[appalachiangenderblendr]

I was born and raised in Kentucky, near the foothills of appalachia. I could drive twenty minutes in any direction and find myself square in the middle of abject poverty. Every spring, winter-hardened homeless men reappear to beg for change by the end of most interstate off-ramps.

The people here don’t love me. I’ve been glared out of nearly any kind of establishment you can think of. The south is a place where there are crosses in sight nearly everywhere you go and Mitch McConnell has been voted repeatedly back into office since 1984. They play country music in the Dairy Queen and everyone has a Ford pickup (“because they’re made in the USA!”). It’s a place where speaking in tongues isn’t crazy but being transgender sure is.

Everyone I know wants to leave. They set their sights on Colorado, California, Washington, Oregon. Out in the west where everything is bigger, more open, more open-minded. A place where they might feel safe.

But Kentucky is my home. I love it from deep within my bones. The hills nestle you into them, lovingly, nurturing. In the summer, the air presses into your lungs like it has something burning to say. The forests here are more alive than any other place I have seen; the cicadas sing nonstop and the greenery is so lush that it holds you. A teacher once dubbed it “the sacred yoni” and I have since longed for nothing but mother earth’s embrace. I feel her magic everywhere.

Y'all. I can’t leave. I love these people the way you can only love the people where you come from. I love all of the brave queer kids and the scared queer adults and everyone in between. I love the homeless men begging for the kind of change that you can’t pull out of a wallet. I love the hills and the rivers and the trees.

Someone has to stay. Someone has to make it a better place.

[karenmakesout]

I'm not crying, you're crying.

[karenmakesout]

Are you sure about this career choice, T.O.?

[karenmakesout]

A Chanukah Hamilton for your tumblr thingy, Hermionehamilton, from yr mama

[karenmakesout]

[karenmakesout]

Living in the Land

From a home embedded in a cliff in Lebanon, to a seaside home on the coast of Norway, we share a few designs of forward-thinking progressive architects.

Thought you might dig these

[karenmakesout]

Dolly Parton, Pentatonix Team Up for ‘Jolene’ [WATCH]

Dolly Parton and Pentatonix cover 'Jolene' presented by Cracker Barrel.

Awesomeness via the tumblrs and interwebs 

[karenmakesout]

How Marah Made the Best Americana Album You've Never Heard

In 2008, Philadelphia roots-rockers Marah released the album 'Angels of Destruction!', but a band breakup kept the record from ever getting its due.

Enjoyed a very loud sweaty blow the doors off Marah show at a teeny rock club this past weekend. 

[karenmakesout]

Yeah, I think he's behind bars. I think he's running the prison from the inside.  But he'll get out.  We may not have seen the end of Boyd Crowder.

Walton Goggins, as interviewed in Entertainment Weekly (July 15, 2016) 

[karenmakesout]

Yay

[karenmakesout]

[karenmakesout]

Spring Comes to Panama Street

[karenmakesout]

Terriers’ perfect one-season run defied description, marketability

One-Season Wonders, Weirdos, And Wannabes considers the merits of short-lived TV shows. In this installment: Terriers, which ran for 13 episodes on FX in 2010.FX needed a comeback in 2010. The cable outlet had found hits in The Shield, Nip/Tuck, and Rescue Me in 2002, but, with the exception of 2005

[karenmakesout]

100 Years/100 Shots

OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2016 Tribeca Film Festival A journey through the past 100 years of cinema--the most memorable shot from each year (in my opinion). While many…

[karenmakesout]

Drew Barrymore, Timothy Olyphant to Star in Netflix Comedy Series 'Santa Clarita Diet'

'Better Off Ted' alum Victor Fresco will serve as showrunner on the single-camera comedy, due in 2017.

[karenmakesout]

I can tell you this. I loved working for David Milch. So if he wants me to work for him again, tell me where, when, what I should wear, and how thick a mustache. And I will grow that son of a bitch.

[thehurlscouts-deactivated202212]

[kateordie]

I can’t overstate the importance of this movie, and specifically this exchange.

[karenmakesout]

My derby daughter is my hero

[karenmakesout]

“In baseball, it takes a season for a team’s heart and talent to prove themselves and even then it might be a gust of wind or a bad hop or an umpires’s call on a low strike or a bunt that stays just fair or rolls just foul hat decides the whole shit-amaree.  What you can be sure of is that if you have heart and talent, you’ll be there at the end with a chance. I’d been playing baseball on teams since I was ten and I know a player of talent when I see one.  We had several. . . . . I was less sure about our heart, but I reasoned that most of us were flakes of one kind or another and some of us were old flakes, persistent flakes, thirty-and forty-year old flakes that had turned their backs on almost everything but baseball and flakery. And to my way of thinking, folks that have kept being flakes for as long as some of us had to have heart . . . . misfits’ heart, and that we would fit together, for a season, anyway, because most of us knew we couldn’t fit anywhere else.”

-Donald Hays, The Dixie Association