Crazytown

VOTE!

Tomorrow is election day - finally! Most of us, even those of us who generally are election junkies, are just relieved to see that it's finally here. But it's not enough to wait out the day. This is it. For nearly two years we've been listening to what the candidates have to say, and tomorrow is our day to speak. The choices we make tomorrow will determine how we approach the next two or four years, but they'll also set the tone for the kind of world we want to live in. 

by Liz Richards (writer)

The best thing that we can do tomorrow is vote, but we have to know what we're voting for. I think at this point, the big ticket is probably pretty clear and most of us are decidedly on one side or the other. But the president isn't the only one on the ballot tomorrow, and the choices we make in local government will carry just as much weight. 

It's difficult to know who to vote for. We have to really look and educate ourselves when it comes to who's running locally. Yes, that is our civic duty, and yes, we all should be grateful for the privilege of educating ourselves, but let's be honest. It's a pain in the butt to do all that digging, and a lot of us don't even know where to look. Wouldn't it be great if we all just got an email with an outline of who everyone was and what they stood for?

And then there's the added conflict that voting wisely doesn't always mean voting for who you want to win. Robin Laverne Wilson, New York State Green Party nominee, might be my actual girl crush. I love the idea of voting for the underdog, for the fierce lady who stands for the environmental and social justice issues that are close to my heart, someone genuinely grassroots who is running not to bank a career on politics but to make an actual change. I don't like Democratic nominee Chuck Shumer,who might be the actual antithesis to that. 

But Democrats this year have a very real chance to regain Congress. Let's be real. A Democratic majority (potentially with Bernie Sanders at the helm) together with a Clinton-led administration and a  ninth Supreme Court judge of her choice is the most efficient way to push through environmental and social justice issues. So when it comes to senators, I may have to bite the bullet and vote for the guy I don't like, so that I can have the administration we need. 

The information we need to vote isn't typically packed neatly in one place. Except this week, when Facebook comes to the rescue! If you have any questions at all about who's running, or simply want to see all of the options in one place, Facebook has you covered. For the past week or so, they've had a great link to each of the candidates, their website, and posts they've made on social media.

This is such a cool tool. Whether you're totally undecided, fully committed, or somewhere in between - whether you're not sure who/what's on the ballot or you've never been more ready - it's so great to have all of the candidates and a summary of their platforms in one place.

There's so much banter and background noise around this Election Day that it's hard to find resources to be fully educated. Here is an awesome overview right at our fingertips.

Now we've got no excuses!

Check it out!

And there are a few websites with similar resources! Try On the Issues, Ballotpedia, and even this Reddit page.

30 NASTY WOMEN TO ADMIRE

Nasty, bossy, butch, bitchy, sensitive, emotional are just a few of the very loaded words used to demean and delegitimize women. But these women tend to be assertive, dominant, confident, original, inspired and invaluable, and sometimes a gal's got to reclaim her territory and reappropriate these insults. Here are 30 of the Nastiest Women in History for your admiration.
by Liz Richards (writer)

 

1. The original nasty girl herself, Miss Janet Jackson
2. Bonnie Parker
3. Beyonce
4. Audre Lorde
5. Toni Morrison
6. Susan B. Anthony
7. Gloria Steniem 
8. Dorothy Pitman
9. Joan Didion
10. Aretha Franklin
11. Amy Winehouse
12. Sacajawea
13. Amelia Earhart
14. Patti Smith
15. Abigail Adams
16. Janis Joplin 
17. Elaine Harmon
18. Margaret Sanger
19. Marie Curie
20. Rosa Parks
21. Malala Yousafzai
22. Frida Kahlo 
23. Hedy Lamarr
24. Eartha Kitt
25. Cleopatra
26. Margaret Hamilton
27. Gypsy Rose Lee
28. Annette Kellerman
29. Dr. Mary Walker
30. Gertrude Ederle

WAVES

Every choice makes waves.

by Liz Richards (writer)

 

She stands in the dark at the kitchen sink, fiercely downing tap water from a plastic cup. She pours another cup and lets the tepid water slide along her throat, tasting minerals and the staleness of late night after a frat party. Behind her, she can hear the hallow ping of her iPhone and feel the reflection of the cool blue light filling the room. Staring blankly, she pays it no mind. Just a crazy ex.

