’re going to eat art,” says Federico Valdez, a chef at the School of Mexican Cuisine and a man so passionate about food he has the word Queso (Cheese) tattooed on his forearm. “Today,” continues Valdez, “you’re going to eat history.” What unfolds, in a sun-filled dining room lined with Mexican flowers, books and artefacts, is a three-course feast inspired by Frida Kahlo, her life, her art and her loves, including her first lesbian affair.
The starter, rooted in her childhood fascination with revolution, is a lightly spiced Mexican take on Russian pirozhki. The main dish – served with pulque, an agave-derived drink Kahlo loved – taps into her rebellious spirit. “It’s called Frida Against the World,” says Valdez, as we are presented with a giant stuffed chilli that sits amid a nutty, beany sauce similar to the one eaten at Kahlo’s wedding to Diego Rivera, then the most famous artist in the world, now firmly in her shadow.
“I wanted this to be hot and horny,” says Valdez, explaining that halved figs were added to reference Kahlo’s sexuality. “Her first love, with a female teacher, happened at a time when Mexico wasn’t so open. I wanted to get in all that spicy gossip. I’m not a big fan of playing it safe.”
I’m in Mexico City with a Tate delegation just as the huge jacaranda trees are blooming purple and violet across its parks and boulevards – to follow in Kahlo’s footsteps ahead of Frida: The Making of an Icon, a show of more than 30 of her works at Tate Modern in London that seems destined to be a summer blockbuster, adding yet more fuel to Fridamania.
‘This is going to blow your mind’ … chef Federico Valdez. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
One work, Self Portrait With Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, was painted in 1940 after her painful divorce from Rivera. A spider monkey, similar to the one he gave her as a present, is pulling on her thorn necklace, drawing blood. The two soon remarried, Kahlo inscribing the clocks in their house with the years of their separation and reunion.
“The exhibition is like a movie,” says Tobias Ostrander, its curator. “Frida is the star but it’s also about her life, her people, her impact.” Charting Kahlo’s rise from unknown painter to global phenomenon, the show will also examine merch (expect a Kahlo Barbie) and gauge her influence on later artists.
On display, too, will be many of the artist’s treasured possessions, including her brilliantly patternedtehuana dresses. Graciela Iturbide’s ghostly photographs of her crutches, customised medical corsets and prosthetic leg will also feature. These were taken 50 years after Kahlo’s death, when all her belongings were finally freed from the bathroom in which Rivera had ordered them to be locked away.
Unseen for 50 years … Kahlo’s prosthetic leg, captured in Graciela Iturbide’s photograph. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist
This took place at Casa Azul, the house in Coyoacán (The Place of the Coyote Owners) where Kahlo was born and spent most of her 47 years. It’s now a beautiful, beguiling museum with smooth exterior walls painted a gorgeous blue. These border shiny red concrete paths that thread through fountains and lush gardens bursting with palm, yucca, cactus and bougainvillaea. Off in a corner, seen through trees, a maroon pyramid with yellow steps displays on its ledges Rivera and Kahlo’s pre-Hispanic, Aztec and Toltec artefacts.
“We don’t know exactly where the blue came from,” says Perla Labarthe Álvarez, the museum director. “But in her diary, Frida expressed what the colour meant to her: purity, electricity and love. Because of her health – she had surgery all her life, more than 30 operations – she was at home a lot so it had to be a comfortable place where she could rest. Many of her still lifes were done in the garden. She called her home A Place Full of Places.”
It’s a perfect description. For this is a breathtakingly evocative location, even leaving aside the fact that Trotsky lived here for two years with his wife, having a brief affair with Kahlo.
‘A place full of places’ … Kahlo’s kitchen and garden at Casa Azul; her bed with its overhead mirror; and the easel adapted so she could paint on her back or in her wheelchair. Composite: Bob Schalkwijk/Andrew Gilchrist
Tours begin in the living room, with its hefty pyramid-style fireplace designed by Rivera and, as an old photo shows, once flanked by two of his macabre Judas dolls, papier-mache devils that are stuffed with fireworks and set alight at festivals. Opposite is Kahlo’s mesmerising portrait of her beloved photographer father, painted 15 years after he died, his eyes as captivating as hers.
