Retired coach and financial marketing exec, Spiritual companion, Outside adventurer. Living gratefully.
DC-Baltimore, USA
Joined February 2010
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Gerri Leder retweeted
Democrats are poised to win back the Senate — sending a Methodist pastor, a Presbyterian seminarian, a Muslim doctor, and a Catholic Native American to Washington while reelecting a Jewish Southerner in Georgia.
This is America at its best.
Gerri Leder retweeted
NEW from me: The National Association of Evangelicals (along with several other religious groups) are now joining the USCCB in condemning Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth’s plans to publicly execute Nidal Malik Hasan, also saying doing so promotes a “culture of death.”
Gerri Leder retweeted
URGENT RECORDING BELOW: Despite MAGA liars claiming that James Talarico was a patient at Lindner Center of Hope in Ohio, and allegedly recording an employee stating that he was, I just got off the phone with the Lindner Center and they have confirmed that the whole story is a Giant LIE.
Listen Below:
Gerri Leder retweeted
Ossoff: Each time Mike has called himself a trucker tonight, you'd think he's cruising down 85 behind the wheel. This is a congressman's son who inherited a seat in Congress, who now runs his daddy's trucking company, who voted seven times for the war in Iran, who voted for the tariffs, who voted to cut your health care — all so he could give a tax break to data center developers and some of the wealthiest people in the country. His office has been in cahoots with some of the most notorious white supremacists in America. He's already brought disgrace to our state.
But I am so grateful to Georgians for investing the trust in me to represent Georgia in the Senate. I've stood up to the drug companies, to the big tech companies, and to the insurance companies who are denying us the care that we need when we need it. And I humbly ask for your continued support in this election.
Gerri Leder retweeted
Neiman Marcus closed its downtown Dallas flagship yesterday. The store played a notable role in the history of desegregation in Dallas during the 1960s.
Previously, Black shoppers across the US could enter department stores, but they weren't allowed to try on clothes before purchasing without adhering to certain conditions. For instance, they had to try on clothes over their clothes, put on protective covers when trying on hats, or weren't allowed to make returns once they purchased clothes and brought them home. These policies stemmed from the racist fear that white customers would refuse merchandise previously worn by Black shoppers.
The downtown Neiman Marcus flagship was one of the first major Dallas businesses that broke with these practices. In 1961, the company desegregated its Zodiac Room, a swanky restaurant frequented by Dallas elites. Neiman Marcus later welcomed Black shoppers without restrictions. These victories were achieved through the efforts of Civil Rights activists, along with support from Neiman Marcus president Stanley Marcus, who was an early advocate for desegregation in Dallas. The Neiman Marcus store manager purportedly warned Marcus that he would ruin his business — and indeed, some shoppers closed their accounts — but he stuck with his decision.
At the time of the flagship's closure, the Main Street store had been open for 112 years.
Gerri Leder retweeted
🚨 The Champs Elysee is completely FULL
This is unbelievable
The people have France have turned out in their hundreds of thousands to see Pope Leo XIV, the atmosphere is electric
Gerri Leder retweeted
I kept hearing that Pope Leo XIV was “far left,” and for a while I assumed there must be some truth to it.
Then I started actually listening to him.
Not clips. Not political commentary. Not somebody telling me what I was supposed to think about him. His speeches. His words. His teaching.
And I have completely changed my opinion of him.
On immigration, he has acknowledged that a country has the right to control its borders. But he does not stop there. He has also told immigrants that entering another country comes with responsibilities. Learn the language. Respect the laws. Learn the customs. Participate in the life of the community.
That struck me because it is neither “open borders” nor a rejection of the immigrant. It is order and responsibility alongside human dignity.
Then there is abortion.
Pope Leo has been absolutely clear that the right to life begins at conception and continues until natural death. In his encyclical, he specifically named induced abortion and euthanasia among choices the Church considers gravely wrong.