She hears from her ex in waves. Violent outbursts drop like rocks in the water – words like suicide and murder plunk down hard, so that her panic ripples until his mania sinks down, leaving long episodes of stillness. She’s learning to ignore him.

From the next room there is a soft stir. A voice calls, “Come to bed.” It’s a voice with strong and steady depth, a voice the ex says he’ll exterminate, though he’s never heard it, like this were the first threat he’s ever made. He’ll shoot the next man she touches he says, but it’s empty. She’s touched so many since she’s broken away. Like his threats a thousand time before. Like anyone would sell a bipolar a gun.

She fills her cup again and lets the faucet run. As the steady stream of water rushes down the drain, the pale blue light of the iPhone flashes again and again. In the spaces of that cold blue light she smiles into the gentleness of her new lover’s voice, and heeds his call.

In her bed he lies spread-eagled, shoulders too broad for twenty firmly squared and arms outstretched, head still buzzing from beers and the afterthought of her touch. He thinks briefly of the girls he touched in high school and community college in small-town Western New York. Mousey, insecure girls, mostly uncomfortable in their own beauty. They were hundreds of miles and nights away.

He thinks ‘How’d I bag such a hottie?’ The room is still in contrast to the crashing loudness of the party. The sheets are soft and smell like her shampoo – the tropical, flowery kind that’s always on sale at drug stores – and the fertile way she tastes. A million miles away from classes that start on Monday, he calls to her toward the kitchen. In a few moments she enters, crawls across the bed and lets him wrap his arms around her.

A pounding knock at the door wakes him, but she’s passed out from drink, head at his chest, slender arms across his torso. With care he unwraps her and folds her to the other side of the bed. He fumbles through the dark for his briefs, and as he pulls them tightly up, the elastic snaps crisply at his waist.

As he walks across the small apartment he stretches limb from limb, slumber burning in his eyes. He opens the door to a stranger, and as the sound of the gunshot reverberates it crashes in waves, hundreds of miles away, in small-town Western New York.

ANOTHER RESTAURANT MEMOIR

Another memoir with the restaurant industry at it's center. A millennial account of moving to New York from a small town upstate, the allure of the city streets, and walking into a first job in the city.

by Liz Richards

 

The wind that echoed through the city streets that year was shrill and piercing, like a person lost in years gone by. As it swept through the thin, impossibly tall buildings of Midtown, it imposed a chill that was at once alive and sallow. It was the kind of wind that froze a body in time and marrow. It was everything. The Midtown wind that year was hope and courage and strength, not as I envisioned them in childhood, but as they came to me in the city streets. Pale and distant, ever shrill, ever moving.

New York isn’t a calling as much as it is a voice on the wind. It is a story handed down and passed around so that by the time we’re young, we already know the potential of Midtown. The wretched don’t just wash up on its shores and the streets aren’t lined with gold. New Yorkers are collective in their need for action and our search of the illusive motion along the concrete streets because the chill and the chase are part of us. The grid can’t contain us. We have constructed a city without limitations, with bodegas that never close, with businesses and oases for every possible desire. Our hearts’ content is that we recognize the beauty of the discontent, of constant motion within the grid. We are universal in our pursuit of the wind.

 

When I was accepted into my graduate program at the New School I had already chosen New York, even though I waited patiently for the other letters to trickle in from Portland, San Francisco State, and a school in Los Angeles. Why New York? was the question on everyone’s lips, and I had my list of carefully constructed responses about the integrity of the school, the creative legacy of the city, it’s relative proximity to home – six hours by car, eight by train or bus, or a one-hour flight – and some other practical motives. I envisioned myself an academic, lost in the city’s vast libraries and socializing in late-night study sessions with high-quality coffee drinks discussing literary principles and philosophy and whatnot.