On the walls, photos and texts detail the polio Kahlo contracted at the age of six, leaving her with one shorter leg, and the trolley-bus crash at 18 that impaled her on an iron handrail and left her in pain for much of her life, as well as unable to have children.
She could never paint this accident, even though what she did paint was often deeply painful and personal – and these works were largely created at Casa Azul, upstairs in her studio, where visitors can see the easel adapted to allow her to use brushes lying on her back or seated in her wheelchair.
‘One kick and it could take the house down’ … Kahlo’s customised boot and her ashes in an urn. Composite: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
In the next room is the four-poster single bed in which her mother placed an overhead mirror, giving Kahlo, frequently confined there, both a distraction and a subject. “I paint myself,” she once said, “because I am so often alone and I am the subject I know best.”
As well as her corsets, she customised her orthopaedic footwear, turning one stepped-up mid-calf red boot into a work of art. Embroidered with patterns and adorned with a blue ribbon, the chunkily laced boot now proudly stands in its own case, extraordinarily alive, looking like it could take the whole house down with one kick. Meanwhile, on a dresser, Kahlo’s ashes sit in a delightfully playful ancient urn. Boasting cartoon-like arms and legs, it’s shaped like a toad, a nod to her affectionate term for Rivera. “You found me torn apart,” says a sign, “and you took me back full and complete.”
Across the courtyard, you can see Kahlo’s crutches and corsets, one decorated with a hammer and sickle. She painted herself in these corsets, too. In Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, a 1954 work that hangs close by, the garment has morphed into her skin, her bare breasts. A bald eagle wearing an Uncle Sam hat is being throttled while Marx’s enormous hands reach out to cradle Kahlo. As ever, her penetrating, all-seeing eyes stare out beneath that monobrow.
Throttling Uncle Sam … Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick. Photograph: Artium/Alamy
The most stunning work at Casa Azul, though, is the last one she ever painted, completed eight days before her death in 1954. Called Viva la Vida, or Long Live Life, it portrays several sun-drenched watermelons, the de facto national fruit of Mexico. In some places, their flesh is as red as blood. One has been cut in half in a crisscross pattern, echoing the Vs of the title, which appears in big black letters on another slice. It’s as if the fruit itself, life itself, is talking to you, imploring you. Live, live.
What you take from Casa Azul is an almost overwhelming sense of Kahlo’s talent, resilience and rebelliousness. “Tell us about the bomb,” someone says to Álvarez at one point, but she is out of earshot. “Is it true Frida bombed her school?” Actually, what she and her friends planted was more of a firecracker, albeit one powerful enough to blow out several windows. No one was hurt and, unlike some, Kahlo escaped expulsion.
‘It’s as if the fruit – life itself – is imploring you’ … Kahlo’s final painting, Viva la Vida. Photograph: The Artchives/Alamy
There’s a park not far off, now named after her, with a pyramid by a fountain and lifesize bronze statues of Rivera and Kahlo. She’s ahead of him, purposeful, her head half-turned, as he follows happily in her wake, smiling gently and clearly in awe of this woman, despite all his affairs. The bar they liked, La Guadalupana, still stands, a shrine to el toreo with the heads of bulls on its walls, as well as paintings and posters of fighters. Perhaps it’s more appealing if you’ve had, as Rivera and Kahlo sometimes did, “a tequila or 10”.
Downtown, we find, the streets are not so tranquil. Some are barricaded and hoarding has been placed around national monuments. These were erected in response to a recent march of 180,000 women, furious at the rates of femicide in Mexico. About 2,500 women are murdered a year, but less than a third are categorised as femicides even though there is evidence they should be. Less than a quarter of femicides are punished.
‘Clearly in awe of this woman’ … statues of Diego Rivera and Kahlo in the park named after her. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Would Kahlo have painted this outrage if she were alive today? She already did. In 1935’s Unos Cuantos Piquetitos, or A Few Small Nips, Kahlo recreates a story she read in the paper that left her incensed. A woman lies slashed and naked on a blood-splattered bed, murdered by her husband, who holds a knife and would later dismiss his crime to the police with the words of the title. Initially, Kahlo put the children in, as they witnessed the entire horror, but this was just too brutal and they have now gone.
