Elizabeth
LightNews LightNews
avertexofmyown.bsky.social
Elizabeth
@avertexofmyown.bsky.social
6.9K followers 8.6K following 1.7K posts
Here I am.

White, straight, married, LISTENING and learning. Voted blue all the way down. Deeply distressed by election and immediate aftermath.

Interested in following art, writing, photography, weather, storm chasing, animals (esp cats). And politics
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
avertexofmyown.bsky.social
Elizabeth @avertexofmyown.bsky.social · Nov 20
I don’t want to live in a dystopian science fiction novel. Please make it stop!
Reposted by Elizabeth
altnps.bsky.social
Way to go Hilton!!!!
January 6, 2026 at 1:41 AM
avertexofmyown.bsky.social
@legalafmtn.bsky.social

What the heck is narco-terrorism? It’s reported that Maduro was indicted under “narco-terrorism” charges. Is there actually a law that uses that language? I thought it was a made-up trumpism.

And how can we regulate “possession of machine guns?” outside our own borders?
January 5, 2026 at 1:21 AM
avertexofmyown.bsky.social
@mspopok.bsky.social
Michael Popok

What the heck is narco-terrorism? It’s been reported that Maduro is being indicted under “narco-terrorism” charges. Is there actually a law that uses that language? I thought it was a made-up trumpism.

And “possession of machine guns?” How can we regulate … 1/2
January 5, 2026 at 1:17 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
My son, Indy, is doing another epic fundraising walk for Ukrainian refugees via @ukforunhcr.bsky.social. He is walking the 102-mile Cotswold Way in the depths of winter, photographing the Ukrainian flag in the changing landscape as he goes. He's already begun & will post updates regularly.
Indy Avery is walking 102 miles along the Cotswold Way to support Ukrainian Refugees and the UN Refugee Agency
Help Anne Louise Avery raise money to support UK for UNHCR
www.justgiving.com
January 1, 2026 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
washingtonpost.com
If boomers and Gen X are puzzled that youngsters are not required to endure the same mastering cursive that they were, they might be even more surprised to hear that some are learning the craft for fun.
Meet the middle-schoolers keeping cursive alive, one swoop at a time
Script is finding new life in after-school clubs where students can learn to loop and swoosh their handwriting.
www.washingtonpost.com
January 4, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
calmatters.org
A new law going into effect Jan. 1, 2026 prevents cities from penalizing outreach workers who provide services such as legal aid or hand out blankets at encampments. bit.ly/4qA2QLY

📸 Larry Valenzuela
Cities can’t punish outreach workers for helping homeless Californians under new law
January 2, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
bellingcat.com
Start the new year by learning a new skill 🧭
Explore Bellingcat’s guides to a wide range of open-source research techniques in the Resources section of our website. www.bellingcat.com/category/res...
Resources - bellingcat
www.bellingcat.com
January 1, 2026 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
uncleduke1969.bsky.social
David Attenborough [whispering]:

