Notices by Mary Austin VOTED 4 HARRIS! (maryaustinbooks@mstdn.social)

In the morning I drink my caffeine
And without it I might be quite mean
I guess there's worse vice
And it keeps me so nice
But don't take away my roast beans!

#LimerickAConfession #HashtagGames

I went for my annual skin check at the dermatologist today, which is always a huge relief! One mole removed, and otherwise everything was fine. I'm also grateful to have access to care, this being the US. 😩

Please get your skin checks! #Cancer prevention is always worthwhile.

#Health

I get that corporate media want to increase crybully turnout by misquoting #Biden, but I'm pretty sure this is backfiring. Everybody who laughs at racist "jokes" was going to vote #Trump anyway.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, via KamalaHQ on Threads:

"Latino radio show host in Pennsylvania: He said Puerto Rico was garbage. That's where we draw the line. It brought all of those feelings right back of how Trump treated us after Hurricane Maria."

https://www.threads.net/@kamalahq/post/DByk9_DCe9L

Ace comment from above:

@lowqualityfacts
And isn't it ironic
Don'tcha think
A little toooo ironic

It's like razor blaaaades
And a guy with a beard
On Halloween,
Yeah that's definitely weird

@anon_opin
I can do all three but learning to swim and cook are to some degree matters of privilege. Not everybody has access to a pool growing up. Not everybody even has access to fresh food, or a parent to teach them to cook. I love cooking and have taught friends as adults who did not have the opportunity to learn to cook when they were kids. People shouldn't be shamed for hard childhood circumstances. And despite having "a very good reason" for not learning they do feel shame. Please don't.

Honestly sounds like a pretty good role model right now.
#WildLife #BecomeUngovernable

While I appreciate all the mournful "We're not better than this" articles, I'd like to point out that being better than this remains a choice anyone can make.

It involves risk and sacrifice for any better intention to mean anything. Without risk and sacrifice, all the mournful takes in the world mean nothing.

We can decide at any time to be better than this. There will be a price, just as there has always been, for any real progress. But we absolutely can and should be better than this.

I don't own any cancer awareness merchandise because I spent years watching people who wear that stuff refuse to have anything (publicly) to do with a situation that involved risk and sacrifice to oppose Big Pharma. Lately, a lot of the same people won't even wear masks in hospitals.

Nobody ever saved a life from cancer by wearing pink crap, but wearing a mask at least in healthcare settings is effortless and absolutely does save cancer patients' lives. Hospital acquired Covid kills.

I don't usually write "fuck cancer." I mean yeah, fuck cancer, big time. We have all lost people we loved. But in the fight for cancer patients' lives, slogans won't save anybody any more than pink merchandise.

Wearing masks in hospitals is easy. Fighting fascists to keep what healthcare we have will be harder. Fighting Big Pharma has been a whole fucking rodeo, I assure you.

But I can tell you, it's what you do when you love people so much you will die to save them.

Courage comes from love.

All of you love people. Contrary to what JD Vance thinks, it's quite possible to love people you did not physically make. Some of you may want to fight for your children, and godspeed! Some of us don't have biological children and will be fighting for yours.

Love is the answer because love is the only thing that makes us brave. I've seen many people who couldn't quit smoking for their own health quit for their children. I personally decided there wasn't anything worse Big Pharma could do....

...to me than what I had already been through, watching patients (including children) die of cancer knowing there might be something more to save them if not for corruption. If not my drug, then someone else's. But I knew greed was limiting their choices, and watching kids die of cancer is bad enough when you don't know that.

In that same setting I lost the best man I ever knew, for whom I titled my book THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER. That's the title of an Irish poem about betrayal and death.

This is the poem I named my book for.

https://poets.org/poem/last-rose-summer

The last line is "Oh who would inhabit this bleak world alone?"

I would have died to save him or any of my young patients, whose faces I will never forget. To get me to stop fighting for improvements in cancer care, Big Pharma was going to have to torture me worse than that. They were going to have to be scarier than all cancer.

I don't know what the fuck they thought they were going to do.

Yes, it is bleak, as the poem says, when we are mourning those we loved and lost. It is bleaker still when those deaths result in part from betrayal.

But to be selfish and not love, like Trump, is to truly inhabit this world alone. All of us know that there is absolutely no one who loves him, or should.

We are not Trump or any of these fucking Nazis. We are the people who love-- whether spouses and our children, or our whole community.

We are the brave ones because we have love.

@br00t4c
Great article regardless of one's race.

@emarktaylor
God I would even take Charles over Trump. It's saying a lot, because I am no fan of Charles or the monarchy.

But at least Charles acknowledges climate change and wouldn't start any nuclear wars, so there's that.

@emarktaylor
You gotta give him that. Maybe not much else, but you can acknowledge he has a functioning brain.

Oh Lord, an evangelical leader yelling "groomer" at #LGBT people has a hard drive full of child porn, version 1,289,853. 🤦🏼♀️

https://www.rawstory.com/jason-yates-my-faith-votes/

Harris didn't work at McDonald's! But Her Details! Obama looks old! Here, let's release some polls that are faker than Mar a Lago boobs!

No campaign behaves like this when it is winning. 🤡