Kahlo also painted in a studio across town, in the bohemian neighbourhood of San Ángel. It’s a beautiful, boxlike, three-storey building painted that signature blue. A rooftop bridge links it to Rivera’s much bigger workplace, a white-and-ochre structure where he would often put in 15-hour days.
Built on modernist Le Corbusier lines and now part of a museum, these studios caused a sensation when they first appeared, unadorned constructivist creations sitting among the elaborate residences of San Ángel. They’re still ringed by a superb perimeter fence of tall, perfectly placed pole-like cactuses, this being a way for both artists to bring Mexico and nature into their workplaces.
At one with nature … Kahlo’s studio with its cactus fence. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Rivera’s studio is magnificent, overflowing with ceramics and artefacts from his folk-art collection, all arranged alongside paintings and paintpots. There’s an almost party vibe: death masks sit grinning on chairs, crowds of Judas dolls leer conspiratorially around the windows, while chorus lines of strangely joyous skeletal figures dance wildly across the walls above. It feels appropriate: the parties here were legendary, attended by presidents, revolutionaries and exiles alike, as well as Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin.
Over the bridge, above the bath in Kahlo’s studio toilet, you can see a copy of What the Water Gave Me, her 1938 painting of her feet as she bathed, with elements adrift on the water symbolising events in her life, from exotic plants to nude figures on a bed to an erupting volcano. There’s not a whole lot else to see in her studio, Kahlo having packed everything up and left after catching Rivera in bed with her sister. According to the museum guide, she told him: “I am going to get all my furniture and get out of here because I hate you.”
What the Water Gave Me is the favourite Kahlo painting of Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, writer of The Ribbon and the Bomb, a book about the artist’s continuing and even growing relevance. Its title refers to the words French surrealist André Breton used to describe Kahlo’s work – “a ribbon around a bomb” – although Mac Gregor thinks there’s “maybe no ribbon, only bombs” and they’re still exploding through times beyond her own, as new generations of (largely) women see themselves, their bodies, their sexualities and their struggles mirrored in her masterpieces.
“There’s the bomb of her illness,” says Mac Gregor, as she joins us for lunch at the fabulous San Ángel Inn, a former Carmelite monastery opposite the studios famed for its gardens and margaritas. “She’s vulnerable yet she’s strong and erotic, not what you might expect of someone so ill. And she was so ahead of her time, making the personal political, living on her own terms, playing with gender roles and cutting her hair. Then there are the bombs of femicide and abortion, her own.” This was chiefly to safeguard her damaged pelvis. “Frida painted these things people didn’t talk about. Even with this illness – and one year she managed only one work – she created such beauty.”
‘The parties were legendary’ … Judas dolls, paintings, skeletons and death masks at Rivera’s studio. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
Clearly delighted, Mac Gregor adds: “Frida is more important than Diego Rivera now, which is weird because she was the artist she was because of him. He was a macho Mexican womaniser but he loved and supported her. And the essays he wrote about her work are amazing, talking about her representations of the interior and the exterior. He said she was going to be the most important artist in Mexico.” Kahlo didn’t stop there. When The Dream (The Bed) fetched $54.7m in 2025, this set a new world record for a female artist.
The Tate has been lucky to get any works at all, given how proud and protective Mexicans are of Kahlo, especially with the World Cup having just kicked off in their country. This was brought home to me at the Museo de Arte Moderno, where you can linger all you want in front of, say, a María Izquierdo – but gaze too long at a Kahlo and you’ll soon start to feel the pressure from other visitors to move on.
This happened to me twice: first in front of The Two Fridas, in which she explores her mixed heritage, dressing one self in European attire, the other in Mexican; and secondly at Self-Portrait with Monkeys (see top), in which Kahlo, faintly moustached, is seen with four of the creatures she kept as pets. They are often seen to represent the four pupils, nicknamed Los Fridos, who stuck with her even as her health made teaching harder and harder. Kahlo would also say that the monkeys in her work symbolised the children she could not have.
No visit to Mexico City is complete without a trip south to the floating gardens and canals of Xochimilco, for a voyage on one of the 500 colourful big gondola-like boats that ply its busy waterways. Kahlo loved to come with her family to these canals, which were created by the Aztecs. There’s a famous photo of her face hovering over the water, looking serene as she dips her arm in up to the elbow.
