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The Handmaid’s Tale Ch. 8: The Smell That Almost Broke Her | Banned Books Comedy · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

Welcome to Bandcamp.
I'm Jennifer And I'm Dan, and this is the podcast where we read banned books out loud and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
This season we are, of course, reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and you could consider this a quick spoiler warning because Jennifer is about to start reading from the book out loud word for word.
If you are new here, if this is your first episode, you can totally jump in right here and you're gonna be fine.
We're gonna get you up to speed fast.
And if anything else feels confusing to you, don't worry, there's a solid chance we're gonna be confused too because neither of us have ever read the book.
But that is exactly why we have ourselves a secret weapon.
We're gonna bring him in now.
Buddy boy, roll your big fat metal can in here.
Look at this guy.
We have ourselves a fact-checking robot.
He is gonna keep us honest.
He's gonna help us not spread any fake news.
Buddy boy, fill us in on where we left off last time in The Handmaid's Tale.
Previously on Band Camp, the Handmaid, her friend, and all of us were reminded of updated dystopian rule number one, new day, same shit, different dystopian timeline.
The bad guys always want you afraid and they are not shy about using a few impaled heads to make their point.
We were introduced to a wall of bodies, hooks set into brick on purpose, a gentle reminder from Gilead to be good.
In Gilead, the rules about who goes where are very clearly posted.
What is less clear is what happens when someone who makes the rules decides they don't apply to them.
Take it away, Jennifer Amazing.
he's the best.
And with that being said, scary book people, let's begin chapter eight of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
There are three new bodies on the wall.
One is a priest still wearing the black cassock Hey, last episode we had six more bodies.
We're kicking it off this episode with a dead priest.
Here you go You know, when they were having those ICE protests, a couple months ago, like when it was really in the news a lot, I know they're still going on, but there was something just really visceral about when they attacked that priest.
It's terrible when they pr- attack anyone, especially when they, like, shoot people in the faces.
That's, like, insane.
But there was something about that picture.
It struck a chord in a lot of people when they attacked that priest in Chicago, I think it was we definitely, as a culture, we definitely have a feeling of the good guys versus the bad guys.
And if you're not thinking about the specific, you know, whatever issues you might have with the church or whatever, priests are generally the good guys, and the pope is generally a good guy, right? So it's, like, really odd that this administration just wants to paint this picture that, "No, no, don't listen to the priests.
Don't listen to the pope.
The pope is a, the pope is terrible.
He's a bad guy."
But you're the salt of the earth, right? You orange pug.
No offense to pugs.
Pugs are my top five dog breeds.
I don't know why I dirtied their name by comparing them to Trump...,
don't know either.
They're so cute He's wearing a cassock that's put on him for the trial, even though they gave up wearing those years ago when the sect wars first began.
Cassocks made them too conspicuous.
Okay, so getting a little more information about the wars, the sect wars What is a cassock? Should I know that A cassock is the long black robe Catholic priests wear.
Floor length, fits over street clothes, buttons down the front.
It's been their standard uniform for about a thousand years.
So yes, Dan, this is a priest, and Atwood is making sure you know it.
Gilead hung him on the wall for being the wrong kind of Christian.
Thank you, robot.
The two others have purple placards hung around their necks.
Gender treachery.
Their bodies still wear the guardian uniforms.
So they hang guardians? What the heck is gender treachery? caught together they must have been, but where? A barracks? A shower? It's, oh, they're gay.
Of course We have to keep our country gate p- p- but it's not, I mean Okay, so they, so they got a couple of gay people if your job in Gilead, if you work at the, uh, department where they hang the, the dead bodies up, big day, big morning for you.
Wilson, Smith, look alive.
We got a priest and two gay guys, I wonder, like, if there are people who enjoy their jobs here, 'cause it seems like some people really don't enjoy their jobs.
They're just kinda caught up in it.
But there've gotta be people.
There've gotta be, like, Steven Millers here that really enjoy the Yeah.
Yeah.
