Author | Lightnews

Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 2d

When we lived in Germany the “autofrei” days folks would put tables in the streets and have food/beverages.

Also farm —> table dinners at farms, or wine tastings at wineries.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 2d

Block party in neighborhoods—we’ve lived multiple places around the US where this is a Thing, and the cities even have a program to support it (road barriers, trailer with tables, etc).

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

🪾whetstone 🍂 @whetstone.bsky.social · 3d

This is a great resource in precarious times.

Tried it for my city and it pulled up all the things I know about + more I didn’t. It finds food pantries, but also stuff like legal help and housing assistance.

For those of us more fortunate, great way to find volunteer and donation opportunities.

findhelp.org by findhelp - Search and Connect to Social Care

Search and connect to support. Find financial assistance, food pantries, medical care, and other free or reduced-cost help in your area, anywhere in the US.

findhelp.org

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 4d

BREAKING: Judges order the federal government to use contingency funds for SNAP food aid payments during the shutdown.

Judges order the Trump administration to use contingency funds for SNAP payments during the shutdown

Two federal judge have ruled that the Trump administration must continue to fund the SNAP food aid program using contingency funds during the government shutdown.

bit.ly

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 5d

Circle jerk

Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 8d

Just WOW

Jeremy DeHart @jeremydehartwx.bsky.social · 8d

From a crewmember on yesterday's Teal 74 mission into now-Category 5 Hurricane #Melissa. As clear of an eye as you will see in the Atlantic basin.

Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 21d

@pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy

Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · 21d

I cannot recommend this convo enough. Both enlightening about the policy that is enabling so many of our systems shittier, AND hopeful with actual steps toward making things better. Well worth the time. @adamconover.net

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

The Ensh*ttification of Everything with Cory Doctorow

Podcast Episode · Factually! with Adam Conover · 10/08/2025 · 1h 46m

podcasts.apple.com

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 24d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 30

Soooo excited for this reboot, with a lovely new host. RR was a central part of my childhood.

Mychal Threets @mychal3ts.bsky.social · Sep 29

🎶 Take a look, it's in a book 🎶

🥹 After nearly 20 years... Reading Rainbow is returning to motivate, help, and encourage kids to become avid readers with new episodes, new friends, new projects, and of course... new books! Make sure to follow the rainbow 📚🌈

#FollowTheRainbow

Reposted by Heather Schulte

Vanity Fair @vanityfair.com · Sep 16

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Charlie Kirk and the pundits and politicians sanitizing his legacy.

Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause

By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy.

www.vanityfair.com

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

good hyuck, babe! @markpopham.bsky.social · Sep 17

it's so funny to see America's health insurance companies be like "look. If there's one thing we love it's denying you care. but we ran the numbers - and we cannot BELIEVE we're saying this - and it's cheaper for us to just pay for the vaccines than deal with you going to the ER."

Dr. Vin Gupta @vinguptamd.bsky.social · Sep 17

Regardless of the disgraceful nonsense we will likely hear from this administration in the coming days on vaccine “recommendations,” Americas healthcare insurers issued a joint statement tonight saying coverage for Covid and flu shots will remain unchanged from prior years.

Speaks for itself.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 13

Oooo, love this!!

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 11

Truly. And thank you for your kindness. Apparently the “suspicious person” was wearing a weighted vest (for exercise) and holding a cell phone. I just…

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 11

We had a false alarm today at our kids’ school in CO, but wasn’t confirmed false for hours. Full lockdown & reunification horror. Awful even when it’s not an “actual” threat.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 4

It should be a table you lay face down on, like a massage table, with a cutout for boobs, with 3d imaging like how 3D X-rays work. Is it really that hard? The table could even have lead plates to protect the rest of your body.

Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 4

I think it should be something where we lay face down on at table (like a nice massage table) and at minimum let gravity help the ladies get into position. We have 3d X-ray tech to teeth, etc, so I don’t see why we can’t have some kind of 3d imaging for boobs that doesn’t involve smashing them.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 3

The egg freezing industry is similarly unregulated, and misunderstood. This book is an excellent (and well balanced) deep dive:

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566663...

The Big Freeze by Natalie Lampert: 9781524799403 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fascinating investigation into the lucrative, minimally regulated, fast-growing industry of egg freezing, from a young reporter on a personal journey into the world of cutting-edge reproductive medi...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 3

Also, must plug Natalie Lampert’s incredibly in-depth book reporting on egg freezing. It uncovers parallel grey areas, uninformed (or misinformed) clients, lack of regulation, etc.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566663...

The Big Freeze by Natalie Lampert: 9781524799403 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fascinating investigation into the lucrative, minimally regulated, fast-growing industry of egg freezing, from a young reporter on a personal journey into the world of cutting-edge reproductive medi...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Sep 3

Absolutely horrific. As a mother with a traumatic birth story similar to Smith’s (though with a healthy boy thanks to amazing medical staff), I just can’t fathom that experience followed with being dragged through court.

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · Aug 25

A country is real estate. A nation is a brand. Governance is deal-making. Diplomacy is franchising. Services yield profit. Everything is zero-sum. All relations are transactional. This admin is what happens when everyone majors in business or econ… or runs a car dealership.

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · Aug 25

I am sounding the alarm on the real crisis we face today.

Donald Trump’s overreach is what our founders warned against – it is unprecedented, unwarranted, and un-American.

There’s no emergency here that calls for military intervention.

Governor JB Pritzker joined elected officials, business, faith, and education leaders, community advocates, and law enforcement leaders to condemn the Trump administration’s plan to deploy the National Guard or active duty military in Chicago despite objections from state and local leadership.

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Reposted by Heather Schulte

Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · Aug 25

There's a point Arendt makes in Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship that people who convince themselves to cooperate with the regime in pursuit of "the lesser evil" end up conditioning themselves to accept evil, which the regime then ratchets up. A similar story with the press here.

Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social · Aug 25

if you wind back the clock a year and say “trump will be president, he’ll tear up entire agencies without any legislative authority, ignore court orders, build a concentration camp, and send troops into multiple US cities” you wouldn’t ask “well how many troops?” before deciding what this describes

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Aug 26

I agree with both of you, but thinking about hauling a closet of clothes I no longer wear/don’t fit into (was all of 100 lbs most of HS) for 20+ years hurts my head. I DID keep my CDs, many of which she has now.

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Heather Schulte @dawnofheather.bsky.social · Aug 26

My daughter has been mad that I didn’t keep my clothes. Just NO.

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