Kimberly Van Munching

I know that Pete Hegseth has been talking a lot about morale recently. You know what would be great for my moral? Watching former DOGE staffers eating enormous salads with lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms.

I’d like to congratulate my neighbors on finding a construction crew willing to start before 7 a.m. this morning.

Muzak version of “Ring of Fire” playing in my dentist’s waiting room makes me want to scream.

I'm attending No Kings's event, “Eyes on ICE: Document and Record” - sign up now to join me! www.mobilize.us/indivisible/...

We are not the first people, or the first country, to suffer under a tyrannical government that does not respect our lives, or our rights. There is a method for how to effectively resist, and eventually topple, such a regime. We can learn from others who came before us. This is my favorite guide.

Memory is a fragile thing in this moment, so it is important to keep in mind that Hakeem Jeffries refused to whip his caucus against ICE funding earlier this week.

Bishop blessing an anchoress. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 079, f. 96r. An anchoress was a religious woman who chose to be walled into a small cell in order to live a life of contemplation and honesty…I can see the appeal.

When I volunteered to donate blood at my local YMCA I didn’t know it would involve lying here listening to the Eagles. I was tricked. This is torture.

Oasa DuVerney Black Power Wave as Bodhisattva Manjushri Sankofa, 2023 Graphite on hand-cut paper (courtesy the artist and Welancora Gallery) Wish I were in San Francisco for “Unbound: Art, Blackness, & the Universe” at the Museum of the African Diaspora (10.1.25 - 8.16.26)

From the Daily Mirror, 1905.

Abolish ICE, Minneapolis, everywhere. (Pen and ink and marker on paper)

Minnie Evans Untitled (Day to Night with Beasts and Angels) 1966 See The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans Nov 14, 2025 – April 19, 2026 At the High Museum in Atlanta

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, 1922/23 “Despite all my experiences, I’m stupid enough to believe in humanity.”

An illustration from Christine de Pizan's “The Book of the City of Ladies,” 1405 (thank you JSTOR)

I am putting my art up in public for everyone. Pen and ink and color pencil on cardboard. Abolish ICE.

A drone view of detainees forming the letters SOS with their bodies in the courtyard at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, April 28, 2025 (© Reuters/Paul Ratje) via Hyperallergic

The mister and I just finished our weekly grocery deliveries to ICE-effected families. Loads of college kids on winter break pitching in. It was lovely. ❤️

URGENT ACTION! #SaudiArabia: Stop deportation of Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi from #Bulgaria and address serious deterioration of his health On 26 March 2025, Sofia Administrative Court ordered his release but he's still suffering in a deportation centre. Let him go free! gc4hr.org/actions/stop...

Victorians designed the best Christmas cards

Kent Monkman Miss America 2012

Shahzia Sikander Fleshy Weapons, 1997 Acrylic on Linen 8.5 X 5.5 Feet

W. E. B. Du Bois's “Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America” is one of the books on my Christmas list.

What power art thou, who from below Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow From beds of everlasting snow? See'st thou not how stiff and wondrous old Far unfit to bear the bitter cold, I can scarcely move or draw my breath? Let me, let me freeze again to death. youtu.be/uwbFDoXpDZU?...

The woman sitting next to me in this doctor’s waiting room has not disengaged the texting sound on her iPhone and I am outraged. PS She’s texting madly right now LADY COME ON

Chris Ofili The Great Beauty (2020–2023)

Arthur Hacker Annunciation 1892

Goblin napping

Today the mister and I went to see Ursula von Rydingsvar’s gloriously heroic cedar sculptures at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. The exhibit is worth the train ride from NYC. “Ursula von Rydingsvard: states of becoming,” curated by Margarita Karasoulas, November 28, 2025–May 10, 2026

Another mass shooting; this time at Brown. My son is safe, but I am sick at heart. And furious. Because nothing ever changes. Antifa is not a terrorist organization but the NRA is.

“The Fucking-Up Ritual” by Gideon Kiefer

Hortensia Mi Kafchin Duty to fix oneself, 2025 oil on canvas Go see Hortensia Mi Kafchin’s Paintings Made for Aliens Above at PPOW 392 Broadway October 31 – December 20, 2025

Claude Cahun I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 Tate Gallery

My grandmother always called the tail of the turkey “the pope’s nose” and I think about that every Thanksgiving even if we’re having tacos.

I’m watching Pluribus and so far, I’m team extraterrestrial. I’ve seen what our rugged American individualism has accomplished thus far and it leaves a lot to be desired.

Left: Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Comtesse de la Châtre, 1789. Right: Volker Hermes, Hidden Vigée Le Brun, 2019. © Volker Hermes

Franz Sedlacek Twilight Song, 1931 Albertina Museum Vienna, Austria

Chicago ❤️ web.archive.org/web/20251116...

“For people wanting to experience God, we are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility than we ever were in church.” —Rev. Michael Woolf, senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois Photo: AP/Erin Hooley 10/3/25

Relieved that yesterday the CT Senate passed HB8004, a bill that adds courthouse and data protection provisions for immigrants to the Trust Act.

Knitting and watching D.W. Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926)

“I have not mutated myself in any way. Joel and I have this conversation a lot. He literally has to stop me physically from saying something to people — to friends who’ve had work. I’m so full of fear and rage about what they’ve done.” —Frances McDormand Bruni, F. (2014, October 19) NYTimes

The constellation Sirius depicted as a dog, from an astronomical miscellany. British Library Cotton MS Tiberius C.I., fol. 28r

Honestly, we need politicians who respect sex workers way more than we need those who only respect lobbyists.

Sliman Mansour Shrinking Object, 1996 mud on plywood #palestine

Today my son and I went to see “Predator: Badlands” which is about the limitations of individualism and how coalition building across different cultural groups is crucial for achieving collective action. We give it 3 out of 4 Kalisk head trophies

Rae Klein Bodyguard, 2024–2025 oil on canvas 80 x 80 in 203 x 203 cm

I left Spotify when I learned that Daniel Ek invested €600 million in an AI military drone company. I downloaded my playlists using Soundiiz and moved them to Qobuz. Super easy.

I thought one of my son’s friends made this in photoshop as a joke. It’s real?!