New York itself never occurred to me, not the glamor or the grit of it. I never imagined that the world I found would be random or that my biggest moments would transpire in a world so separate from academia. From my position in a small Western New York township halfway between Buffalo and Rochester, as a twenty-one-year-old graduate of a SUNY school close to home, I thought only of getting out. Sure, there was the allure of the urban, that restless dream of a place where there was always action, always excitement. The notion of the tallest of city’s standing on an island where stars never came out seemed mystical, poetic. I wanted to stand under a blank night sky, to feel the rush of cars and water all around me. But also it was practical. The rest of the state, the New York that I knew, was dead or dying, and I was raised to chase my dreams. So I followed the wind downstate, and wound up in Midtown, in a famous Times Square restaurant.

Like everything in Times Square, Junior’s was a copy. The most central of four locations, its lights were the brightest and its food the priciest, but it was inspired by a fixture in Brooklyn’s history. The original location on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn was still the largest and the most beloved, and even in Times Square the menu boasted egg creams and hot pastrami on rye – along with that ever legendary cheesecake – but the transposition of Junior’s to 45th Street between Broadway and Eighth, on the bottom floor of the Viacom skyscraper that housed MTV, solidified the establishment as a multi-million dollar business. Owner Alan Rosen, whose grandfather opened the Junior’s on Flatbush as a humble nightclub in the 1950s and later a family eatery, was a celebrity and the cheesecake was so popular that by the 2010s, Junior’s was the number one buyer of Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the world.

I walked into Junior’s Times Square with no real knowledge of the legacy or the surrounding area. I had been in the city about a week, had just started classes, and was spending the day wandering aimlessly around the city in search of a job, and I wasn’t qualified for much. An email from a  man named James popped up on my phone from a retail/service industry-based job site I had been using to submit online applications, asking if I could interview within the hour. The Google Maps App on my phone told me that I was nearby and so I went without hesitation. I recognized Junior’s as the place my roommate had taken me with my family the week before when they’d brought me to the city and moved me into my first Brooklyn apartment. My mother needed a real, New York-style cheesecake for a party and my roommate said this was the best. Beyond that I knew nothing about the place, and when James offered me a job in the take-out department I said yes without hesitation.

 

The job was at least forty hours a week (and generally several more) and hourly pay but it didn’t interfere with classes and seemed similar to the retail job I’d had upstate for five years in my hometown’s candy store, and I thought it would be the easiest phase of my life. I’d heard horror stories about people who never found jobs in New York, who spent months and years being turned away. To walk in the front door of the first place I interviewed and walk out with a job had to be a good omen. It felt temporary and automatic, but it was also a relief. Since I had a brand new Bachelor’s degree and was now a graduate student, I assumed that I would keep interviewing for jobs in my field and be on my way as a young professional soon enough. And I did keep interviewing. I was scammed and rejected and offered less money than I could survive on, like most millennials. In the meantime, I settled into the restaurant and let it shape me without even knowing it most of the time.

I spent so much time there, and for a while I couldn’t have left if I’d wanted to. By the time I did want to leave it was a big part of my world. I laughed more there, cried more, had been simultaneously angrier and more content than I had ever imagined possible in a temporary job. I knew that Junior’s was  going to be my first stepping stone in New York, but I never thought it would be a milestone, a major moment in my life that shaped me as a woman as much as a New Yorker. For more than a year it was all I knew. My relationships, my energies, and myself were completely wrapped up in a place – in the windiest place in the city because the skyscrapers created a tunnel, and the most popular restaurant in Times Square.

