trip to block island, social media or not, photographs, herstory, storm of humanity

01 Feb, 2026

yesterday i was grateful for a safe trip home and a warm house when we got there...

today i am looking forward to normal routine...

notes...

i am feeling a little curfuzzled this morning... over the past couple of days i have been working out a plan for moving forward with my art work and my writing... how to share my work... how to communicate with my fellow human beings... i have decided once and for all to leave facebook, instagram, threads, micro.blog, substack... anything with the premise that is should reach a broad, disconnected audience... instead... i will focus on communicating with people through snail mail, bear blog, newsletter, email, text and phone calls... also... submissions to photo calls for entry and maybe some writing calls... i will do open studios... i will get my work into galleries... i will concentrate on what is local... what is person to person... in this moment we are in connection locally and in person is what i want to focus on...

last week was quite a week... it started on jan 22 as we were preparing to get out of town... i had a gut feeling that we shouldn't go... put it off for a week... because of the impending storm... holly was prepared to do that, but disappointed... so we went... the weather was not supposed to be bad on block island... a couple of inches of wintery mix... we got at least six inches... maybe as much as eight... we got snowed in... it took three days to shovel the driveway to the road... mind you... a younger me could have done it in one or two... but i decided not to be in a hurry... cabin fever definitely became a thing though... for me... for dogs... for my wife... i got pretty cranky... when i finally got to ellen's at the airport, saw people, had a good breakfast, i felt so much better... holly commented on the difference...

we came home yesterday... the trip home was uneventful...

it is so cold here and so much snow...

the national story is what i am now referring to as a growing storm of humanity... the winter storm echoing the storm of humanity, or vice versa...

i am sitting here thinking in the background while i am writing other things... what is going to be my writing and publishing footprint?... shall i strive to publish on bear blog daily, as i was doing?... should i write a news letter once a month and put a lot of effort into it?... almost like a magazine?... do i need to publish anything at all on a regular basis?... why do i want to publish anything?...

some photographs from yesterday...

what i read today...

Raised by Butch-Femme parents in small-town 1960s USA: Pam's story - Lesbian Herstory

While the family had two female parents at a time when men were the only ones expected to work, they didn’t go without. “My Pap could turn circles around 10 men. She concreted driveways, did mechanic work, painted, played guitar, and sang. My mom played the accordion, piano, and harmonica. We had music all the time in our house growing up. They would both do side jobs and made it with 4 kids.” 

i have been following more sources of lgbtq+ stories... it has been helping me place myself in the spectrum...

and then there is the storm of humanity that is gathering in intensity... i hope against hope that it won't get to the place of first or second world wars... storms of humanity are among the most destructive things in the cosmos...

heather cox richardson

After his call for a “labor class” excluded from citizenship and a voice in government, Miller went on to reject the idea that Haitians living and working legally in Ohio should be described as part of Ohio communities. Calling out Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, who is running for the Senate again this year, for including them, Miller posted: “Democrats just flatly reject any concept of nationhood that has ever existed in human history.”

and...

The horrors of the Epstein files show a group of powerful and wealthy men and women who sexually assaulted children and showed no concern either for their crimes or that they might have to answer to the law. The public still does not know the extent of the horrors or the human-trafficking business in which Epstein and others were engaged. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters yesterday that the Department of Justice was not releasing any item from the Epstein files that showed “death, physical abuse, or injury.”

and...

Another story tonight indicated the degree to which the president sees himself as part of a wealthy caste that is above the law. Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhous, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster report showing that four days before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, men working for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal with the Trump family to buy 49% of their brand-new cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investors would pay half immediately, sending $187 million to entities held by the Trump family and at least $31 million to entities held by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial whom Trump had named U.S. envoy to the Middle East weeks earlier.

and...

Thousands marched peacefully in Portland, Oregon, today but, as Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle recorded, “federal officers outside the ICE facility in Portland…indiscriminately threw loads of gas and flash bangs” at marchers, including children. Portland, Oregon, city councillor Mitch Green reported: “I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions.”

the amount of bad shit going on is just astonishing... the cruelty, greed and selfishness is appalling...

a little light in the dark...

Tonight, voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a special election. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s. Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign, the Wambsganss campaign spent $310,000 while Rehmet spent nothing, and Daniel Nichanian of BoltsMag posted that overall, Wambsganss spent nearly $2.2 million more than Rehmet in the campaign. Both Texas governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wambsganss.

#block-island #lgbtq+ #storm-of-humanity