Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Such a great song of grrrl lust. I’d featured it – and the cover by Jack Off Jill – a while back. & So sad that she’s gone so young. She died of the double-barreled assault of MS & breast cancer.
Here she is with “Boys in Town” – a song that is so 1981 it almost hurts.
Mara Keisling of NCTE spoke here at Lawrence a little over a week ago and she talked not just about trans issues and policy and legislation, but also about the importance of white people talking about racism and about what kinds of things are required of an activist.
She presented this list:
1. Have a worldview. Know what is right and wrong for you.
2. Be intentional. Don’t just do things the easy way.
3. Remember that you are in service with your activism.
4. You have to love the people you serve. If you don’t love them, you can’t serve them.
5. Respect other people’s work.
6. Know your superpower.
7. You can’t be amazing unless you are amazed.
And I found the list pretty astonishing. I’m certainly not perfect at it, but it does summarize so much of what I’ve been thinking these past few years about my own work.
I’ve got #s 1 & 4 down, at least. I’m pretty good at #s 3, 5, & 6. #s 2 & 7 are my weakest. I wonder, if you’re an activist, how these measure up for you.
The Fox Cities Book Festival started in earnest yesterday and I saw one author right out of the gate: James Loewen, otherwise famous for Lies My Teacher Told Me, but who spoke yesterday about sundown towns. And he was amazing. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, please do.
Otherwise, there are a ton of other readings and authors and contests and events and all sorts of things. The very last event is with my colleague David McGlynn who will be talking about his memoir A Door in the Ocean – which didn’t start out a memoir – and how it got that way.
It’s pretty cool. Go see stuff.
This is my favorite thing of the year so far.
& I’m sure many of you recall the very first Burmese punk, right? (She was born in Rangoon/Yangon.)
New Zealand has made same sex marriage legal. They’re the 13th country in the world to do so. & Guess what? The US isn’t one of them.
(I can’t quite sort if they are the 13th or 14th. Seeing conflicting #s from good sources, so here’s a list.)
No really, it is. Here is mine inspired by the Wisconsin winter:
Winter should end now
It has been cold much too long
Ass is frozen off.
This person has been writing one daily, about which I have to say:
daily haiku?
why try so hard for brevity:
blog instead.
Still, they’re fun to write. Leave one here.
Or, as one Nadia from Brooklyn put it, “Do I really have to sign a petition telling women not to participate in an event that discriminates against women?”
C’mon, MWMF. Get on the right side of history already. You’re better than this.
& thanks to the Indigo Girls and Andrea Gibson from dropping out this year.
Two Explosions Rock Boston Marathon Finish Line; At Least 2 Dead, 23 Injured: how terrifically sad and confusing and horrible.
You can find people or report information about people at this Google People Finder.
This musician, Ryan Lee, just sent me an email out of the blue: he’s a queer musician who’s doing some gigs in the area in the next week so I thought I’d give him a plug. I’m not so much of a singer/songwriter type, but I know a bunch of you out there are, so check him out. I found his story about upending and remaking his life pretty cool. He’s got upcoming gigs here in Appleton, in Green Bay, Madison, Waukesha, Minneapolis, and lots of spots in-between.
So many anniversaries: today, 15 years ago, I met the person I married.
Some days it is hard to imagine how much we have been through in that time, and other days it is as if nothing has changed.
Still other days I am astonished by the luck I had in finding someone who loves me so much, who has taken such good care of me through some difficult stuff, and who has, in turn, asked much of me.