Junior’s was a waiting place for most of the people who worked there. Some made a career out of it, but most viewed it as a means to an end. Junior’s was where we went to pay our rent, and our lives were supposed to happen outside. People came and went in Junior’s, like in any restaurant. But there was a core group who came and stayed for at least a few years. They were my first family in New York, and with them I did a lot of first things. My first job in New York was at Junior’s but it’s also where I made my first friends, tried my first pastrami, had my first real heartbreak (plus one or two more), had my first waitressing gig, and my first breakdown. I completely lost myself there, and that’s how I started to find my way.

AN AFFIRMATION FOR MEN SEEKING COMPANIONSHIP

I go through cycles with online dating, periods where I am more active and lengths of time when I'd rather be secluded. All of the single women I know - and I suspect this transcends gender and relationship status - know what it means to be confronted with unenlightened sexuality. Unsolicited propositions from men I don't know and the derogatory assumptions they make about me despite the clarity of my intent can be damaging no matter how I may brace myself, rework their words into humor, or dismiss the ignorance in their motives. I do not take my womanhood in stride, and no one should feel she has to. This is an affirmation for all men seeking companionship.
by Liz Richards (writer)

Honor yourself. 

Lead with love and perceptivity.

 

Honor your sex.

Treat your body with love as you honor the joyful sensations it brings to you.

 

Honor balance.

Know that what you take will be given back by will or by natural order, and what you put into the world will determine your experience.

 

 

Honor your feminine.

Be soft and allow your intuition to lead you in grace. 

 

Honor your masculine.

Use your power to inspire. Let your energy be present. Listen always.

 

Honor your loneliness.

Take time to cultivate solitude to affirm the person you are. Do not yield to insecurities and self-doubts, but do acknowledge them. Your psyche knows what you want and what you need. Do listen. 

 

Honor reciprocity. 

Only take what you can digest, only serve what you can offer. View interaction not as a game, this way you will lose as often as you win. Be prepared instead to take delight in each experience for what it is - a veneration and reverent integration of two selves.  

 

Honor her.

Know that she has also gone through this process. She too has come out the other side of heartbreak and degradation time and again and she too has an equal capacity for cynicism and serenity. She too has known passion as well as she has known complacency, and she too has an intent worthy of respect. How you interact with her will influence the cycle.

 

 Honor life. 

Our emotion, our intellect, our communication, and our sexuality are intimately connected. If one is injured, all are weakened. Live from joy. 

 

Do good. Be good. Celebrate the good in every interaction. 

 

*Paintings in this post are by Georgia O'Keeffe. See the source for details and for more artwork.

 

WOBEGON

Last week, we met Marty and Diana. Here is a continuation of their story.

 

SCENE TWO

CHARACTERS

Young Diana, 17

Nurse

Jim, 63

 

SETTING

Hospital room. A single hospital bed sits left of center where DIANA is in labor. She is clearly in pain. The nurse tries to comfort her.

DIANA

Ahh!

NURSE

You’re alright. You’re going to be alright.

DIANA

It hurts. Fuck it hurts.

NURSE

Where is your mom? I have to call your mom. It won’t hurt so much if you have someone here with you.

DIANA

I don’t have a mom. Ah! Ah!

NURSE

It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We have a Helen Frisbee here on your chart. Do you give me permission to call Helen Frisbee?

DIANA

Don’t call that bitch.

(panting)

 

I don’t want her here.

NURSE

Someone should be here with you. It will make the labor smoother. When you came in you mentioned you’re in foster care. Can I call your foster parents?

DIANA

Get it out! Just get it out!

(Her breathing is heavier now. She pants and screams closer together as she contracts.)

 

NURSE

Is there anyone we can call?

DIANA

Get it out! Get it out!

(Lights out briefly. They come up on DIANA, in hospital bed, holding the baby. JIM is seated in a chair next to her, pensieve.)

 

DIANA

(to baby)

 

Shush. Please shush. You don’t have to cry. Please don’t cry? Do you need burping? Are you hungry? Why are you still crying?