A song for £10 … the Axolotls board Rosamaria. Photograph: Courtesy Andrew Gilchrist
“Every boat has a female name,” says the captain of Rosamaria, our vessel, “because they are like flowers.” As we set off, smaller, faster boats speed by, bearing vendors of pulque and tacos. Before long, we are being pursued by two very loud mariachi bands, one called the Pintorescos, meaning the Picturesques, the other the Axolotls, named after the tiny, endangered and ridiculously cute species of salamander native to these waters. The Axolotls win, boarding our boat in seconds and performing for £10 a song, first Cielito Lindo (Lovely Sweet One) with its rousing singalong chorus, and then of course La Bamba.
As the Axolotls speed off in a blur of strings, brass and tight trousers, peace returns and we idle along as the afternoon sun beats fiercely down. I dangle my arm into the cool water, just like Kahlo did, and remember something Federico Valdez said as he unveiled the final course of his feast, a rice-pudding-like dish in a watermelon sauce, washed down with a liquor made from Chihuahua apples.
“This dessert is going to blow your mind,” he said, as a picture of Kahlo’s funeral appeared on the screen behind him. “Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.”
I think I posted about the Big Gay Market last year here on Scottie’s. It’s really cool, and it was Sunday 6/14 this year. It always makes me reminisce about, among other things, when I first came upon Scottie’s blog.
It was named “Scottie’s Toybox” at the time, with the same tagline, “Come See What I Share.” It sounded like Big Gay Fun to me, so I clicked through from MPS one time, and sure enough, there was a little big gay fun, a few resources for queer and other marginalized groups, and some issues on which people could take action if they cared to, along with a little general news. It was another time, it now seems. Anyway, Scottie transitioned to Playtime not as long a while back, I think due to Word Press anomalies, or something. I may not recall that correctly; I was a reader/sometime commenter, and it was nice. The Big Gay Market always reminds me of that, and I smile! 🏳🌈
Because of some election results and the associated removal of rights from, well, about everyone, but everyone isn’t as unsafe as those who are marginalized; and the scope of the blog has changed as well.
But on Big Gay Market day, I like to post about it. I bet everyone has a bright spot like this by them, and I know Scottie and I would like to know about those, too! Below is a report about, then the home page of Wichita’s Big Gay Market. Relax and enjoy!
A news report/interview from our local CBS affiliate.
(I dislike this channel, for its owner is an evil corporation and they’ve dumbed things down significantly, but as far as Google knows, they’re the only channel who has covered the Big Gay Market this year. For the record, I saw a short report on our local NBC affiliate at 5 PM, too, but can’t find it online Sunday evening. You can watch/listen on the page; it’s a short interview with the founder.)
WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – The 5th Annual ICT Big Gay Market returns Sunday, June 14, bringing a full day of vendors, food and family-friendly activities to Central Riverside Park. Organizer and founder James Boyd says the event is designed to feel like a “huge farmers market” that is welcoming to all ages and packed with things to see, taste, and shop, with nearly 150 vendors expected this year.
Admission is free, but attendees can choose to purchase a Market button. You do not need a button to attend, but some vendors will offer special discounts to button holders. Button proceeds go toward a $2,000 Trades Scholarship through WSU; once that goal is reached, remaining funds will help support next year’s market.
Event details
What: 5th Annual ICT Big Gay Market
When: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Sunday, June 14
Where: Central Riverside Park, 720 North Nims St., Wichita
Cost: Free to attend (optional Market button available)
Copyright 2026 KWCH. All rights reserved. To report a correction or typo, please email news@kwch.com
Central Riverside Park June 14th 9:am to 4:pm 720 North Nims st Wichita, KS 67203
Wether your looking for a day out and a meal, some shopping or chilling to local music this can be a fun time for everyone! Local creators from all around Wichita have come together to show support to our local LGBTQ community!
2026 has come so quickly it’s hard to believe we are celebrating our 5th season of ICT Big Gay Market!
Jeff & James put together a community scholarship that supports the futures of soon to be students at WSU TECH! Our goal is to help one person with a $2,000.00 boost to their passion. We all help out where we can, you can donate to this scholarship here:
Donald Trump had an interview with a national news network, and he got fact-checked. Obviously, this network was not Fox News, because it would typically allow him to lie unabated.