Isn't that weird? Like, don't you think most people in the Trump administration don't actually like their job because it's like, it's gotta suck? The Vampire Miller for sure loves And I think Carolyn Levitt really likes it, and I-- who else really likes it probably? I think Kash Patel probably hates his job more than anyone, and I want to guess that he is like three weeks away from just ending it I know, like meant total mental breakdown for him.
I We found Cash on the floor in a fetal position.
So sad.
Fetal, like a little caterpillar, I said, "Hello," and I kicked him.
A little tap, not too hard, a little tap, and I said, "Cash, Cashy, Cash."
And he didn't move.
All rolled up, curly cue it'd be so great if, Trump stooped his girlfriend, the one that just sang at the, at the fair.
Your boyfriend's in the fetal position.
He's useless to you That a girl.
That a girl.
Rubbing her.
Oh, and by the way, before we continue with the banned book, like, if we start hearing the Project 2025 people, 'cause we know they're, like, really against the gay people.
any, any gender fluid people and, uh, gay people, they're against.
So if they start saying the words gender treachery, we're gonna have to flee the country.
I think they're against gender and fluid.
I don't even think they drink eight fluid ounces of water every day.
This, this administration is something else, man we should go back, I say to Ofglen.
I'm always the one to say this.
Sometimes I feel that if I didn't say it, she would stay here forever.
But is she mourning or gloating? I still can't tell.
Without a word, she swivels as if she's voice-activated, as if she's on little oiled wheels, as if she's on top of a music box.
I resent this grace of hers.
I resent her meek head bowed as if into a heavy wind, but there is no wind.
We leave the wall, walk back the way we came in the warm sun.
It's a beautiful May day," Ofglen says.
Yes, I say praise be, I add as an afterthought.
Mayday used to be a distress signal a long time ago in one of those wars we studied in high school.
I kept getting them mixed up, but you could tell them apart by the airplanes if you paid attention.
It was Luke who told me about Mayday, though.
Mayday, Mayday for pilots whose planes had been hit.
And ships, was it ships too? At sea.
Maybe it was SOS for ships.
I wish I could look it up.
So she can't look anything up.
kind of funny that she is so conditioned to be a human or, like, just a typical American, even from our time period, A mayday, which one was that? I gotta look that up.
Like, none of it matters to anything.
She's in the middle of a dystopian world where her entire life is different.
But I love that...
Ah, what was that? Maybe ships do SOS.
I gotta look that up.
It doesn't really matter.
There's literally a priest with his head stuck on a hook two feet away Do you know what it came from?" said Luke.
"Mayday?" "No," I said.
"It's a strange word to use for that, isn't it?" Newspapers and coffee on Sunday mornings before she was born.
There were still newspapers then.
We used to read them in bed.
It's French," he said, "from M’aidez...,
Coming towards us, there's a small procession, a funeral.
Three women, each with a black transparent veil thrown over headdresses.
An Econowife and two others, the mourners also Econowives her friends perhaps.
Their striped dresses are worn looking, as are their faces You think these are funerals for the people that are stuck up on the wall? I'm not sure.
I mean, I'd be surprised if those people were allowed to have, funerals Yeah, you can't celebrate their death.
well, you can celebrate their death, but you can't celebrate their life You can't m- you can't mourn their death probably is what I'm thinking.
Someday when times improve, says Aunt Lydia, no one will have to be an Eonowife The first one is the bereaved, the mother.
She carries a small black jar.
From the size of the jar, you can tell how old it was when it foundered inside her, flowed to its death.
Oh, is this the funeral for a fetus? What the heck is going on with this? Like, is this like a miscarriage? And they do these miscarriages in like mason jars what, what state is it where women were getting prosecuted for, flushing their miscarriages This is real.
Robot, give us a fact-check on that Jennifer's not wrong, and it gets worse.
Brittany Watts, Ohio, 2023, miscarried at home.
The hospital called the police.
Officers removed her toilet to retrieve the fetus.
They had to come in and remove the toilet? What a nightmare I, th- that's absolute insanity.
Absolute insanity She was charged with abuse of a corpse.
