What, that's not the most important thing today?
I finished drafting my twelfth installment. 24,368 words, for a total of 316,005 words.
Twelve down, four to go.
Excuse me while I make some calls to save democracy.
Deb in the City
What, that's not the most important thing today?
I finished drafting my twelfth installment. 24,368 words, for a total of 316,005 words.
Twelve down, four to go.
Excuse me while I make some calls to save democracy.
Deb in the City
My fellow Americans,
If you're planning to vote on Election Day (as I am) or you've already voted, thank you, but unfortunately we need to push a little harder this time around. It truly amazes me that this can be a close race after what happened on January 6, 2021, but (once again) here we are.
I am very happy to be working on the GOTV effort with EVP. This isn't just to preserve democracy, but also to give us a fighting chance of preserving the livability of the planet. EVP is calling people who already believe climate is the most important voting issue but don't reliably show up to vote. It's difficult to get those people to vote, but it's harder to get existing voters to believe that climate should be their number one issue. As Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder of EVP has said, it's easier to change behavior than belief, especially now.
If you haven't already started phoning, start now. They're phone banking until tomorrow, November 5 (aka Election Day) until 7 PM EST. They've already made some amazing inroads--as of yesterday, almost 11% of their targeted voters had shown up to early vote, which is amazing--but we've got a lot more work to do.
Let's do everything we can to make sure we have a democracy next year.
Deb in the City
There are very few words or phrases that should automatically shut down a discussion and force someone to concede a point, but in the last year, I've run into a few.
"Novel intestinal bacteria" This comes courtesy of Chris van Tulleken's book, Ultra Processed People, and it refers to the known effects of xanthan gum. This is why I avoid a lot of ultraprocessed foods.
"Fatty liver" This is something one of my siblings suffers from. I was reminded of this when we tried to see the doctor last month, and it made me think about all of the times that I was told I was too extreme or a "health nut" for feeding said sibling a whole foods plant-based diet.
"Rats in the community garden" This is self-explanatory, and you really would think that it would be enough to motivate board members to immediately authorize funds for an exterminator and gardeners to attend to their plots. (You would be mistaken.)
If I'm extreme or inflexible for believing these things are indicative of absolutes, what the Hell happened to the center? But maybe living in an age where we are literally in danger of *electing* a fascist in the United States for the second time in less than a decade has dulled everyone's senses.
Deb in the City
And let's take our victories where we can. Every single one of them feels hard won.
I just finished drafting installment eleven (11) of my saga. I fell hard for a character who--spoiler alert--will not make it through to the end (or will they?). This installment clocked in at 69,593 words, which brings my total word count up to 291,637. That is very close to three hundred thousand. This is the longest installment of all, and I may have to make some changes, but I need to wait until the end to deliver the punch. It's not perfect--it's a draft--but it's pretty good.
Five more to do. One of them will be on the longer side, but not nearly as long as this.
Deb in the City