“Like a grain of sand in a vast desert, the predator blends seamlessly into its environment, nearly imperceptible to the naked eye.”
The top half of a cat is concealed behind a gold curtain, its bottom half exposed.
December 28, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
abloc1.substack.com
Shchedryk: 🌻💙💛🌻
youtu.be/0UmvUy1LziE?...
Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells) – Bel Canto Choir Vilnius
YouTube video by Bel Canto Choir Vilnius
youtu.be
December 25, 2025 at 12:01 PM
avertexofmyown.bsky.social
He’s sick
onestpress.onestnetwork.com Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 13d
Trump to a child: We track Santa. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. We want to make sure that he's not infiltrated, that we're not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa. Santa loves Oklahoma like I do. You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election
December 25, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
decoy007.bsky.social
December 25, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
decoy007.bsky.social
December 25, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
number10cat.bsky.social
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Because I ate it for lunch.
December 24, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
szohow.bsky.social
some studies ive done! #art #painting
December 25, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-first Window. The Stinting of the Sun is not a safe time, said the Newcomer to Old Fox. They were sitting high on Pooksdown Hill, leaning against the slope of the round barrow and looking out across the snow-palled land, hatched in dark thorn and hazel, little plumes of smoke rising from farms and the hamlet cottages on the distant rise. The clouds were heavy and vast and leaden, pressing down on the fields like yperite. And they saw below them the lonely and the grief-stricken, the impoverished and the sick, the lost and the frightened, and then the first gleeds of Solstice light, rosy and golden in the darkness, striving to meet them and warm them, flaming through the brittle ice and the pushing, belligerent fog. Image: Dorset: Snow on Eggardon Hill by Mike-DT6. Old Fox The Newcomer
December 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-first Window. The Bishop of Dorchester, a noble and imposing badger, had travelled up to London that morning by motor car. His destination was the BBC studios at Savoy Hill, just off the Strand, to record a message for St Thomas's Day. At four o'clock on 21st December 1930, his speech was broadcast, and across the country, from Jarrow to Faversham, Port Talbot to Weymouth, Dudley to Ely, people listened with their tea or lack of it. And whilst clothed in a Sunday afternoon voice and presentation, the Bishop's speech somehow cut through and moved people, made them feel heard and seen and understood. Many wrote to him via the BBC afterwards, and he wrote back to all with great care and consideration. Here is a short excerpt, to be read in a deep, kind voice full of passion and authority. "I know full well what Christmas can do, how injurious this long week can be, how desperate the prayers sent into the dark winter nights. For those without employment, without food, without money, without lodging, with a dozen swords of Damocles at their throats, peace and good will are ensnared by suffering and pain and despair. The year that has passed is marked by the greatest industrial depression of our modern times – many of our great cities and towns have become "workhouses without walls". I call upon the government and all those in positions of authority – our new financial ruling classes – to do everything in their power to help local authorities feed and clothe and comfort those in peril. I hear that a Means Test is being advanced in the halls of Westminster and a more unchristian proposal would be difficult to imagine! My fellow bishops and archbishops have called for prayers, but those prayers must be tethered in our own autonomous actions. God works through us and our charity – unshowy charity – should be the cornerstone of our morality. Giving is the light in the darkness of midwinter. And how much should we give? Well, as a great friend said to me in Oxford o… The Bishop of Dorchester The Christmas Radio Times for 1930. BBC Studio 1 at Savoy Hill in 1928
December 21, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxChristmasFilms
Day Twenty-three. A Matter of Life and Death (1946). My favourite film starring my favourite actor, David Niven, as an RAF pilot who miraculously survives a fall from a burning plane due to a heavenly bureaucratic error and promptly falls in love with the young American operator, Kim Hunter, to whom he had relayed his dying wishes. The first Royal Command film, it was released at Christmas in a shattered and traumatised post-War world. Opening in the silent, vast reaches of space and slowly moving closer to an angry, cacophonous earth convulsing in the midst of violent conflict, it represents an urgent enquiry into that grief-stricken, bomb-blasted world - what survives those graves, those ruins, those camps, those ground zeros, what can move us forwards, upwards, beyond? Only love. All ideologies seem to lead to the same dire place, only love transcends, only love remains. A Matter of Life and Death film poster.
December 22, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-third Window. Sea Otter and Ermine were sitting on an ianthine-coloured sofa in the artistic, book-filled, freesia-scented drawing room of Ermine's small but very pretty Georgian cottage situated on an estuary in Cornwall. The sofa was extremely comfortable, but they were both perched on the edge, listening intently to the wireless. The Children's Hour was just finishing. "It's five to," said Sea Otter. "Not long now! " "I can't bear it," said Ermine, "It's so terrifying." She gripped his paw. The music had ended. The next programme had begun. "And now," boomed the presenter festively, "Our Christmas Edition of Poetry Today, which features some new, rather exciting literary voices." "Oh god," whispered Ermine. "The first poem is in the imagist tradition and is from the pen of a new poet from Cornwall. The title is 'Glaucus Bound.'" "I'm so proud of you," whispered Sea Otter. "LASH! LASH! LASH! What pulls the fisherman down into the depths? Fish-tailed Glaucus bound in love! The pine trees urge towards the light, to the gleaming, silver-capped waves, Their roots push into salt-water, The sea's weeds strangle the mountain-top, His head crowned in celery leaves! Crowned in summer grass! EBB! FLOW! EBB! FLOW!" As they listened to Ermine's words being broadcast across the country, floating into a million strangers' holly and tinsel decked sitting rooms, Sea Otter thought of the agonies she had gone through in their creation. The late nights, the endless pots of coffee and cigarettes, the wind-swept walks along the cliff path to the headland. And he thought of her subject, the humble fisherman Glaucus turned sea god, so in love with the beautiful Scylla that the witch Circe jealously transformed her into the ghastly monster guarding the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. He'd sailed through there a couple of times himself, and still remembered the impenetrable fog in the height of summer, the tense concentration, keeping close to the coast all the time - yes, poor Scylla still haunted those troubled waters. And the end of Ermine's poem had come already - "A man of broken shells and phŷkos Hear his prophecies! They break as the waves break upon the rocks, then draw back, and are lost in the dark currents of Messina like old treasure." The presenter explained a little of the antique mythology of the piece, mentioned its forthcoming publication in 'Farrago' in January, and then moved on to the next poet. Sea Otter turned down the wireless and poured them both a cherry brandy. "To my Ermine, a great poetess! Merry, merry Christmas!" Ermine, still trembling, quite overwhelmed with delirious happiness, raised her glass until it caught the light of the oil lamp, and pronounced "to my Glaucus, the finest sailor in Cornwall and my eternal muse!"
