I saw a woman on the subway today who was remarkable in more than one way. For starters, she was tall, but wearing square heels of at least 2.5″, and wearing a women’s suit that fit her perfectly. She had no coat on like everyone else – just a pair of leather gloves.
I assume she was going somewhere underground to somewhere else underground, or maybe she was Norwegian and scoffed at what we call cold in NY. I only saw her for a minute, and she had a large frame, and for a minute I wondered if my eye was different, or if she just was what she was so perfectly, so confidently, & so comfortably, that she made me feel quite proud of being strong, and not petite, and womanly, at once.
New Site
I wanted to introduce my new author website, helenboydbooks.com. The sidebar to the right was just getting too cluttered, & when I thought about adding info for the new book, I just decided it’d be better to have a new site for that stuff.
I’m pretty impressed with myself – no, Betty did not create it; I did. Betty will probably put together a schmancier site at some point, but for the meantime, it’s got all the info it’s supposed to.
Oscar
Jon Stewart, in the opening lines of his Oscar hosting:
Welcome, Ladies, Gentlemen (pause) … Felicity.
Jon, you didn’t have to do it. And you really shouldn’t have.
Now I Know How Joan of Arc Felt
Remains purported to have been Joan of Arc’s are being tested as to whether they could be hers. They can’t, of course, confirm anything, as they don’t have anything of hers to test against.
The illiterate farm girl from Lorraine in eastern France disguised herself as a man in her war campaigns and said she heard voices from a trio of saints telling her to deliver France from the English. Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and made a saint in 1920.
Actually, this is quite wrong. Everyone knew Joan was a woman; her crime was wearing men’s clothes despite the fact that she was a woman. If she’d been passing as male, she would have had a lot better chance of escaping the interrogations and pyre.
TG Life Interview
I was interviewed for this month’s TG Life – in the Celebrity Spotlight.
Do check it out.
… I think a lot of transpeople want to be attractive for being women or men, which is fine, but I think those of us who love you all tend to love the transness itself. Not the issues, not the narcissism – but the very fact of someone who transcends or combines or expresses more than one gender.
Worried Like This Forever
I’m generally having a problem with the way things are going these days, what with the South Dakota bill and the news that the US Government didn’t only fuck up New Orleans and the other areas that got hit by Katrina at the time but are continuing to fuck it up now, & that Paul McCartney is trying to keep people from beating baby seals to death. It’s the last one that got to me the worst – I mean, didn’t we highlight how barbaric that crap was like 20 years ago? I was almost surprised to find out it’s still happening; I thought Canada was cooler than that. Then Megan delivered the news that increased air travel – accelerated by cheap fares – will eventually guarantee that we can’t see the stars.
I keep hoping we human beings take ourselves out before we wipe out every other species that calls this planet home.
But something Sandy posted made me feel a little better:
I sometimes feel so weighed down by everything that is so wrong, and so bad, about how we humans treat each other and the world.
I worry.
I worry about an all-out, probably nuclear, war between the Muslim world and everyone else. I worry about bird flu. I worry about resistant strains of bacteria (and would everyone PLEASE quit using “anti-bacterial” soap, you’re making the problem worse, and gaining no benefit in the meantime). I worry about overpopulation and food and water supplies. I worry about the crazy rise in the incidence of all types of cancers in our country. I worry about plastics and pesticides and volatile organic compounds. I worry about all the no-money-down mortgages and credit card debt that people are getting into and not out of. I worry about the incredible, collossal amounts of waste in every aspect of our fat American lives. I worry about how stupid and sinister our government is, and how just plain stupid we citizens appear to be. I worry about the dubious role of huge corporations in society. I worry about children whose parents are mean to them. Now too, I worry about the demise of astronomy as we know it. I’m not being facetious. I care about all of this stuff.
My husband even worries about living on the East coast, downwind of all the air pollution in the rest of the country. I don’t go quite that far. But if we moved to the west coast, I’d probably worry about missiles from North Korea.
There’s no automatic healthy dose of “fuckit” attitude in my life anymore, that feeling that used to kick in when the world looked too cruel. All I can do these days is limit the amount of news I take in. (Ah, parenthood. It takes away some humor, for sure; thank God it installs some new kinds as well.)
One thought that eases my mind a bit is that people have worried like this forever… and life continues, and it’s mostly really, really good.
Thanks, Sandy.
If You Haven't Heard
South Dakota has just made abortion illegal, state-wide. No exceptions – not for the health of the mother, for rape, or for incest.
So I think South Dakota needs a new state slogan, yes? Here’s my entry:
South Dakota: The Inbred State
I’m sure some of you clever folks can come up with better ones.
This law is an attempt to take Roe down, absolutely. And in the meantime, women in South Dakota will now have to travel across state lines, at much greater expense, to have a safe, legal abortion. Greater expense often means delay, which means abortion later in the pregnancy, which means great health risks to the mother.
Writer's Cat
Well, it’s official. Once a cat sleeps on a manuscript, it’s all over. She’s now my cat. Or I’m her writer.
NYS Being Sued By Feds
This is really unbelievable (but predictable) to me. New York State is being sued by the Feds for our old voting machines.
Considering the crap that’s gone on in Ohio, I’m really wondering if what the Feds have a problem with is who we vote for, not how. Just keep Diebold out of the modernizing, please.
At least we come up with 4 when we put 2+2 into our cranky old machines.
New Feminism Category
You know, it seems kind of funny that only tonight did I decide to add Feminism as a category for my blog posts. Maybe it was one of those ‘so obvious I missed it’ kinds of things.
I’m thinking of adding a Relationships category as well. Let me know if you think it’s a good idea (or not).
Now all I want to do is figure out how to alphabetize my category list.