Different words for...

Spinster. Crone. Witch. Old Maid. Hysterical. Past Her Prime. Shrew. Hag. Harpy. Harridan. “Fucking bitch.”

On Friday, in anticipation of, as we joke in the DC-area, a storm bringing “1-78 inches of snow,” I came to West Virginia. Our animal caretaker does not like to drive in icy conditions, I happened to really need a break—read: alone time—, and I despair when I think of any animals, especially my animals, being neglected in any way. Sign me up.

While MD did get a respectable 6”, my little corner of WV got nearly 10”! It is extremely cold and extremely beautiful, and I have spent today feeding and hydrating the goats, cats, birds, and any other little being that I hope to be serving with the vast amounts of seed and water I’m keeping stocked outside. ONE goat has deigned to wear its coat (Rambo, duh), the cats will only come inside for periodic warmings that I think are more about accommodating my maternal worry than their discomfort, and you can see none of the paths I shoveled on my first voyage to the barn. Hey, we still have power (miracle), and I have detailed the stovetop and painted a bathroom and taken many a photo, and the migraine I’ve had since late December is gone. And now it looks like I’ll be here at least until Tuesday. You don’t hear me complaining.

Why are there so many pejorative names for women who aren’t nubile and agreeable? I mean, I offered you but a sample above. And like WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!

If the (vastly understaffed because they’ve all been fired by trump) weather service is correct, tomorrow is to be sunny and at least ten degrees warmer than today. This will put the temp at roughly 25 F. I’m not complaining, but I’m also not expecting much in the way of melt. Considering that I did not see or hear even a single plow today, I think I best settle in. For pete’s sakes, I can’t even drive five feet in my driveway which is about a half-mile long, so… But yay for sun! And a proper winter. I pulled a massive dog tick off Jinx tonight, but hopefully the other ticks are all freezing to death in the snow and hopefully all the plants are having a proper lie in and remembering the concept of seasons, and hopefully everyone can just take a minute to calm down and think.

With humility, may I suggest we think about courage and moral integrity and the profound power that can be felt and asserted by saying “NO! I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!”

I am about to start a new needlework class entitled Emerald Counted Threads, aka Blackwork in needle-speak. In preparation, I brought all my supplies to WV and today enjoyed reacquainting myself with variously sized needles, beeswax, hoops and threads, and the somewhat blinding creative optionality that can be found in so many places. I was awestruck by this bit of ice on a window, for example, but had no luck tracing it (the light) or reimagining it with paper and pencil (too intricate), so gave up and started something with pearled purl and jewel-toned bullion for Valentine’s Day. And to have a whole table full of material and a day of time and a room of glass which means light and so much beauty all around, well I felt rich.

Honestly, I also felt full of rage and deliciously entitled to and empowered by that rage. Were not two innocents just slaughtered in Minneapolis? Were not their killers simply supported with money (you fucker, Bill Ackman, I see you and your BS) and reassignments (no punishment, of course, gasp, what a concept, it’s like Catholic priest pedophiles) rather than punished and shamed as they deserve? Renee Good, a mother and school volunteer. Alex Pretti, a nurse for veterans. Both simply bearing witness to the horrors their community is enduring, both simply showing up, both killed for their goodness.

Y’all, if I find total peace in my counted threads class tomorrow, I will let you know. Could it be so simple? Yes and no.

Because you know what? No one should feel peace right now but for the intermittent kind that we all need to discover and hold onto to stay sane. If you support Donald Trump, you hate America. If you support the GOP, you are evil. If you voted for trump, you have blood on your hands. You should be shamed and tarnished and kicked out of decent society. You can hide behind your “Christian” values or your “safety” bullshit. But Jesus would weep at the sight of your cruelty and the most dangerous among us are white men who peaked in high school and have now joined ICE to feel tough and to vindicate their pathetic existences.

If my words make you uncomfortable, perhaps you’re starting to think of me as an overwrought libtard. A hysterical progressive. A deluded wine mom. If so, I am A-OK with that. YOU are on the wrong side of history, of morality, of justice, of democracy, of what our founders envisioned, and most certainly of Jesus. Fuck, I’m an atheist and I’m a better Christian than every Republican I know.

