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Michelle Strausbaugh

@behindasurface.bsky.social
107 followers 241 following 44 posts

Living the horror and wonder lurking behind the usual surface of health. I play with words in bed. Book and tea hoarder cliche. Write erratically at behindthesurface.com

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Reposted by Michelle Strausbaugh
Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Well that sucks. Did Alabama get any increases in federal funding and any other departments or areas? Or did we just lose massively all around? www.al.com/news/2026/09...
al.com
Alabama loses $3B in federal funding, and here’s what it covered
Alabama has lost billions in federal funding since January 2025. See what areas the cuts impact.
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strawberry garfield @bbburgerrr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
mohammed and his family are still struggling and it’s honestly only getting worse. i worry so much for him and im always relieved when i get a message from him that he’s still alive. today especially if you’ve got a couple bucks to spare… chuffed.org/project/help...
chuffed.org
Help Mohammed and Family Survive
My name is Summer and I'm organizing this fundraiser for my friend Mohammed Abu Ghanem in Gaza. Mohammed and I became friends after I learned about the Gaza Surf Club and I wanted to know the status o...
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Reposted by Michelle Strausbaugh
Street Roots @streetroots.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
🗞️ A new issue of Street Roots is out now. Read stories on what to expect at the upcoming Oregon legislative session, the October Arts for All calendar, Made in Old Town records subpoenaed, and more. Purchase a newspaper from your local vendor: www.streetroots.org/vendors/
Cover of Street Roots October 7, 2026 issue. An illustration shows the Oregon State Capitol building constructed as a constellation of stars as an onlooker looks to it through a telescope. Text also made of star constellations says, "Approaching the lege" and below in plain text it says, "What to expect with 100 days before Oregon lawmakers convene."
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Wow! Don't just take a bite of this piece. Gobble it up and then savor it again. It's short but wallops you.
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Shana Ross @shanaross.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I hate when my most cynical dystopian imagination remains relevant. From @smallwondersmag.com , last year: smallwondersmag.com/piece/inters...
smallwondersmag.com
Interstellar Catalog: Death Penalty - Small Wonders
On this world they still have the death penalty. / If found guilty of certain crimes, you / are sent into space, alone in a capsule.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Last year not a single refugee fleeing religious persecution was admitted to the US.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The last line of this flash CNF piece will punch you right in the solar plexus with its compassion: inaflashlitmag.substack.com/p/issue-19-k...
inaflashlitmag.substack.com
Issue #19: "Keep Your Voice Soft" by Robin LaVoie
October 2026, COURAGE
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Reposted by Michelle Strausbaugh
The Sick Times @thesicktimes.org · 23/09/2026
The Telegraph recently published an article about "sickfluencers" titled “How having a disability became cool." We've republished a piece by Julia Doubleday at The Gauntlet pushing back against the article, which she calls "absurd on its face." thesicktimes.org/2026/09/21/c...
A young woman stands by a staircase with a backdrop of tree canopy.  She wears a white, high quality mask and has long dark hair. She wears a teal sweatshirt and black pants. The text reads, “The Gauntlet x The Sick Times. COVID-19 — not TikTok — is disabling young women “Sickfluencers” are symptoms of a mass disabling event. By Julia Doubleday.” “The country is sicker than it’s ever been before” — now why would that be? Six years after COVID-19 hit, four years after the virus has been allowed to run totally rampant without mitigation, the country is sicker than it’s ever been before, but we can’t come up with any reason why that would be other than “women be faking?”
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Sue Poncin @sueponcin.com · 17/09/2026
Hope looks like reading a book to feel less alone 🌈 Madelleine Muller sums up how I feel living with Long Covid: “If healthy person jumped into my body, they would have an immediate panic attack and believe they were about to die because that’s what it feels like.”
Cover of the book 
What is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Like? 
Patient & Caregiver Perspectives

The cover art looks like blue, green, and yellow water flowing together with the title in white print on a dark blue rectangular strip near the top.
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Joe Cirincione @joecirin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The last U.S. soldier has finally left Iraq. They never should have been there in the first place. $3 Trillion and 550,000 deaths later, we can say with certainty that the war was a catastrophic blunder. joecirincione.substack.com/p/we-warned-...
joecirincione.substack.com
We Warned You. The Iraq War Was a Disaster
On September 30, the last US soldiers left Iraq. They never should have invaded.
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Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Someone came out of the yarn room
Black cat with a yarn label around shoulders
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
@councilorgreen.bsky.social: FDR: "They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred" They hate you cuz you're effective! Got one of these outside my window. 🤮 Will Billboard Attacks Be Enough to Oust Portland's Progressives? www.portlandmercury.com/news/will-bi...
portlandmercury.com
Will Billboard Attacks Be Enough to Oust Portland's Progressives? - Portland Mercury
It isn’t uncommon for big business interests to throw cash at elections in hopes of moving the electorate—and not just at the federal level. Amid growing wealth inequality and ongoing affordability cr...
