Wendy's Thoughts Before the World Gets Loud
The generals are gone and the spokesman wants a promotion, and somewhere a teacher is still saying a queer kid's name correctly — which counts as insurrection now.
Survival tactic for today: Press both palms flat on a wall until your arms shake. Feel the structure hold.
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Table of Contents
The Ground Beneath Your Feet — Weather & Earth
Atlanta: 56°, cloudy — dogwoods cracked open overnight, white petals against pewter sky, the air like clay and something sweet.
Detroit: 60°, overcast — rain by evening, the old Packard plant smelling of rust, spring pushing through every crack.
Kansas City: 64°, mostly cloudy — prairie wind hauling the green scent of new tallgrass.
New York: 43°, sunny — cold snap gripping the city by the throat, April tulips hunched against air sharp as a rebuke.
San Francisco: 55°, cloudy — fog on the Sunset like a hand laid flat, eucalyptus dripping its medicinal excuse for comfort.
Miami: 74°, light rain — warm enough to sweat through your shirt before noon, Biscayne shimmering between tears and relief.
Tha an talamh a' tionndadh — the earth is turning. Dogwood moon tonight over Georgia clay that remembers every burial and every bloom.
The Part That Draws Blood
What Woke Me Up Angry This Morning
The spray-tanned fascist's Pentagon is cannibalizing its own officer corps mid-war, and that festering carbuncle Hegseth just fired the Army's top general because loyalty matters more than competence when you're running a military like a goddamn elimination round.
First time here? Welcome to The Gathering.
Editor's note: Three generals purged, a spokesman measuring the drapes, and an Iranian "ceasefire" as real as Hegseth's credentials — hold the fuck on.
You Aren’t Loyal To Lord Hegseth: Fuck You
The resignation letter sat on a desk in a building shaped like a war. Dan Driscoll refused to sign it.
That bile-spewing narcissistic cesspool Hegseth demanded the removal of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — 40 years of service — plus Gen. David Hodne and Maj. Gen. William Green Jr. Not for failure. Because George was Driscoll's ally, and Driscoll's name keeps surfacing as Hegseth's replacement. Hegseth's spokesman, Sean Parnell, has been telling colleagues he wants Driscoll's job. The rancid despot in the Oval praised both men simultaneously — which is how this decomposing carcass of an administration works.
Officer corps gutted: Three senior leaders, one week, no explanation, mid-war.
The Kid Rock detail: Hegseth overruled the Army's investigation into a military helicopter stunt over Kid Rock's estate. Generals objected. Generals gone.
Action:Call your senators on Armed Services. Civilian oversight exists until you let them take it. The Hill
The Iranian "ceasefire" is capitulation in flag pins. Hormuz stays contested. Gas climbs. And that sewage-belching apparatus eats its own.
The house always burns from inside.
Lions Death: Tooth That Hangs From The Neck
Four young lions in Mozambique ate a poisoned calf and died where they fell. Faces and paws hacked off.
Wild lion populations dropped 43% since 1993. Fewer than 25,000 remain in 6% of their historical range. In Kruger's north, numbers fell 63% in 18 years — organized criminal networks poisoning carcasses, harvesting claws and teeth for markets in China and Southeast Asia. As tigers shrank below 4,000, syndicates pivoted to lions. Same bones. Cheaper.
Scale: 300 kg of lion parts seized in Maputo, 2023. One city. Dr. Samantha Nicholson, Endangered Wildlife Trust: poaching has shifted from opportunistic to organized. Even flagship parks are failing.
Support the Lion Recovery Fund. Demand stronger CITES enforcement from your representatives.
The land remembers what walked it, long after we've made the walking impossible.
MAGA: Destroy All Queer Lives And Remove Them
Randi Weingarten was a closeted kid in the 1970s who couldn't imagine saying I do to the woman she loved. She grew into the first openly lesbian president of a major union — 1.8 million educators — fighting the worst assault on public education this country has built in a century.
A Trump State Department nominee, Jeremy Carl, wrote that she should get the death penalty. For the crime of teaching.
The erasure: Book bans. DEI gutted. Head Start defunded for shelving books about gay penguins. Kentucky's SB 72 strips LGBTQ+ content statewide.
The arc: From "don't say gay" to "she should get the death penalty" in three years.
As a trans woman writing this: this is not disagreement. This is eliminationist rhetoric wearing a flag pin. When erasing trans people becomes so normalized that war crimes feel proportionate — the disease is not in the policy. Bone.
But classrooms resist. Teachers still saying our names. Weingarten calls them "mini democracies" — one attendance sheet at a time. LGBTQ Nation
Existence does not require permission.
The Witness — What We Carry From What We Just Read
"When I am dead and gone, remember this: I was a person who wanted to live fully and well." — Essex Hemphill, poet and activist, Ceremonies (1992)
Reckoning arrives in the body first. Generals purged have hands that signed orders and families waiting by phones. Lions poisoned had faces before profit removed them. The queer kid hearing silence where her name should be carries it in her sternum. Not a demographic. A body.
What have you witnessed this week that your body knew before your mind found words?
The Turning — Where the Breath Comes Back
Suidh sìos — sit down.
Floor, chair, ground. Hands on something that isn't a screen. April's thunder-week is building — earthworms risen, robins finding them, that ancient negotiation between hunger and rain that predates every war.
Your chest held the news. Tha fios aig do chorp — your body knows. The jaw tightens, shoulders climb, breath goes shallow. Name one place in your body that absorbed today's burning. Touch it. Confirm the bruise is real, which is also a way of saying: I see you.
