churchgoer

OH YEEAH! Big Saturday Night: I went to church. Well, a concert in a church.

I can't really explain what possessed me, except that I liked this sign, and I'd been curious about the church architecturally. It was built in 1725, was used as a prison during the revolutionary war, has a really old cemetery in the yard, and has a little preaching perch out front, on the street, with stairs to climb up to it.

The bells were amusing enough. I thought they'd be played by seniors, but it was a whole group (what do you call them, a band?) of teens. I got to sit in the balcony, on the organ bench, under all the big organ pipes, and check out the building relatively undisturbed. But then, there was a trick. The bells ended, and a teen choir started singed "God is in control." I got out quick.

There is one thing I miss about church, and that is that even the people with the bad voices get to sing. But clearly there's a lot I don't miss. Glad to have made it out unscathed.

self defense

I noticed yesterday at my gym that they're offering new self defense courses. My mind wandered back to the awesomeness that is self-defense training. I took classes about 15 years ago, before some solo traveling, at Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts (now the Center for Anti-Violence Education). Empowered is an overused word, but it was amazing to understand the power of your body and connect with it in a practical way. Parts of the training were terrifying, like learning to break out of a choke-hold, but the instructors and students were gentle with women who had strong reactions to some of the simulated attacks. For "graduation" we broke planks of wood with a karate chop. It made me feel very strong, and safer, and proud to have made an effort to learn how to protect myself.

But of course, self defense can be criminalized, as with the seven New Jersey lesbians charged with "gang assault" and attempted murder for fighting back when attacked. There's a demo this Monday in NYC demanding that the D.A. drop all remaining charges (some indictments been overturned by the appeals court).

Stop persecuting Renata, Patreese and Venice. They fought back to defend each other. Had they not fought back successfully, one or more of them might have been killed or raped. Are rape, death, or prison the only three options open to lesbians who are attacked on the street?

Protest Monday, March 2
noon - 1 p.m.
1 Hogan Place
Manhattan, NY
(corner Leonard and Centre Streets) (A, C, E & 6 trains to Canal St.)

For more info, e-mail: freenj4@yahoo.com

Related "defense" is that abovegroundpool friend and merit badge winner Susan Tipograph is Renata Hill's attorney.

Support this group of women on Monday; support women's safety every day!

runtlina, tranny cat

Some people like to argue that queers are bad because "it's just not natural." I don't particularly care about natural or not, but I always have known homo non-human animals, which makes it seems sorta, well, natural. Or at least widespread. My childhood dog, Beazy, and some barbers my mom worked with were the first queers I knew, and they made me think it couldn't be such a bad thing. The barbers made me wonder if queerness had some sort of relationship with obesity, but then Beazy wasn't heavy.

People have the same nature arguments against people who don't live as their born bio gender. They think that men "dressing up as women" are mocking women, and that women who want to live as men must hate women. Neither of these things really hold water. And they don't address all the in betweeners. (Is that what's meant by tween?) The animal kingdom can always be trusted to give insight.I live with a tranny that I picked up down by the railroad tracks. Her name is Runtlina (or Bolly). She is absolutely stunning, loves M.I.A.'s fashions and Bollywood music and dancing. She was way into the final, unexpected dance scene in Slumdog Millionaire, and excited again when the movie won best picture. She's a girl through and through, except that she was born a boy. Runtlina is a cat. Her purrs turn from pigeon noises to loud rolling Rs when I tell her that her hands and feet are small. Occasionally, when she's pushy, I think there's some privileged "boy" in there, but really she's just pushy.
Runtlina, Runtlina
Going hundred mile per hour
With your radio on
With your radio on

