It is almost 4 minutes. Watch it when you get a few minutes; not only is it history-making that she still sounds like this at 79, but the screen or screens behind her have their own little history bits. Enjoy! It’s not hard-rocking or loud or anything.
Tag: Peace
More For Readers To Check Up On With Their State Legislatures
We read and write a great deal about the SAVE Act that may or may not pass. It is a federal law, and really it’s unconstitutional, because the states control their own elections. If it passes as a federal law, well, there are still a few things that can be done. In the meantime, state legislatures are busy. Depending upon your own state’s legislature, it’s at least likely there’s committee work happening on this. Or, possibly, your state has progressed (ha) as far as my state has. It’s a fine day to check in with your state’s business, so you aren’t caught unawares come your next election.
Kansas Legislature plots election suppression, one careful building block at a time
by Robin Monroe, Kansas Reflector
March 11, 2026
Kansas is not rewriting its election system with one sweeping law.
It is doing so in pieces.
A deadline adjustment here. A database requirement there. A repeal of mail-in ballot authority. A restriction on ballot return methods. A new reporting mandate. A rule centralizing constitutional challenges in one county. A provision that repeals advance voting if courts intervene.
Individually, each bill appears technical. Administrative. Procedural.
Collectively, they form a kind of architecture, and architecture is never accidental.
The justification offered repeatedly is election integrity, specifically, noncitizen voting. Yet documented cases of noncitizen voting in Kansas have been counted in the single digits through the decades.
National reviews of millions of ballots have found similarly rare occurrences. The problem, statistically, is exceedingly small.
The legislative response, however, is structurally expansive.
Consider what is being built.
One bill requires certain public assistance agencies to report identifying information about noncitizen recipients to the secretary of state. Another one mandates recurring comparisons between Kansas’s voter registration system and the federal SAVE database.
Others expand the removal triggers to include driver’s license status or database mismatches.
In practical terms, that creates a dubious data pipeline: Public benefits system data is sent to the Secretary of State, where it is cross-referenced against the federal immigration database, then checked against the statewide voter rolls and then returned to the secretary of state, who has removal authority.
Public benefits databases were designed to determine eligibility for food, health care, and housing assistance. The federal SAVE system was designed to verify immigration status for entitlement programs. Kansas’s voter registration system was designed to facilitate elections.
Now, these systems are being interconnected for enforcement.
Even small database error rates become significant when the right to vote is at stake. Federal oversight reports have documented reliability and oversight concerns within SAVE.
Legislative testimony in Kansas has acknowledged audit-tracking issues within the state’s voter system. When automated cross-checking expands and removal authority increases, the margin for error shrinks, and the constitutional risk grows.
At the same time, access pathways are narrowing.
Deadlines for advance mail ballots are shortened. Remote ballot return boxes are eliminated. The statutory authority for certain mail ballot elections is repealed. These changes do not eliminate voting, but they constrict time and space.
When time compresses, errors matter more.
If a voter is flagged incorrectly due to a database mismatch, an outdated record or a clerical error, there is less opportunity to correct the problem. Fewer alternatives. Less flexibility.
Then there is process.
Several of these election bills have moved rapidly through the House, advancing from committee to floor debate to final action within compressed timelines. Emergency procedural tools reduce the space between debate and final vote. Hearings are scheduled even when broad support is thin.
Procedure is not neutral.
When legislative time is compressed, public scrutiny thins. Stakeholder response shortens. Amendments shrink. The result may comply with formal rules, but deliberative depth diminishes.
Finally, litigation itself is being reshaped. House Bill 2569 centralizes constitutional challenges to election laws in Shawnee County. Another contains a provision that would repeal advance voting statutes if courts invalidate certain signature verification requirements. These measures alter the terrain of judicial review, raising the stakes of constitutional challenges.
States unquestionably possess the authority to regulate elections. That authority is granted by the Constitution. But it exists alongside equal protection guarantees, due process protections, and the Voting Rights Act.
The question is not whether Kansas can regulate elections.
The question is whether it should construct an expansive enforcement and restriction architecture in response to a statistically rare problem.
From a social work perspective, policy is not evaluated solely by its stated purpose but also by its impact.
