Oh, Jenny, oh, young. Hey, everybody. Wow, how are you doing? How are you feeling?

Woo! What a quite a few days it has been. Listen, we talked a little bit last episode about how we are sort of rooted in an election cycle as a podcast

because we had only just begun when the United States election, presidential election happened in 2016. It shaped a lot of the work that we were doing in the space. It shaped a lot of the community that has happened here.

This community has come together in some incredible ways. We have people who were listening to the podcast who wrote it to say they ran for office. We have people who have organized. We have people, I mean, like you all have done a lot of shit as a collective community.

And so, fuck yes. Let us take a moment of celebration to just, you know, feel good for a minute. Let's feel good for a minute.

I don't recognize this thing going. I posted on Twitter, I don't know if you saw it, but somebody tweeted like, this is me trying to receive good news and it's this raccoon who's like, poking his little hands out like, maybe this is a treat but also maybe not.

As I think our listeners are aware, there's so much work to be done. And also the election, you know, put in a bright shining light what we already saw in over the last four years, which is like, wow, there's a lot to do here.

So it's celebrating the good things and allowing ourselves to feel joy for a moment. But also I felt a bit anxious over the last few days and I'm sure a lot of people have too.

Yes, 100% and could I just say while we are really tuned into feeling good feelings where we can get them and presidencies and that raccoon you just brought up. Could I tell you and everyone listening that I just learned about Rebecca the raccoon who was a raccoon kept as a pet by US president Calvin Coolidge and firstly Grace Coolidge.

Rebecca came from Mississippi. She was sent to the White House to be served for the 1926 Thanksgiving dinner.

What served like I guess has food, but they decided to keep her as a pet.

Wait, they were going to eat Rebecca. This has gotten off the rails.

Sorry, I didn't read all of this before I started reading it out loud. But let me just tell you a couple more things.

For Christmas, an embroidered caller was made for her inscribed with a title White House raccoon.

She enjoyed participating as you might expect in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

She was also fed shrimp and persimmons. She was let loose in the White House and walked on a leash outdoors. At times she could be mischievous and was known to unscrew light bulbs, open cabinets and unpot houseplants.

Oh my fucking god. Okay, petition began for a new White House raccoon.

But so yeah, Jenny, you know, I just am happy to hold a little bit of space here with you and with all of our listeners.

We've been doing a lot together. We're going to keep doing a lot together and we celebrated this weekend.

We celebrated and we took a deep breath and onward. Oh, hey, how dare you?

Hey, don't we have a live taping up? Yes, we do. We do have a live taping coming up.

We had to on a very special day. We had to postpone our live taping that was scheduled in October and we moved it.

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