JIM

He’s just fussing. Babies fuss. They fuss and they cry.

DIANA

I hate his crying. I can’t stand it. It’s giving me a headache.

JIM

Stop fussing over him. You just have to let him cry. He’ll fall asleep eventually.

DIANA

I wish he could tell me what he wants.

JIM

He doesn’t want anything. It’s just a baby. Babies cry.

DIANA

What did you used to do when your babies would cry?

JIM

Don’t.

DIANA

Well it’s the same thing. This is –

JIM

Don’t. Di, don’t. Just stop.

DIANA

(beat)

 What would you do if I cried?

JIM

Stop.

DIANA

Would you do what you did when I used to cry for you?

JIM

Damn it Di! You don’t do this you don’t do this to me now.

DIANA

Do what? It’s the same thing? The same damn thing. This is you baby and I was your baby and your kids, your children, they could be my parents. And they think I’m your little girl. They treat me like I’m your little girl.

JIM

(a long beat)

 That is not my son. That, that. That is not my son.

DIANA

He’s going to look like you, talk like you. Think like you, fuck like you.

JIM

Enough.

(Jim pulls out out an envelope and hands it to Diana.)

 

DIANA

What is this, hush money? You can keep your hush money.

JIM

You’ll be taken care of.

DIANA

Well isn’t that nice.

JIM

It’s time for you to go home. Just…go home.

END SCENE

WOBEGON

Here's a scene from a play inspired by Garrison Keillor and "A Prairie Home Companion." We'll call it a love story. 

 

CHARACTERS

Diana, almost 60

 

Marty, mid-70s

 

SETTING

Suburban Wisconsin, not far from Chicago, Illinois. Early 2000s. Inside a rustic, eclectic kitchen. A Prairie Home Companion is playing on the radio, which means it’s Saturday evening.  There are two plates on the kitchen table containing the remnants of a steak dinner. MARTY is seated at the kitchen table, reading her newspaper, quiet. DIANA dances around the kitchen, full of energy, almost  manic.

 

GARRISON KEILLOR’s voice is audible over fiddle music

 

A –Bee-Bop-A-Ree-Bob-A-Rhubarb-Pie.

DIANA gyrates to the bluegrass music, throwing her arms about and moving closer toward MARTY. MARTY looks up from her paper amused, looking at DIANA the way a mother looks at her rambunctious child. DIANA takes her wife’s hand and sways her to the music. MARTY laughs and swings slightly, reserved, but does not budge from her chair. She laughs.

 

MARTY

What  has gotten into you tonight?  You’re all fired up. (laughing) Piss and vinegar you are!

DIANA

(still dancing) I’m not piss and vinegar. I’m made from sugar and spice and everything nice.

MARTY

That’s a hoot!

DIANA

Well (beat)  maybe not the everything nice. Maybe I’m sugar and spice and a little piss and vinegar. Gives me flavor.

MARTY

Sure does. I wouldn’t take you any other way. (MARTY picks at her steak.)

The music changes as DIANA stops dancing for the moment. She and MARTY share an affectionate glance and then make funny faces with each other.  Garrison Keillor is sharing the latest installment of his popular segment Guy Noir, Private Eye, who is still reeling from the appearance of a beautiful, luxurious femme fatale who has just walked into his office and will undoubtedly ruin his life.

 

DIANA sits next to MARTY and places her hand on the table. MARTY places her hand over DIANA’s as they listen to the radio program for a few moments.

 

MARTY

Do you think the woman’s always blonde?

DIANA

It’s a radio show, who cares if the girl is blonde?

MARTY

She sounds blonde.

DIANA

You can’t sound blonde. What are you saying, she sounds dumb?

MARTY

No, not dumb. Not exactly.

DIANA

Well then, Professor Wolfe, how does one “sound blonde” if she does not sound dumb?

