It’s fall. Another precious North American Summer lived/milked/frittered away. Currently I’m in Oregon, where I’ll hunker down/work/work on my 2nd book/manifest my next projects until spring. As much as I like sleeping in my van beneath a hundred blankets in the perfectly dark and quiet forest, Winter is Coming (as they say) and soon it’ll be time for this indoor/outdoor cat to find some indoors. The craigslist housing page for the area where I want to spend the winter looks dire, but I’m pretty good at manifesting, like, a shack or a treehouse or like an old barn, so I’m not too worried.

Cops in the US are still executing black people in the street on suspicion of misdemeanors, or just because. White people would still rather avoid the discomfort of thinking about race than face that this is even happening. (Here’s some hard data if you still need convincing that this is an actual issue, or to share with friends/relatives who need convincing.) But YOU aren’t one of those white people who prefers to just hide in the bubble of their privilege to avoid discomfort, are you? No? Good! Go to joincampaignzero.org to see how you can help. And if you’re looking for a good news source on these incredibly timely and important issues, I like Democracy Now, which you can also listen to as a podcast. Great!

Some cool things! This summer I read Shrill, by Lindy West, and it was one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life, and now she is my hero. In the book Lindy talks about the concept of “Punching Up” as a way of living one’s creative life. Like, if you make a joke about rape, that’s punching down, because you’re making fun of people who’ve been raped. But if you make fun of rapists, that’s punching up. Making fun of a marginalized group: punching down. Making fun of Donald Trump: punching up. Lindy is a brilliant, eloquent, fearless warrior of Punching Up, and she’s also very, VERY funny. And kind. And patient. She doesn’t HAVE to be funny and kind and patient while also making the world a better place in the real and concrete ways that she does, and yet she is. And that makes her a fucking saint, to me. This book should get the fucking pulitzer prize. Go read Shrill.

My friend Nicole Antoinette finished her solo hike of the Oregon section of the PCT and made a special podcast episode about it! Nicole has a wonderful insightful brilliant analytical brain and I wish she would do EVERYTHING and tell us about it. This is one of the best accounts of a person’s first long hike that I’ve ever heard/read.

Also, in the newest season of Nicole’s podcast, she interviews my friend, body-positive fitness coach Lacy Davis! AND she talks to Blair Braverman, who wrote the book Welcome to the Goddam Ice Cube, which is another book I read this summer and loved. Basically Nicole’s podcast is great and you should listen to all of it.

And another thing! At the beginning of the summer I got a tarot reading over the phone from my friend Erin Aquarian, who is rly good at tarot, and it basically set the tone/course of my entire summer and started me on this awesome trajectory that I’m still discovering/building on/seeing the rewards of. Erin’s website is here- http://www.erinaquarian.com. Call her!

Ok!