For two years, it was my honor to write for STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY.
My first episode of the show airs today. And that honor has only deepened.
Because this series dares: with a setting populated primarily by immigrants – often staggeringly alien, always undeniably “human.” It dares: with a central institution that venerates the foreign-born, treasures their starry treks, delights in their arrivals, houses them from harm. It dares: with a law enforcement protagonist striving to reunite a family she separated. It dares: with a body politic seeking redemption for othering its neighbors.
It dares.
And it does so on the shoulders of immigrants, or the children they raised. Which includes the series creator, Gaia Violo: my co-writer for this episode, and the light of the writers’ room. Our head of production, Olatunde Osunsanmi: born to Nigerian parents, and born to lead. This episode’s starring actor, Karim Diané: whose descent is from a West African tribe, and whose love on set formed a new tribe altogether.
The list goes on. Whether first-generation or from strange new soils, so much of this series is owed to people who “boldly go.” To “foreigners” who wrote scripts, gave notes, delivered dialogue, manned cameras, designed sets. There was power in holding them close. Family made in the filming.
And out of it, this fourth episode. The story of a refugee, adrift. But surrounded by friends who love him. And remarkably, a government that does, too.
For years now, we’ve been told who to blame for our ills. Where to aim our bricks. And why we should discount who laid them.
But we can be more.
And I’m proud that this show dares us to be.
This is Tiffany.
A singer. A teacher. A fighter. A friend.
*My* friend. For over 20 years. We were both nerdy enough to go to school in the summer. A pre-college program in Brooklyn, where we loved each other fast.
We’ve nurtured one another ever since. Just like those first nights. Through losses of faith. New ideals and identities. There she was, always. A life raft for me. Even when her own waters churned.
Those waters are at their worst, now. Health challenges. Housing ones, too. And she deserves a life raft of her own.
If you have the means to build some of that raft with me, I promise: you will never give to a more loving person. A person who deserves rest, recovery, and the kind of compassion she pours out so generously.
Thank you for your own generosity, should you choose to help her. It would mean so much to both of us.
I’ve left a link in my bio.
My heartfelt thanks to the @wgaeast staff for organizing this protest against censorship, and to all people stepping up for free speech (including the incredible @brad.lander ). @disney and @abc , you can be better than this. And we’ll be here to remind you.
Rob and I were fortunate enough to visit the Maldives for our 10th anniversary. After this grueling year, being able to spend time together in a beautiful place — with such hardworking staff there to feed us, clean up after us, and make us feel welcome in general — was an obvious privilege. This was a trip to cherish. ❤️
I met @mikeheslin at a party.
He was among several of Rob’s college friends, most of whom I was getting to know for the first time. They were warm and loud and welcoming and hilarious. But Mike set the tone in a different way. There was something unassuming about him — something that made me feel even more at ease with this new group.
The parties kept coming, and for each occasion, there he was — as calming as the first time. As kind as ever.
Gradually, I learned he was a writer, too. I’d hear about what story he was as pitching to fancy contacts. What he was writing for himself to act in. Once I watched his original web series, it became clear that there was even more self-awareness, decency, and humility to Mike than I had first imagined. And to know him at all was to know that was saying a lot.
We grew a bit closer after we both lost our brothers early. And eventually, we touched base outside of parties. A double date with his incredibly sweet partner, @scottydynamo . A one-on-one brunch in West Hollywood. Occasional private messages about loss and healing. A friend I met through Rob. A friend to call my own.
I last saw Mike at a party.
His wedding, in November of last year. I watched his loved ones surprise him with a flash mob performance of “Dancing Queen,” one of his favorites. All that love, given back to him. All that tenderness, returned. It took my breath away. And it was one of the rare times I’ve cried from happiness.
The tears have been sadder, angrier ones since his passing this week. A sudden cardiac arrest, with no cause fully understood by his doctors. After days of hospitalization, he never woke up. Mike left behind countless people who saw him like I did, as well as — unsurprisingly — his own vital organs. So that others might live.