And now, as he prepares to go to France, where abortion has been placed in the constitution and assisted dying has advanced into law, the central theme of his visit is essentially a defense of human life: “That the world may have life.” (AP News)
Then listen to what he tells young people.
Stop being afraid of commitment.
Stop being afraid of your vocation.
Stop being afraid of marriage.
When speaking to hundreds of thousands of young people in Spain, he congratulated couples preparing for marriage and told them plainly: “You don’t have to be afraid to get married and start a family.”
In a culture constantly telling young adults to delay marriage, delay children, chase themselves first and keep every option open forever, hearing the Pope tell young people that marriage and family are something beautiful enough to embrace instead of fear hit me hard. (National Catholic Register)
The more I listen to Pope Leo, the more ridiculous our political labels start to look.
Borders matter.
Laws matter.
The unborn matter.
Migrants matter.
Marriage matters.
Families matter.
Human dignity matters.
None of those things cancel the others out.
That is Catholicism.
I thought I had Pope Leo figured out before I really listened to him.
I was wrong.
And honestly, the more I hear from him, the more I love this Pope.
Gerri Leder retweeted
Mother Teresa was asked what she would say to someone who doubted Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Her answer: “Pray.” Then came the question, “What if someone doesn’t know how?” She answered, “I will teach him. We learn to pray by praying.”
Gerri Leder retweeted
GOOGLE LETS YOUR GMAIL STORAGE FILL UP WITH YEARS OF JUNK.
I hit 13.7GB out of 15GB and was almost ready to pay for more storage.
Then I found a way to free up space in under 20 minutes — without deleting a single important email.
Here are the 5 steps I used:
👇
Gerri Leder retweeted
Pritzker: I have to worry about whether people can eat lettuce or blueberries off a grocery shelf because Trump is doing away with food inspections.
I have to track measles outbreaks because the president put a madman in charge of vaccine recommendations.
I have to monitor the movements of ICE agents because he handed guns to people who couldn’t pass a background check, frankly, to work in an animal shelter.
I have to find money that we don’t have to fight problems that didn’t exist before Donald Trump. It’s the reality of being a governor in America today. I’m not the only one.
Gerri Leder retweeted
The full scale of the Himalayan disaster is only now becoming clear | More than 90,000 people are estimated to be directly affected by the Himalayan landslide and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the Red Cross said on Friday, as aid officials voiced fears of further flooding. "We believe that at least 93,000 people have been affected and are in great need," David Fisher, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Nepal said. "We're of course very concerned about the secondary flood," he added. Full Report Here 👇
ow.ly/P0mP50ZGrxt
#HimalayanDisaster #RedCross #Nepal #NaturalDisaster #HumanitarianCrisis
Gerri Leder retweeted
Americans keep a second refrigerator in the garage.
Not a small one. A full sized refrigerator, standing in a garage, usually older than the one in the kitchen, usually the one they used to have in the kitchen.
I asked a man why he didn't just get rid of the old one when he bought the new one.
He looked at me like I'd suggested drowning a dog.
There's a hierarchy in there and it took me a few houses to work it out.
The kitchen fridge is for food.
The garage fridge is for drinks, overflow, anything in bulk, and a category of items I can only describe as things that are not ready yet.
At one house the garage fridge had eleven cans of one thing, a turkey, and a half gallon of milk that a woman told me was "for the dog" without further explanation.
The freezer part is worse. The garage freezer contains meat from an event nobody remembers. Every American I've asked has something in there they can't fully identify and won't throw out.
One guy said he has venison from a hunt in 2021 and he does not hunt.
He said a friend gave it to him. The friend has moved to Arizona.
He is not going to eat it and he is not going to throw it away and it has now outlasted the friendship geographically.
Then a woman told me something I hadn't considered. She said when her parents downsized, the garage fridge was the hardest thing, because you can't move it and you can't sell it and nobody wants it, but it's the one that had the popsicles in it when they were kids.
The garage fridge is where the popsicles were.
I did not know that. Now I keep noticing that every American I mention it to says the same thing back to me within one sentence.
