I Am On My Last Can Of Surly Furious

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Every time I go home, I buy a six pack of beer. I drink one or two during my visit, and pack the rest in my suitcase. Minnesota beer isn’t sold in the Mid-Atlantic. Not even at Total Wine. I like a good hoppy beer that punches you in the face. There are many Minnesota beers I can recommend to fulfill this objective. Over the holidays I bought Surly Furious.

This morning, I ran. It was warm outside. I wore shorts. I thought about texting my mom when I was done, to show her a photograph of my bare legs, because Oh My God, how is running outside in shorts possible in January when you’re a girl from Minnesota? Well, it’s possible because you move.

But I didn’t text Mom, because I had a packed workday ahead. I needed to avoid distractions. I needed to get ‘er done.

There was a snowstorm in Minnesota during the visit. It was substantial. We cut our Christmas at the cabin short due to the forecast. Our daughter went with my parents. She would sleep at their house, so they didn’t miss out on precious granddaughter time. My husband and I went to a hotel. We were snowed in at the Mall of America. The winter storm warning was so bad they closed the stores early.

Nothing closes the stores early in Minnesota. They are fucking pros at snow.

I was cheated out of time with my parents by this storm. When parents are old, and they live far away, you don’t know how much time you will have. We tried to drive back, before they closed the stores early, but the highways were a mess. It was scary. The snow kept coming down. We needed to turn back.

I develop playlists for running. I rotate through them. I group them by the marathon I’m training for at the time of creation. This morning I listened to my “Minnesota Marathon 2022” playlist. It’s all Prince, Soul Asylum, Judy Garland, and Bob Dylan. I pressed shuffle. As I ran across this one curve a few miles from my house that is so achingly beautiful, “Purple Rain” came on.

We all remember certain days. I remember the day Prince died, and seeing people on the streets outside First Avenue nightclub, lighters in the air and singing “Purple Rain” together. I moved in 2009. April 21, 2016, was the first day I felt truly homesick for Minnesota.

I got through the workday. I was just leaving to pick up my daughter from school when I saw it:

The video of masked ICE agents shooting a mother in the head.

The neighborhood in the video looked so much like blocks that I have lived on, that I had to look up where it happened, to be sure.

I am on my last can of Surly Furious. I don’t know that I’m homesick. But I am not at home, and I am thinking about home. Psychologically, emotionally, home will always be Minnesota, though I love where I live now. I am calling my parents to ensure their medical appointments aren’t in places where they might need to consider the possibility of more ICE agents hiding their faces and/or shots fired. Their mobility isn’t so hot.

The last time I was in Minnesota was five days ago. Friday. I made a point to wear my “AMERICA NEEDS IMMIGRANTS” T-shirt in the airport, because while I’m kind of over performative activism, the reality is, our war-mongering government is focused on demonizing and terrorizing a specific group of people at home (immigrants, and in Minnesota’s case, Somalis) while simultaneously threatening to invade and/or depose the leaders of multiple nations. I want to be counted, and I want to demonstrate–we need to continue speaking up. They want us to be too afraid to speak up.

Other leaders and other countries have declared enemies within, deployed masked agents, and declared intentions to invade other countries. We know how these behaviors end. (Hint: It’s not just talk.)

To see our disintegrating democracy streaked with the blood that belonged to a six-year-old child’s mother in the snow in the sunshine in the snow in the sunshine in the snow in Minnesota in Minneapolis in a neighborhood breaks me. There are stuffies in the passenger seat of that SUV in that video, and when the ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good in the head the stuffies were right there and they saw the whole thing.

I pray for my friends, my family, my country, my world. I only wanted to see you underneath the Purple Rain. I have loved living my whole life in a country that strives to be a democracy, and that strives for peace. These are the stories of peace and democracy we have told ourselves our whole lives and much of our history reflects those stories, and even when they don’t, people could peacefully protest and organize and vote. The concept was rule of law, not rule of man. Our American ideals as written in the Constitution are beautiful. I want that country back. I want my home back.