gorgeous

Don't tell the Beaconites, but sometimes I wish I lived in Newburgh. There's a forest in the middle of the city, beautiful old Main St. (Broadway), authentic Mexican food, a happenin' waterfront with an indie movie theater, and amazing architecture. When moving to the Hudson Valley, we looked at a house there: a view of the river, a walk to both Broadway and the river, across the street from a nice, quiet cemetery. The slumlord selling it and done a number on it, though, and it wasn't livable.Sometimes I wish I lived in Newburgh because commuters who do live there get to take the ferry across the river to the train. What a gorgeous** way to start one's day! I know from swimming in the river and from sailing on the Woody Guthrie that the view from the middle of the river is even more stunning than from the banks. Bannerman Island and Storm King can host your hazy morning daydreams.
As I've watched from the train platform as the ferry got stuck in the river ice in the past days, I've even thought it would be exciting to be caught on that boat in that ice. Being on the river every day,* I think, would ground me here, in this place.
*Aside one: Years back I participated in an Act Up demonstration against Coke on the Chelsea Piers. Coke was sponsoring a party for AIDS activists, pretending their own African employees weren't being denied health care. Besides the protesters on the pier, we had a little boat with a big banner going back and forth in the river, podunk Greenpeace style. The people who owned that boat used it to travel to work everyday, from one Manhattan location to another, floating around the island. Amazing that people live their lives that way, on open water, even in Manhattan.
**Aside two: Let me explain my use of "gorgeous." My friend Ron was a recovering heroin addict and had his share of awful experiences. Every day was a big struggle for him, and that fact made him revel all the more in the beautiful, the positive. When Ron said "gorgeous" he drew out the word, bent his knees, leaned back, and rolled his eyes to the sky. "Gooor jus." Ron said, "I threw some candy on the pavement and photographed it. G o r g e o u s." When I appreciate something, I like to take the time to appreciate it Ron style. Bend my knees, make it last.

Photos are from wmbraine

gender boot

Some things just don't need genders assigned to them. It irks me that short haircuts cost more for women than long hair haircuts cost for men. There's no reason that my last trip to Paris should have been filled with people chasing us down going "femme, femme" and pointing across the street. God forbid a woman consider purchasing men's clothes. I think, too, that people are more freaked out when you don't look particularly girly, but they suspect you might be a woman. It's like they have to defend something. If you look straight-ish, they can be comforted in the idea that you're trying to accomplish the Gap's much beloved "boyfriend look."

Sadly, it's not limited to Paris. Yesterday in New Paltz (the name of which drives my Dutch friend crazy, "It's New Platz, New PLATZ!" she protests) another, not-Dutch friend was challenged for trying on a "men's" shoe. This is in an outdoor sports store, where you think the guys working there are going to be a little laid back. But no. He insinuated that the shoe wouldn't fit because it was a men's shoe. I'm just not convinced. What kind of shoes or clothes do you suggest trannies wear?

While I'm being irked, can I just say that little kids shoes are always nicer and brighter than adult shoes? Another wild injustice!

Photo courtesy of Eartha Kitsch, who, as a bonus, also has a picture of a possum. Possums are becoming a leitmotif.

wherever you can get it

Winter weather is cruel. It's raining and seeming like spring could come someday, and you go out for a run and by the time you're back it's snowing and the salter trucks are out hurling salt around. The horror. I looked up the weather for the next week, and it's all cold and grey. It's the first day of Carnival in Brazil, and I have to look for any bit of color and light I can get.

love the one you're with

I'm from the southwest. I like road trips in the car with the windows down listening to conjunto music, bakingly hot weather, sandals, javelinas and jackrabbits and roadrunners, cacti, swamp coolers, big skies filled with insane lightening, and walking really slow. That said, I've lived away from "home" longer than I lived there, making it so that I can't use where I'm from as an excuse for everything anymore.

It's warm enough to be rainy here in the Hudson Valley, but not really warm at all, and me and my stack of seed catalogs can't stop fantasizing about planting season. I've been following chatter about growing various fruit in southern California, and it's driving me a little crazy. As if I don't miss fresh pomegranates, kumquats, tangelos, and prickly pear tunas enough. Should I really be listening to people talk about their avocado, jujube, and meyer lemon trees? It hurts.

I have to focus here, what grows here. Past years have seen the beginning of my perennial fruit excitement: I've planted raspberries, elderberries, cranberries, wolfberries, ligonberries, hawthorne berries, black turkey figs, cherries, apples, a plum. Some of them have done swimmingly, some didn't make it through a season. Some aren't really meant to be perennials in this climate, and are angry with me for dragging them indoors for the winter. (Hang in there little goji!) I think it's spectacular that wild fruits and nuts were here in the yard before I came. Woohoo for mulberries, black walnuts, wild strawberries, and quince! And there's that one fruiting tree that I still haven't been able to identify after five full years.
I can't help searching for additional food perennials for this climate. I've found siberian kiwis which I'd love to give a go, and pawpaws, which seemingly would require hand pollination (alternatively fascinating and frightening, since I'm not that skilled a gardener). Maybe seaberries and honeyberries, too. Or an asian pear for the mini orchard.