December 23, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-third Window. Once upon a time, there was a green-eyed Tabby Cat who ran a bookshop by the Christ Church gate of Canterbury Cathedral. It was a marvellous place, four stories high, with treasures on every shelf & free buttered toast, plum cake & hot sweet tea for all who visited. At Christmas, it glittered with lights & its window was a wonder of the city. That evening, the night before Christmas Eve, the Tabby Cat locked up at half-past six. She was very weary and apart from her usual afternoon nap in the little attic room where she had her office, had been on her feet since six that morning. Hundreds of books had been suggested, bought, wrapped and paid for. The old-Victorian iron safe built into the wall by the front desk was a treasure trove of notes and coins and cheques, and the account ledger had increased by a considerable number of pages. She stood for a moment outside in the street looking up at the stars in the dark sky. It was very cold and there was an odd wildness and elemental magic in the air, a glimmer of an old, old Christmas. She thought of Becket preparing his sermon for Christmas Day a mere stone's throw away, and shivered. She had a sudden urge to leave Canterbury and decided to drive to Faversham, to an old smugglers' inn at Hollowshore in the salt marshes. She used to go there with her father, who died a few years before. They'd have a slap-up fish and chip supper and sit by the fire and talk for hours. She wasn't sure that her motorcar would make it along the rough track, but that was where her Christmas would start – at the very edge of the Kentish land, where curlews wade and the sea laps on the Holy Shore, as a Viking king had called it, and Old Father Time falters in his relentless course. Canterbury in the Snow by Ernest Uden. The Tabby Cat by Rachel Stribbling. Rowland Hilder
December 23, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-fourth WIndow. Christmas Eve in Old Fox's cottage and everyone was sitting by the parlour fire having tea and telling stories – stories about winters long ago, about the Silver-tongued Nightingale of Kraków and Brave Robin Redbreast and Christ's Harsh Garland, about the golden lights which flickered on Barrowdown on St Stephen's Day and the French princess, in satins tattered and torn, who came to the village on a cold December night in 1791. When it was Wolf's turn, he had an extra big spoonful of rum trifle and began a tale which they all knew and loved. "When I was a little wolf, I would be sent out into the snows to call Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter, Snow Maiden, in for supper. Sometimes I would have to howl for a long time, until the Christmas moon rose high over the church, before they heard me. Then they'd sweep in, all magnificent with their silver crowns and their blue silks, and they would take the best chairs and the best plates, and they would eat with us - borscht, they liked, and all the old favourites - vatrushka and pirozhki and coulibiac - and gooseberry kissel and my mother's rice pudding. When they'd had their fill, they would stand up and bless each one of us with a different gift. My brother had the gift of standing tall and my father the gift of tears and my sister had the gift of forgetting." "What was your gift, Wolf," asked Pine Marten. And Wolf suddenly faltered, the memory falling away like a cliff crumbling into the sea. But Old Fox came in as sharp as a pike and pulled him back. "They gave him the gift of love, Pine Marten, the gift of love," he said, and tucked a blanket over Wolf, who had finally had his fill of stories for that night, at least. "Merry Christmas, my loves, and to all who think of us from afar," said Old Fox, raising his glass of elderberry wine, "Merry Christmas one and all! Merry Christmas one and all!" Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden Old Fox
December 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
annelouiseavery.bsky.social
#OldFoxAdventCalendar
The Twenty-fourth Window. Christmas Eve and in Old Fox's cottage, all was merry. From High Attic to Parlour, every room, every nook and cranny was filled with light and bustle and food. Such food! Bethmännchen and Fernby & Evans florentines and amber tart and ginger fairings and sugar plums and Old Fox's fiery rum trifle. And the snow was still falling, falling on golden thatch and on the dark fallowed fields, on the ancient gnarled apple trees in the orchards and the ancient guard-oak at the end of that happy little lane in the depths of Dorsetshire.
December 23, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
altnps.bsky.social
Link: www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...
WATCH: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment
I was sent the CECOT segment anonymously in a group chat.
www.muellershewrote.com
December 23, 2025 at 12:51 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
cdlane.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/thejackh...
PAPERS, PLEASE
How America Quietly Became a Country Where Citizens Get Detained- And the Exact Actions You Must Take Before This Becomes Permanent
open.substack.com
December 22, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth
wajali.bsky.social
Trump and Stephen Miller kidnapped innocent people of color and just sent them to die in a foreign prison.

Oh American taxpayer dollars - 6 million of them - went to pay Bukele of El Salvador for this dirty work.
60minutes.bsky.social 60 Minutes @60minutes.bsky.social · 16d
An Editor’s Note from 60 Minutes
The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report “Inside CECOT” will air in a future broadcast.
December 22, 2025 at 3:57 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth
51st.news
2/ Over the last month, the Gomez family has been exploring immigration visa options that would allow them to stay in the U.S. but that comes with costly legal fees

They’ve been fundraising to support that process, including via Lost Origins’ sale of Gael’s astrophotography:
Lost Origins Web Store – Lost Origins Gallery
lostorigins.gallery
December 21, 2025 at 3:02 PM