We Should All Be Worried About The State Of Feminist Infrastructure

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“The initial Trumpean protests were largely unfocused and self-satisfied. They had limited structure and deficient leaders–if they possessed leaders at all. The Women’s March crumbled away. Black Lives Matter devolved. Serious organizers sat at the helm of the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and material change was won. The upsurges of the 2010s and 2020, when George Floyd was killed, amounted to spectacle and little else. Some laws did change on the criminal justice front, and progressive prosecutors were swept into office, but there was little thought given to the long term, to building durable organizations that would outlive the boom times. Movements cannot rise on froth alone.” – Ross Barkan, “Facism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics”

In these waning days of 2025, there is much to be worried about. I am not advocating unmitigated despair: There is also much to be joyous about in the confines of our own lives, if we are willing to look for those reasons to smile, to love, to be (and we should!). But if we’re talking about the republic of the United States, the democracy we are at least on paper supposed to be, we are not doing too well. An authoritarian is president; Congress has all but abdicated its authority; the judiciary, stacked by that same authoritarian in his first term, seems to consider itself along for the ride.

I am a lifelong feminist, and a feminist organizer along with being a writer, duh. And so, I take an explicitly feminist lens. When I lay the facts side by side that feminist infrastructure is weak, and that we are in this authoritarian moment, I grow very concerned.

Because women’s movements are one of the chief tools we have to fight against autocracy. The reason why repressive governments crack down on women and sexual minorities first is not just culture wars, it’s a mechanism of control. For organized women are very powerful.

Do you know it might be a crime to look up and watch Pussy Riot videos in Russia? This is not some random thing. Dictators hate feminist women. They are terrified of us.

Recently, a friend who I respect very much, who participates in organized feminist work, and writes, but what is unique about her is her willingness to take radical direct action whether or not people support her, this friend posted on social media about the weakness of the feminist movement. She is right to be concerned. I had replied at the time that I saw it, too. That we are weaker today than we were ten years ago, when there were people marching in the streets, when there was a cultural feminist moment. We are in the midst of a cultural backlash with trad wives and super skinny heroin chic all back. Hell, we can’t even teach women’s studies in a number of the universities anymore (and of course these attacks are quadrupled on DEI, and women of color–Black women in particular have been disproportionately fired from the federal workforce by unqualified Elon Musk backpack dudes).

But also, we are in a time where are organizations have dwindled greatly. Root causes include a variety of issues, including but not limited to infighting, lack of sustained investment, and the false mirage of so-called ‘leaderless organizing’ (which is never as egalitarian as it professes to be, since when there is no leader, the unspoken power that is wicked powerful takes the wheel, but everyone denies it at the same time). What’s more, we now have a president who wants to decimate the primary sector that supports structured feminist organizing, which is 501(c)3s.

To be very clear, I don’t think a non-profit or a set of bylaws is what makes a movement, but I also think we unabashedly need structures. I want women in particular to get serious about tending to and building our feminist structures. If we’re going to fight, we need to methodically build capacity.

Some are doing this work.

But as of right now, it’s not enough to break through. Given the overwhelming power of organized women in fighting back against autocracy, that makes the low-infrastructure state of feminism everyone’s problem.

Are Art And Activism Incompatible?

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I’d just quit my job as an officer of the National Organization for Women (NOW). What did I do the next morning? I pulled my laptop into bed, and launched this blog. This sounds fairly anticlimactic, but it was a huge deal. I had pulled my old blog offline after being elected action vice president. Too much stuff was getting scrutinized by too many people.

The truth was, I felt horribly stifled. To be a spokesperson for the nation’s largest feminist organization was awesome, exciting, and an honor–and a lot of the time, it really fucking sucked. I was an activist and an artist. At the time of my election, just after my twenty-ninth birthday, I had been in a phase of life when I’d been deeply expressing my artistic side. But all that changed when I moved to Washington.

