Month: April 2008

Posted on

TRS

In case you’ve never heard of it, The Tranny Road Show is a traveling troupe of trans identified writers, performers, and musicians, organized by Jamez Terry and Kelly Shortandqueer.

The remaining dates of the 2008 Rocky Mountain Tour include:

  • the Gay and Lesbian Center in Colorado Springs (Tuesday 4/22),
  • University of Denver (Thursday 4/23),
  • University of Colorado at Boulder (Fri.day 4/25) and
  • Backroad Pizza in Santa Fe, NM (Saturday 4/26).

My students at Lawrence saw the TRS last year & loved it. http://www.trannyroadshow.com/ for more information.

Posted on

Sleep Aides

Betty’s a poor sleeper so I’ve looked up stuff you can do:

  1. make sure you create a habit around going to bed (ie, do things in a certain order, which signals your brain that it’s time to go to bed)
  2. drink warm milk
  3. take a warm bath
  4. make sure you have clean sheets & a made bed
  5. add a few drops of lavender to your bath or your pillow
  6. try meditation or some relaxing yoga poses (Child’s Pose, Corpse Pose)
  7. & my favorite – put a tennis ball in your mouth for a minute before sleeping. it helps stretch out the jaw muscles where a lot of us hold our tension. good for those who grind their teeth, & recommended by my favorite masseuse. (alternately, you can put the tennis ball under your chin & hold it in place for a minute by keeping your jaw extended.)

Otherwise, Valerian is a non-addictive herbal remedy that is readily available at health stores. It’s stinky, but the stuff is amazing for relaxing & good sleep, and doubles as a cat treat (since cats respond to it like they do to catnip). You can try some of these suggestions, too.

Posted on

There Goes the Neighborhood

So I’ve been back in Brooklyn a few weeks, and in three months the neighborhood has changed drastically. Mostly not in a way that pleases me, either.

  1. Jack’s is, after all, closed. Not only will I miss the pot roast, but I will miss the place for the sake that it was the first place I heard a song by Spoon. That is, I heard a cool song, and asked who it was, & the server said “Spoon.” I think it was their “Back to the Life.” Anyway, a place that played music cool enough for me to discover will be sadly missed.
  2. We now have a 7-11. I’m really not even sure what to think of that one.
  3. Our local favorite Greek diner is remodeling.
  4. But the worst change of all is this: My favorite pizza joint, Lenny’s, no longer makes zeppolis.

And I’ll tell you why it sucks: because when I first moved to Brooklyn, and first went into Lenny’s, I felt like I was home. Old Italian guys making pizza who’d been making pizza for decades, photos of Italians on the walls, those awful formica stalls, fountain soda, italian ices out of paper cups, and yes, zeppolis.

I’ve always had this vague feeling I was born in the wrong era. I’m beginning, more and more, to be more sure that I was, watching the change all around me. I still haven’t gotten over paying more than 50 cents for a cup of joe, after all. Why people ever agreed to pay $2 for a cup of coffee that you have to prepare yourself so that now that’s all you can buy, I’ll never understand.

Posted on

Pretty Boxes

I wish these sorts of things didn’t entertain me, but they do.

Make sure you scroll over the boxes, since they tell you things, like my masculinity score (ha), my extrovert score, & best of all, my trust score.

Like I said, entertaining. Click on the “Reserved Inventor” text to go take it yourself.

(thanks to the newly-found blog of java for the link.)

(I took it twice.)

Update – here’s Betty’s:


(which explains, at least to me, why we work together so well.)

Posted on

Fuck Seal Press?

I came back from visiting Betty upstate to find out that there is a huge mess involving Seal Press (my publishers) which came right on the heels of BFP’s departure last week.

So without pointing out every phrase and person involved, I’ll just say a few things as a white feminist who really only consciously became a feminist after reading Michele Wallace, and who, for nearly 10 years, worked for author Walter Mosley, who has written and talked about the absence of POC in the publishing industry, specifically.

The under representation of WOC in publishing has been a problem for a long time. The under representation of POC has been as well, in general. It’s not just chronic; it’s really fucking awful. Continue reading “Fuck Seal Press?”

Posted on

Race + LGBT

I heard Jasmyne Cannick speak at the Bodies of Knowledge conference at USC Upstate, and the focus of her talk was race and the LGBT community. She made a couple of important points about the failures of the white LGBT set in dealing with black LGBT people. I use “black” because she did; she mentioned that she dislikes the phrase “people of color” but didn’t explain why exactly.

One of her main issues was that minorities are often used to trump up “diversity” numbers for primarily white LGBT organizations but aren’t then given any real power to choose issues within those organizations. Gay marriage in particular was way down on her list of priorities, after things like universal healthcare, jobs, access to education, immigration, access to power/politicians, and other issues of poverty. Her point was that in LA, it’s the white LGBT who live in West Hollywood, but that black LGBT people tend to live in their neighborhoods of birth: Compton, East LA, etc., exactly because of the issues of dicrimination and access.

As she put it: “Just because someone doesn’t agree with you that gay marriage is the most important issue doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be at the table.” Continue reading “Race + LGBT”