Wendy's Thoughts Before the World Gets Loud

A man posts himself as Christ while bombing another civilization, and we are asked to call it Tuesday. The body knows before the headline loads.

Survival tactic for today: Press bare feet to the floor. They existed before this administration. They will exist after.

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Table of Contents

The Ground Beneath Your Feet — Weather & Earth

Atlanta: 72°F, sun cracking open an early summer nobody scheduled — azaleas along Ponce gone feral, blooming like they know something.

Detroit: 70°F, overcast, the kind of gray that sits on rooftops like an unpaid bill.

Kansas City: 74°F, blue sky so wide you could lose a war in it.

New York: 73°F, clear and brazen, sweating through wool it refuses to shed.

San Francisco: 51°F, fog-scrubbed, the Pacific pulling cold fingers across the city's face.

Miami: 77°F, mostly cloudy, humidity arriving early — that weight on skin that makes thought slower and anger heavier.

Tha Bealltainn a' teannadh dlùthBeltane draws near and the dogwoods have opened their white crosses to a sky that cannot stop warming.

The Part That Draws Blood

The narcissistic cesspool spent Monday explaining that an AI image of himself in biblical robes healing the sick was actually a Red Cross doctor portrait. Then he ordered McDonald's via DoorDash and asked the delivery woman about trans athletes.

Editor's note: When a man posts himself as Messiah, attacks the pope for opposing his war, then hides behind a DoorDash grandma and two bags of cheeseburgers — the shitshow isn't distraction. It's the whole goddamn platform.

The Industrial Jesus Complex: Trump Posts Himself As Doctor Jesus, Blames the Media, And The Catholic Church MAGAs Blinked

The image showed him in white robes and a red sash. Light poured from his hands. A sick man lay beneath him. Soldiers and fighter jets filled the background. He posted it on Truth Social on Orthodox Easter, hours after attacking Pope Leo XIV as "WEAK on Crime."

What they said: "I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor…..I heal people…..I heal lots of people all the time."

That sentence — the festering carbuncle of American narcissism compressed into thirteen words — is what happens when a spray-tanned fascist runs out of populations to bomb and starts annexing divinity. The image, traced to MAGA shitposter and newly appointed "special envoy for tourism" Nick Adams, originally surfaced in 2016. The bile-spouting version posted Sunday added a horned, winged figure overhead. Even Riley Gaines called for humility. Greene called it an "Antichrist spirit." When Greene is your theological conscience, the floor has dropped out. Source

The damage:

Catholic coalition fracturing: Three American cardinals condemned the Iran war on 60 Minutes the same evening. NBC polling shows voters view Pope Leo more favorably than the president by 12 points.

Pattern: This follows Easter's "whole civilization" threat and the ongoing refusal to apologize to Leo. The Pentagon summoned the Vatican's ambassador in January demanding Church support for the war.

Action: Call (202) 224-3121 — demand Congress invoke war powers authority. The ceasefire expires April 22.

A man who cannot distinguish himself from God will not distinguish between a ceasefire and a crusade.

Renewables Keep Winning, Despite Causing Trump To Contract Cancer

Somewhere beneath the noise of holy wars and cheeseburger diplomacy, the American energy grid did something the fecal-tongued kleptocratic cabal never intended: it got cleaner. Renewables hit 26% of generated electricity in 2025 — a record, enough to power 108 million homes.

Evidence:

Red states leading: Texas, Florida, and Ohio accounted for 73% of new solar capacity added last year. The sun does not check voter registration.

Cost collapse: Without subsidies, solar and wind are now the cheapest new electricity generation. A solar farm goes up in under a year. A gas plant takes several.

The war boost: Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven crude past $100 a barrel. Gas prices spiked more than a dollar a gallon domestically. The economic argument for energy independence is now visceral.

The EIA forecasts 93% of new generating capacity this year from solar, wind, and batteries. Coal production has plunged 53% since 2000. The administration guts clean energy with one hand and the market builds around it with the other — water finding its way past a boulder that thinks it's a dam.

Action: Support community solar programs in your area. Call your utility and ask about renewable energy options. Source

The land remembers what it was before extraction. The grid is beginning to remember too.

