Angela Rye talks about the new wave of strange fruit.

CATMAN STATEMENT ON DORKY'S ARCADE OWNER LES VOROS-BOND It was Saturday, August 8th back in 2015. The scene was Dorky's Arcade in Tacoma. I had brought my friend and actor Noah Hathaway, known best as "Atreyu" from the classic 1984 film The Neberending Story there for an evening of retro fun for the community, with a long line of fans waiting out the door to meet him. On that next morning, I had received a phone call from Caroline, the co-owner of Dorky's. She was crying and in hysterics. I instantly thought that something happened to Noah. Marjon and I had left him there the night before as he wanted to stay super late and play video games. We had cats and sleep to tend to. Before my mind could even go there, Caroline asked if I had heard about Les, Leslie Voros-Bond, her fiancee and co-owner of Dorky's. It turns out there there had been a Black Lives Matter protest that morning in downtown Tacoma, literally at the intersection where Dorky's is located, temporarily shutting down all traffic to the area. But what happened next was not something I needed Caroline to fill me in on being that there was a viral video posted online. Les had grabbed a megaphone from inside Dorky's and proceeded to go crash the protest, blaring music out of his megaphone and dancing wildly through the protest. But that paled compared to him approaching a young black male that was participating in the protest, getting with an inch of his face and repeatedly shouting the N word at him. If the video had come out today, everyone would have assumed it was AI. Unfortunately, this was very real. I don't know how many times I watched it that morning. And every time I was more and more in disbelief as to what I was witnessing. While I had had only a couple of interactions with Les over the years, we had come to know Caroline. And her and Les had a young child maybe a year or two old. Calls for a boycott were immediate. As they should have been. But something more concerning was brewing.

This skill can be built up, holding two truths at once. As uncomfortable as it can be, life if complicated sometimes. Bittersweetness for example.

Kelly McWilliams is biracial, and she was raised to be proud of her identity, but when she walks into a room, a lot of people perceive her as a white woman. And when she does tell people she’s Black, the situation can get uncomfortable — even scary — very, very fast. https://nyti.ms/4hBWPvk

"Delusions are strongly held beliefs that can remain resistant to contradictory information, even when other people see the situation very differently. To the person experiencing the belief, it often does not feel like a possibility they are considering. It may feel obvious, urgent, personally meaningful, and supported by what they believe they are seeing, hearing, remembering, or noticing around them. This is one reason simply presenting more facts often does not resolve the belief. When a person feels certain that something is happening, attempts to disprove it can easily turn into a debate about evidence. The supporter points out an inconsistency, the person offers another explanation, the supporter introduces additional facts, and the discussion becomes increasingly detailed. What begins as an attempt to reassure can turn into a long argument about motives, timelines, who else might be involved, what particular events mean, or whether certain experiences “prove” the belief." More: https://www.authenticlivingtherapy.co/supporting-someone-with-delusions-the-leap-method-validation-and-healthy-boundaries