It was a wide-ranging interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker that aired Sunday on Meet the Press, and ended abruptly in a hissy fit on his part. Trump claimed that the California gubernatorial primary is “rigged” in favor of Democrats. Instead of letting his lie slide by, Welker pushed back and pointed out that there is no evidence to his claim. Welker was professional and tried to move the interview forward after calling out his lie, but Trump would not let it go.
Trump has a tradition of castigating black female journalists, and he continued it with Welker, saying, “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” before ending the interview in a tantrum. (snip-MORE)
It seems that Donald Trump wants to take something else away from the people and make it all about himself. This time, it’s the NBA finals.
The New York Knicks lead in the finals, 2-0, after defeating the Spurs in the first two games in San Antonio. Now, the series is headed to New York City, where it will resume on Monday night. Not only will there be thousands upon thousands of rabid New York fans waiting for them, but also Donald Trump.
The Knicks haven’t won an NBA Finals series since 1973, and fans are worried that Donald Trump’s presence will jinx their current run, where they have not lost in the last 12 games. The Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons on their way to meet the Spurs in the finals. The Spurs are supposed to be the better team, but no one has told the Knicks that yet.
Knicks owner James Dolan has invited Trump to attend Monday’s game at Madison Square Garden. Why would he do that? Is he stupid? (snip-MORE)
I considered taking the day off, but I have a hard time not working. I kind of sort of don’t know what to do with myself. So I drew something, but decided not to spend too much time on it.
I was thinking about artificial intelligence and how much I hate it. I really hate these people on social media who use AI to create cartoons. They suck. It annoys me that these people think that they are cartoonists. We all use AI, but I really hate that people are using it for their creative process. Lately, the word “slop” has been used with AI. I don’t know who was the first to use it that way, but it’s most appropriate. When it comes to art, there isn’t a lot of variety in styles with AI, which means that when you use it, it looks generic. I can usually tell when something has been created with AI. (snip-MORE)
June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the United States, so we’ve collected some of our most popular stories on a range of topics—from pronouns to politics—that highlight the history of the LGBTQIA+ community. As always, links to free JSTOR scholarship are included with each of these.
Carson McCullers’s debut novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, is published.
On June 4, 1940, the day her debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunterwas published, 23-year-old Carson McCullers was alone in New York City. She’d come with her husband to promote the book, but he was off sailing with a friend. “She knew almost no one in New York except the kindly older woman acquaintance who had found her the room,” writes Mary V. Dearborn.
“She was nearly penniless, but she had to scrape together enough money to buy something to wear to a meeting with her editor the next week. June 4 was a pause. On one side were Carson’s years growing up in provincial Columbus, Georgia, and the succession of Southern towns to which her husband’s job had called them. On the other side, she assumed, would be the exciting life of an author, living glamorously in New York City, meeting the writers, artists, and musicians who had peopled her fantasies.”
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was hotly anticipated, despite—or because of—its strangeness. “It did not fit any of the accepted and expected categories of mainstream fiction,” Dearborn explains. “It was neither a love story nor a bildungsroman, it did not have characters whom readers could recognize as like themselves, it did not have a happy ending, and it did not have a single strong narrative line.” It was a book about misfits, written by a misfit. But, importantly, McCullers was a young misfit, and publishing has always loved nothing better than a wunderkind. “Readers were flabbergasted to learn that this tour de force was the work of someone so young and, despite her gender-ambiguous name, a woman,” writes Dearborn. “It was hard to believe she knew so much about the ‘lonely hearts’ of others, said one critic. She seemed sui generis, unique, and as it turned out, as odd as some of her characters.” Richard Wright compared her favorably to William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and wrote that “whether you will want to read the book depends upon the extent to which you value the experience of discovering the stale and familiar terms of everyday life bathed in a rich and strange meaning, devoid of pettiness and sentimentality.” A lot of people wanted to read it. The novel became a bestseller, and McCullers, at least for a time, was offered entry into the artist’s life of her dreams. “I became an established literary figure overnight and I was much too young to understand what happened to me or the responsibility it entailed,” she said later. “I was a bit of a holy terror.” It’s hard to hold it against her, though. By the age of 30 she would have had two major strokes; she died much too young, at 50, after a brain hemorrhage, leaving behind years of literary potential along with her enduring classics.