At the time I told myself that abandoning my writing was about the climate surrounding me. In Minneapolis, I’d been surrounded by artists. Those were my people, my friends. In Washington, I was surrounded with feminists and activists and political types. In Washington, what do you do? was the transactional question when you met someone. The question really meant this: what power do you have, and how can that benefit my agenda?

So, I basically stopped writing for three-plus years. I didn’t have the time to do it, because I was a workaholic. But I also didn’t have the frame of mind to do it, because as a primary spokesperson for NOW, I knew that everything I said would be taken as a reflection of the organization. There were many people out to get that organization. And the organization also had bitter infighting, over a variety of topical and identity fissures. One glance outside the invisible lines and the grenades would come.

Today I have found a healthier balance with work, life, activism, and art. I still apply myself to more endeavors than almost anyone I know, but that’s also just kind of what I like to do. It’s who I am. I like to do stuff. Life is short, and I like to live it.

I kept the same old crutch from my NOW days, though: I felt like my feminism and my writing had some serious incompatibilities. While I am most definitely a feminist writer and these things are intertwined, there is a tautology in movement life. There is much saying of the same things: a climate of stifling agreement. Even though in my current activist posture there are no longer decades worth of NOW resolutions of policies and platforms (many of them predating my life) I have to reflect throughout my words, as when I was in leadership there, I still find myself at times contending with the deep and incredible pressure not to challenge group wisdom as it exists in movement spaces. There are stories to be championed. Stories that fall outside those lines are often branded harmful.

The problem is, that’s not how life works. It’s certainly not how writing is supposed to work. You need to go for the truth, no matter how damn uncomfortable it is, or you’re writing absolute schlock. You need to let the words get away from you. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in What Is Literature?

“A work is never beautiful unless it in some way escapes its author. If he paints himself without planning to, if his characters escape his control and impose their whims upon him, if the words maintain a certain independence under his pen, then he does his best work.” (160)

I was afraid to write freely. Might I write outside the lines? Would it get me cancelled?

I’d also felt a certain self-imposed pressure to downplay the work that I do as a writer, because would that mean that I might be perceived that I’m not committed to my professional leadership roles?

I’ve been in the process of getting over this. I’m beginning to see that I can integrate my life more, and that it’s okay for my nonfiction writing self and my fiction characters to reflect the messy that is real. I’m beginning to see that I can be an artist and activist at the same time, and that these things are not necessarily in opposition to each other, but rather, that they offer different outlets for expressing my desires for a better world.

One more Sarte quote from What Is Literature?:

“The ‘committed’ writer knows that words are action. He knows that to reveal is to change and that once can reveal only by planning to change. He has given up the impossible dream of giving an impartial picture of society and the human condition.” (14)

As I’m starting to see it in my newer integrated conception of myself, both art and activism are tools. They are not the same tools. I am not a writer in service of anything but truth, no matter how uncomfortable that truth may be. I still get to be a feminist when I do this. I’m also starting to understand it’s on me, too, to model the change I wish to see regarding the non-productive pressures for group-speak in activist spaces. Finally, I’ve stopped hiding in my professional life how much writing matters to me, personally, outside of work. These moments are liberatory.

This is journey of abandoning my own dogma (“my art and my feminism are in conflict with one another,” as I’ve said for years), and woo-ee, is it refreshing.

A Trip To Paris With Pictures And My Commonplace Book

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During my first semester of my MFA program, one of my instructors assigned us to keep a commonplace book over the course of the semester. A commonplace book is a file of quotations. It had to be at least 25 pages, so I had to be a bit of a bunny with our assigned reading. I couldn’t slough it off until the last minute.

More than three years later, I’m still going strong, although I’m no longer doing it in a document in exchange for class credit. I now have a small Moleskin notebook. I write in it by hand. No one is assigning me this. I just love to do it.

Please meet my commonplace book, as it records my readings during my stay in Paris over the past week.