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I just read this and wow! It really packs a punch!
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Mitch Green @councilorgreen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Disappointing outcome for the Zenith ISQ transfer deal but we have one more opportunity today to address safety & fuels at the CEI Hub. Tell Council we need clear, actionable language, a directive to redefine the use of “fuels” in the text & a data-driven approach to draw down the fuel at the Hub.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Excellent piece. There is a logic to why people do what they do that often makes sense when you sit down and listen to them. If we tell people their health is their responsibility rather than we are all a connected community, this is a perfectly rational outcome.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
You should be proud! This is such important reportage & best piece you've published. Our prisons really ARE "magnifying lenses for our social problems." And that picture with the line of cells and their walkers is gutting. #longcovid #mecfs
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"I killed a star today. She was a young woman, once full of dreams and hopes, who had been rotting in my kitchen for years." Wow, ain't that an opener to a piece of memoir?! Beautiful, heartbreaking. www.commonhousemag.com/issue-7/dyin...
commonhousemag.com
Dying Star | Common House Magazine
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
So loved this story! Loved the Middle Eastern fable with so much subtext and metaphor. Loved getting out of the Euro-centric MFA bubble.
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#MEAction Network @meactnet.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Changes in guidance and science seem to have little impact on millions of devastated lives. It’s a shocking social crisis playing out behind closed doors...there has seldom been a stronger case for a public inquiry." @georgemonbiot.bsky.social discusses #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
LOL -- I just posted that there was a great poem in that Wired story! And here we are!
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"It turns out the gravity of the planet itself combined with the rate at which it spins naturally caused the moon to collapse on top of it.” There's a great poem somewhere in that quote.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I know, right? I want bathrooms where Barry White makes me feel good, where we crack jokes and swing from the stalls together before washing our hands and heading back to our computers. Those bathrooms would rock.
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Epiphany @epiphanylit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
David Sheynberg brings us gay longing, failed Broadway boys, and klezmer band intruige in “Unveiling,” our latest piece of fiction. Experience the “omnipresent ache” that resonated with our editors: www.epiphanymagazine.org/features/unv...
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AGNI @agnimagazine.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
🔥 NEW at AGNI Online 🔥 I’m writing this because of a translator’s note that’s got me worked up, a paratext that appears in the Korean edition of Torrey Peters’s novel "Detransition, Baby." ~from "Honoring the Opaque: Strategies for (Not) Translating Queerness" by Hoyoung Moon
buff.ly
Mihalis Katsaros in the Craving Clutch of the Moon
Sometimes we wake with a cave in our chest, a dwelling we call Look here with me and weep. Sometimes we stumble upon an egg in the street, a walrus egg, though that barely seems possible.
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Dishsoap Quarterly @dishsoapquart.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
If u missed this earlier this week be sure to give it a read :)
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Sundress Publications @sundresspub.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This week on The Wardrobe, Guest Editor EMDASH selected pieces from Nada Samih-Rotondo’s All Water Has Perfect Memory published by Jaded Ibis Press. sundressblog.com/2026/09/15/the-war…
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
What I loved about this piece is that it reminds us that literature is not "useful"; its purpose is to give us pleasure. Why is that not enough?
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"So it was a shock when Michigan denied her application for Medicaid benefits last year after she lost private insurance. Worse yet, it came down to an IT error, according to an attorney who helped Noon overturn the denial." kffhealthnews.org/health-indus...
kffhealthnews.org
A Deloitte-Run System Denied Medicaid Benefits for Michigan’s Disabled. Now Trump’s Law Piles On. - KFF Health News
Complex computer systems that decide whether people, including the disabled, get Medicaid benefits have a history of errors. Now changes to comply with Trump’s signature tax and domestic policy law ar...
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"Patients with disabilities have long struggled with administrative hoops, blunders, and confusion when trying to qualify for federally subsidized health coverage because of their illness." www.thelundreport.org/content/canc...
thelundreport.org
A cancer survivor hoped to work — then she lost her medicaid disability coverage
Public aid experts say disability cases like Taya Hailstone's are an indication that states aren’t ready for the onslaught of Medicaid changes in the works. As a result, they say, more people will be ...
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Over 126,000 Oregonians have lost SNAP this year, tens of 1000s Medicaid, but @wweek.com uses a Republican legislator & Cato Institute hack to make it sound like the problem is ODHS incompetence. The ONE Benefit system IS a problem--making it too hard to apply! Shameful!
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Absolutely my best writing time.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Really useful reporting from @alexbaumhardt.bsky.social that helps contextualize SNAP recipients as workers & companies they work for as the takers: oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2026/05/28/o...
oregoncapitalchronicle.com
Oregonians using SNAP benefits most frequently listed big grocery, retail companies as employer • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon’s public universities and Amazon and its affiliates were also among those most listed as employers on SNAP income verification forms.