MARTY

Well, Doctor Wolfe, now you are transferring. She doesn’t sound “dumb.” I mean that her cadence is sexual, powerful, there’s a tinny quality in her voice that implies that she’s never had to work for anything  a day in her life. At least not anything other than the tone of her voice.

DIANA

And for this, she must be blonde?

MARTY

Oh, you know what I mean. You’re a goof, and you can be so harsh sometimes.

DIANA

I don’t know why you have to take your opinions so seriously. It’s all good fun.

MARTY

For you, it’s all good fun. I make a simple declarative statement and you have to rip me to shreds.

DIANA

Honestly, Marty. It’s only a radio show.

MARTY

Honestly? Thirty years you’ve been tuning into this show every week like it’s church and we can’t miss it the six years I’ve known you, but I make a silly statement and it’s just a radio show.

DIANA (more to herself)

 

I don’t know what church has got to do with it.

The two are quiet for a few beats. Guy Noir has ended and the ensemble is playing a parody of a Heinz ketchup commercial. DIANA and MARTY have both forgiven each other but neither wants to make a fuss by acknowledging it.

 

The music swells as the ad comes to an end.

 

ORCHESTRA (singing)

 

Ketchup. Ketchup.

MARTY

Bob didn’t call tonight.

DIANA

No, Bob didn’t call tonight.

MARTY

I’m sure he’ll call tomorrow.

DIANA

I’m sure he won’t. Bob calls every Saturday at 5:30pm, one half-hour before Prairie Home  Companion. That way we can talk about our week and get that out of the way, and then still listen to the program together.

MARTY

Yes, that’s right.

DIANA

It’s almost 8:00. If Bob hasn’t called by now, Bob isn’t calling this week.

MARTY

I don’t know why you two have to be so rigid.  Call once a week, no matter what’s happening. Unless one of you wants to make a point, and then you usually both want to make the same point. You’re both stubborn asses if you ask me.

DIANA

Oh yeah? Well when was the last time one of your kids called?

MARTY

Now there you go being harsh. You know it’s a different situation. You left Cliff. I was with my husband forty years.

DIANA

So because I left my third husband, that makes it less legitimate?

MARTY

Now there you go, making yourself illegitimate. I only meant my kids have a reason to stay angry and you know it.

DIANA

I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.

MARTY

I miss my kids, Di. I wish they called once a week like Bob does.

DIANA

I know. But Bob didn’t call tonight.

MARTY

I know.

A live bluegrass band plays a lively song on the radio. With the change in background noise, we can visibly see their moods change onstage.

 

DIANA

(standing up and beginning to gyrate once more)

Want to dance?

MARTY

(looks at DIANA playfully, makes a funny face.)

 

Oh what the hell.

DIANA takes MARTY by the hand and pulls her up, still swinging her hips. They two-step around the kitchen deliberately, with passion.

 

Garrison Keillor’s voice can be heard over the music:

 

That’s all the news we have from Lake Woebegone tonight. We’d like to thank you for joining us where all the women are strong, the men are good looking,  and the children are above average.

END SCENE

FIGURING IT OUT

For anyone who suffers from a cognitive disorder and the associated anxiety, self-help books and inspirational social media articles can feel a little too peppy. Here's one person's experience of coming attempting to come to terms with ADHD and accept that she functions differently.

by Liz Richards (writer)

A couple of years ago, I discovered a book called The Queen of Distraction: How Women with ADHD Can Conquer Chaos, Find Focus, and Get It All Done. It was pitched as a really great resource for women with ADHD to help themselves find balance and realize their full potential. I honestly couldn’t tell you if that’s true. I picked it up a few times, but never got through it. Oops.

My journey with brain disorder is as personal as it is ongoing as it is constantly evolving. No, that doesn’t make me a special snowflake like all of the yoga sites and mindful living journals tell me. But I do spend a lot of time skimming those journals, inspirational quotes, and jumping around self-help books. Then I spend more time overthinking what I’ve read, alternating between being too hard and too forgiving on myself, spiraling out to reel myself back in again.