Consider the words that have historically been used to tar and feather women who were sick of towing the party line. Who wanted to live rather than be controlled. Who wanted to think for themselves rather than having their dear husbands/parents/churches/whatever do that “work” for them. Who would not, and will never, sit by while innocent men and women are being murdered for simply saying “wait a minute; I see your misbehavior and I don’t agree.” You start to wonder about the why behind the monikers, you know?

I will turn 50 in a few months. I’m nearing peak “crone” age. And I am reveling in it because I am no longer willing to sit down, stay mum, keep polite, and remain palatable. Some of you, some of my very family, are wrong. You are deplorable and you are ripping our country apart.

Spinster. Crone. Witch. Old Maid. Hysterical. Past Her Prime. Shrew. Hag. Harpy. Harridan. Fucking Bitch. In those denigrations is such power and liberation. Can you hear my witchy cackle as I raise my hands and heart to the skies?

Berlin & now in the midst of a scorcher

I’m in West Virginia right now, and today hit 104 degrees. Yesterday wasn’t far from that, and tomorrow promises to be warmer. As y’all know, I grew up in the Deep South, so you might think I’d be used to this, but this here is fire hot. I spent a good bit of the past two days scraping and sanding our deck despite it all, but this isn’t good or normal heat. My heart hurts for the goats and cats and all the other beings that make this place home. I have vats of water everywhere and am hoping for the best.

Last week I was in Berlin, and most days it was well above the average temp for June. Regardless, I really enjoyed my week in a place brand new to me. Oliver is attending in innovation program there so I flew him over on June 9 so that he could rest up before move in on the 12th and so that we could do a tour of the BMW motorcycle factory. That was absolutely fascinating. Think of every stereotype you have of incredible German engineering and precision, and you will see it all come to life in the factory. The warehouse part was a kinetic ordered chaos of millions of parts, robots, autonomous units, and highly trained people. That all feeds in seamlessly to the dynamic production lines which produce every BMW bike you see on the road anywhere in the world today. Many of the robots have such charming humanistic features; it was sort like encountering Star Wars droids in real life.

Berlin is not particularly pretty (I’m sure part of the reason is that 80-85% of its buildings were destroyed during WWII), though it has some very pretty elements, and it is huge, so I’d never recommend going there for a quick weekend unless you were revisiting. I was glad to have six full days and grateful for the extensive, easy, affordable, safe public transportation. My sister joined me for the weekend and we did two fantastic tours—one a Third Reich walking tour and the other a bike tour of “alternative” Berlin. Combined with excellent restaurant recommendations from our Airbnb host, I left feeling like I had a good sense of it as a vibrant, accepting, progressive city with a hell of a lot of history and a relatively new and burgeoning identity, knit together in admirably functional ways. Nowhere is remotely perfect, and unfortunately the right wing is attempting a comeback in Germany, but it was such a relief to be in a place that unapologetically values things like the environment, public transportation, and acceptance of all manner of identities while also celebrating music, the arts, and innovation. The environment and public transportation aren’t woke; they’re responsible and practical. It’s not normal for Berlin to have been in the mid-90s or WV to be near 105 right now nor is it reasonable to have to have a car to get literally anywhere.

Everywhere I met people from all over the world: Australia, Denmark, Georgia (the country), Turkey, the Netherlands. Every single one of them is appalled by trump and America; none are coming to visit anytime soon. The Australian couple had just canceled their two next trips to the U.S.- they have traveled in America more than many Americans have, they have made friends here, and they don’t feel at all safe coming. It’s just heartbreaking and totally understandable. The Dutch men clapped me on the shoulder and wished me luck ever getting rid of trump. The Danes were horrified and perplexed. “I didn’t vote for him,” I said over and over.

While standing atop Hitler’s Berlin bunker (now, delightfully, a shitty parking lot over the bunker which has been filled with cement), our Third Reich tour guide, a Frisian, told us about his grandfather who was a high ranking SS leader who committed suicide the day after Hitler did. His family has done its best to make peace with that history, most by moving out of Germany and to the U.S. Our tour guide’s father is the only one of the kids to have remained in Germany though he settled quietly and far away in Frisia. I wondered how his U.S.-based relatives feel right now. I didn’t have the heart to ask. I did feel openly thankful that many Germans have wrestled honestly with their past and have made very intentional societal pivots since. How mature! Our bike tour guide, when I said that Berliners seemed very relaxed and laissez-faire about stuff like thumping 24-7 nightclubs near parks, drugs/drinking, and all manner of sexual and gender identity, said “yes, you don’t get in my business, I won’t get in yours.” That attitude plus a largely functional state makes for a good quality of life. I felt, in Berlin, despite the vast diversity of everything, much more of a social contract than I almost ever do in the States. It can be done!