The dogwood moon carries no opinion about the Pentagon.
The Nurturing — Food As Medicine
Spring onions — first allium of the season, still wearing mud. Slice thin, sesame oil, high heat, forty-five seconds until edges char. Creamh an earraich — spring's garlic. The sulfur that makes your eyes water rebuilds your gut lining.
Sovereignty hack: One pack of spring onion sets, $3, hardware store. Plant in a windowsill pot. Cut and they regrow.
10-minute meal (feeds 4, 7 ingredients): Brown ground turkey with cumin and smoked paprika. Add canned tomatoes, frozen corn, diced spring onions. Over rice, hot sauce. Chan eil duine a' dol gu acras — no one goes hungry. Dinner doesn't require performance. Just a pot and the belief you deserve to eat tonight.
The Breathing — Herbs As Curing
Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) — Cognitive. Rosmarinic acid crosses the blood-brain barrier and inhibits the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine — the neurotransmitter that keeps your thoughts from scattering like startled birds. Luibh an t-solais — the herb of light. Steep 1 tbsp fresh leaves, 7 min covered. Drink warm when the mind won't stop circling. Caution: Suppresses thyroid function at high doses. If you're on levothyroxine, skip this one entirely.
Dandelion Root (Taraxacum officinale) — Kidney/urinary. A potassium-sparing diuretic — flushes without depleting. Sesquiterpene lactones stimulate bile flow and take pressure off kidneys carrying a stress load. Roast dried root chunks at 300° until dark, brew like coffee. Tha am feur-beag ag obair — the small plant works. Caution: Contraindicated with lithium and potassium-sparing drugs. Allergic if ragweed-sensitive.
Calendula (Calendula officinalis) — Lymphatic/immune. Triterpenoid saponins move lymph fluid that stagnates when the body armors itself against sustained threat. Infuse 2 tsp dried petals in hot water, 15 min. Also: steep a strong batch and use as a skin wash for stress-triggered rashes. Caution: Asteraceae family — cross-reacts with ragweed, chrysanthemum. Avoid during pregnancy; uterine stimulant.
The Tending — Survival Protocols for Your Actual Body
Somatic: Tongue to the roof of your mouth. Ten seconds. Release. Resets the vagus nerve — the wire panic hijacks first. Tha do chorp a' cuimhneachadh — your body remembers.
Cognitive: Write one sentence starting with "Despite." Not optimism — inventory. The despite is the mind refusing to let the worst fact be the only fact.
Relational: Text someone you haven't spoken to in a month. Three words: Still here. You? Tha sinn còmhla fhathast — we are still together.
The Practice — Armor You Can Wear Tomorrow
"Gender is a lot like language. Something we invented. Something we can change." — Kate Bornstein, author, Gender Outlaw (1994)
Chan eil fìrinn ann an eagal — there is no truth in fear. Your body is not a policy debate. The people legislating your existence have never asked what it costs. Today the defiance looks like this: you exist anyway. You name yourself. You walk into the room they tried to close and sit.
What are you willing to protect even if the cost is everything comfortable?
Heroes & Bright Signals — The Ones Who Showed Up and the Proof It's Working
Not monuments. People who showed up.
Essex Hemphill — Black, gay, unwilling to be invisible in either community. Ceremonies cracked open the silence around Black queer life. AIDS took him at 38. He published when it meant death threats.
Kate Bornstein — trans woman, cancer survivor, author of Gender Outlaw: 32 years in print. Banned in 14 states. Still selling.
Saeed Jones — queer Black poet whose How We Fight for Our Lives won the Kirkus Prize by making the personal a collective nerve. Desire and grief in the same sentence.
Bright Signals:
Maine mayor wrapped city vehicles in Pride colors after a GOP "no Pride flags" order.
Librarian fired for refusing to hide LGBTQ+ books: $200K crowdfunded in 72 hours.
Agus iad sin a thàinig romhainn — and those who came before us. What they share is the repeatable act of making yourself legible in a world designed to misread you.
Gathering History — The Roll Call of Those Who Were Here First
Bayard Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington while the FBI weaponized his sexuality; Christine Jorgensen (1952) rewrote what bodies could mean; Sarah McBride (2020) became the first openly trans state senator; Stonewall (1969) started with a brick; Danica Roem (2017) became the first trans state legislator.
The Carrying — What Your Body Knows When You Close This Tab
"I think of desire as the beginning of all action. As in: the wanting that precedes the reaching." — Saeed Jones, poet, How We Fight for Our Lives (2019)
What this day cost: generals dismissed, lions defaced, a trans name unsaid where silence is policy — the cost is bodily, a tightening behind the ribs, the way your hands curl reading something designed to erase you, and the slow uncurling after, because you are still here and the season outside is turning green with a ferocity that asks no permission. Tha thu beò — you are alive. Not nothing. Today, the whole argument.
What does survival feel like in your hands tomorrow morning — not concept but the first thing you reach for?
Beannachd Dheiridh — A Blessing for the Road Ahead
Dùin do shùilean — close your eyes.
April's thunder rolls east tonight, and somewhere a dogwood blooms in a yard where a queer kid lives, and the bloom does not know or care about the laws written against that child — it opens because opening is what it was made for. You carry today the way clay carries rain: not resisting but letting it move through. Tha an tionndadh a' leantainn — the turning continues.
Beannachd na coille ort — the blessing of the forest upon you.
✨ 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