The anxiety that comes with ADHD is personal too. It took just one uninformed school counselor and two ill-equipped teachers in 10^th and 11^th grade to shut me down for years. When my grades dropped from straight As to Ds in only two subjects, the people I was taught to rely on assumed it was a cry for attention. They helped reluctantly, because it was state mandated, and I never actually learned advanced algebra or basic chemistry.

I adopted a philosophy of overcompensation and rigid self-reliance. I found that I worked better under pressure. As long as I took on projects that held my interest, I did fine with a full plate, and because I was always keeping busy, so when I did slip, people thought I was full of myself. So I fought to stop slipping.

My anxiety comes out in activity, in the inability to leave things unfinished and simply let it be. There’s nothing I can read in a book that will help me make sense of it. Last weekend I painted two rooms, scrubbed the floors, rearranged furniture, completely redecorated, and bought new furniture in time for a friend’s dinner party. But I still get sick when I think about the suitcase I haven’t unpacked from a vacation that ended a month ago. That’s nothing new. I have to set the bar too high, so that I have a shot at average.

I’ve read it all and reacted in every way. I read that ADHD was made up so I ignored it for several years and hoped the problems would go away. That was unhealthy, and they didn’t go away. In fact, each time the cycle came around, it came around bigger and badder.

I read that antidepressants help curb the anxiety associated with the condition. That felt like it helped for a while, and then I got slapped with bouts of paranoia and panic attacks.

I read that yoga and meditation help people with cognitive disorders focus and gain clarity. Of course that’s true, but there are days when sitting still and quieting the mind are not achievable tasks.

I read that chemicals in food and too much TV are linked to worsening ADHD symptoms. Sure I feel better when I eat better and am more active, but that’s kind of an obvious concept.

Anxiety is complex, and it can’t be boiled down to what I read or what I’m supposed to read about my condition. I look at every anxiety article I see even thought I know it will make my skin crawl. I can’t sit still, petrified that if I sit too long, life will pile up on top of me and I’ll suffocate under all the things I haven’t done.

I don’t know if balance is really in the cards for me. But I keep doing, reading, living. Because for every 40 days when nothing clicks, there’s one day that something does. Because through all of the brain fog and the caffeine abuse and the stress I know is disproportionate, there are moments of clarity. However brief they may be, they define me, and give me something by which to measure myself. Because I’m a basket case, and not moving forward is not an option for me.

IT'S OKAY TO TUNE OUT

It's no secret that this election cycle is a little different from other years, and a lot more vitriolic. The new face of the Republican Party has the ugliest heart they've ever thrown at us. If you've seen enough, don't feel pressure to stick around for more. Vote smart, of course, but don't think you have to listen to every vile thing he says. You don't. 
by Liz Richards (writer)

I love presidential election years. They’re like Christmas, but better, because they only come once every 4 years.

 

Normally, I’m glued in, sponging up anything I can from every side of each debate.

Our political process is so unique, so funny, so distinctly American in every way and I love the ride from start to finish.

This year though, I’ve felt myself petering off. First I stopped watching the Republican debates, because it stopped being funny early on.

Then I missed the end of the last Dem debate because it felt a little tired. Like Clinton and Sanders were both answering the same questions the same way.

My roommate was totally absorbed in the RNC this week, and it’s all she’s wanted to talk about. I just didn’t. I had no interest in my opposing party’s national convention. Maybe for the first time ever.

Sure, I’ve followed up on snippets here and there and the highlights are unavoidable, but for the first time I can’t seem to justify tuning in.

It just doesn’t carry the same comic satisfaction that RNCs from years past have. I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s productive. And this time it’s not even entertaining.