“I always say that you can not tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading can never do.” – Gertrude Stein, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

I picked up a copy of Gertrude Stein’s “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” at Shakespeare and Company, just behind Notre Dame. I read it in one day. Admittedly, this is the day we flew home from Paris, so I had time on my hands. Let’s talk about the above quote, because not only is it the ultimate validation for my quest, it’s fascinating. I reread it several times as I transmitted it to paper. She really spelled “can not” as two words the first time, and “cannot” as one word the second time. This was a woman of great intentionality. I refuse to believe she made this choice casually. What does she mean?

Notre Dame at night. We stayed at an apartment so close by, sometimes you could hear her bells.

I read Gertrude Stein’s poetry, if you can call it that, during the course of my program. It was inscrutable. It made me want to craft shoe leather out of the roof of my mouth, anything, anything to get away from her words. But “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” was pretty good. I’m glad I gave it a try.

“A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.” – Gertrude Stein, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

Ouch, Gertrude. A little close to home, yes? Me and my tragic unhappiness and sorrows, and sloppy prose. Alas. We went to Musee D’Orsay and the Louvre. There are no little artists featured there. I’m not much of a picture-taker, though. I delegate that to my husband. He loves a camera. Thus I took no pictures in the Musee D’Orsay or the Louvre. But I did take this photograph of a coaster at Les Deux Magots, where James Joyce used to drink.

What kind of idiot looks at fine art for several hours on two separate days, and takes no pictures, but does take a picture of a used coaster presented with her glass of red wine? Alack, a little artist.

I read two other books during the trip. Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84,” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s “What Is Literature?” Technically, I started Murakami at home, but the book is bigger than the telephone directories they used to give you for free. It was totally genius. The two quotes from the trip that I’ve put in my commonplace book I’ll withhold for now, as I may use them in a project I’m working on.

I also still have a bit to go with “What Is Literature?” Perhaps 70 pages remaining. Maybe 60. I read that immediately after finishing “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.” I never got up from my window seat during that Air France flight. Why worry about blood clots when there is the threat of brain clots? These are the two books I purchased at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. I worry that, like the maracrons purchased at the airport, I shouldn’t let Sartre go more than a few days if I hope to get back into it. It will be hard to finish that book in a not-captivity situation, but I’ll do it.

Things they do better in Paris, beyond the accurate “EVERYTHING” include public toilets and a genuine encouragement to give to the poor. This encouragement to donate sits inside the front gates of the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. I didn’t take photos of these graves visited: Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Frédéric Chopin. I was too busy looking at them.

Cemeteries are among my favorite places. I go in a cemetery a half dozen to a baker’s dozen times a month, and have been doing this for years. They are great places to still the mind, to explore, to run. Thus, Pere-Lachaise is the place we visited that was my favorite. No contest. I can’t believe how packed together everything was. Rotting grandeur is my favorite vibe. This one had it.

“You must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality. Then anybody will do anything for you.” – Gertrude Stein, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

It is possible to lean on one another in life, and in death. This is what I see in this image.

Reviewing my phone, I took seventeen photographs during my seven days in Paris. The first photograph was of kohlrabi for sale in a market. My small-town Minnesota grandmother loved kohlrabi. As they say, wherever you go, there you are.

And that was me. Reading my books. Writing down quotes. Not taking many pictures. Eating croissants every day. Never looking once at social media (oh my God, yes). Drinking copious quantities of red wine. Not having Thanksgiving dinner because our family is vegetarian anyway. Rather, some nice wine and cheese.

This is what a nice Thanksgiving meal in Paris looks like when no one in your family eats flesh.

I was struck, landing at Charles de Gualle, and walking through customs, how different it felt to be in a country without fascist leadership. I felt much freer and safer than I did walking through U.S. customs on the way home. You never know what kind of shit they’re going to pull on the abortion people, and when.

But in Paris? I didn’t have to think about it.

What I’m Really Getting From My MFA Degree

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I’m about to graduate with my MFA in creative writing.