Many of these plants won't produce anytime soon, but it is amazing to be learning about them, and turning this yard into a truly edible landscape. When considering planting a fruit tree in her yard but knowing she wouldn't be there anymore when the fruit came, my friend realized someone would live there, somebody would benefit. If I do someday run back to Arizona and go to work for Iskash*taa, may this yard feed whoever lives here well.

*The berries pictured aren't edible. They are cotoneasters, and just look dramatic in the snow. Especially with a cardinal sitting on the branch. The other picture is of black walnuts from my yard. No longer green, but with the fruit still "on."

foofy dogs & vegan cheese

My cats have told me over and over again that no dogs are allowed in the house. I constantly disobey them by having friends over with dogs, and worse, picking up homeless or lost dogs and bringing them home. The worst offenses were each a full week of home invasion (twice). The single worst offense is when I fell head over heels in love with an abandoned pit and got involved in his training, healthcare, etc. The most recent was this Friday night, when I brought home two dogs that were running in the street. (My poor children, forgive me!)

Neither the lhasa apso or shitzu were were wearing collars with their phone numbers or address, but were clearly together. All three of us almost got killed while I tried to wrangle the two of them into the car, and some guy had the nerve to insult all of our intelligences in the middle of it. Why do people love shouting out their car windows so much? The fast getaway?

Both dogs were girls, one had clearly just had puppies, and we knew they had homes because they were not only fluffy lap dogs, but they reeked of groomer's chemicals, like a flea dip or something. One had a pink collar on with a rabies innoculation number, so the hunt began there. The nursing one got slapped across the face by a cat.

I'm not a fan of cops, and the Fishkill Police Dept did not disappoint when I called to get the phone number for the people you're actually supposed to report lost dogs to. (I should really have this written down somewhere!) He was "too busy" to give that to me. Funny enough, the people looking for the dogs called him too, so he ended up having to connect us. We should always force the police to be so useful!

Here's the hard part. How do you know when animals are being well-cared for or not? How do you figure it out in an instant, and what is your role beyond plucking them out of traffic and trying to find their home? Obviously, because one of them had had puppies, we wanted to know if she was being bred. She was noticeably less healthy than the other one. When their people came to take them, the white, fluffy, not-nursing one got hugged, but the mother got carried out of our house at arms length with discussion of how she'd gotten out of the laundry room.

If someone came across some of my cats, they'd probably wonder after my caretaking. One of my girls has always been so thin she's half the size of a normal cat. We feed her many extra snacks every day, get her checked for parasites, etc., but she's actually the most active of our bunch, truly acrobatic when she plays. The vet says she's fine unless she starts losing weight. Another of my kids has a cloudy eye, from a bout of conjunctivitis back when she was a shelter cat, and will bite you if you don't pet her just right.

That said, I worry about that tiny mother, named Amanda, as it turns out. Even though she had three week old puppies to nurse, I wonder if we did the right thing.

I was relieved to see them go, thankful we'd gotten in contact with their people, thankful the cats could relax, thankful that I could get back to my weekend of testing homemade vegan cheese recipes (three kinds!). But I worry.

Images from Dream Dogs Art.

broke, eating meat

Will all this joblessness make people finally break down and grow veggies for dinner and collect rainwater off their roofs, or will it just make people hold up convenience stores with guns? (You know how sometimes crises make people deal with things they've long been putting off? Of course, some people just shut down and go ballistic.)

This goes out to all those people who don't go vegetarian because they don't give a crap about animals, or are "sympathetic" to animals but think they are superior to them. The Matt & Nat blog has a nice list for those who don't care about animals but do care about the environment (as if keeping those things exclusive of one-another is possible!). For those who need a non-veg source, here's the the facts & figures from a non-veg chef. There are the world poverty reasons to eat less meat. Then there are the environmental racism reasons, or concern for workers.

Yeah, yeah, there's health, too, but people seem to care about that as little as they care about animals. (Here's an article that puts them all together, just in case you do care about all these things. Enjoy your fresher food and your fresher water, even if you haven't got a nickel in your pocket!)

nesting

Speaking of plane crashes, after the whole Hudson River ordeal, I'm worried about the geese. Everybody blames the birds, as if the sky doesn't belong to them! I worry about mass killings of my sweet voiced flyover friends.

