Charlotte's Web Thoughts

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] My earliest memory of patriotism is from kindergarten. My family was living in a cramped apartment building, and every morning, as I waited for the bus to fetch me, the prop...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] This weekend, Lance Armstrong announced a video interview with Caitlyn Jenner regarding trans inclusion in sports, as part of a series which he’ll begin releasing today. I d...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] Pat Robertson passed away this morning. He was a Southern Baptist minister best known for launching the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), founding the Christian Coalitio...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] (WASHINGTON) — On Tuesday, House Republicans passed sweeping legislation that would prohibit all minors from entering Christian places of worship, ban Christian clergy from...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] Dear Sir, We don’t know each other past a brief interaction, and in the event this finds you, wherever you are, tucked behind anonymity, I am hoping it may be of service in...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] On Tuesday, Target announced they’re pulling some items from their famous annual Pride collection, which has become a huge hit in the wider LGBTQ community over the past dec...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements . If you need a Pride Month speaker, hit me up.] On Saturday, at Westminster Abbey, The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby, the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, placed all 2.23 kilograms of St. Edward’s Crown u...

Hey folks, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to bring up that we’re now entering the 2024 campaign cycle. I know, it’s horrible. Didn’t we just get done with the last one? Have we not suffered enough through endless texts, emails, and phone calls from politicians and campaign orgs? Yes, indeed, but the next one is upon us. Candidates are starting to announce their campaigns, networks are angling...

[This morning, I spoke at the ADL’s Together Against Hatred Rally on Capitol Hill, alongside some amazing folks who are committed to fighting antisemitism and all other forms of hatred, specifically calling on Congress to fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to protect synagogues, schools, and other public spaces. Video is available here , and the full text of my remarks are below.] It...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription . And yes, I do speaking engagements .] You may have missed it in all the Trump indictment hoopla, but late last night, Kid Rock, aka Robert James Ritchie, posted a 35 sec. video on Twitter in which he fired an MP5 submachine gun in the direction of several c...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] NEW YORK CITY (AP) — On Tuesday, former president Hillary Clinton turned herself into authorities at the office of the Manhattan district attorney following last week’s grand jury indictment for her role in allegedly falsifying documents. She is the first...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] Haven’t the Mets Suffered Enough?by Charlotte Clymer With the Big One they’ve long seemed not to trifle, Almost 37 years without a World Series title, I was barely born when Queens’ joy last caught an eyeful, Haven’t the Mets suffered enough? That heartbre...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] On Monday morning, at The Covenant School, a private elementary school in Nashville, TN, a mass shooter opened fire over fourteen minutes, killing three children who were students there, all nine years old, and three staff members before police arrived and...

This past Saturday, Howard University’s Men’s Basketball Team won its first conference championship in three decades in a razor-thin thriller, capping off an historic season that has witnessed a culmination of Head Coach Kenneth Blakeney’s rebuilding efforts since being hired to helm the program in 2019. The Bison haven’t been to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament (better known as “Ma...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] My favorite poem is “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith. There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of it — if not by the numerous times it’s gone viral since its publication in 2016 or its occasional glowing references in popular media, then certainly by following my...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] Recently, I saw a post online with this challenge: "Without saying your age, say something a young person today wouldn't understand." For me, it was The Phone. It had its own place and aura in the home. If you didn't have internet--and most homes did not d...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] It was August 17th, 2015—a typical, late summer, hot Monday morning—when I heard booming music outside the bedroom window of my apartment. It sounded like it was coming from RFK Stadium, which was just up the street on the east side of Washington, D.C. I w...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] Today, I purchased a rose gold, carry-on luggage piece at Target, with smooth-gliding wheels that display tasteful, faux-chrome mini-hubcaps and a sensible yet alluring plastic handle deployment apparatus. When extended with intention, the apparatus create...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] The Junk Drawer is back! This is a feature of my blog I intended to do regularly when I began it last year, and things just got terribly busy with the midterms. So, it’s become one of my goals this year to reignite the feature. It’s about odds and ends: ra...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] TALLAHASSEE (CWT) — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shocked political observers and reporters this morning at a press conference where he announced a statewide ban on Pink Floyd, the English progressive rock group generally considered by popular music critic...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] In an exclusive interview with Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield, published this morning, Pope Francis said homosexuality should not be a crime and called upon all countries with such laws—67 of them in total—to decriminalize. There are currently t...

Last week, I watched a particular ‘80s movie for the first time in years, and I had forgotten how much I felt it was largely underwhelming, even overrated, despite its standing as a niche favorite. Without naming the movie, I casually mentioned this in a group chat with a bunch of girlfriends, and they started guessing titles. Half an hour and dozens of guesses later, no one had landed on it, and...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] Good morning from our Nation’s Capital! The 118th Congress was supposed to start yesterday, and although the Senate went about its business, the House is currently in a holding pattern after the Republican Caucus failed to elect a speaker to lead its new m...

This is my first full year of earning a living as a writer, thanks to you fine folks. It’s been a damn good year on that front, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something I love that pays the bills. I have written more this year than any previous year of my life, and fortunately, some of these pieces make me quite happy. Here are five essays of which I’m particularly proud. For the Love...

[This blog will always be free to read, but it’s also how I pay my bills. So, if you like what you read, please consider a paid subscription .] Friends, I have been deeply concerned in recent days by the frequency of people in my life—smart, wonderful, hardworking people—who reveal that they are watching “Emily in Paris”, for the first time, with the wrong expectations. I want to help by setting t...