MAGA Catholics Are Fucked, And A Door Dash To The White House Failed

Gif by AthleticsNTHS on Giphy

Sharon Simmons stood in a red "DoorDash Grandma" t-shirt outside the Oval Office on Monday. She had come to talk about tips. The president asked her about trans women in sports. She said, flat and final: "I really don't have an opinion on that. I'm here about no tax on tips."

Stakes:

The Catholic fracture: A Pew survey found nearly three-quarters of Catholics support LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections. A majority reject religious liberty exemptions wielded against queer and trans people.

The pope problem: Trump's attack on Leo is the collision between a man who posts himself as Christ and a Church that still recognizes blasphemy when it wears bronzer. MAGA Catholics must choose: the rosary or the rally.

The DoorDash moment was supposed to be a tax segment. But the president cannot enter a room without dragging trans people onto the stage as his enemies. Simmons, whose husband is undergoing cancer treatment, didn't flinch. A woman with an actual problem refusing to cosign a manufactured one. Source Source

When the most honest person at a White House press conference is the one who came to deliver McDonald's, the architecture of power has inverted completely.

The Witness — What We Carry From What We Just Read

"You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies, but still, like dust, I'll rise." — Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness (1928), whose novel was banned in Britain for depicting lesbian love — the judge called it "obscene" for suggesting queer women could live with dignity

The body knows when it is being erased before the statute is written. It knows in the shoulders, in the held breath at the school door. Hall wrote a book about lesbian love. They burned it. The book survived. The fire didn't. Reckoning is the thing they tried to destroy becoming the record of their cruelty.

When you read today's news and felt your jaw tighten — what were you recognizing that you haven't yet named? Drop an answer in the comments.

The Turning — Where the Breath Comes Back

Sit where you are. Place one hand on your chest. Feel the rhythm underneath — the one that did not stop while you were reading.

Tha an corp agad a' bruidhinn riut — your body is speaking to you. The news leaves residue: cortisol in the jaw, adrenaline pooled behind the eyes. Mid-April, the dogwood petals are already browning at their edges, and honeysuckle along Georgia fencerows has opened its first white throats into air heavy with pollen. You read about a man calling himself a doctor while ordering airstrikes, and your hands did something — clenched, maybe, or went still.

That stillness is not weakness. It is the body deciding what to protect, the way a river slows before the bend not because it has lost force but because it is choosing where to go next.

The Nurturing — Food As Medicine

Spring radishes → Slice thin, toss with flaky salt, good butter, and a torn baguette. The bite is the point — meacan dearg, the red root, a vegetable that argues back. Eat it when the world asks you to be mild.

Grow your own greens → A window box of arugula costs $4 in seed and two weeks of patience. Tùs beag — a small beginning. The flavor of something you grew yourself in a kitchen where the light falls differently because you chose it.

10-minute supper: Lemon-garlic pasta with wilted greens → Spaghetti, olive oil, four cloves of garlic sliced thin, a fistful of whatever greens are cheapest, lemon juice, parmesan, red pepper flakes. Boil, sauté, toss, eat. Feeds four. No one goes without because the week was brutal.

The Breathing — Herbs As Curing

Gif by neeryletters on Giphy


Lemon balm — Melissa officinalis Pharmacology: A volatile-oil nervine that downregulates cortisol receptor sensitivity and increases GABA availability. The nervous system quiets not because the noise stops but because the ears adjust. Use: Steep 1 tablespoon dried leaf, 10 minutes, covered. Twice daily. Caution: Potentiates sedatives and thyroid medication. Separate from levothyroxine by four hours.

Dandelion root — Taraxacum officinale Pharmacology: Bitter hepatic stimulant — increases bile production, supports phase II liver detoxification. Use: Decoct 1 teaspoon dried root, simmering water, 15 minutes. Drink as morning bitter. Caution: Contraindicated with bile duct obstruction. Interacts with lithium and potassium-sparing diuretics.

Hawthorn berry — Crataegus monogyna Pharmacology: Cardiovascular trophorestorative — strengthens cardiac contractility, dilates coronary vessels. Use: Tincture, 30 drops in water, three times daily. Or steep 1 tablespoon crushed dried berries, 20 minutes. Caution: Potentiates cardiac glycosides — digoxin users must consult a prescriber. Lowers blood pressure.