Pride Month is an annual celebration of the many contributions made by the LGBTQ+ community to history, society and cultures worldwide. In most places, Pride is celebrated throughout the month of June each year in commemoration of its roots in the Stonewall Riots of June 1969. However, in some areas—especially in the Southern Hemisphere—pride events occur at other times of the year.
Origins of Pride Month
The roots of the gay rights movement go back to the early 1900s, when a handful of individuals in North America and Europe created gay and lesbian organizations such as the the Society for Human Rights, founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago in the 1920s.
Following World War II, a small number of groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis published gay- and lesbian-positive newsletters and grew more vocal in demanding recognition for, and protesting discrimination against, gays and lesbians. In 1966, for example, members of the Mattachine Society held a “sip-in” protest at Julius, a bar in New York City, where they demanded drinks after announcing that they were gay, in violation of local laws against serving alcohol to gays and lesbians.
Despite some progress in the postwar era, basic civil rights were largely denied to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people—until one night in June, 1969, when the gay rights movement took a furious step forward with a series of violent riots in New York City.
Stonewall Riots
https://www.history.com/articles/pride-month (this is one of those videos embedded on the page, beneath is a bit about it, then more about the riots. Go see the video, if you like!)
How the Stonewall Riots Sparked a Movement
The 1969 Stonewall Inn Riots sparked the beginning of the gay rights movement in America. Learn how.
As was common practice in many cities, the New York Police Department would occasionally raid bars and restaurants where gays and lesbians were known to gather. This occurred on June 28, 1969, when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan.
When the police aggressively dragged patrons and employees out of the bar, several people fought back against the NYPD, and a growing crowd of angry locals gathered in the streets. The confrontations quickly escalated and sparked six days of protests and violent clashes with the NYPD outside the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street and throughout the neighborhood.
By the time the Stonewall Riots ended on July 2, 1969, the gay rights movement went from being a fringe issue largely ignored by politicians and the media to front-page news worldwide.
This is my last week of book tour for How To Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay and I have conflicting emotions because touring can be hard with anxiety and chronic illness, but it’s also so uplifting to see people in real life and remind myself that the work I do does make a difference even when my mind says otherwise. It can be so easy to listen to the lies that depression tells, and it helps me refill my cup in a way that I can’t explain.
I suspect that you also probably have no idea how much the work you do in your own life (including the work of just being human, kind, and yourself) makes ripples in fantastic ways you’ll never see, but never doubt that it does.
I drew a lot last week because I was in a depression and it helped, but my brain wouldn’t work enough to put together the words I wanted on the drawings so instead of showing you the three unfinished sketches that I’m still working on, here’s a drawing from the book that I’ve been reminding myself of during this depression:
“Don’t begrudge yourself happiness.”
Because there isn’t enough joy in life to just let it pass you by. When it arrives, celebrate it…enjoy it…don’t let guilt or the drudgery of life get in the way of grabbing joy and whimsy and relief whenever it comes and however it shows up. Because you deserve it.
And I do too.
And when this depression passes completely I want to be ready for it.
Do you remember last month when everyone was so excited about Moon Joy as we watched Artemis II? I have a confession to make.
I did not watch it.
Perhaps a combination of my anxiety plus a little leftover trauma of watching in Challenger live in Elementary school? Regardless, I couldn’t enjoy it until I knew that they were safely back home, but then I did a deep dive and that is why I am forever experiencing pop-culture moments behind the rest of the world. It’s also why this week I decided to draw something that might have been more timely before, but I suspect you will forgive me.
It reminded me of how amazing space is…of exploration and joy…and of the idea that we are each an actual part of the magic of that universe, even when we feel that we are so tiny and unremarkable.
So this is just a reminder to you that you are truly made of stardust. Nearly all of the elements in your body where made in a star, and many have come through several supernovas. The actual iron in your body is from a star going supernova. So if today you are feeling small, remember that you are magic in astounding ways.
PS. I know I normally just talk art here but I thought maybe you’d want to see this. Yesterday I started fostering a feral rescue kitten to try to fill the kitty-sized hole in my heart right now and I’m pretty sure this tiny, nameless orange gentleman will not be leaving us because omg, y’all.
Scottie's Playtime 