Author: Helen Boyd

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Still

I am still sick, dammit, & I already had this cold this year! Isn’t it someone else’s turn?

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Upsetting

The Task Force recently issued a report about homeless youth: up to 42% of homeless youth are LGBT (even though only 3-5% of the population is).

While I’m glad to hear NYC has stepped up funding to help serve these kids, I wonder if a public education campaign isn’t also in order. That job, however, might need Federal support, which we certainly aren’t going to get just yet. Still, you’d think we could maybe let people know that throwing their LGBT kids out on the street is not a solution to anyone’s problem.

These throwaway kids are one of the ‘side effects’ of all the anti-gay rhetoric being thrown around, & that includes the anti-gay marriage rhetoric, in my opinion. Define a group of people as second-class citizens and this is what you get.

You can read the full report at The Task Force’s website.

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Boxing Day

So how did it get to be December? – and not just December, but the day after Christmas?! That seemed fast. I’ve had people older than me tell me that the years go by faster the older you get, & some days that seems to be very, very true. Now there are these few days between Christmas and New Year’s Day left of 2006, and it was – looking back – an exhausting year. Granted, a year goes by very quickly when eight months of it are spent writing a book, but still – December already! Astonishing.

Sometimes at the end of a year I like to wonder what (1) I want to be different in my life a year from now; (2) what I thought would be different from a year ago that is or isn’t, and (3) which kinds of changes I seem to be the most effective at bringing about. There are wishes of mine that are totally unreasonable – like living in a less cluttered apartment – that will probably never happen; now I’m of the opinion that if we moved to an 8-bedroom house we’d still have too much crap – it’s just who we are & in the greater scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter to me very much. But then there are other things, like losing weight, that can be more feasible some years but less feasible even than getting rid of clutter other years.

I’m sometimes good at predicting, but I’m better still at pushing myself to achieve more than I think I can & so achieving some respectable changes. These are the kinds of things I think about when I put together my New Year’s Resolutions lists, so I don’t feel like a failure when I haven’t totally reorganized our bookcases by the end of January or something.

I’ve got a system, even. Maybe I’ll share it on another day. Right now I’m still getting over a cold, though, so it will be another night of Nyquil sleep for me so I can kick this thing once & for all.

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Quiet Xmas

We’re having a quiet Christmas this year: my sister threw a gathering for my family last week, so we both feel like we had a premature xmas this year. Plus, we spent anything you might call a gift budget on clothes for that TV taping a week or so ago.

But we were very glad to enjoy the company of our fellow mHB board locals for a lovely holiday party, & we’ll be going upstate to visit friends for the New Year.

Have a good holiday, everyone.

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Five Things

Apparently I’ve been tagged for a blog meme, by Debra over at Tragic/Beautiful.

I’m supposed to come up with Five Things You Don’t Know About Me. I’m going to hope that none of my very old friends are reading, since what they know about me may be very different from what a more generic “you” might know.

(1) I have always worried that all of my eccentricity is really driven by a niggling fear that I am painfully mediocre.

(2) I started my undergraduate career as a Theology major at Fordham University. I wanted to be a priest when I was a child and often wonder if I won’t end up some kind of monk/nun by the end of my days.

(3) My first boyfriend’s name was also Jason. (My friend Ming took to calling him “the wrong Jason” when I met the person who you all know as Betty.)

(4) I spent a good chunk of my 20s traveling:

  • in 1991: to San Francisco (I was 22)
  • in 91/92: to India
  • in summer 92 I drove across the USA with a friend
  • in 1993 I went to New Orleans
  • in 1996 to Singapore, Bali (Indonesia) and Burma (Myanmar)
  • in 1997 to Singapore and Viet Nam (then later in the same trip, to Chicago, Nashville, and Charleston)
  • in 1998 to London
  • in 1999 to Sao Paulo and Rio in Brazil and later that year to London and Paris (we were in London for the Millennium changeover)
  • in 2000 to London and Scotland (our engagement tour, as it were)
  • in 2001 to Hawaii (for our honeymoon)

As a result of the books and my lectures, after I turned 30, I have since seen, all stateside: Eureka Springs, AR; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Hammond, IN; Provincetown, MA; Las Vegas, NM; Albany, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Sherman, TX, and Burlington, VT. As a result of being keynote speaker at First Event this year, I’ll finally get to see Boston!

(5) I am allergic to almost everything a person can be allergic to (dogs, cats, mold, dust, etc.) with the bizarre exception of cockroach poop.

& Now I will tag three other bloggers to list five things we don’t know about them: Betty Crow, Caprice Bellefleur, and John.

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UNICEF Reports: Equal Women Raise Better Children

Okay, that’s not exactly what they reported, but to my mind, it pretty much is:

“Gender equality and the well-being of children are inextricably linked,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “When women are empowered to lead full and productive lives, children and families prosper.”

For some people I guess the idea that women need to be equals and to make important decisions about family resources still needs to be made, and for them, UNICEF has created a report that delineates exactly how and why:

The State of the World’s Children 2007 report finds that equality of women produces a “double dividend,” allowing empowered and healthy women to have empowered and healthy children, according to the report (PDF).

I think I can safely add that the opposite is also true: people who prefer women not to be equal are not “pro child.” Somewhere in here I think I can also conclude: feminists are actually the real “family values” set!