I wish I could see him at the next party. He deserved to be at the next party. He deserved thousands more.
But I’m so deeply grateful to have met him at that first one.
If you’d like to help Mike’s husband Nic and his family with the cost of Mike’s passing, there’s a link in my bio. Thank you.
Four weeks since the passing of my grandfather, Percy Anderson. Who died just four short months after my stepfather. I wish I’d had more time with my Poppy. But he made my life brighter while he was in it, and I’ll try to pay that forward.
I met Rovie as a preschooler, around a decade before my mom married him. It was a brief camping trip, and Mom’s work friend, “Tom,” showed me where he’d seen a deer. His wonder was infectious. I asked about him repeatedly into grade school.
Then he moved into my goddamn house when I was a teenager. He helped Mom paint my living room yellow (yellow!). I felt like I was under the microscope of a neat freak (“Can you put the suitcase in the bedroom closet?” I’ll ask my boyfriend now, about 30 seconds after we get home from vacation). And given my self-esteem back then, *any* criticism from Rovie, including the gentle kind – or the blunt kind, which was also his way sometimes – left me overwhelmed.
But there was one hard talk we had that stood out for making me feel the opposite. We were having a chat about my grades, which had faltered, or were threatening to. He said something to the effect of: Once you get things together, “you’re gonna take off.”
He extended his hand into the air as he said it. Me, launching. Me, flying. I didn’t know he saw me that way. I certainly didn’t.
It took me years to internalize that vision. But in the in-between, I still kept going back to that conversation. After making a big mistake. After celebrating a new victory. “You’re gonna take off.” Words like a blanket around me, or a cape if I squinted.
And in the in-between, he gave me other gifts. Endless book suggestions. Eyes on every page of the novel I began before college. Countless trips to his beloved Big Bowman Lake – his happiest place, and now one of my happiest, too. Excitement over my accomplishments. Food cooked for me, and restaurant bills paid for, even into adulthood. “I love you,” with every farewell. Too many Christmas gifts to carry back to my apartment, every December. A happy, healthy mother, who endured chemotherapy with his help. The list goes on. It will continue to go on.
I hate that it will go on without him. I dearly, desperately miss my stepdad.
But I am so, so grateful that he helped me take off.
Today is about standing up to fight fascism. Anti-Semitism. Misogyny. Racism. Transphobia. Climate change. Rampant gun violence. Ableism. Classism. And cruelty.
The endless, bottomless cruelty.
And as much as I know what I’m voting against, it helps to remember what I’m voting *for.* For too long, the Republican Party’s barrage of attacks against human rights and even common decency have shortened our attention spans and withered our moral imaginations. All we tend to remember is the fight to keep the crumbs we have. There’s been little time to dream.
And what a waste that’s been. It’s time, I believe, to imagine more — and to vote *on offense.* To demand a society that aggressively empowers each and every voter to make their voice heard. To celebrate, protect, and warmly embrace religious minorities. To treat women with compassion, and to offer grace to people with pregnancies. To let racial minority groups live, exist, and pursue happiness in peace. To offer understanding — real understanding — to trans people and their queer siblings, whose lives we can make longer with our love and more joyful with just treatment. To heal this planet, our only home, and invest in available innovations to offset lethal emissions and ensure safe, healthy lives for those most at risk of suffering climate-related disasters. To make public spaces — especially schools for children — areas where the specter of gun violence is a nightmare of the past alone. To provide generous accessibility to disabled citizens as a priority, not an afterthought. To offer affordable housing, debt relief, robust food programs, subsidized medical care and social security, and other measures aimed at treating struggling people with dignity. To be a country that cares.
That endlessly, earnestly cares.
Going to the polls repeatedly to keep the country’s cruelest hands off the wheel is the best way to fight for that better society. We deserve more than crumbs of a compassionate country. And voting is how we cook.
See you in the kitchen, chef.