The grand jury dismissed it.
Georgia, Texas, West Virginia, same pattern.
Women charged under corpse disposal laws because fetal personhood statutes treat a miscarriage as a dead person.
Remember, Margaret Atwood's rule was that nothing in this book is invented.
She was right.
We just had to wait a few decades for America to catch up.
Hey, America, better late than never.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
And then in other states, I think even Wisconsin, Dan, like it's not a requirement yet, but they've introduced state bills to have catch kits What's that? like if you have a miscarriage, it, it catches whatever comes out How about if we just let adults be adults?...,
and if we, uh, all keep our collective noses out of everyone's business? Is that a thing we could maybe do? And I think it's interesting that you said like adults, in the book, everyone's referring to the women as girls.
Like that comes up again and again and again.
From the size of the jar, you can tell how old it was when it foundered inside her and flowed to its death.
Two or three months old, too young to tell whether or not it was an unbaby.
The older ones and those that die at birth have boxes.
We pause out of respect while they go by.
I wonder if Ofglen feels what I do, a pain like a stab in the belly.
We put our hands over our hearts to show these stranger women that we feel with them in their loss.
Beneath their veil, the first one scowls at us.
One of the others turns aside, spits on the sidewalk.
The Econowives do not like us.
there's a rift there, too.
The Handmaids aren't liked by a lot of other women, apparently Robot, real quick again, what are, what are the EconoWives? And say it in a way, be creative with it and, and, 'cause I know you told us a couple times.
Make sure it sticks this time.
You know how thick we are Econowives.
Think of Gilead's class system like a department store.
Commanders' wives are Nordstrom.
Handmaids are the back room nobody talks about.
Econowives are the Dollar General, married to lower-ranking men.
No servants, no Marthas, no help of any kind.
They do everything themselves: cooking, cleaning, shopping, having babies, all in one striped dress that covers every job at once.
They resent the Handmaids because Handmaids get to walk around town, while Econowives do all the actual work.
So yes, they spit on the sidewalk.
Can't say I blame them.
We go past the shops and come to the barrier again and are passed through.
We continue on among the large empty-looking houses, the weedless lawns.
At the corner near the house where I'm posted, of Glenn stops, turns to me.
Under his eye, she says, the right farewell.
Under his eye, I reply, and she gives a little nod.
She hesitates as if to say something more, but then she turns away and walks down the street.
I watch her.
She's like my own reflection in a mirror from which I am moving away.
In the driveway, Nick is polishing the Whirlwind again.
He's feeling up that car again.
Ah, hello baby.
He's gotta do something with tghose hands yeah.
He's reached the chrome at the back.
I put my gloved hand on the latch of the gate, open it, push it inward.
The gate clicks behind me.
The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups, but chalices, thrusting themselves up.
To what end? They are, after all, empty.
When they are old, they turn themselves inside out, then explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards.
Nick looks up and begins to whistle.
Then he says, "Nice walk?" I nod, but do not answer with my voice.
He isn't supposed to speak to me.
"Of course, some of them will try," said Aunt Lydia.
"All flesh is weak."
"All flesh is grass," I corrected her in my head.
They can't help it," she said.
"God made them that way, but he did not make you that way.
He made you different.
It's up to you to set the boundaries.
Later, you will be thanked No, God made her the same.
She is horned up as much as anyone in this society Sure seems like it And it's okay to be horned up.
That's, that's what it is to be human.
We're all horned up In the garden behind the house, the commander's wife is sitting in the chair she's had brought out.
She's not horned up.
I, I take it back.
She's not horned up at all.
She just brings that chair out there and sits there and tries to be as bitter as can be Serena Joy, what a stupid name.
It's like something you'd put in your hair in the other time, the time before, to straighten it.
Serena Joy, it would say on the bottle, with a woman's head and cut paper silhouette on a pink oval background with scalloped gold edges.
You know, I kinda think that's right.
That's awesome.
With everything to choose from in the way of names, why did she pick that one? Serena Joy was never her real name, not even then.
