Wendy's Thoughts About Today: The jaw tightens before the mind catches up — $4.02 gas and a journalist detained for booing, and your body knew before you did.

Survival tactic for today: Press both palms flat against a wall. Push. Feel your own force meeting something solid. Ten breaths. You are still here.

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Atlanta: 79°F, partly cloudy — azaleas cracked open three weeks early and the heat that forced them pools in the Persian Gulf

Detroit: 65°F, light rain — warm enough for crocuses today, cold enough for snow tomorrow, April's broken thermostat

Kansas City: 52°F, clear — a sky so blue it feels like someone's lying to you

New York: 59°F, cloudy — bodega flowers out on Atlantic Avenue but eggs hit six dollars and the war isn't two months old

San Francisco: 71°F, cloudy — seventy-one in April and no fog, which means fire season starts its conversation early

Miami: 78°F, sunny — mangroves flowering in Biscayne, water temperature already where August puts it

Tha an roth a' tionndadh — the wheel is turning. Dogwoods in Atlanta, along the Beltline have opened white fists into humid air, and the mycorrhizal web beneath the red clay is doing what governments won't: sharing without a toll.

The gilded authoritarian launched a war without an exit plan. Forty-one countries are meeting without him. Gas just hit four dollars.

First time here? Welcome to The Gathering.

Editor's note: He told the nation that oil-dependent countries should "grab it and cherish it" — the man who started the goddamn fire handing out buckets.

Forty-one countries convened Thursday under UK leadership to troubleshoot reopening the Strait of Hormuz — the 21-mile choke point carrying 20% of the world's oil — because the bone-spur generalissimo who ordered strikes on February 28th never consulted a single ally about what happens when Iran retaliates.

What he said: "They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily."

The Mar-a-Lago warmonger assassinated Iran's supreme leader, triggered strait closures, watched oil rip from $71 to $114 a barrel, then told Europe it's their fucking problem. Gas hit $4.02 nationally — highest since 2022. On Truth Social, the same day burning tankers choked the Gulf, he posted about seizing the oil and making "A FORTUNE."

The damage:

Human cost: Five dead merchant sailors, one US fighter jet downed, two helicopters hit

Pattern: Feb 28 strikes → Mar 2 strait closed → Mar 4 attacks begin → Apr 3 UK convenes 41 nations because Washington won't

Action: Call your senators. Demand a War Powers vote. (202) 224-3121.

France rejected offensive operations. Macron called it what it is. The Hill

The world reroutes around this president the same way ships reroute around the Cape — the passage he promised to keep open is on fire.

Thirty percent of the world's internationally traded fertilizers transit the Strait of Hormuz. Not oil. The thing that makes food grow.

The reality-show despot didn't mention that. Nitrogen fertilizer depends on natural gas as feedstock, and with Brent crude swinging between $102 and $114, the math turns savage: Middle East urea prices surged 20% in the first week. Global fertilizer costs projected 15–20% higher through mid-2026, and unlike oil, there are no coordinated strategic fertilizer reserves.

Evidence:

What's breaking: Spring planting is happening now — this week — and farmers aren't speculating on futures. They're deciding whether to plant at all.

Scale: Iran granted humanitarian fertilizer shipments March 27 after UN pressure. A spigot drip when the pipe is shut.

Expert reality: The FAO warned this crisis could trigger localized food insecurity in regions already stretched by climate disruption.

The draft-dodging hawk started a war in the Gulf and accidentally declared war on the global food supply. Not one shiny-suited bastard in the West Wing asked what happens to wheat when fertilizer doesn't ship. The Hill

The land remembers what empires forget: you cannot eat a barrel of oil.

Eugene Ramirez wore his press instincts the way some people wear cologne — without thinking. The gay journalist and former Sinclair lead anchor attended the opening night of Chicago at the Kennedy Center on March 31st with five friends. One last evening before the administration's $257 million renovation shutters it for two years.

Then the president appeared in the balcony box.

Stakes:

Pattern: Ramirez booed. Thumbs-down. Recorded on his iPhone. Textbook First Amendment expression.

Timeline: Security director and guards escorted him to a holding area within moments. Detained until lights dimmed. Suppression of political expression in a publicly funded arts venue, executed with practiced efficiency.