I get why so many people are so interested in this election. It’s mindblowing. Hearing Trump speak is always a spectacle, always unreal. Everyone is watching in awe as he spouts off his blissfully uneducated, intentionally derogatory, explicitly and unapologetically backwards racism and sexism. And this week, one of our most influential politically parties threw their whole-hearted, televised support behind his bad behavior.

I can’t wrap my head around this apparent accident of the Constitution. He got the votes and he got in. And half of our policy makers and protectors are willing to pretend that it’s acceptable simply to hitch their star to his wagon and secure their own continued political comfort.

My stomach hurts when I listen to Trump for too long. My heart hurts when I think of all of the awful things he’s said about people I care for. It’s nauseating to think of the tragic things he’s done as a businessman, and how it real a chance he has to act on behalf of the US in the global economy.

So for the first time I can remember, I’m tuning out. I didn’t watch the RNC, not to avoid giving them a rating, but because it’s not a healthy choice for me.

I have an aunt who threw out her TV about 15 years ago because the news made her sad. I always thought she was a little crazy, but now I kind of get it.

After more than a year of this surreal campaign, I’ve learned all I needed to know to make an informed vote about Donald Trump as a politically contender. No more scandals or off-color remarks are necessary. Knowing that there is enough hate and anger in this country to make him a serious possibility for POTUS is not only scary, it’s making me sick.

There’s a lot of media coming at us from every angle all the time. With that, there’s a lot of pressure to know exactly what’s happening every second on every side of the campaign. I think that as long as we know the platforms and dispositions of the person we support vs. the people we oppose, it’s okay to turn off now.

I felt guilty initially, like maybe I was being ignorant, but in reality, I just have to practice self-care. There is so much love and light and joy in the world. I can see that when I’m walking through the park on lunch, when I’m at the beach with my friends on the weekend, when I’m painting my living room and igniting my own creativity. I won’t be able to see that watching the RNC.

TRAVEL CHANGES US FOR THE BETTER

Travel changes us for the better. Girlfriends motivate us. Girlfriends we travel with get us out of our comfort zones, kick our butts, laugh with us, love us unconditionally. And together we get to share our most valuable memories.
by Liz Richards (writer)

When I told people some girlfriends and I were going hiking in Italy last year, they all ooh-ed and ah-ed and called it the trip of the lifetime. Everyone was impressed with my insta pics of gelato and colorful beaches and big plates of pasta with red wine.

When I told the same people this year that I was going hiking in Yellowstone with the same girlfriends, they reacted a little bit differently.

“Three girls, camping? Without a guy? That’s nice.”

“Oh, nature, that’s nice.”

“How interesting.”

It’s important to have girls who get you. But also girls who push you. You should have girls with similar passions but who also bring something different to the table.

Having ladies in my life who I can travel with has been my single greatest blessing, and the part of my life that I am most proud of. There’s no connection like that of a shared experience, a fond memory between friends.

Traveling is an enormous privilege, one that changes everything about us, from the inside out. Travel buddies shifts everything. It’s absolutely amazing to have people who will pack their bags and get out of town with you.

It’s amazing for me because I would never think that the trip of a lifetime could happen at Yellowstone National Park. I never would have thought of it on my own.

Friends who will push you 6 miles up a literal mountain just to eat turkey sandwiches by a secluded lake are a better breed of friend than anyone at home.

Friends who stage impromptu jerky-and-beer tastings on the side of the road are better dining companions than anyone in the city.

Girls who get that steak cooked on the campfire is the ultimate girls’ night will really have your back.

Everyone should have someone in their life with whom they can drink herbal tea spiked with rum, talk for hours about their travel poop schedules, snore together in a tent, and push each other mile after mile until your at the bottom of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, face to face with the Yellowstone River.

Or whatever the non-granola-hiking-camping-nature-girl equivalent is, if that’s not your thing.

Because everyone deserves someone(s) who will get you up and moving to places you never imagined you’d see, and someone(s) who end every trip with, “Where are we going next?”

Yellowstone National Park (Really Cool Stuff!)