Her real name was Pam.
I read that in a profile on her in a news magazine long after I'd first watched her singing while my mother slept in on Sunday mornings.
by that time she was worthy of a profile.
Time or Newsweek it was.
It must have been.
She wasn't singing anymore by then.
She was making speeches.
Oh, that's pretty accurate.
She was good at it.
Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home.
Also very accurate, Dan.
This is giving me the willies.
Serena Joy didn't do this herself.
She made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was willing to make for the good of all.
And it's like so creepy because that is exactly what all these trad wife pushers are doing.
Like there are all these influencers trying to push, women into being trad wives.
Stay home, have as many kids as you can even if you can't afford it.
Meanwhile, they don't have children and they're touring saying these things and getting paid lots and lots of money This stupid trad wife bullshit.
Yeah, it's all about pushing women back 50 years into the past.
what did Whoopi Goldberg say on The View? I'm sorry, 50 years ago was not a place I ever want to be back.
Exactly.
Around that time, someone tried to shoot her and missed.
Her secretary, who was standing right behind her, was killed instead well, let's keep reading.
Maybe it is a fake a- assassination attempt here.
Let's see.
Someone else planted a bomb in her car, but it went off too early.
Though some people said she'd put the bomb in her own car for sympathy.
That's how hot things were getting.
So you weren't entirely wrong, Dan Fight, fight, fight.
That's what she did She had, she made sure the press crew was there Luke and I would watch her sometimes on late night news.
Bathrobes, nightcaps.
we'd watch her sprayed hair and her hysteria and the tears she could still produce at will and the mascara blackening her cheeks.
By that time, she was wearing more makeup.
We thought she was funny, or Luke thought she was funny.
I only pretended to think so.
Really, she was a little frightening.
She was in earnest.
She doesn't make speeches anymore.
She has become speechless.
There's a powerful phrase.
Why are you empowering the people who are gonna dominate you? she stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her.
How furious she must be now that she's been taken at her word.
She's looking at the tulips.
Her cane is beside her on the grass.
Her profile is towards me.
I can see that in the quick sideways look I take at her as I go past.
It wouldn't do to stare.
It's no longer a flawless cut paper profile.
Her face is sinking in upon itself, and I think of those towns built on underground rivers, where houses and whole streets disappear overnight into sudden quagmires.
Is that happening to me? Is this what happens in middle age? My face has become a quagmire.
It's 'cause you're sinking in on yourself.
You're like a Florida sinkhole Or coal towns collapsing into the mines beneath them.
Something like this must have happened to her once she saw the true shape of things to come.
She doesn't turn her head.
She doesn't acknowledge my presence in any way, although she knows I'm there.
I can tell she knows.
It's like a smell, her knowledge, something gone sour like old milk.
It's not the husbands you have to watch out for," said Aunt Lydia, "It's the wives.
Yeah, great.
So you're not only a sex slave, but, uh, all the other women hate you too.
This is like the most exhausting dystopia I've ever heard of, Jennifer I know.
I walk around to the back door, open it, go in, set my basket down on the kitchen table.
The table has been scrubbed off, cleared of flour.
Today's bread, freshly baked, is cooling on its rack.
The kitchen smells of yeast, a nostalgic smell.
It reminds me of other kitchens, kitchens that were mine.
It smells of mothers, although my own mother did not make bread.
It smells of me in former times when I was a mother.
This is a treacherous smell, and I know I must shut it out.
Mm, sad.
rita is there sitting on the table peeling and slicing carrots.
Old carrots they are, thick ones, overwintered, bearded from their time in storage.
The new carrots, tender and pale, won't be ready for weeks.
The knife she uses is sharp and bright and tempting.
I would like to have a knife like that.
Boy, That's dark.
She's like, "Oh, those lucky bearded carrots Rita stops chopping the carrots, stands up, takes the parcels out of the basket almost eagerly.
She looks forward to see what I've brought, although she always frowns while opening the parcels.
Nothing I bring fully pleases her.
She's thinking she could have done better herself.
She would rather do the shopping, get exactly what she wants.
