Rest in peace, Patrick Haggerty, it was a blessing to have met you. Haggerty was a country singer and queer activist, whose 1973 album Lavender Country is widely considered to be the first openly queer country album ever made. I originally became hip to Patrick through his 2016 StoryCorps short called “The Saint of Dry Creek”, a Sundance Film Festival selection that tells the story of being young and gay in rural america, and his father, a dairy farmer, who impressed upon him the beauty in being true to yourself.
“‘Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.’ And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, ‘Now, how bout you? When you’re a full-grown man, who are you gonna go out with at night?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘I think you do know. Now, I’m gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you’re gonna remember when you’re an adult. Don’t sneak. Because if you sneak, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’ll ruin your immortal soul.’ And out of all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son, my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak. My reaction at the time was to get out in the hay field and pretend like I was as much of a man as I could be. And I remember flipping 50-pound bales three feet up into the air going, ”I’m not a queer. What’s he talking about?” But he knew where I was headed. And he, he knew that humiliating me and making me feel bad about it in any way was the wrong thing to do. I had the patron saint of dads for sissies, and no, I didn’t know at the time, but I know it now.” - Patrick Haggerty/Lavender Country
Patrick boldly made music that I know not only touched the lives of many of us, but provided a sense of comfort, confidence, and the power of feeling seen to his queer audience. He spent his life doing the opposite of sneaking, and left us with his art and spirit.
Taken at the OG Basement in Nashville years back after his show there.
There is something sooo deeply American going on with Seattle Children’s Hospital that I think would brick the minds of everyone outside of the United States.
The CHILDRENS hospital has to restrict helipad landings because of noise complaints from the wealthy home owners living next to it. Only the most urgent patients can land directly at the hospital. While the other kids have to land a mile away and are taken to the hospital via ambulance. Which is an unnecessary risk to the child’s life and also makes the families pay for the helicopter AND ambulance.
everyone's heard of this, right? per ap article of apr 8, 2026:
Jacobs went on to record more than 10,000 concerts, with increasingly sophisticated equipment, over four decades in Chicago and other cities. Now a group of devoted volunteers in the U.S. and Europe is methodically cataloging, digitizing and uploading them one by one.
The growing Aadam Jacobs Collection [link to internet archive] is an internet treasure trove for music lovers, especially for fans of indie and punk rock during the 1980s through the early 2000s, when the scene blossomed and became mainstream. The collection features early-in-their-career performances from alternative and experimental artists like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth and Björk.
“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”
— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference (via mothersofmyheart)
I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.
Ms. Tippett:
Really?
Ms. Howe:
They really find it hard.
Ms. Tippett:
What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?
Ms. Howe:
Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.
Ms. Tippett:
It does.
Ms. Howe:
It hurts us.
Ms. Tippett:
You naming something.
Ms. Howe:
We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.
Ms. Howe:
It’s the this, right?
Ms. Howe:
Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.
Ms. Tippett:
In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.
Ms. Howe:
Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.
So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.
The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.
izzy806
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
