sharonecathcart

sharonecathcart, 9 months ago to random

Quote from article: If you live in a Blue area of a Red state, get ready: the GOP plans to pull out all the stops for the 2024 election.

Double-check your voter registration every month or two, and be sure to double-check it in the weeks just before the deadline for registration, as Republican Secretaries of State prefer to purge people in this window so by the time people discovered they’re purged it’s too late to re-register.

Forewarned is forearmed. Pass it on to your friends in Red states.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/the-shocking-voter-purge-crisis-of-c66?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 7 months ago to random

Quote from article: In the eleven months since Republicans have taken control of the US House of Representatives, child poverty in America has doubled. This is because Republicans in the House refused to renew programs Democrats put in place providing health care, food assistance, housing support, the child tax credit, and subsidized child care: all have now expired.

In the past 40 days, 3.2 million children lost access to healthcare, 70,000 childcare and preschool programs have closed, and the child tax credit has expired. So have the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s emergency allotments. As of yesterday, 10,046,000 Americans have been kicked off Medicaid, nearly all in Red states.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/will-we-hold-the-gop-responsible-70d?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 11 months ago (edited 15 days ago) to random

Long overdue #intropost now pinned:

I'm an award-winning author, primarily writing historical fiction but dabbling in other genres. I'm happily married, an empty-nester, and we are owned by several rescue cats. We also look after a feral cat colony and do TNR. I still have a day job, which I like most of the time (and I know what a blessing that is). I vote blue, support my LGBTQ+ friends and family, and am a proud SJW.

I also love Disney, all animals, reading, films, travel, and good food. I live with two autoimmune diseases that sometimes affect my ability to do these things.

Howdy!

sharonecathcart, 8 months ago to random

Quote from article: if this were anyone not named Hunter Biden, the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex would be fucking apoplectic right now, because this is exactly the kind of case that would normally have the gun fetishists screaming about prosecutorial overreach — a minor paperwork charge that is rarely brought against anyone.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/republicans-fucking-love-gun-laws?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 11 months ago to random

Quote from article: Every nation’s single biggest long-term asset is a well-educated populace, and student debt diminishes that.

Every other advanced democracy on the planet understands this.

That’s why student debt at the scale we have in America literally does not exist anywhere else in the rest of the developed world.

American students, in fact, are going to college for free right now in Germany, Iceland, France, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, because pretty much anybody can go to college for free in those countries and dozens of others.

“Student debt?” The rest of the developed world doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/is-student-debt-a-crime-against-americas?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 10 months ago to random

Quote from article: This movement by the morbidly rich, which has fully captured the Republican Party, is led by fossil fuel and big business oligarchs who are using the social, religious, and political values of the old Confederacy to build a modern nationwide movement. They’ve built their political house on the foundation of bigotry, misogyny, and hate.

That movement, at its core, is fascist. And just like fascists of Europe in the 1930s who claimed that their main enemies were communists, these fascists label all who oppose them as commies.

They don’t actually believe that Democrats are communists, of course; they’re not that stupid. It’s just a convenient term of demonization. Fascists have always known that to enrage people to the point of violence it’s necessary to first turn their opponents into “the other,” and “communist” is a convenient all-purpose term to do that.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/why-american-fascists-label-all-who-452?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 7 months ago to random

Quote from article: House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) today said it is “urgently necessary” for the Republicans to “get their act together and elect a Speaker from within their own ranks, as it is the responsibility of the majority party to do, or have traditional Republicans break with the extremists within the House Republican Conference and partner with Democrats on a bipartisan path forward. We are ready, willing, and able to do so. I know there are traditional Republicans who are good women and men who want to see government function, but they are unable to do it within the ranks of their own conference, which is dominated by the extremist wing, and that’s why we continue to extend the hand of bipartisanship to them.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/october-12-2023?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 7 months ago to NewOrleans

#FediBookFair

If you sign up for my mailing list, you will get a #free #timeslip short story set in #NewOrleans delivered to you immediately! I promise never to sell your e-mail address or spam you. My newsletter goes out once a month.