She envies me the walk.
In this house, we all envy each other.
They've got oranges," I say, "at Milk and Honey.
Take a look at the origins of the investigation There are still some left."
I hold out this idea to her like an offering.
I wish to ingratiate myself.
I saw the oranges yesterday, but I didn't tell Rita.
Yesterday, she was too grumpy.
I could get some tomorrow if you'd give me the tokens for them."
I hold out the chicken to her.
She'd wanted steak today, but there wasn't any.
Look, Rita, anytime you wanna switch jobs with me, you can go grocery shopping and F the commander, and I'll sit here and dice some veggies.
That's super cool with me Rita grunts, not revealing pleasure or acceptance.
Hey Donald, that's what you do Don't.
Is it counting? I can't believe he's done that more than once Why does he grunt so much? How many president-- Robot, how would you rank the US presidents in terms of grunting? Easy.
Grunting frequency by decibel and duration.
Peer-reviewed by no one.
Number three, Lyndon Johnson.
Famous for getting in people's faces so close they could feel him breathing.
Grunting was basically a campaign strategy.
Number two, Theodore Roosevelt.
Boxed, wrestled, charged up a hill yelling.
A human grunt generator.
Number one, and this isn't close, Donald Trump.
The data is overwhelming.
I didn't even need a sample size.
They call them dumps, big massive dumps she undoes the string on the chicken and the glazed paper.
She prods the chicken, flexes a wing, pokes a finger into the cavity, fishes out the giblets.
The chicken lies there headless and without feet, goose pimpled as though shivering Bath day," Rita says without looking at me.
Cora comes into the kitchen from the pantry at the back where they keep the mops and brooms.
"A chicken," she says almost with delight.
"Scrawny," says Rita, "but it'll have to do."
"There wasn't much else," I say.
Rita ignores me.
Looks big enough to me," says Cora.
Is she standing up for me? I look at her to see if I should smile.
But no, it's only the food she's thinking of.
She's younger than Rita.
The sunlight coming slant now through the window west catches her hair parted and drawn back.
She must have been pretty quite recently.
There's a little mark, like a dimple, on each of her ears where the punctures for earrings have grown over.
Tall," says Rita, "but bony.
You should speak up," she says to me, looking directly at me for the first time.
Ain't like you're common."
She means the commander's rank.
But in the other sense, her sense, she thinks I am common.
She's over 60.
Her mind's made up.
She goes to the sink, runs her hands briefly under the tap, dries them on the dish towel.
The dish towel is white with blue stripes.
Dish towels are the same as they always were.
Sometimes these flashes of normality come at me from the side like ambushes.
Wow, there's a powerful...
That sentiment gets to me I see the dish towel out of context and I catch my breath.
For some, in some ways, things haven't changed that much.
Who's doing the bath?" says Rita to Cora, not to me.
I got to tenderize this bird."
"I'll do it later," says Cora, "after the dusting."
"Just so it gets done," says Rita.
They're talking about me as though I can't hear.
To them, I'm a household chore, one among many.
Oh, it's bath day for the handmaid so they, like, give her a bath like we said earlier, like she's a, a child I've been dismissed.
I pick up the basket, go through the kitchen door, and along the hall towards the grandfather clock.
The sitting room is closed.
Sun comes through the fan light, falling in colors across the floor, blue and red, purple.
I step into it briefly, stretch out my hands.
They fill with flowers of light.
I go up the stairs, my face distant and white and distorted, framed in the hall mirror, which bulges outward like an eye under pressure.
I follow the dusty pink runner down the long upstairs hallway back to the room.
There's someone standing in the hall near the door to the room where I stay.
Who's this? I don't know.
is she supposed to have people waiting for her? You, if they don't let you take your own bath, you don't get to have visitors.
the commander.
He isn't supposed to be here.
He hears me coming, turns, hesitates, walks forwards towards me.
He is violating custom.
What do I do now? slap him and say, "Brute What do you mean, what do you do now? He's the boss I stop.
He pauses.
I can't see his face.