I enrolled in my program because I wanted to become a better writer. On that level, I think I have succeeded. Here is what I’ve gained:

More rigor toward my own writing. When I turned in my thesis novel, I instantly knew that I needed another big project of that scale, or I would lose my mind. I have realized I like having something substantive to work on, and enough structure to make real. My program has taught me that big projects don’t just happen. I need to outline, have daily writing goals, have reading goals, and a game plan.

Acceptance that I need to revise things over and over. And over. Any first draft that I love, that I feel is on fire? It’s likely shit. My MFA program has helped me to understand that I am a horrible writer. Like, truly terrible. That I am only as good as my willingness to keep rewriting. Rewriting. Then rewriting, again.

An eye toward craft while reading. I’m a different reader than I was when I entered the program. I now am far more interested in how choices around point of view, voice, and narrative arc shape a story. I have grown obsessed with the choices authors make.

Reverence for the literary community. I now understand literary magazines, and what treasures they are. I understand how much work goes into editing. Publication. I’ve been a professional writer in much of my career, and with a fair degree of success, but I was not a literary writer. I now have appreciation for this whole other world, on the literary side.

Friends. Making new friends is no trivial matter when you’re 45! It’s been a rare gift to make a handful of close friends from my program. Friends who write! I read their stuff, they read mine. But the friendships are deeper than that. These relationships are life blessings.

—

An MFA degree is a degree no one cares about. As for me, it does nothing to advance my career or earning potential. I have already been a professional writer and communicator. Thus, this degree opens no doors for me. It could matter if I wanted to go on and teach at the university level. But I don’t.

Still, I’m super glad I did this. I’m proud. Though I admit I have senioritis. I’m ready to say, “it’s over.”

Soon. Three weeks, to be exact.

Fact Check After Texas A&M Censors Race And Gender Studies: I Have A Women’s Studies Degree, And I Am Successful

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Texas A&M censored gender studies last night. According to The New York Times, the regents have spoken with a unanimous vote: courses are not able to “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” without direct approval of the university president. One regent, Sam Torn, said:

“Curriculum is created and approved based on the accepted body of knowledge needed for our students to be successful in their chosen profession. It is unacceptable for other material to be taught instead.”

I hold a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies, and thus am in a position to speak from direct experience. (Technically, I hold an interdisciplinary studies degree with a concentration in women’s studies, because that was the closest Georgetown let its women’s studies program get to recognition.)

I consider myself to have had a great deal of success in my chosen professions. I have written for Fortune 500 companies, landed and held competitive advertising creative jobs, started an organization that I have led for 10 years, served as an executive officer of the national organization for women, published work in a variety of local, national, and literary publications, and in less than a month, I’ll complete my MFA in creative writing.

I have been blessed to have a varied and rich career path, and the foundation of what I learned toward my women’s studies degree is a direct contributor to my success — I took courses in English, history, linguistics, law, psychology, and sociology that counted toward my degree. I have learned that everything counts, and that critical thinking skills are the key tool to success. The real world is multidisciplinary, too.

Academic censorship of gender studies (and race studies) has nothing to do with preparing students for meaningful careers. Rather, it’s a reflection of the authoritarian environment in which we live. The government is placing enormous pressure on our public institutions, in order to control what we think.

The goal is total control. It’s terrifying. And yes, authoritarian governments always come for the women, the sexual minorities, and the people of color first.

Unpopular Opinion: Erika Kirk Is Off-Limits

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary9 Comments

Recently, photographs of Erika Kirk and J.D. Vance embracing went viral. Seemingly everyone had something to say about where the hands were, what she was wearing, and the future of the vice president’s marriage.

STOP. Let’s be human beings, shall we? This. Woman. Is. Grieving.

Erika Kirk is undergoing an intense trauma with few parallels. Imagine having your husband murdered, on camera. Imagine those images going around the web. Imagine having young children and knowing that no matter what you do, you can’t protect them from the fact that those images are out there. Waiting for them.

Yes, J.D. Vance is a spineless, morally bankrupt tool. A chaser of the wind and wherever it blows. An authoritarian sell-out. He deserves all the criticism. All the time.