#indieauthor #writingcommunity #bookstodon @bookstodon

Click the link: https://weebly.us8.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=006b4d49a538f087db5387388&id=26168d2956

sharonecathcart, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to free

A brief moment of self-promotion ...

#free #ebooks #indieauthor #readingcommunity #bookstodon #ebookstodon @bookstodon #Smashwords

https://sharonecathcart.wordpress.com/2023/07/01/smashwords-summer-winter-sale-2023/

sharonecathcart, 10 months ago to random

Quote from article: This move by the state ensures that those with the least privileges–those in unstable homes, those without regular internet access, and those without active parents or guardians in their lives–have even fewer opportunities to utilize public goods and services. It in turn protects the library, which is not in the position to determine the suitability of every book in the library per the law’s definition of inappropriate.

My thoughts: this is for every one of the hand-wavers who insisted "They can just check out e-books from the library." The definition of "obscenity" in Mississippi's law is so vague that biology textbooks depicting human anatomy qualify.

#bookban #writingcommunity #readingcommunity

https://bookriot.com/hoopla-overdrive-libby-now-banned-for-those-under-18-in-mississippi/

sharonecathcart, 7 months ago to random

#FediBookFair

A little #backlist love for "Hugs and Hisses."

This #memoir about my time as an animal shelter volunteer, working with behaviorally difficult cats, benefits Humane Society Silicon Valley (http://www.hssv.org). Cover photo by Dave Darling. Cover design by James Courtney.

#indieauthor #readingcommunity #animallovers #adoptdontshop #bookstodon @bookstodon
Grab your copy here: https://books2read.com/b/mBz9YN

sharonecathcart, 11 days ago to random

https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/nailing-down-the-loose-cannon?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 8 months ago to KindActions

Contrary to what many people think, many "rock stars" from the 1960s and '70s are far from wealthy. Being a professional musician is not a steady paycheck with retirement benefits and health insurance deducted; it's a literal gig economy. Many of the older stars have no health insurance; Denny Laine, who founded the Moody Blues and was a member of Wings, is one such person. He's now dealing with a health crisis that is going to require significant rehab costing in the six figures; his wife has humbled herself to put up a GoFundMe (something many people have had to do with catastrophic medical bills). The shitty comments on Denny's IG, asking why a "rich rock star" couldn't pay his own bills, far outnumber those offering compassion and help.

If you can give a little, please do.

#mutualaid

https://www.gofundme.com/f/denny-laine-medical-expenses

sharonecathcart, 1 year ago to random

Quote from article: So, here we are in a situation much like the one that FDR faced when he first came into office in 1933. Homelessness stalks the nation; three morbidly rich individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans; gun crime is at Bonnie and Clyde levels; and workers are terrified of their employers, who force them to sit through anti-union indoctrination sessions or lose their jobs.

To solve this crisis, we must gather and gain the political strength and will to once again raise the top income tax rate up to 90 percent; to overturn the Taft-Hartley Act and restore the right to unionize without interference; and to strip the poison of big money out of our political system.

My thoughts: According to a biography by Peter Guralnick, a reporter once asked Elvis Presley how he felt about being in the 90 percent tax bracket. His response was that he wrote the check and paid, because those tax monies went to help a lot of people.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/what-happens-when-you-tax-billionaires-fa3?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 8 months ago to random

Y'all have no idea how much I wish posts about my books got nearly as much traction as posts about politics and social justice ...

