Natalie Cranberry > Recent Status Updates

The sound of laughter - youthful merriment from the belief that the world is set up for your amusement, your pleasure, your plans - carried into a new year on a wind so dry it almost crackled.

Los Angeles, Vegas, and children’s parties are possibly the only places where magicians are cool.

…the paper cutout of a man by a hospital bed.

As always, his mind wanders. What a strange religion Christianity is -- virgin births, holy ghosts, people eating their God's flesh.

A communal sponge to wipe after using a toilet? No thanks, Italy!

Also, does that mean everyone had all the STD/STIs?

Historically, people have made alcoholic beverages from pretty much anything they could get their hands on: bananas, tree sap, corn, cactuses, rice, pumpkins, even horse milk. But grain-based beer played an outsized role in the human saga, to the point that some archaeologists believe it fueled the rise of the first complex civilization in history.

Moss that had spent its entire life staring up at the sun now found itself underwater.

This story of Darga in Catalhoyuk, Turkey is such a robust argument against conservatism.

Throw the whole man out. Jesus, Mary, and the Carpenter.

One of the things Alicia always admired about Norah was that she was a committed liar. Not to be confused with a good liar; Norah's gift was the ability to come up with a lie on the spur of the moment and remain committed to it against all logic and reason.

It felt terrifying and exciting and important. Like the part of the movie when the truth starts to come out and the prisoner begins to believe they might have a shot at escaping death row.

"In the long run--regardless of whether you are happy or not in the work-- I am sure your conscience will be easier if you do what you can."

Schultz tells her editor of the Nazis -- "They confuse manliness with brutality."

Who does that sound like?

Obviously free Palestine.

But I am waiting for discussion of women and queer people.

The mind outlines better than it shades.

the language Akkad uses is almost too lush for the topic. He makes horror melodic.

Already this is a WILD one to follow Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert.

How am I supposed to live with myself knowing I could have helped somebody but chose not to? I can't enjoy freedom like that.

"Not every leader is out on the front line with their face being posted for the world to see. For every Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth, there was a dozen abolitionists and activists working behind the scenes, risking it all to help us meet our true potential. Everybody wasn't made to be out front."

Harriet to D: "When I help Black folks get to freedom, I don't ask them a bunch of questions about who they love and what they do. I only concern myself with where they need to go. You understand me? The biggest struggle in earning your freedom is feeling like you deserve it. Something we feel like we ain't worth putting in the work."

On coming out: "Don't you understand that you are taking this road for other people? It ain't got nothing to do with you."

Darnell: "I had a hard time accepting my Blackness because my Blackness had a hard time accepting me."

"The richest of white folks have also convinced the poorest of white folks that if Blacks was to become equal, if Black folks got rights, if Black folks was seen on the same level as white folks, that it would somehow be bad for them."

Harriet talking to Darnell about her friend John Brown:

"The only thing that scares a racist white man more than a smart Black woman fighting for her freedom is the white man that helps her."

Score uses “hassock” instead of ottoman too!

Riley found it Alanis Morissette “Ironic” that the victim had caught aging tooth and nail only to meet an early end.

She is Black, illiterate, handicapped, born a slave, tiny, completely plain looking, and yet she saw something special in herself.

-- Darnell on Harriet

Freedom is such a tricky concept? When are you really free? The question makes me think of Nina Simone.

Religion should be a force for bringing people together, not tearing them apart.

-Says a 1730s little person to a modern queer Black man