But you know what? Get those jokes about that hug out of your mouth. They are tasteless. The last thing this woman needs right now is criticism for normal behavior–a hug with a friend while she’s going through the wringer. And critiquing her clothes? No. I haven’t been in feminism for a few decades to go along with demonizing women based on their wardrobe choices.

It has been less than two months since the murder. Erika is allowed to grieve, to be. She deserves our grace. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

The Marathon Where I Let Go And Had The Time Of My Life

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I ran the Marine Corps Marathon over the weekend. It was my fourteenth marathon completed. I am incredibly proud of this one. It represents an evolution in my hobby-level distance running career. This marathon was grounded, joyful, and while I wouldn’t say it was effortless, it was light. Airy, even. Don’t believe me? This is me somewhere around mile giganti-thousand:

I am extremely attentive to my running. For several years I’ve kept a daily running journal in which I track my time and pace. As I’ve rolled deeper into my forties I’ve started to pay more attention to things I used to ignore, namely what I’ll call The Big S’es: Strength Training, Stability Work, Stretching, and Sleep. There is no question, I’m a better runner now than when I started. Whereas injuries used to be a constant battle, I barely ever get them now. My body is in better shape.

But earlier this year, I started to slow down. A lot. Inexplicably.

It wasn’t like I lost energy. Rather, what felt like the same effort became a minute to a minute and a half slower per mile. Pretty insane, actually.

Through a routine health care appointment this summer that had nothing to do with running, I discovered that my iron levels have plummeted. My doctor put me on iron pills. I’ve also been working on an iron-heavier diet. Pretty quickly my usual pace came back. For most runs. But I’m not totally back to normal yet, and still figuring it out.

So I truly had no idea what would happen at the Marine Corps Marathon this year. In my natural state my body likes to do a marathon in about 4:10 (I’ve clocked this or something within a minute or two of it several times). Every now and then I bust out something faster. Sometimes I fall the hell apart and go much slower.

Surrendering any pretense of a time goal/prediction was freeing!

I’m especially proud of this marathon for two other reasons:

First, two years ago I ran the first 18 miles of the Marine Corps Marathon and dropped out. This is the only marathon I haven’t finished to date. That was devastating for me, which I wrote about here. I’m thrilled to have finished this time around, but also for every stride before I finished. I did not fall into the headspace of ‘doom,’ ‘sad,’ ‘revenge’ self-punishment whatever. This weekend’s success proved to me that trying again is a worthy pursuit.

Second, I have finally figured out fueling. Remember my Big S’es from before? Fueling should have been on the list. Maybe fueling is even more important than the physical stuff. This training cycle I realized that I needed to stop grinding it out, and just eat a hell of a lot more when I’m running. It worked. I never got tired. I never walked. Score one for a training run this summer that I decided to cut short and label a failure (which I had never done). That became the impetus for me to really experiment with fueling. Win!

I will never be a professional runner. I’m getting older and, with the input of funky blood, slower.

But I love this sport. I learn things from it every day. I am thinking so much about fueling and failure and patience. Consistent effort. Letting go of outcomes. How I can apply it to other areas of my life. And find more joy!

    This Is A Lola Young Appreciation Post

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    Fam, I’m going to keep this short, but I’m a huge Lola Young fan. She’s a wickedly talented artist. For the past year her music has been the soundtrack of me writing my thesis novel about an unlikeable woman experiencing domestic violence. I’ve listened to her song “Messy” on repeat until I’ve cried (and I love that she gets beaucoup royalties for this, please take all my money, girl)!

    She is open about having experienced a variety of mental health and substance issues. A few days ago, she collapsed on stage at a music festival. She has since said that she is taking a break and will “cancel everything for the foreseeable future.”

    I already loved the crap out of her. Now it is only more. People dealing with their demons, period, much less in public, get ALL of my praise. Everyone has demons. Everyone, dude. But only some are brave enough to admit they have them.

    Do what you need to do to be well, girl! We love you.

    This is a Lola Young appreciation post.