Losing an admired, public parent who privately battled with mental health — One month ago I lost my Dad. The world doesn’t feel right and the grief pangs are still dripping raw. Though I’m almost fifty, I’ll always be his little girl. Ours was a deep connection. Cut from the same clichéd “tortured artist” cloth, Dad and I shared similar talents and…

With a guilty verdict, justice has only just begun — At least twenty-two complaints of misconduct were filed against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin before he would go on to murder George Floyd in front of a Cup Foods store— and the whole world — last year. That is, according to reporting from the New York Times. According to…

Following the Great Recession, many people learned this lesson the hard way: don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining. — Before he was mixing presidential politics with personal quid pro quos, subpar-to-mediocre businessman Donald Trump was mixing his name and image (or, his brand) with a slew of crooked companies and poppycock products. This included everything from personalized vitamins to Vodka, steaks sold exclusively through The Sharper Image®, and vastly…

He’s pretty much an imbecile in everything, only he doesn’t know he’s an imbecile. — From time to time, each of us has the tendency to overestimate our competence, to think we’re better at something than we actually are. This manifests in everyday moments that can often be chalked up to pride. Like, when you struggle to assemble, say, an IKEA bunk bed, but also…

(A question on one of my essays, and my response) — In response to a short article I wrote, The Truth About Being a ‘Woke’ White Person, a reader posed the following question: I have seen some sketchy videos lately, that are supposedly woke. The fact that I WANT to exercise is now considered fat-shaming The fact that I WANT to lose…

As obvious as it should’ve been, I didn’t make this connection. — I lost my Dad on September 20th. The grief was (and is) heavy. About a month later I wrote this essay, trying to articulate the small comfort that was carrying me at the time: “his soothing, golden radio voice, captured in real time — suspended — and forever preserved in…

It seems it’s once again time to revisit what the word actually means, and where it came from to begin with. — If you lived on a diet of Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Rumble, or any of the (plentiful) other right-wing media outlets, you’d likely despise the word ‘woke’ and everything it represented. Well… everything you thought it represented, that is. If pressed to define what ‘woke’ actually means, you’d almost certainly have…

If you fled Twitter or want an alternative, here’s a tiny bit of my Mastodon experience, plus a list of useful articles on the rapidly growing social media platform — Mastodon is trending hard right now with the mass exodus from Twitter and Chief Twit — Elon Musk — “let that sink in!” Mastodon, the open source social media platform, has been around for years but I only learned of it today. After doing some quick research and diving in…

You know, like it was with Donald Trump. — Sarcasm as communication can be funny when done right. That is, when it’s: a.) under the right circumstances, b.) with appropriate company, and c.) executed well. …