A queer man booed a president at a musical literally about powerful people escaping accountability through performance — and security removed him before the overture finished. You can't write satire sharper than this. The Kennedy Center sits on federal land. Every ticket, every chandelier, every note exists because taxpayers — including queer taxpayers — fund it.

Movement: The Washington Blade broke the story. Ramirez has the video. PinkNews

A man booed power and power flinched — told you everything about who it fears.

The reckoning arrives when you admit you saw it coming. Five weeks of war, five dead sailors, a journalist pulled from a theater for using his voice. Your hands know something your politics haven't caught up to — they curl into fists before you decide to be angry. That's not rage. That's recognition.

What truth have you been watching unfold that you haven't yet spoken aloud?

You just read about fire and tolls and a man detained for booing. Leig leis — let it go, not forever, but for this breath. The April air carries the particular green of things that grow without permission — weeds splitting sidewalk concrete. Tha am Bealltainn a' tighinn — Beltane approaches — and the earth is doing its old unreasonable work of becoming despite everything. Your body has been holding that news like a stone in each palm. Open your hands now. Fury and tenderness occupy the same fingers.

Somatic practice: One hand on sternum, one on belly. Breathe until the lower hand moves first. Three times. Tha do chorp a' cuimhneachadh — your body remembers. The vagus nerve doesn't care about geopolitics; give it a slow exhale and it stops bracing.

Cognitive tool: Name three things you did yesterday that weren't reactions to headlines. Cooking counts. Laughter counts. You existed before the news cycle and you will after.

Community action: Text one person you haven't spoken to in two weeks. Not about politics. About them. Càirdeas — friendship — is a practice, not a feeling, and the muscle atrophies when you only flex it in crisis.

Asparagus — snap the woody ends, toss with olive oil and salt, roast at 425°F for twelve minutes until the tips char. Creamh — the old word for wild garlic — and its cousin asparagus are the first real green, and eating them is a conversation with the same soil being denied fertilizer across the world.

Sovereignty hack: One windowsill pot of basil from seed: $1.40. Grocery basil: $3.99 a pack. The math resolves in six weeks.

10-minute pantry meal — Egg-drop ramen: Instant ramen, two eggs stirred in while boiling, sesame oil, scallion, chili flake, lime. Feeds four, under three dollars. Chan eil duine a' dol gun bhiadh — no one goes hungry because the week was hard.

Your defiance today doesn't require a stage. Seas còmhla — stand together. Ramirez booed in a theater and they tried to make him invisible. Baker danced in a war zone and they couldn't look away. The common thread isn't volume. It's refusal. You carry that refusal in how you move through a grocery store with intention, in the text to a friend gone quiet, in the asparagus you roast because the season asked.

What act of ordinary defiance are you refusing to perform?

Harvey Milk — First openly gay elected official in California, 1977. Won on his fourth attempt, organized the Castro, fought Proposition 6. Assassinated at 48 because visibility remains the most dangerous act.

Josephine Baker — Fled American racism for Paris, smuggled intelligence for the French Resistance in her underwear. Croix de Guerre. Légion d'honneur. She chose every battlefield.

Ocean Vuong — Vietnamese-American poet, first in his family to reach college. Night Sky with Exit Wounds at 28 — war and tenderness in the same breath.

On this day: 7th Circuit ruled Civil Rights Act prohibits LGBTQ workplace discrimination (2017); Angels in America premiered on Broadway (1993); Bayard Rustin organized the first Freedom Ride (1947).

The past rhymes in a voice you'll recognize if you've ever been told your existence is a provocation.

What this day cost: a strait closed, a season disrupted, a man silenced for the crime of his own voice — and underneath, the unreasonable insistence of asparagus pushing through cold ground because the calendar said April. Tha sinn fhathast an seo — we are still here. You carry this forward not by resolving it but by refusing to let the weight flatten the part of you that still reaches toward light.

When the day replays tonight behind closed eyes — which image stays, and what does it ask of the body carrying it into morning?

Stand, if you're able. Feel the ground pull at your feet.

April's early dark carries the scent of rain that hasn't arrived. Gum bi thu sàbhailte — may you be safe — not from the world but within it, the way a root is safe inside soil it didn't choose. The asparagus is up. The dogwood has opened. Tha an talamh ga do ghiùlan — the earth is carrying you — tomorrow too.

Beannachd leat, a charaid. Bi beò. — Blessings go with you, friend. Be alive.

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

Become a member: thistleandmoss.com/upgrade