Today, during one of my cooling sessions inside, I peeked at my phone to find messages from friends:

This is shocking. It means ICE can send someone to a country not their own with no notice and no due process/no chance for the person to explain they might be killed if they are sent there. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/23/supreme-court-third-party-country-deporations-00419210

Wow. We are so fucked. (News.)

Everyone I know is near-tears and/or enraged pretty much all the time, myself included. I’m still reeling from the political assassinations in MN and am pretty freaked out by the daily onslaught of anti-liberty rules and regulations being handed down by anti-democratic jerks. Two days ago, I woke up to a text from Oliver (still in Berlin): “did you see that trump bombed Iran?” Everything feels upside down.

My sister and I did the Third Reich walking tour on the day of trump’s obscene military parade here, and I will tell you that we both felt we were reliving a terrifying, odious playbook.

Exciting news is that Tom and the kids are officially Italian citizens (as of last November), AND I recently found out that I passed my language exam for spousal citizenship. This exam was a four-hour monstrosity whose reading section was rather like the SAT but in Italian and also included lengthy written and listening sections plus a live oral assessment. I don’t think I’d studied that hard since grad school, but the six months and hundreds (thousands?) of hours paid off, and we will soon submit my enormous parcel of background checks (from state of birth on) and official documents, all translated and apostilled in the hopes that I, too, will become the Italian I am (my grandfather was Sicilian). Sono così orgogliosa!

Don't tell me not to despair

K and I were walking our usual route on Monday, and at the entrance to one of the main cherry blossom neighborhoods in the DC area, a tiny copse of the trees were in bloom. Sprays of blossoms in variegated pinks, like so many tiny ballet slippers in flower form. Cherry blossom season is in March. When Oliver was born, on St. Patrick’s Day in 2009, my mom came to meet him, and my mother-in-law took her downtown to the Tidal Basin to see the cherries in all their ephemeral resplendence. It was chilly that day. Mom wore a scarf.

It is November right now. It is not chilly. The cherries have no business being in bloom, not least for a second time this year. We have not had rain in 35 days. In West Virginia recently, our well ran dry. Everything is brittle. I am brittle.

Don’t tell me not to despair.

On Halloween, a warm night on which we got many fewer than usual trick-or-treaters, a little cat + vampire rang our bell. She had long golden hair and shyly asked if I am Ukrainian (our flag flies next to our front door). I said no and asked if she is. “Yes,” she said. “My mom and sister and I moved here a year ago.” Gently, I asked if she still had family in Ukraine. “Yes, my daddy. We had to leave him.” Slava Ukraini, I said. Please tell him thank you and that we are with him.

Don’t tell me not to despair.

On Monday night, I went to set up my local precinct where I and the other election judges would work on Tuesday. Each precinct has two chief judges; they must be of separate political party affiliation. I made snap judgments about who was which, and I was wrong. It was a good reminder of a worthy lesson. I was enormously fond of both judges and of my fellow election workers. We were not supposed to talk politics, but people feel each other out. They need to, really, in terms of understanding and feeling safe. I cheated, late in the 15-hour day on Tuesday, and looked at the judge sign in sheet which, oddly, lists political affiliation. Out of all of us, roughly 14, one was a Republican, two were unaffiliated, and the rest were Democrats. Was I looking for comfort? Camaraderie as the anxiety of election day ending grew? I don’t know. Probably. I wonder how many of them feel like I do today. Despondent, disgusted, not surprised but very sad.

Don’t tell me not to feel any and all of that.

On Twitter yesterday—I was there because I am leaving it but first wanted to migrate all possible contacts to Bluesky—I saw Nick Fuentes, an odious far-right college drop out asshole, post this:

22,000 people “liked” that.

I despair. Don’t tell me not to.