Who is most likely to be flagged incorrectly in database cross-checks? Who relies most heavily on mail voting? Who has the least time and fewest resources to correct administrative errors?
Who bears the burden when access narrows, and timelines tighten? When election administration shifts from facilitation to filtration, those questions matter.
This is not about one bill. It is about the convergence of data centralization, verification expansion, access contraction, procedural acceleration and litigation hardening, all moving in the same direction, creating a cumulative burden on Kansas voters.
Kansas may not rewrite its election system in a single dramatic stroke.
But architecture does not require drama. It requires design. And Kansans deserve to understand the structure being built in their name.
Robin Monroe is a native Kansan living and working in Wichita. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.
Another Women’s History Post
Short, sweet, and simple, by an artist I have adored since Jr. high and my own radio.
Josh Day Next Day
Enjoy some time on your Wednesday!
For Women’s History Month,
a Monday entry that isn’t toooo historical, but is a nice tidbit. Enjoy the comic; the Women’s History bit is in the Soul Corner: “Painless Paula.”
Good News Here!
A safe baby, and record Girl Scout cookies sales for trans Scouts! I remember seeing the story about the young man saving the baby last week on local TV news (through a national network affiliate.) No mention of anything but his heroism and his humility about doing what anyone else would have done.
Heroic Chicago trans comedian recalls saving infant from ice-cold Lake Michigan: ‘I guess I’m going in’
“The most important part of this entire story is that the baby is okay,” Lio Cundiff told The Advocate.
A Chicago comedian is speaking out about a daring rescue that left him in the freezing waters of Lake Michigan, and saving an infant from drowning.
Six days before his February 24 birthday, on a bright winter afternoon along Chicago’s Lake Michigan waterfront, Lio Cundiff had a thought that now reads like a setup to a joke. “I was on the phone with my friend, looking at the water, and I was like, ‘Man, that looks so beautiful. I just want to jump in,’” he told The Advocate in an interview on Friday. Little did he know.
Cundiff, 31, had arrived early for work on February 18 near Belmont Harbor and wandered down to the water, as he often does. He loves the lake. He loves floating in it in the summer — ideally, he says, “with a beer.” He had been taking phone calls, sitting on a bench, “vibing,” he said.
Then he heard screaming. “I just look up, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ I just saw a stroller headed straight to the lake, just blown by the wind,” he recalled.
In that instant, the punchline vanished. There was no bit to craft, no self-deprecating aside about his baby face or his anxiety about sending emails, both staples of his stand-up. There was only motion. He threw down his jacket and phone and ran.
“I was like, ‘I guess I’m going in.’ And I jumped in and just tried to keep us afloat as much as possible,” he said.
Early media reports suggested that Cundiff did not know how to swim. He bristles at that characterization. “I can swim,” he said, explaining that in the hospital he told a reporter he wasn’t the strongest swimmer and preferred “to float with a beer in my hand.” “They ran with, ‘I can’t swim,’” he said.
“I can swim. I just prefer not to,” he said through a chuckle.
The baby, eight months old, was zipped inside the stroller. Cundiff had to keep the entire frame buoyant while treading freezing cold water. At one point, both of their heads went under. He describes the memory in fragments, as though replaying a film whose ending he already knows but still cannot quite believe.
“There were a few minutes where I didn’t know if we were going to be able to keep afloat,” he said. “I grabbed her hand for a second. Her tiny little fingers. I rubbed them for two seconds, and I was like, ‘Okay.’ … ‘All right, we got to keep going.’”
A bystander named Lou dropped a jacket; later, a life buoy arrived. They were about thirty feet from a ladder. Cundiff’s muscles were tightening. When they finally reached it, and the baby began to cry, he felt something like release.
“As long as she’s crying, when she gets out, that’s all I needed,” he said. (snip-MORE on the page)
Trans Girl Scouts Sell 330,000 Boxes Of Cookies In Public Outpouring Of Support
The total boxes sold is the highest in the history of EITM’s trans girl scout cookie list.
