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When a reporter for The New York Times called the Yukon “desolate,” I wanted to reach through my laptop screen and shake him, to try to make him understand a place he wasn’t describing properly. Life here is amazing, I wanted to say. This is the kind of place where you can hike to a glacier, watch it calve, and then engage in a howl-off with a pack of nearby wolf puppies. This is where grizzlies swipe spawning salmon from streams, and caribou still flow like rivers across the mountains, and the northern lights come out at night. It’s the opposite of desolate. [CW for some descriptions of mauling deaths]

June 22-23: Monarch Art + Wellness Fair. Celebrating women, femme and gender non-binary artists, healers, and small businesses. Free, all ages. 5020 S. Cornell Ave.

Through a diverse roster of public programs on physical, mental, spiritual, sexual wellness, Monarch functions as a collaborative project providing local healing resources for women, gender non-binary and femme identifying communities and people of color. Monarch serves to establish a dynamic, intersecting network among Chicago creatives through interactive events and spaces for healing, honesty, and reflection.

You'll find short stories and novels (and, as I mentioned, a game); you'll find contemporary werewolves and steampunk, dark Edwardian fantasy and stories that draw on myths ancient and modern, a "year's best collection," a year's worth of Glittership, and a wildly diverse collection of pirates. What they have in common is queer visions, visions that celebrate our multitudes, all written by authors at the very top of their game. 

So sorry that I’m just getting to this now. There were six other people on this e-mail thread and I was hoping that one of them would answer your question and I could just go on living my life.

“One of the challenges of aging is not just to focus down on your aches and pains,” she said. “And I feel like this called me back again to the bigger vision. And on a simple level I overcame my fear of talking to younger people.”

In the end, she wrote a haiku about the millennials.

“You know, I find myself leaving in the morning, I kiss my wife goodbye and then I’ll say, ‘Hey Jibo, have a good day,’ and he’ll say the same thing, you know [like], ‘Back to you,’ or ‘Don’t forget your wallet,’” he says. “That’s probably a little crazy, but it proves that they do become a real part of your family.”

More than he or his wife, though, Stuard says his three grandkids love Jibo, including a 16-month-old who calls it “Bo.”

“They’re immediately drawn to Jibo,” Stuard says. They want to see it dance or play music or answer questions. “To me, that was worthwhile. It’s like a toy that poppa’s got special over all the other grandparents and that makes me kind of special.”