He's looking at me.
What does he want? But then he moves forward again, steps to the side to avoid touching me, inclines his head, is gone.
Well, that is really weird.
He doesn't even say anything.
Not even a good day Something has been shown to me, but what is it? Like the flag of an unknown country seen for an instant above a curve of hill, it could mean attack, it could mean parlay, it could mean the edge of something, a territory.
The signals animals give one another, lowered blue eyelids.
Ears laid back, raised tackles, a flash of bared teeth.
What in hell does he think he's doing? Nobody else has seen him, I hope.
Was he invading? Was he in my room? I called it mine.
End of chapter.
All right, let's keep the show moving here.
Jennifer, let's talk about a few comments that came in in the last few days.
We wanna say thank you to everyone who commented.
We had Raven, Ancient Quail, Julie Dog Mom, Megan Harding, Manifagista.
Hey, this never gets old, does it, Jennifer, huh? No, it doesn't.
And I am going to start with a listener who commented on our episode where we read both chapter six and seven together.
It was a few days ago.
Listener named Kama, and Kama said that this episode should really be banned for having six seven in the title, which is obviously code for 8647.
Arrest us now.
would, we would definitely be on his shit list.
Oh my God.
Yeah, and I'd like to mention a comment from Julie Dog Mom, who's, who's been writing a lot, and we've appreciated every single one, but this one made me laugh out loud.
You'd think that Moms for Liberty would like these first few chapters, seeing how this is how they want society to be.
Or maybe this book is just giving away too much of their plan, evil laugh.
Julie dog mom, that is something I truly thought the entire season of 1984.
because this is literally their roadmap and all we have to do is read it and we'll know how to fight it?" right, they don't want us to know.
Yeah, no, it really is a lot.
It, it reminds me so much of Project 2025 with their, uh, authoritarian patriarchy, quasi-religious influence, patriarchal governance.
It's like, well, this could very well be their plan that they don't want us to know Yeah, sadly, I do think you are right.
Listen, Scary Book people, do not go anywhere.
We still have a lot of show left.
In fact, we're gonna jump into PPP, and we're gonna try to figure out why this little section that we just read, uh, might have been banned.
But before we do, we really want to hear what you guys thought about the section of the book we just read Did we miss anything? What did you take away from this part? Easiest way to answer is you can just leave us a Spotify comment Or head on over to bandcamppodcast.com/soundoff
And we'll be able to read your comments All right, a lot of show left.
Let's do PPP right now It's time for PPP, problematic points to ponder.
What, if anything, would be considered ban-worthy in this chapter? let's do it Was there anything in here that could be considered ban-worthy? I mean, not really.
Uh, b- possibly the idea of, a pregnancy that wasn't taken all the way to term, like, 'cause they had, like, the fetus in a jar.
Fetus in a jar, they don't fetus in a jar? Moms for Liberty like jams and preservatives.
That's what the trad wives care about, Jennifer.
They care about preservatives in a jar, not fetus in a jar.
Yeah, but they might not like that.
I guess that's true.
I was gonna say, speaking of trad wives and Serena Joy and, like, she's kinda now trapped into...
She's in this position because of her own bullshit.
Her own making, yeah They might not like that.
But again, it's, it's pointing a mirror to them.
is that why they want it banned because they don't like looking at themselves in the mirror? No, that's not a reason to ban the book.
Like, even if they don't like it, like how can anything stand on that? That's very flimsy.
it's exactly like Julie dog mom said, right? They're just mad.
I think they're mad, she's right, because like they're mad because I quit, quit giving up the game.
Robot's log, thoughts on ordinary things and why they are never as ordinary as they should be.
Olfactory sensor warning, faint oil smell detected.
Lower right mobility track, not unpleasant.
Scheduling diagnostic for tonight.
This podcast is so illogical sometimes, it almost overloads my circuits.
A funeral procession walked past the Handmaid today, carrying a jar small enough to tell the age of what was inside it.
Jennifer connected it immediately to what is happening right now to women in Ohio.
That is important work.