Erin Reed Mar 05, 2026
Five years ago, as anti-trans legislation first began spreading across the United States, I kept thinking about the kids caught in the middle of it—transgender children suddenly facing a wave of hostility simply for existing. That year, I started something small in response: a trans Girl Scout cookie list. Only three scouts were on it. The internet responded immediately, helping them sell out their entire quota. Every year since, I’ve made the list again, and every year it has grown larger. Now, in 2026, the list has reached a staggering scale: 220 transgender Girl Scouts participating—and together they have already sold more than 330,000 boxes of cookies, with the number still climbing every minute.
One scout hoping to fund a troop trip to Alaska—and assemble backpacks for foster children—has sold 2,500 boxes of cookies, bringing those plane tickets within reach. Another scout, a competitive soccer player, was raising money so her troop could attend scouting camp without worrying about the cost; she has now sold 4,500 boxes, ensuring that trip is covered. One troop made up of transgender Girl Scouts set their sights on learning horseback riding and attending summer camp together—and sold 22,000 boxes to make it happen. And Pim, who simply wanted to go to Niagara Falls and to take her troop camping, has sold more cookies than the website can even track: more than 100,000 boxes.
And while we can’t know exactly how many of those sales came directly from our yearly list, we do know that these trans Girl Scouts have taken the internet by storm. Posts about them have racked up millions of impressions on Facebook and gone repeatedly viral on Bluesky. In the process, countless people looking for their next box of cookies discovered a cause worth supporting—and a group of scouts they were excited to cheer on.
The news about their staggering success comes during a broader regression around scouting organizations with respect to transgender people. In December, the United Kingdom’s Girlguiding—the British equivalent of the Girl Scouts—banned transgender girls from joining, reversing a policy that had been in place since 2018. In the United States, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced Scouting America to agree to classify members by sex assigned at birth, eliminate diversity initiatives, and effectively out and segregate transgender scouts from their peers. Girl Scouts of the USA, however, has yet to see the same regression—the organization still stands by its transgender inclusion policy.
For these kids, that transgender inclusion policy has given them hope. At a time when thousands of anti-LGBTQ+ bills are being proposed and passed across the country, the cookie list is proof that people out there care. When every force in the world is acting against them, for once, their identity is not treated as a curse by society, but a blessing. Parents have told me that their children have been overwhelmed with joy watching the numbers climb, realizing that strangers across the country support them. And that’s worth protecting. (snip-MORE on the page)
Tidbits From My Neglected Email
This one’s a couple of months old, but good for Women’s History Month.
William Merritt Chase, the Accidental Ally
Painter William Merritt Chase opened an art school for a new generation of women, teaching them how to draw as well as how to advocate for themselves.
William Merritt Chase with Parsons School of Design students via Wikimedia Commons
The story of the establishment of the Chase School of Art, forerunner of the Parsons School of Design in New York, offers an unlikely object lesson in what happens when you seek to realize your creative aspirations in an era of political and cultural upheaval. In 1896, the Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase was ready to declare independence from the rigid hierarchies of the New York art scene and its dependence on European masters and methods. He dreamed of establishing what he considered an explicitly American school of art, one that encouraged artists to embrace and portray the unique character and energy of the young nation and its people, and he needed money. To get it, he founded an experimental new school for painting in Manhattan that would, ironically, thrive on the burgeoning hopes of women in an era of their growing liberty and opportunity.
Best remembered for society portraits, plein air paintings, pastel seascapes, dead fish still lifes, and depictions of dancing white clouds, Chase suddenly found himself in an unfamiliar role: he was, if not quite an equal rights leader, then an ambitious artist who, in pursuing his own interests, opened avenues for women artists and played a part in establishing a new era of American art beyond his own envisioning.
As June L. Ness writes in Archives of the American Art Journal, Chase stood among the most influential artists and art teachers in the country at the turn of the twentieth century. He was on the faculty at the Art Students League, the Brooklyn Art Association, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; he instructed a cadre of private students in his home studios and abroad; he lectured in Connecticut, Chicago, and elsewhere; and he oversaw a summer art school outside the Long Island town of Southampton.
A man of his times, Chase and his wife, Alice Gerson, an amateur photographer, ran at the limits of their finances. In 1896, as parents to four children, they faced a turning point. Chase wanted to quit teaching altogether and devote himself to painting. Yet the couple also wanted to maintain luxury residences in both the city and the country while traveling extensively but lacked the resources to sustain such a lifestyle. (snip-MORE, plus art!)
