Marthine Satris
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msatris.bsky.social
Marthine Satris
@msatris.bsky.social
Bay Area words & book person. Oakland. Associate Publisher at Heyday, Calendar compiler at ORB.

www.heydaybooks.com
www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org
Reposted by Marthine Satris
A sculpture park is being built in Piedmont, California, to honor the Dearing family, but one relative says it’s not enough.

capitalbnews.org/black-homeow...
100 Years After a Black Family Was Forced Out, a Descendant Sues a California City
A sculpture park is being built in Piedmont, California, to honor the Dearing family, but one relative says it’s not enough.
capitalbnews.org
February 10, 2026 at 3:32 PM
one of my daughter's best friends has two trans dads, so she's quite confident men can be pregnant, which, yes in this *particular* case, but Not All Men, which did add some nuance, but once we got through the specifics she was like cool, moving on, are ponies baby horses or not?
February 10, 2026 at 4:59 AM
Reposted by Marthine Satris
Pretty sure regular prisons are also concentration camps
February 10, 2026 at 4:30 AM
Reposted by Marthine Satris
We lost an incredible LA Times colleague, Jeanette Marantos. She was a dedicated reporter - when an ICE raid on a cannabis farm broke out last July, Jeanette, whose beat was plants, was first on the scene and central to making sure we had accurate, quick information.
www.latimes.com/lifestyle/st...
Jeanette Marantos, L.A. Times plants reporter, dies at 70
Jeanette Marantos, a Features reporter, died following an emergency heart issue. She helped educate readers about native California plants. She described her reporting as her own ongoing education.
www.latimes.com
February 10, 2026 at 12:10 AM
How does it come up for you and your colleagues?
February 10, 2026 at 3:15 AM
Favorite Mormon influence on culture fun fact: baby name trends start in Utah years before they catch on elsewhere.
February 10, 2026 at 3:14 AM
I spent a deeply unhealthy amount of time in Etsy forums from 2008-2011 because I was totally fascinated by the braiding of domestic femininity, cottage industry & influencer/lifestyle blogging to shape an entire subculture that was SO dominated by a LDS aesthetics that bled out into wider culture.
February 10, 2026 at 3:13 AM
One of my favorite topics of all time. I'm cut off by the paywall here but I have so many theories about this. 1) the parallel rise of Mormon influence in pop/design culture + the tea party in the GOP are both IMO examples of the rising power of the American West over the East coast establishment
February 10, 2026 at 3:08 AM
First read this poem in high school, never got over it. I literally sat at her feet last year at Golden Sardine to hear her read because 1) there were no more chairs and 2) it was the right position to take. Sam sax was right there next to me, eyes up!
February 10, 2026 at 2:32 AM
Looking forward to this, put together by the most San Francisco person I know!
If you've been feeling frantic and powerless while SF arts institutions close left and right, SOMArts is hosting a community convening this Friday to channel all those feelings into action:

www.kqed.org/arts/1398653...
SOMArts to Gather SF Arts Community During ‘State of Emergency’
The cultural center will host a community meeting on Feb. 13 in an effort to save the local arts ecosystem.
www.kqed.org
February 9, 2026 at 11:48 PM
I love hearing people's dad memories and stories. I'm glad I get to hold a little piece of his life in my mind now, and feel the love and affection that he's left you with. Such a gift of a life, to have people who will love you forever and tell others your stories.
February 9, 2026 at 10:22 PM
typo: give should be SOLVE
February 9, 2026 at 10:03 PM
Thank you @karjohnson.bsky.social for recommending this book. It had been on my radar since before it even published, but I hadn't tipped over into reading it until you talked about how she approached grief on @kqedforum.bsky.social
February 9, 2026 at 9:44 PM
I really loved this book. There was no terrible wound to gawk at, it was cooked down from the raw into ways to think thru some of the hardest things to face. We can't fully know even our closest loves. We can't mother into certain safety. Our only work is to love & remember & keep the dead company
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
The third aspect that called to me is having a child who doesn't fit into this world so easily, & feeling always, always that no matter what we do, he might slip out of it. He might not believe the world I've imagined for him. I might not be able to convince him to stay through the hardest parts.
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
Objects as keepers of memory, life as a series of placeholders which yet have to suffice, and gardening and writing as the work that needs doing, but which yet don't give the impossible to solve. Sometimes we just hold the abyss and know it cannot be resolved, just lived alongside.
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
This book taps into several of my deep interests. How we build worlds and relationships with words, constructing ourselves and each other in language. How we live with loss and hold memories of what and who matter with us after they're gone.
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
It's also a book about writing & thinking & stories. Her 2nd son, James, was an autistic savant, she says he died of thinking too much (her 1st son, she writes, felt the world too much). So she wrote him a book all about thinking, and how we impossibly try to predict & know the future & each other.
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
I read Things in Nature Merely Grow on Saturday: Yiyun Li writes painfully, directly, of the abyss (her word) that is her life & the radical acceptance of living w/ heartbreaking loss of both sons to suicide in their teens. I found it a tender, sweet, wrenching book on mothering & the work of living
February 9, 2026 at 9:42 PM
beautiful
February 9, 2026 at 9:06 AM
Now that's the take
Bad Bunny X Birnam Wood collab
February 9, 2026 at 7:04 AM
It got dark and gloomy by like 4pm, and the fog went from a light touch to a steady march.

I feel like someone pulled a cover over my cage and told me to go to sleep.
February 9, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Ok it's full on raining in West Marin now; I can't keep calling this a heavy fog when I can hear the drops landing.
February 9, 2026 at 1:41 AM
Yeah! See you there!
February 8, 2026 at 7:46 PM
recently learned about this wonderful poet, and another poet friend shared this fabulous older poem by them, published in The Awl (I miss The Awl!): it makes me feel like a slithery piece of meat whipped by the weather, and I like it:

www.theawl.com/2015/05/a-po...
A Poem by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
by Mark Bibbins, Editor“I was popular in certain circles”Among the river rats and the leaves. For example. I was huge among the lichen, and the waterfall couldn’t get enough of me. And the graveston...
www.theawl.com
February 7, 2026 at 6:29 AM