What's in your garage fridge that you cannot identify.
Gerri Leder retweeted
Kelly: The military does not need more testosterone. It needs better leadership. And that starts with the secretary of defense. It also starts with the commander in chief.
He's the one that hired Pete hegseth, who is the most unqualified individual we've ever had in this position by far. They're firing the wrong people. Pete Hegseth is firing people because they're women and they're black. The President should fire Pete hegseth.
Gerri Leder retweeted
“I came without a speech, because I’m hungry.
“I’m hungry for justice, hungry for authentic charity, hungry for a Church that truly knows how to open the doors, welcome, receive everyone, where there is love for all and where no one is an enemy.”
— Pope Leo XIV at lunch with 200 migrants, refugees, and homeless persons.
Gerri Leder retweeted
Studies now present a striking picture of what happens when private equity firms acquire hospitals and nursing homes: predictable increases in harm and deaths. One landmark study shows: patient deaths up about 11% after such acquisitions.
Gerri Leder retweeted
Finding God in the Conflicts of Daily Life by @LederMark #31DayswithIgnatius ignatianspirituality.com/fin…
Gerri Leder retweeted
Explainer on the Vatican’s July 2 declaration of excommunications concerning the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX): what happened, why it is rare and how it reflects Pope Leo XIV’s concern for unity.
@CNN
Gerri Leder retweeted
In 1958, a divorced single mom got fired from her secretary job for being a bad typist.
21 years later, she sold her side hustle for $47.5 million.
And her teenage helper would go on to help invent MTV.
Her name was Bette Nesmith Graham.
Before she became a millionaire inventor, she was a struggling single mother in Dallas with no college degree and very few options.
She married young during WWII.
By 22, she was divorced, raising a son alone, and trying to survive on secretary jobs.
She eventually became an executive secretary at Texas Bank & Trust.
There was just one problem:
She was a terrible typist.
The bank had recently installed new IBM electric typewriters that made correcting mistakes almost impossible.
One typo could mean retyping an entire page.
Her son later remembered watching her sit at the kitchen table in “tears of panic,” terrified she’d lose her job.
But Bette had another skill.
She painted holiday window displays at the bank for extra money.
One day, while painting over a mistake on a window, she had a realization:
“An artist never erases mistakes. They paint over them.”
That night, she went home and mixed a white liquid in her kitchen blender using tempera paint.
She poured it into a nail polish bottle.
The next morning, she used it to cover typing errors.
It worked.
For five years, her boss never noticed.
Other secretaries did.
Soon, women from offices across the city were asking for bottles.
Bette started making batches at home with help from her teenage son, Michael, and his friends.
She called the product “Mistake Out.”
Then came the twist.
In 1958, she accidentally typed the name of her side business onto a company letter.
Her boss fired her immediately.
It became the best thing that ever happened to her.
She renamed the product Liquid Paper and focused on it full-time.
Orders exploded.
By the late 1960s, she was selling over a million bottles a year.
By the 1970s, 25 million bottles annually.
Then she did something even more unusual:
She built one of the most progressive workplaces in America.
Her company offered:
• child care
• continuing education
• leadership roles for women
• jobs for disabled workers
• integrated staffing
This was decades before most corporations even considered those ideas.
In 1979, with failing health, Bette sold Liquid Paper to Gillette for $47.5 million.
Six months later, she died at age 56.
Half her fortune went to women-focused charities.
The other half went to her son.
That son was Michael Nesmith.
Yes the same Michael Nesmith from The Monkees.
And with the money from Liquid Paper royalties, he funded a small experimental cable TV project called PopClips.
It featured short films set to music.
PopClips became the direct prototype for MTV.
So one woman’s “typing mistake” helped create:
• a multimillion-dollar company
• one of America’s most progressive workplaces
• and the blueprint for the modern music video era
Bette Graham proved something her old boss never understood:
The mistake wasn’t the failure.
It was the opportunity.