#indieauthor #writingcommunity

sharonecathcart, 9 months ago to random

Quote from article: In the meanwhile, fair warning, it will feel extremely frustrating. We know Thomas is corrupt and has violated not only every norm but several laws. We also know that the GOP will block every effort to hold him accountable, just as they do with Trump. But we shouldn’t throw up our hands in despair, lamenting that “nothing ever happens.” That only serves the aims of the GOP. They’re more than happy to see us give up.

https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/its-even-worse-than-we-thought-with?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 6 months ago to random

Quote from article: And now House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because “we’re drowning in debt.” What he fails to mention is that 100% of our nation’s $34 trillion debt was caused by Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts along with the $10 billion in illegal wars Bush and Cheney lied us into.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/if-democrats-ran-red-states-fewer?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 8 months ago to random

Quote from article: Experts say shutting down the government would not, in fact, end the former president’s legal troubles, but he is actually doing more than that here: he is trying to assert dominance over the country. As Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said: “Let’s be clear about what the former president is saying here. House Republicans should shut down the government unless the prosecutions against him are shut down. He would deny paychecks to millions of working families & devastate the US economy, all in the service of himself.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-21-2023?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 1 year ago to random

Quote from article: The Washington Post has discovered that the majority of books banned in schools in Red states across America were removed from the shelves because of complaints from just 11 people, many who aren’t even parents of schoolchildren. Several of the book banners have well-documented ties to white supremacist groups and a few have even promoted explicitly Nazi websites, memes, and activists. These revelations are not, however, blunting the enthusiasm of Republican politicians for going down the same road Germany traveled in 1933 when their first book bans focused on literature about gay and trans people, months before the bans turned into bonfires.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/saturday-report-52723?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 5 months ago to random

Quote from article: The Binder saga also underscores the utter hypocrisy of the Republican Party when it comes to the handling of classified materials, including top secret documents such as those included in the Binder. This isn’t some instance where the use of a private email server results in the inadvertent inclusion of documents marked as classified. This is, once again, the nation’s top secrets, so valuable that they needed a safe within a vault to keep them secure. But under Trump, they were photocopying and scanning the Binder in the final hours of his presidency, sending top secret pages to reporters back and forth in paper bags, with the original, most valuable version still mysteriously unaccounted for.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thinkbigpicture/p/trump-binder-russia-crossfire-hurricane?r=1ekuyr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

sharonecathcart, 10 months ago to random

I really miss having Barack Obama in the White House.

https://barackobama.medium.com/thank-you-to-americas-librarians-for-protecting-our-freedom-to-read-80ce373608b3

Mrfunkedude, 21 days ago to random

Tell me the story of the last time you committed an act of kindness in 500 characters or less.

There’s nothing wrong with bragging about creating kindness. There’s nothing honorable about not sharing the joy of creating kindness.

We need to uplift and encourage people who create kindness in their daily lives.

So tell us your story. It doesn’t have to be something big. It can be something as simple as helping someone carry a bag of groceries.

How did you create kindness this week?

sharonecathcart, 15 days ago to music

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/23/david-bowie-diamond-dogs-50-glam-halloween-jack/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3fCsidzBaUGX6gurQbHjOtDqFrIKX-e_YJVV21LD08qB5iRPpx1qlfqiY_aem_AYRCnflzMDNdOgI5VQ7mfBCTCEHgnnIguKYz6wkKqX5ZX7Kv4U6Hiw3_qLNkk-usF3A9JMgstnsvy066M-pH9QfL

#music #bowie

sharonecathcart, 20 days ago to random

#WordWeavers
How did you settle on your MC's appearance?

I often have a good idea of what they look like ... but sometimes it's more vague. I use storyboarding to help me consolidate who they are so that I can translate that a little better. Pinterest is super-handy for this.

Here is the story board for my current #wip

https://www.pinterest.com/secathcart/story-board-highland-fire/

#amwriting #dualtimeline #historicalfiction #indieauthor

sharonecathcart, 9 days ago to books

#PennedPossibilities 330 — How does your MC go about expressing or not expressing their sexuality?

Suetonius, like many gladiators, is pimped out by his lanista -- and he's very popular with the clients. When he falls hard for Drusilla, his experience is translated into tenderness.

#indieauthor #awardwinning #dualtimeline #historicalfiction #pompeii #readingcommunity #bookstodon #books

https://books2read.com/b/3nNrde