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The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 22/05/2026
“My clothes— / save those strung / on the line, four more / days to dry— / do not warm / my soul.”
thebaffler.com
the thing between the wall and my body | Ahmed Douma
Written from Badr Prison in 2023, “the thing between the wall and my body” traces the physics of incarceration.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Beautiful piece by Alex Foley in @thenewarab.bsky.social . I've had the same thought. All we ever see is Gazans on their worst day, not a typical one, simply living life. www.newarab.com/opinion/dont...
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The New Arab @thenewarab.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
A Palestinian poet in Gaza spent two years rescuing thousands of books from destroyed libraries and universities, restoring them with volunteers to open the Gaza Strip's first library since the war began. The Phoenix Library houses over 6,000 books salvaged from rubble and donated by families:
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Even the National Association of Evangelicals oppose this as anti-family values: www.propublica.org/article/trum...
propublica.org
The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families
A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities who...
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
From "May Day [1892]" by William Morris from his Chants for Socialists www.marxists.org/archive/morr...
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Yep. Straight out of the decades-long neoliberal playbook to encourage privatization by making your interaction w/government intolerable. Thomas Frank talked about this in his book The Wrecking Crew nearly 20 years ago.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
The implosion of American healthcare---decades in the making---is here: youtu.be/7mdIwgwBBgY?...
youtu.be
“Barbaric” and "Humiliating:" Americans Are Waiting Days for a Hospital Bed | Amanpour and Company
YouTube video by Amanpour and Company
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Great news! Tangentially, what sort of coalition building could we do w/other patient groups? It's not just #mecfs patients who struggle w/the sensory environment of EDs. Elderly, neurodivergent, etc.
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United Farm Workers @ufw.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
"Fidel" works under a UFW contract in the Oxnard area and is known for his speed. He earns piece rate and shares "This works in the radishes is called 'Tops and Tails.' When I go top speed like this, I can earn $30 per hour." #WeFeedYou
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Mitch Green @councilorgreen.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Demanding a transparent, public process where Portlanders know what they get for their money is not 'playing politics.' It's good governance and fiscal stewardship. It's deeply unserious to suggest that the only thing that matters is locking up seven votes on council, by locking the public out.
oregonlive.com
Kotek signs bill for Moda Center project, puts pressure on City Council: ‘Not a time to play politics’
The state will contribute up to $365 million toward Moda Center renovations if the city and Multnomah County approve their own pieces of the package.
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Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 @helenbranswell.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Motivated by the devastation the Spanish flu inflicted on WW1 troops, the US military was key in the development of #flu vaccine. Keeping troops battle ready is critical, which makes Hegseth's decision to drop mandatory flu shots ill-advised, Paul Friedrichs writes. www.statnews.com/2026/04/23/m...
statnews.com
Dropping the flu vaccine requirement puts U.S. military readiness at risk
Since the 1918 pandemic, the military has acknowledged the threat of influenza. Now that’s changing.
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Michelle Strausbaugh @behindasurface.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Just donated my widow's mite to @meactnet.bsky.social 's Emergency Dept guidelines fund. When I was at my sickest, most dehydrated, I could not tolerate a visit to the ER. How many #mecfs patients have died because they couldn't either?
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Stephen Moran. @moranstephen1000.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
“In Beirut, we hear explosions that kill our neighbours and endure the relentless hum of the Israeli drones... I hear… see this war, but I’m not covering it. What good would it do? You, dear reader, don’t give a damn.” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Charles Glass · Diary: Beirut, Now and Then
Lebanon’s civil war did not end in 1990. It assumed new forms and it isn’t over yet. Like my colleagues, I returned...
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Epiphany @epiphanylit.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
We’re teaming up with the good people of Eckleburg Review and @splitlipthemag.bsky.social for an open mic night to benefit Immigrant Defense Fund on Thursday, May 14 from 6-9 PM at Starr Bar. RSVP through the link in our bio—let’s stand up for a safe, equal NYC!
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Amy Maxmen, PhD @amymaxmen.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Fascinating interview!
Molly: For me, the Bund and Zionism represent these diametrically opposite answers to the question “What do you do with how fucking racist Europe is?” The Zionists were like: “You can’t do anything about it. These people just are racist. They just hate you. The only thing that you can do is you can leave, and you can get out of their claws.” Whereas the Bund was like: “Yes, it’s hideously racist here, but also it’s not genetic. It’s not that these Europeans are fundamentally evil. It’s because of these systems that blame Jews to take the heat off of the autocracy or off of the capitalists or off of the ruler. And we can actually fight alongside Russians or Poles or French or German people for a better world.”
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Bolts @boltsmag.org · 17/04/2026
When formerly incarcerated people are able to obtain work, it tends to be a low-paying position, keeping them well below the poverty line. “The No. 1 contributor to recidivism is poverty,” says a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative.
boltsmag.org
Budget Cuts Threaten Oregon Program for Helping People Get Jobs After Prison
The state had recently expanded the novel program for providing one-on-one career coaching, job fairs behind bars, and support for people after release.
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