For the moment though, I'm focusing on the incredible architecture of bird nests, as photographed by Sharon Beals.

crashing planes and sweating feet

It's confusing. Planes are crashing all over the place, people in LA are just pulling carrots of the ground, and I'm seeing the ground here for the first time in months. Yes, the few days of weather above freezing have melted all the snow here and all of a sudden it feels like there's so much SPACE and I can't stop looking at the exposed ground, the wet smashed leaves and dirt and the slick branches except to look away to look at pictures taken in May. May last year, May the year before, and Mays years back, and I don't even believe that this place can turn into that place in a mere three months. At the same time, there's no way I can wait three whole months. The sun has felt amazing and the days, though they've been getting longer for a while, finally FEEL like they're getting longer. You can actually feel the sun hitting your skin because the moisture in your skin isn't so busy freezing. And my feet are actually hot in my shoes and I can't wait to expose my pale feet. And other people in the 'hood are complaining about flip flops, as if the opportunity to wear flip flops isn't one of the most delicious things. Especially right now, when we can see the ground for the first time in what feels like a frozen lifetime of news of crashing planes.

These pictures are my compost path, which I shovel religiously but finally gave up on this year and just slip slid my way. I did not give up on the little path I shovel for my mail carrier, since he's older and a bit fragile, and I'd hate my laziness to be the cause of a slip and fall. The other picture is the side yard in May, when all the colors are clashing and ridiculous and you can't help but feel happy at the over-the-top fluffiness of it all.

"may she find what she's missing, even if it's not what she lost"

mattilda's public art project, lostmissing, is an open letter, a lost cat flyer, a tantrum a question a pressure point a release, the present holding the past, and hunger.
If you can relate, participate by posting her flyers, making your own, and sending photos.

tour della (o)possum

Sometimes all it takes is speaking their name to get them to come visit.

unplugged

The NYTimes can sometimes surprise: Their article about unplugging the refrigerator was only a little patronizing. Would it really kill us to chill our beer in the stream? Change our eating habits? Or quit milk, which seems to be everyone's hangup?

Kitchen towel by maltoodle.

deer, dear

I've been lucky. In all my driving years I've never hit an animal. This may be due to the obsessively slow and white knuckled approach to the open road, or maybe the alert whistles hooked up to the battery. Today, my commuter train struck a deer on the way to work. The conductor obsessively announced the condition of each of the train's mechanical parts, but no report on the deer. May she have died quickly, without pain or fear.

leaving the body

As a kid, I was obsessed with Lois Duncan novels and the concept of astral projection—willing your spirit to travel free of your body. [There was the thrilling story about Navajo twins separated at birth, one good, one plotting vengeance for her unhappy life. When the lonely girl's body dies her baaad spirit shows up and takes residence in the body of the happy one while her spirit is out running around. What could be more exciting for a pre-teen?]

And, the unruly winter weather has me admiring snowshoes for runners that have springs in them, turning otherwise boring ground-bound humans into snow kangaroos.

But neither of these examples are the body leaving I refer to: Rather than worrying after my soul, I'm pondering where the old bod will go when I die. Cremation seems like a waste of resources. Burial is good, but chemicals and makeup and expensive coffins are yuck, and not what we ought to be planting in the earth. In other countries you can be same-day buried without all the chemical pollutant fuss, but in the U.S., that's still rare. There are new eco-cemeteries, but somehow I expect they find ways to charge you an arm and a leg. I'm into the idea of simple home burial. Plant me with my cats in the side yard.

This is the best thing I got out of Six Feet Under. [Some slack here, please: I was sick delirious dying, and the gfriend rented full seasons to distract from the agony.] Annoying funeral director Nate buries annoying vegan chef Lisa au naturale, no box, in the woods. No rows, no markers, no mowing or plastic flowers. The idea seemed so lovely, and so illegal.

Heard the rumor that Tennessee is the only state where you can bury your human loved-ones in your yard. Go to town with deceased cats, dogs, snakes, rats, rabbits, groundhogs, squirrels, deer, and birds, but it's gonna cost you to lose your humans.

I thought of leaving my body to the faeries at Short Mountain. They'd get some good compost, and would likely have a ritual involving drumming, which would make my hovering spirit happy. Mom fiddled with the fantasy by bringing up the difficulties of legally transporting a human body across state lines. I guess I'll have to get old on communal lesbian land in TN, and, if at all sick or feeble, will have to be restricted within state lines. (Turns out Ohio and Vermont will work, too.) Preferably, I will expel my last breath within dragging distance of a good-sized compost heap.

Or, the gov could chill and let us have our dead in every state.

Note to swimmers: Ocean dumping is legal!

The beautiful GONER tag is by Jonathan Berger, from his Founder, GONER, Seer series of shows in 2007.