Maggie Mertens
@maggiemertens.bsky.social
Journalist Author: BETTER FASTER FARTHER, 2024, @algonquinbooks.bsky.social Radio Host: The Forecast Seattle's Weekly Women's Sports Show www.kvru.org/shows/the-forecast/ Co-Founder: https://www.talkscratch.com/ Professional laugh-er Contains Multitudes
NEW: wrote about why it’s so problematic that many of the new women’s basketball documentaries are erasing Black women’s names, greatness, labor, & contributions from the history of the sport.
the basketball documentaries erasing black women from the sport
this trend is a real problem
thefrankiedlc.news
We love having @avapwhl.bsky.social on the show. Especially when she helps us understand complex things, like wth life insurance is and what it has to do with the PWHL 😂
365HockeyGirl | PWHL@avapwhl.bsky.social · 2d agoI joined The Forecast Seattle Women's Sports show to chat about Mark Walter and the Torrent! Always so fun to hang out with @maggiemertens.bsky.social ! www.kvru.org/shows/the-fo...
“‘The biggest freaks in the world for me are my favorite people, like you, like me,’ she told Andy Warhol and Maura Moynihan in Interview magazine in 1984. She rejected Dolly exceptionalism and we should try to as well…”
Natalie Weiner@natalieweiner.bsky.social · last wk.my debut for the @newrepublic.com! on Dolly, and how she was always entirely herself even in a world that wasn't ready for it newrepublic.com/article/2147...
I was interviewed for this piece on right-wing extremism & the WNBA, which aired on NPR's All Things Considered today. You can listen here:
Amid rising threats, a WNBA team calls in experts on violent extremism
The WNBA's popularity has risen in recent years, but so have threats and abuse directed at its players. One team is taking a novel approach to this, by partnering with national security specialists.
npr.org
Dolly Parton lived with a gay man for years. She was a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ folks and a philanthropic champion of childhood literacy and education, vaccines, and the black people in her community. "We don't know what her politics were"? Please. She lived them. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/a...
Dolly Parton’s Cautious Politics Resulted in Widespread Affection
Bipartisan tributes demonstrated the success of the singer’s long-running effort to stay out of party politics in a sharply divided country.
nytimes.com
Was gonna call @rahawahaile.bsky.social "Scratch's resident Appalachia expert" to introduce this piece, but really Scratch is such an embarrassment of riches when it comes to our backgrounds and things we care about and cover. In any case, read Rahawa on Dolly because it's beautiful.
Rahawa Haile@rahawahaile.bsky.social · last wk.I wrote about Dolly and Appalachia for this week’s Scratch. www.talkscratch.com/dolly-parton...
I always liked that she chose to be her unapologetic self in the face of a classist, sexist culture that pathologizes and humiliates women who look like her
Natalie Weiner@natalieweiner.bsky.social · 2w agocritical to remember that for a lot of dolly's adult life she was a punchline - the reverence is recent. nevertheless she persisted etc
When the Gatlinburg Wildfires happened in 2016, Dolly gave impacted families $1,000/month to help them get back on their feet. This included my father-in-law, who lost everything in the fire. Dolly gave children in TN free books each month, from birth to the age of five. She was a goddamn saint.
This is the letter kids got at the end of Dolly’s Imagination Library. I defy you to read this and not cry.
Headline says "at least 1 in 4" but the finding was NINETY-ONE PERCENT of NFL players' brains donated from 2016–2021 had CTE. Presumably people were more likely to donate if they had known dementia, so the real number is hard to extrapolate. But, horrifying. 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/u...
This reporting is a love letter to my community, & to the skill & thought that organizers bring to every action. I come from a movement & organizing background, before I was ever a journalist. I think you can see shadows of that in this story. 💕
Frankie de la Cretaz@thefrankiedlc.news · 2w agoFor @xtramagazine.com, I spoke to organizers of the trans joy rally outside Barclays before the Liberty/Fever game, as well as the organizers of the “Trans People Belong in Sports” sign distribution inside the arena: “We believe that fans made this league, so fans can lead the way.”
