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Stormy Weather

We’re right on the border of Sunset Park, one of the neighborhoods here in Brooklyn hit hardest by the storms. I was woken up at 6am or so by lightning & thunder that seemed to be in our bedroom with us; I sleep next to the window with the air conditioner, & half asleep, turned the AC off & pulled the curtain closed. When one loud crack of lightning seemed to go off right next to our bed, poor Endymion dashed out, wide-eyed with fur bristling, from under my night table where he often sleeps. Aeneas sat at the foot of our bed. & Aurora, being Aurora, was sitting in the living room window watching the show.

Our own beautiful trees are stripped of some leaves but otherwise standing; there are a few hundred trees down otherwise, some into buildings & cars, & one woman on Staten Island lost her life. The flooding caused commutes to double in time this morning, with all three subway lines down. They say a tornado funnel touched down in Bay Ridge, even.

The Mayor was just on TV telling everyone that they should call 311 for information about having buildings inspected for safety & the like, & someone asked a question about immigration status & languages. & After clarifying that the City will not ask for someone’s immigration status when finding them a shelter if their home has been destroyed/deemed unstable, he then mentioned there are 150 languages spoken by the operators at 311.

150. Love this town.

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Norwalk

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to Amy and all of the people who helped organize tonight’s meeting in Norwalk, and all the people who came. It was a great meeting, with lots of good questions and conversations. I wanted to thank the folks at the TCC, too, for making a point of having an LGBT Center that really recognizes the T.

Again, thanks to you all. We had a wonderful evening.

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Down in the Subway

2 in 3 subway riders have been sexually harassed, and 99% of them are women. Why am I not surprised? Because just about every woman I know can tell you a story of a groper or a lewd comment or some other form of sexual harassment.

What’s surprising is that someone actually wants to do something about it. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer conducted the survey and has suggested changes that would help prevent these kinds of crimes:

Stringer recommends an increase in NYPD presence on subway trains and in subway stations as well as brighter lighting, more pay phones, a hotline for attack victims, and the installation of additional digital security cameras.

He also wants a public education campaign to change “a culture that has been allowed to fester for generations.”

About damn time. You can thank Scott Stringer via his website.

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Drink from the Tap

Pepsi has been forced to admit that their Aquafina water is actually public tap water.

Bottled water is probably the best example of a “healthy” concern gone awry, or What You Think is Good for You Actually Sucks for the Planet (and May or May Not Be Good for You).

  • Each day an estimated 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. The plastics they’re made of go on to poison ground water when they’re not recycled (most aren’t).
  • The Pacific Institute has estimated 20 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the plastic for water bottles.
  • For every bottle of water consumed, twice that amount of used was used in the bottling process.

There’s more here.

It’s a hot day in NYC, the fourth in the 90s, so drink from your tap. It’s safe, at least as safe or safer than most bottled water. Get a water filter, instead.

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Cats, Quilting, & Publishing Mysteries

For the aspiring authors out there, an interview with a book contracts insider. Most interesting to me:

While few of us would turn down a big advance if we were lucky enough to get one, but if you’re aiming to be a writer with a lengthy publishing career, starting out small isn’t such a bad thing.

She talks about the value of having an agent, and what to do if you don’t have one when you’re signing.

This optimistic bit is surely good for plenty of as-yet-unpublished authors to hear:

It occurred to me then that if there’s a market for books on cats that quilt while solving crime, there must be room out in the world for my story.

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Walk a Mile in These Shoes

The New York State Senate leadership – including Senator Joe Bruno – continues its tradition of blocking the advancement of gay rights by preventing the marriage equality bill from making it to the Senate floor for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote.

So NOW-NYC is asking us to send him a message: send him your old shoes with a note asking him to allow the marriage bill to be heard in the Senate.

Mail them to: Senator Joseph L. Bruno Room 909, Legislative Office Building, Albany NY 12247.

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Bathrooms in Arizona, Letters to The Advocate

Michele DeLaFreniere, a trans woman in Arizona, is suing a bar that kept her from entering.

The bar’s owner objects to having been quoted as saying he doesn’t want “her kind” in the place, but does admit that he’s blocked trans women from coming to the bar because of the bathroom issue: trans women were being harassed in the men’s room, and female bar patrons didn’t want the trans women in the women’s restroom.

As the story was reported in The Advocate, Anderson told the AP, “There was no place I could put these people.”

Two letters to the editor about the issue weigh in on the side of keeping women’s restrooms free of trans women, one calling them “men” and the other calling them “‘women’.”

Yet another “women’s space” issue, but I’m not sure the best answer is simply to insist that trans women use the ladies’ rooms. Education, unisex bathrooms, – surely there are more intermediate ways of handling this instead of just telling women – who may be ignorant but also fearful, for good reason, of sharing bathroom space with people they view as male. Convincing women raised female that trans women are not male requires a hell of a lot of education, which will take time, so what do we do in the meanwhile?

(My thanks to Joanne Herman for the heads-up.)

(Xposted to Trans Group Blog.)

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Her Highness

She’s still not really hip to being sniffed by the boys, so they tend to kind of sneak sniffs when she dosn’t seem to be paying attention. Endymion’s doing the sniffing this time around; we’re halfway convinced he’s in love with her, and recently she’s even allowed him to lick her head. She is the definition of princess, and fierce to boot.