A Flamboyance of Flamingos; A Collection of Thoughts
I'm back! And you're very excited, I can tell.
The Beach
The ocean can be hard to find, beneath the hum of cicadas and the wind through the grass and the construction of an even larger beach house nearby. But she’s there, over the dunes, beyond the sea oats and the yucca and the red and gold indian blanket flowers clinging to the sand, crashing against the shore, calling us back.
The sea is friendlier this year, willing to wait for us to greet her, to let conversation and intimacy grow over time. Last year, she was ruthless, and the year before that, sharp and stinging. Perhaps she knows what the rest of the year holds. But is she comforting us, or granting us ease before the fight ahead? There’s no way of knowing.
America’s Dad
It has been an utter delight watching Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ascend to presumed nominee for Vice President. I first became aware of him when he signed the law that guaranteed free breakfast and lunch to kids at school. The contrast between this photo of the bill signing, and the photo of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signing a law rolling back child labor protections is almost too on the nose. Walz is also known for a charming video he made with his daughter at the state fair, making sure there are free tampons in school bathrooms, and shifting his stance on gun control as school shootings and mass shootings became more and more prevalent - in the space of just one election he went from getting A ratings from the NRA to getting Fs.
But he’s also getting a lot of attention for bringing a different kind of masculinity to American politics which has been so overwhelmingly dominated by Trump’s horrifying toxicity for over a decade now. J.D. Vance, Trump’s own VP pick, has made no secret of his own toxic views, suggesting that those of us without biological children are sociopathic, or have less of a stake in politics and the future of our country. Trump, an adjudicated rapist, and his VP, who believes women are the sum product of their uteruses, now face a VP candidate in Tim Walz who is genuinely kind, helpful, supportive, and open to learning and changing his mind.
As Amanda Marcotte writes in Slate:
As a male friend texted me, "there is a genuine hunger out there — I see it in many of my students — for some kind of positive model of how to be in the world as a straight white dude." Trump and his acolytes offer an exhausting and harmful model, that is entitled, rage-fueled, and its heart, deeply insecure. Walz, however, seems comfortable in his own skin. He shows there's nothing wrong with liking football and fixing your own car — both are fine uses of a person's time! All that "traditional man" stuff can live quite comfortably with "woke" ideas like "women are people, too." As Walz has persuasively posited, his is the more normal way to be. It's the MAGA try-hards who are the weirdoes.
Plus in a country where motherhood is so tied up with womanhood, where women in high powered positions and who run for office are subject to relentless and aggressive inquiries about how their ambition impacts their children or their lack of children or their future children, it’s really novel that our parentification of a candidate for one of the highest offices in the land is falling squarely on the male candidate’s shoulders.
Canvassing
Yesterday I went out to knock doors for the first time in this election cycle. I signed up with a local Swing Left group that has partnered with Vote Save America. A bunch of us met up at Penn Station to take the LIRR out to Long Beach, on Long Island in NY. We met up with some organizers from the Lauren Gillen campaign, as she’s the congressional candidate hoping to flip NY-04. We were paired up with a buddy, and given a turf, or a list of names in a specific area. When you canvass with a campaign, you don’t just knock every door in a specific area. Instead the campaign uses the voter file to come up with a targeted list of voters depending on the campaign’s needs and their path to victory. Usually, especially for general canvasses and new volunteers, these are likely Democratic voters whose support the campaign wants to confirm.
It was a beautiful day, if hot. It was also the first nice day New York had seen in a week, so a lot of people weren’t home. Every person who did answer the door was nice, however, and at least willing to take campaign literature even if they didn’t want to talk. My sister, who was my canvassing buddy, had the brilliant idea of calling attention to the information about early voting on the flyers if people seemed a little uncertain about talking about politics with strangers. We walked past quite a few giant Trump flags, but we also found several enthusiastic voters and plenty more folks who were willing to hear us out.
If you want to try canvassing, I have some tips for you here!
What I’m Reading
There are so many books to read and yet once again I’m rereading the Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. I have one book left to read in the series, and so I’m rereading the other books in the lead up. They are so intricate and spare and sneakily emotional that I feel like I need all the context possible before I finish the whole thing.
I’m also reading When Brooklyn Was Queer which is a fascinating look at how Brooklyn, NY over the past nearly 200 years. And I’m reading The Pairing by Casey McQuiston. Casey’s first book, Red White and Royal Blue, is one of my favorite books of all time - one of those books I found myself in, not just as I am but as I want to be. Casey’s books have such a joyful, introspective take on queerness, on finding and making and discovering yourself as part of a wide, wonderful, and yet often devastating world. And The Pairing, which takes place over the course of a decadent, delicious, rich tour of Europe, is shaping up to be nearly as meaningful to me.
Settling In
Even though I’ve moved a lot in the past fifteen years, every time I forget how long it takes to actually unpack. I’m still finding new places to put things, throwing away all the things I could have thrown away before we moved. And yet while I was sorting through all my makeup and jewelry earlier today, I kept thinking about the quiet of the past few years and all the ways there are to find and make and discover myself.
Use Your Voice to Fight for People in Gaza
The death toll continues to climb. The bombs keep falling. Please keep calling your Representative and Senators in Congress, contacting the White House, and talking to your friends about pushing for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. You can also donate to help in Gaza here. Our government is enabling a humanitarian catastrophe and we need to use our power and our voice to stop it.
Welcome back, Sara! 💜