If JKR is so anti "men in women's sports" why is Quidditch co-ed?????????
"You don't want to protect or promote women's sports, you just think trans women are men if they want to participate alongside cisgender women. That's what these columns boil down to." Yes, @sydney-bauer.com !!!! www.sydney-bauer.com/just-call-me...
Just call me a man already and get it over with
I'm angry. I hate writing when I'm angry. I think it makes me too emotional, too attached to copy and most importantly makes my brain move too fast having ideas pop up and die before I can even get t...
sydney-bauer.com
if you're looking for some seattle sports and culture media from... another source... player.captivate.fm/episode/41e2...
Real Conversations About Washington State Initiative I-638
Quickly and easily listen to The Forecast for free!
player.captivate.fm
Quit asking Reo to explain shit to you on your show (unpaid) and just go listen to their show. K? K.
Reo Eveleth@reveleth.com · 2w agoIf you're confused by the conversations around sex testing and trans athletes and all that, I made a podcast that traces the history of this debate from the very beginning. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts: www.tested-podcast.com/listen/
Apropos of literally all the discourse, the latest ep of The Forecast is out today. We dove into WA state ballot initiative 638 - and took the time to interview multiple folks about the possible consequences should it pass: player.captivate.fm/episode/41e2...
Real Conversations About Washington State Initiative I-638
Quickly and easily listen to The Forecast for free!
player.captivate.fm
Turning Point USA aligning themselves with Cunningham should answer any lingering questions abt the impact of her statements & the groups who are rallying behind her. Somehow, I still don't think people will wake up to the reality bc transphobia is still an acceptable form of bigotry to most people.
"I’m not mad about the gendered way a woman’s (nearly) invisible labor has resulted in the aggrandization of yet another Great Literary Man (OK, maybe I’m a little mad). What I am is jealous. Because I, like most women writers, will never have an Ina." — @maggiemertens.bsky.social at the new Scratch
I Want a Literary Wife
But the economy won't support it.
talkscratch.com
you guys... The Mariners.... You guys..... Why is there no mercy rule in MLB?
Casey Drottar@caseydrottar.bsky.social · 2w agoThe Brewers are up 22-0 over Seattle, and one of those runs came because Julio Rodríguez caught the second out and threw it into the stands thinking it was the third.
also HALF the women drafted into the new women's baseball league ain't been paid, don't have contracts, have barely heard from the league they're supposed to play for
Frankie de la Cretaz@thefrankiedlc.news · 2w ago48 hours before the start of the season, WPBL announced a broadcast deal with ESPN. The only problem? ESPN Select, where the games were airing, wasn’t available for commercial streaming, meaning bars that had planned to stream the games couldn’t legally do so. defector.com/the-new-wome...
The very rocky start to the WPBL has been so frustrating as a baseball fan, women's sports fan, and journalist. So glad @thefrankiedlc.news and @jenramose.online got to report on this: defector.com/the-new-wome...
The New Women's Pro Baseball League Offers Hope—And Frustrations | Defector
For most women who play baseball in the United States, playing America’s pastime in a professional league has been little more than a dream. Yet for a select group of women, that dream is becoming a r...
defector.com
This part. This is the part. Instead of bringing research assistant wives out of the shadows and made this a paid work position we just decide the next *genius* will come along eventually... maybe when the economy changes and wives can afford not to work again.
Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · 2w ago"Wives should not be replacements for research assistants. What I need is an industry that takes this work seriously, even when women (even yes, mothers and/or wives) do it, so that writers can hire research assistants and still afford to feed their families."
This thread is so so so nice 🥹
Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 2w ago"Caro says he couldn’t have read every paper from LBJ’s time in The White House, because it would have taken him “six lifetimes,”.... I thought, well, he actually had two lifetimes, didn’t he? His and Ina’s. And I have less than one, really." www.talkscratch.com/i-want-a-lit...