The Tending — Survival Protocols for Your Actual Body

Somatic release → Stand. Shake your hands at your sides for thirty seconds — not gently, but like you're flinging water off. Let the wrists go loose. Tha do làmhan a' leigeil àsyour hands are letting go. The nervous system stores what the headlines deliver. Shake it out the way a dog shakes off rain — without dignity, because the body does not care about appearances when it is trying to survive.

Reframe practice → Write one sentence beginning: "Today I refused to —" and finish it. Defiance sharpens when specific.

Reach toward → Text someone you haven't spoken to in weeks. Not a link. Three words: I'm thinking of you.Bewilderment shared is bewilderment halved.

The Practice — Armor You Can Wear Tomorrow

"Giving up your self to feed the ghosts of your past is not tenderness — it is self-erasure dressed in the language of love." — Cherríe Moraga, Chicana lesbian feminist, co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981)

You do not owe your peace to anyone's outrage machine. Cha bhi thu nad ìobairtyou will not be a sacrifice. Moraga wrote about the actual body as resistance — the one that walks to work, feeds children, decides each morning to stay visible. That is the practice. Not grand defiance. The small act of remaining who you are when the most powerful man alive asks strangers to deny your existence between bites of a cheeseburger.

What would you protect with your whole body if you stopped waiting for permission? Leave a Comment

Heroes & Bright Signals — The Ones Who Showed Up and the Proof It's Working

Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943) wrote The Well of Loneliness knowing British courts would try to destroy it. They did. The book sold millions. Hall never wrote another novel. The cost of being first is often silence.

Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) wrote about queer desire in Alexandria when the British Empire policed bedrooms. His poems circulated as handmade pamphlets, passed like contraband. He published almost nothing. Everything survived.

Cherríe Moraga (b. 1952) co-created This Bridge Called My Back, naming what white feminism wouldn't — liberation fractured along race and sexuality is not liberation. Still teaching. Still writing.

Bright Signals:

DoxyPEP works: New study confirms the antibiotic protocol reduces syphilis infections — a measurable LGBTQ+ public health victory.

No Kings holds: Eight million marched worldwide March 28. The movement isn't fading.

Catholics for equality: PRRI data — three-quarters of Catholics support LGBTQ+ protections. The pews are not the pulpit.

Gathering History — The Roll Call of Those Who Were Here First

Christine Jorgensen made headlines as the first widely known American to undergo gender-affirming surgery (1952); Bayard Rustin organized the March on Washington from behind the curtain because a Black gay man couldn't stand at the podium (1963); Rachel Carson's Silent Spring forced a reckoning with the poison in our own water (1962); the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted (2015).

The Carrying — What Your Body Knows When You Close This Tab

"As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery." — Constantine Cavafy, "Ithaka" (1911), Alexandrian Greek poet who wrote about desire and loss in a colonial city that no longer exists

Tha an t-slighe fada, ach tha thu beòthe road is long, but you are alive. What this day cost: a war in its seventh week, thirteen American dead, a president who cannot distinguish himself from a deity, a DoorDash grandmother who told the truth more cleanly than any senator. You carry the rage and the radishes, the Gaelic and the grief. You carry it because you are here, and being here is the voyage Cavafy meant.

Tomorrow morning, when your feet touch the floor — what will you carry, and what will you set down?

Beannachd Dheiridh — A Blessing for the Road Ahead

Stand if you can. Place your feet on the ground. Open your hands.

You have read the burning and not looked away. Tha sin na's leòrthat is enough. The dogwoods open their petals into an April that smells like warm asphalt and honeysuckle. You are one of the things that insists on living. The ground beneath your feet is older than every empire. It holds you without conditions.

Gum beannaich an talamh do chasan — may the earth bless your feet wherever they carry you next.

Who Is In The Gathering?

The voices woven into this work:

🌿 Poetry and Feelings: thepoetmiranda.com
🌿 Personal Queer Journey: thistleandfern.org
🌿 Life Banter: brandonellrich.substack.com
🌿 Lisa's Porch Talk: wuzzittoya.org / wuzzittoya.substack.com
🌿 Presence Not Permission: presencenotpermission.beehiiv.com

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