Happy Sunday cool cats! How are you? This morning, I got out of bed really early and looked out my window and the sunrise was doing this really gorgeous thing and it was… perfect. The sunrise was so perfect, I stopped for, like, three seconds and just looked at it. I want to do more of that, you know? Like, just be able to stop, breathe, and have an experience. Even if it’s just a three-second one. Maybe you could try having a three-second experience today; I don’t know, it could be great! Speaking of great, let’s get to the news.
This Is (Almost) Halloween
+ Witches are gonna hex Brett Kavanaugh. If that’s your thing, maybe you wanna get in on it?
+ Sophie Wilkinson at Broadly writes about how TV witchcraft has always been queer. She even talks about Angela Lansbury as a spinster witch!
The 1971 film Bedknobs and Broomsticks was aimed at children, so it couldn’t be as overtly sexual as The Witches. Still, its lead character Miss Price (Angela Lansbury) is a motorbike-driving spinster who can’t ride a broom side-saddle but can use her bed to take people to far-off fantasy lands. As scholar Chris Cuomo writes in Spinsters in Sensible Shoes: Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Miss Price “has a classic lesbian look… Villagers are wondering whether she’ll ever have a (male) romantic interest… Even her diet, which includes cabbage buds, rose hips, glossop seed, elm bark and stewed nettles and bran porridge, fits the contemporary and historical constructions of the puritanical, health-obsessed or vegetarian lesbian-feminist.”
+ The Real Curse In Practical Magic Is Heterosexuality
Outdoor Queers
+ How LGBTQ folks are breaking barriers in the outdoors (although, the piece could have used a mention of Autostraddle’s resident outdoorswoman, Vanessa).
+ Farm 51, right outside Philly, is a queer oasis of love ❤️
+ If you’re wondering which flag to hang outside your home, this guide to 11 different LGBTQ flags has got you covered!
Fairy Tales Do Come True
+ Same Same is a new webseries by queer women, for queer women! And it’s free online, right now!
+ Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret will become a movie! I love reliving my adolescence in a theatre of hundreds!
This Week in Brandi Carlile Videos…
Because sis has been BUSY!
+ A new recording of “Party of One” (or as I like to call it, “the song married lesbians with kids make up to after a big argument”), featuring Sam Smith
+ SHE WAS ONE HALF OF THE ARETHA FRANKLIN TRIBUTE AT THE CMT AWARDS! And she looks like an adorable dandy! That suit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6h84aAsjtk
Well friends this is the end, for now! I have a good but busy day planned, and I’m excited to get it started. My mantra for this week is “work smart, rest hard,” and I also wanna offer that to you if you need it. I don’t know about you, but October has historically been a hard month for me, but we’re almost out of it! Soon there’s Thanksgiving! And winter holidays! We got this!!!!
Refinery29 titled their article “A Complete Guide To All The LGBTQ+ Flags.” Probably a best practice not to say “all.” What makes them think that’s all the flags? Is it just all the flags that they’re aware of?
For one, they don’t have the aromantic pride flag. I also volunteered at Oakland Pride this year and helped put their flags up. They had sooo many flags (30+, I think) but, again, no aromantic flag.
This week, can we all remember that aromantic people exist? Please and thank you.
I am SO here for witches coming back everywhere in our pop culture. I’m done with vampires!
That said I tried watching A Discovery of Witches and I just can’t, it’s so bad (and Alex Kingston isn’t in it frequently enough).
I normally prefer to say nothing if I don’t have something nice to say… but the books were definitely not amazing either…? I read them, of course, witches + Oxford = excellent start… but I was disappointed. :-(
Party of One is such a beautiful song! But the lyrics make me think it’d be healthier as a breakup song. It confuses me.
I’ve always had a hunch Natural Woman could be the ultimate wlw duet and…I was proved right. it’s not only one of the best songs ever, but also one of the most flexible (?) songs ever. Carole King, YOUR MIND.
Oh man, I loved Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret so much as a kid so much, it’s probably my favorite Judy Blume book. I’m excited to see how this goes!
The intersex flag y’all.
“The circle is unbroken and un-ornamented, symbolizing wholeness and completeness our potentialities. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and this symbolizes the right to be who and how we want to be.”