To find out how my summer went, check out Summer Lovin. I had to skip September and October Tiny, Private Love Letters because I was hard at work on a few developing, soon-to-be-announced ventures. Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you and I still love you. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll receive a private, early heads up shortly. (And er’body will receive the December update.) In the meantime, because it’s Election Day, the most important thing I can tell you in this: VOTE!

Sex education ballot initiatives are up for grabs at the state level and, depending on who’s president, federal level, too. Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare — such as breast cancer screenings and pap smears — are in jeopardy for people who can’t afford them. Even if you can afford them, insurance companies may not cover you anyway. They might deny you if you’ve survived, or have genetic predispositions to, cancers of the reproductive system. (By the way, to share a bit of sex terminology, these are technically called gynecologic cancers — though dick cancer is often excluded because, too often, we forget that all genders have reproductive systems.)

None of that information is calming or soothing. So, I’ll leave you with a few words from Howard Zinn that might be.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

— Howard Zinn