Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.

How’s the weather?

Local weather forecasters have declared that we are now in the season of “second summer.” With highs of 96 degrees this weekend, that seems about right. At least the humidity will be lower than the “hell’s front porch” season that we had several weeks ago.

What are you reading?

I’m continuing to enjoy Confounding Oaths by Alexis Hall. It’s a big mash-up of Regency romance, Shakespeare, and the supernatural. So fun! Confounding Oaths is the second story set in this world. The first was Mortal Follies.

What are you watching or listening to?

To celebrate Agatha Christie’s birthday on September 15, I watched an episode from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple TV series, starring Julia McKenzie. The story was based on The Secret of Chimneys, which was originally published 100 years ago.

I’ve been streaming classical and jazz music from my local NPR station. I was using YouTube for instrumental music to accompany reading and writing, but I’ve become aware that a lot of it is probably written by AI instead of people. Plus, my local NPR station needs my support more than Google does. I stream directly from the website, but you can also listen with an HD radio or a smart speaker. Check out your local NPR station to see what they have to offer!

What are you doing?

Arriving at the Capitol

On Wednesday, I took a charter bus from St. Louis to the Missouri State Capitol Building in Jefferson City. We went to express our displeasure over redrawing our congressional districts in the middle of the decade. They were drawn after the 2020 census, just as our state constitution demands. The only reason that they are being redrawn now is to satisfy the power-hungry Republican president.

This was while we were gathering — the floor got even more crowded before the rally started. I loved yelling “This is what democracy looks like!” in the gorgeous rotunda of the Capitol building with 2000 of my closest friends.

Lawsuits will be filed immediately since the Missouri state constitution is quite clear about when we redistrict. So, not only did Missouri tax payers pay for a special session of our legislature to pull off these shenanigans but we also get to pay to defend the faulty legislation.

I loved looking up to see the people standing at the top of the rotunda.

None of us believed that we could alter the course of events, but I believe that this kind of event helps people make connections and build resilience for fights in the future.

What I would truly love to see is for the redistricting to backfire. They think they’re drawing a map that will give us seven Republican congress people and one Democrat, instead of the already gerrymandered map where we are represented by six Republicans and two Democrats. What if we flip one or more of these new districts? It’s probably a fantasy, but there are people who are putting in the work to make that come true.

I got to be one of the few hundred who filled the Senate Gallery at the start of session. We were warned that we would be kicked out if we made a ruckus. When we recited the pledge of allegiance, we shouted the last four words to make quite a roar. I could see that we startled the Senate leadership — I don’t think they’d ever heard the pledge said quite that way. But no one could accuse us of a ruckus since we were participating, as asked, in saying the pledge.

Many groups across the state participated, but I’ll thank the two groups that provided the bus, t-shirt, and box lunch for me: Indivisible St. Louis and Missouri Jobs with Justice.