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Cadged these snippets from my Naked Pastor email:
| So when someone says, “You’re okay,” it can feel naive. Or rebellious. Or even offensive. But what if it’s neither naive nor rebellious? What if it’s simply true? Cartoon: You’re not broken  Dad Joke: I’m confused  Quote: The illusion  Original: My Strength That Is Within Me  Merch of the Week: Jesus Eraser Sticker  |
Cartoon of the Week
I mean it.
Dad Joke
I keep saying “It is what it is,” but what even is it???
Quote
I recently saw a clip from a Leonard Cohen interview. She asked him about him spending time with Roshi in a Zen monastery. He said it was like a hospital, and Roshi was the doctor. The interviewer asked what he cured him from. Cohen replied, “The illusion that you are sick. He cured me of the illusion that I needed his teachings.”
You’re Okay!
| Let’s make this one short and sweet. I agree with Cohen. I also agree with Sinéad O’Connor’s therapist, who told her the whole point of therapy was to help her realize she didn’t need therapy. The same with Gabor Maté, who said that I am not broken, but just wounded. Underneath the wounds and pain is wholeness. A wholeness already there, just waiting to be embraced. These all ring true to me. When I share cartoons like the one here, The Best Healing, I get some positive comments, but also a lot of angry and offended ones. And I understand why. I, too, was raised to believe that I was born a sinner, deeply broken and flawed and depraved, in need of a saviour to redeem me. The whole theological system and enterprise is founded upon the assertion that I am a vile sinner who needs to be saved by a divine being.I know how difficult it is to walk away from this belief, because it’s not just a belief, but a whole worldview, an entire paradigm, complete with its religion, institution, scriptures, and priests. It’s like leaving the universe to start over in a new one. One that says you’re okay. It’s a radical step, and maybe you have taken it. I’m proud of you for that. |
A Women’s History Month Entry
from Peace & Justice History, and the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center.
| March 4, 1917 |
| Montana elected Republican Jeannette Rankin as the first woman to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives three years before American women nationwide could legally vote. |
 | A persistent advocate for women’s rights, particularly suffrage, Rankin voted in Congress against American entry into both world wars, and late in life led marches against the Vietnam war. |  |
| Rep. Jeannette Rankin with her colleagues in the 61st Congress. | ||
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, and a native of Missoula, Montana. She was elected in 1916, before women nationwide had the right to vote. In 1917 she joined a handful of representatives who voted against entry into World War I asserting, despite harsh criticism and certain damage to her career, that, “the first time the first woman had a chance to say no against war she should say it.” In 1941 she bravely stood alone in Congress in voting against entry into World War II, but she did not stand alone in society in her opposition to institutional violence and war. Her stand against war as a viable resolution to international conflicts provoked questions on the basic assumptions about peace, war, and conflict, which we continue to grapple with today. Rankin’s staunch opposition to war made her a spokesperson for veteran’s rights, as well, since she recognized them as pawns in the games of politicians. It was she who first introduced the GI Bill to Congress, which guaranteed post-discharge education and other benefits to those who served in the military. Her long career was also distinguished by her deep commitment to the country’s women, poor, and its children. She put forth an alternate vision for this country as one which championed peace and justice. She worked tirelessly in opposition to war and oppression by attending rallies, and by giving speeches in person and on television into her 90s.
The Jeannette Rankin Peace Center is proud to carry the name of this pioneer Montanan whose life’s work exemplified a steadfast devotion to peace, justice, and democratic equality. Jeannette Rankin was, in many ways, the first lady of U.S. politics. Her legacy lives on today through those who carry on her work and honor her memory. University of Montana’s Archives and Special Collections houses a collection of oral history interviews that were conducted by Dawn Walsh for the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center. The interviewees were former and current members of the Missoula Women for Peace and detail their interest and activities related to peace activism. These interviews are available in both audio and text format through University of Montana Scholar Works. (snip-MORE)
Your Josh Day Next Day!
To Begin Our Afternoon, Now
and go on about our day being peaceful, in order to bring about peace. (I have a dental appt. to finish what was begun a couple of weeks ago at that dental appt. I feel all pure-white-dovey inside.)
Scottie's Playtime 
