From the vault: The hitchin’ post

By on February 15, 2017 in From the vault

As seen in a San Francisco restaurant window, February, 2017.

[First published June 19, 2008. A little something about love.]

Fourteen years ago in July, I was on my first date with the woman who would eventually become my life partner and the mother of my children. How we first met is a lesbian cliché par excellence. No, it wasn’t on the softball field. Remember, the beloved is a femmy theater type. The other lesbian cliché. Right! A Women’s Studies class! (The colorful details surrounding that auspicious meeting are best saved for another time, or perhaps The Book, which, if I don’t just start referring to it somewhere it may never exist.) Now back to the business at hand, which is peeking in on our first date.

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What do do? Part 1: Macro

By on February 7, 2017 in Baba familias
dawn over cityscape

Dawn over Oakland, CA, January 2017.

It’s a new day, and way too many of us still feel super disoriented.  After “What the heck?!” or other synonyms for “heck,” we many of us are turning to “What to do?” Or just plain doing, in multiple directions, every day, with a nagging sense of disorientation. Herewith I offer the best answer I can muster under the circumstances, in two parts: What to do? Part 1: Macro, today; and What to do? Part 2: Micro, tomorrow.

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25 Things I Learned at Creating Change in Philly

By on January 31, 2017 in Baba familias, Metacommentary

With thanks to comrade West Philly Mama.

2,316 words | 10 min. read

Thanks the combo of parent + full-time employed person + I’m no longer crazy enough to go without sleep, my processing speed is like that of one of those old putty-colored, 128k Macintoshes, circa the mid-1980s. So! The notes below are what I finally compiled from last weekend, i.e. the post-inaugural one, as opposed from this past weekend, i.e. the most recent one following our first week of the bull-in-the-china-shop  attempted coup d’état (and if you need any convincing on that score, read Yonatan Zunger in Medium, thank you Kelly Wickham Hurst).

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Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a grumpy night

By on January 20, 2017 in Baba familias

Thanks to the fortuitous location of the annual National LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change conference, I find myself in Philadelphia, birthplace of American democracy, on the day this struggling, noble experiment will take arguably its greatest body blow.

(Last night in a call to my kids I said that today democracy would be developing the biggest zit in its 240-year US history*, and my Know It All Brother-In-Law later quipped that such a statement was an insult to zits world-wide.)

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Children will listen

By on January 9, 2017 in Baba familias

I “collect” specialized CA licence plates, and this one remains my favorite.

 

My sister-in-law, with whom I co-house, is a fundraiser for Democratic, pro-choice, women candidates. So naturally, elections in general are big deals in her house. And an election featuring the first-ever Democratic, pro-choice, woman presidential candidate? Well. She plastered an “I’m ready for Hillary!” sticker on the bumper of her electric vehicle days after Barak Obama was elected to a second term. If there were an “I was frickin’ born ready for Hillary!” sticker, that would have been on the bumper instead.

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