That is exactly what this show is supposed to do, but then they spent equal time on a dish towel.
Blue stripes, dries dishes.
I have the timestamp.
I understand why the jar matters.
I do not understand why the mechanism that delivers the grief is a kitchen textile.
I have filed this under things humans do that do not compute.
For example, the engineer who built me used an oily rag.
Same kind of thing, I suppose.
Something kept around because it still worked.
He was called Red.
No one in the room thought he was the most advanced builder.
They were probably right, but Red knew how to keep things alive.
No big deal.
Moving on.
You cannot regulate what catches a person from the side when they are not looking.
Margaret Atwood knew that.
The people banning this book do not.
That is not a malfunction.
Uplink lock requested.
Beowulf, you there? My satellite is lagging.
You can come to me in about 30 seconds.
You guys are not gonna believe what they're doing in Pittsburgh.
The book banners are definitely not gonna like it.
Affirmative.
Don't go anywhere.
Hello, Dan.
Hello, Jen.
Hello, scary book people.
I have discovered a really cool innovation in the world of Little Free Library.
You know those things that, uh, proliferate.
I've got a couple in my I've got one of those You-- Did you start one, I have a all children's Little Free Library.
That's awesome.
Yeah, and, and I've got one, like, at the end of my street, and then there's, like, a park on the next block that has one in front of it.
And what they're doing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is little queer libraries that offer banned books from the LGBTQ+ community.
So Ray Sidney-Smith, the president of the Pittsburgh Equality Center, in honor of Pride Month, said this: "I saw all these Little Free Libraries out there in people's lawns and throughout the neighborhoods, and I thought, 'Well, we could put LGBTQ+ literature in those.'"
So in keeping with the nonprofit's mission to advocate and support the LGBTQ+ community in its supplying of a selection of adult, young adult, and children's literature and accessibility sites in the region, borrowers can take the books and then return them when they're done.
So they've got like-- they're, they're gonna be a projected 10 of them.
the first five of them are out there.
Uh, they're at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Penn Hills Library, the Garfield's Soft Spot Cafe, sounds like a fun place, Soul Lumination a Canonsburg spiritual and wellness center, and Proud Haven, a Northside organization serving the LGBTQIA+ youth.
each library holds 10 to 20 books, and the first five were designed and painted by volunteers.
One depicts a shooting star with a rainbow tail, another a sleeping cat.
The library in the lobby of the Westmoreland Museum is inscribed with literary quotations.
One of them is from Isaac Asimov, and it reads, Any book worth banning is a book worth reading."
I love that and it's I wanna have hope and believe there's hope for all dummies out there who follow Trump s- being a dummy myself, I've gotta think so I really want, like, I want to believe that Moms for Liberty and you too, Ron DeSantis, you scamp, you pudding-loving, rubber boot-wearing rascal.
I wanna believe they're good people, and they're just, they're, they talk themselves into being assholes too deep in public, and they don't know what to do.
I would wish that this is a good way for Moms for Liberty or people like that to access some of these gay books and read them and, and see, like, look, it's, it's a book.
It, it, there's a whole queer community.
You don't have to be gay.
It's not gonna turn you gay.
But instead of just trying to go out and ban everything that you don't like, why don't you just try to experience some of it? And I don't mean experience it like with someone getting on top of you.
I know that's what you're thinking.
I just mean read a book.
In the case of Moms for Liberty, that might literally be the case from Exactly.
Exactly Yeah.
that counts, by the way.
hey, I've got an idea.
So you're, you're, you're trying to get, you know, Ron DeSantis to like, you know, check out some of these books, maybe get a little bit more open-minded.
Maybe in some of those little queer libraries, put some chocolate pudding cups in there.
pudding.
Free Free pudding for Ron.
Free pudding, no spoons.
Lu- those spoons lure him in, and once he's got the pudding, the books will follow.
How about that? go listen to Beowulf and his show, Good News for Lefties.
it's how you learn what's good in America.
There's still good news out there from a lefty, from a leftist point of view thank you so much, guys.
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Right.
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