I’ve been trying to post a lengthy entry on understanding kids, and how I’m entering the one mark point of starting BARB and how angry I am that Rose McGowan is being targeted by Harvey Weinstein and how his reach is so sinister, he can from the depths of his evil, manifest an ages-old charge and voila, an arrest warrant is issued and oh, the joy of Halloween. But yesterday, at 3ish, when the news broke on a sunny Tuesday afternoon of a rogue flatbed truck careening South down the bike path on the West Side highway, stopping just in front of Stuyvesant High School, where the driver emerged, brandishing two guns, before he was apprehended and had an 8 person dead body count under his belt, I decided, no. I don’t want to write about anything else. I want to write this: at the moment the news broke, all I could think of were my friends who live and work nearby. Love was my instinct. I reached out to my friends, I posted on Facebook, I texted The Teenager. The latter was in school, in the locker room. So many of her friends live in Tribeca, and she gave everyone in the girls locker room the update, urged them to be safe. West side trains were delayed, naturally. The rational side of me, of course,  step one, step two-ing it; reach out, reach out, reach out. The me side of me? Dry mouth, panic within, grief overwhelming. The banality of evil, Hannah Arendt called it. Oh that ability to take life so ruthlessly. The ongoing act of it. On an everyday afternoon, the calculated determined act of this man on a mission, his impact exponential. The broken bicycles strewn. The shocked faces of the women and men in blue. The rampant recordings through the windows of school, kids Snapchatting, on-the-crime-scene evidence for their social networks (and the world at large) to see. Inescapable if you were glued to your screens, as I was. Love. My friends that I love were not in the path of destruction. Relief. I hope wherever you were, you are safe. The giddy voices of expectant children shrieking Trick or Teat kickstarted the healing. I live in New York City. I walk in and around my city every single day. Proudly. And so, here I go. Back into the world. Full eyes and a clear heart.

Michelle Obama is so the best.

Maria Bamford: “I think that’s what love is — not having to hide exactly who you are.”

Who is Tulsi Gabbard?

Birth Control and its impact on the economy.

Harassment in the art world exists.

I love this week’s Lady Parts by Stacy Conde with guest Chris Rios. The power you have in your body? Oh it’s to be relished and enjoyed.

Stephen Colbert, as so many late night hosts, addressed yesterday.

Last night I was with a woman who said the term SSRI. Now I know what it means (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and this piece by Cathi Hanuer provides even more insight as to why you’d go on or off it.

And now have a laugh with Jean Grae.