Apple Tree Story

When we purchased this house, there were numerous palm trees and three fruit trees growing in the back yard: a small lime tree, an orange tree, and an apple tree. While the apple tree grew a fair number of small apples, we rarely got any. The top of the tree, where the apples were, was over the roofline, difficult to reach with a ladder, and dangerous to reach from the roof. The branches did not appear able to hold our weight should we try to climb for the apples.



The people who live across the street from us are the original owners of their house, having moved in when the neighborhood was being built in 1952. They tell stories about who lived in which house, about walking up the hill with their children to play in the mud pit that was being built into the local state college campus.


I mentioned the fruit trees to them, and the man said that a furniture store had been giving away apple trees as part of a Washington's Birthday sales promotion. He had gone up there and brought a tree back to the house, but wound up giving it to the youngest son in what is now our house, who was eight or so at the time. I think this son is five or ten years older than Zirpu and I, so doing the math quickly I think this tree is about forty years old.


There was a long branch leaning over the fence and hanging the neighbors' yard next door. A few months ago Zirpu had some arborists come to remove some trees and to trim the apple and orange trees, which were too big to harvest. I have learned it is healthy for fruit trees to get picked, and we really did need it to be shorter for us to pick the apples.


The arborists started to trim the tree and learned that the big branch hanging over next door was almost dead. They did a much more severe trimming than I thought they would, because the rot in that branch went all the way into the trunk. We won't get apples from it this year since the trimming was done too late this spring, but the tree seems happy now. It certainly looks better. Next year we'll be able to reach any apples it produces.

Bi The Way - Assume Nothing

The other night at the Bi Women's Group we all told our coming out stories to each other. Everyone's story is different and yet components are the same. The resonance each of us feels when we hear someone else say, "I just thought she was so cool! I didn't know that I liked girls 'that way,' but I knew... It was in the back of my head, but I ignored it..."


My coming out as bi was initially because of politics. At the time I said to not claim being bi would be the same as denying that the love I'd felt for either Denver D or for Shobi-wan wasn't real, and that wasn't right. But because I'd gotten involved with Odyssey's diversity training and questioned that we presented homosexuality but not bisexuality, I was selected to present that view [this was part of the name it, claim it volunteerism at Odyssey]. So the first time I really came out as bi, I came out to thirty or forty staff members, and the second time to another 75 teenagers.


After all these years, I'm still primarily politically bi. I identify as bisexual because it is who I am. I know that I appear to be straight, living the life I do married to a man, so I'm always on guard that people are going to question my marriage because of the stereotypes they hold about bisexual people. That makes me afraid to come out sometimes. Say what you like about me, but don't lecture me on my marriage and don't say word ONE about my husband. I should add though that in all the years I've been coming out as bi, I've never had to say that to anyone.


That makes me glad. And it's always nice to hear parts of my story in other people's lives, and parts of theirs in mine.

Christmas Cards

I've received the first two Christmas cards of the season. The first was from one of the volunteers, with a nice message about getting everything you wish for. The other is from Zirpu's stepbrother and his family with a message about how Jesus came "for you and me" and, strangely, a school picture of the older child but not one of the younger one.


I must admit that I don't like receiving Christmas cards. I like receiving kids' photos for the brag board, especially since the kids change so much and it's fun to compare last year's photo with this year's. So those of you who send me Christmas cards, please don't stop doing so because I really do appreciate them! Even the ones with newsletters in them!


But I don't send Christmas cards myself. This might be because I'm lazy and might be because I'm rather ambivalent about Christmas. Also I figure that I've been in contact with everyone during the year to whom I might send a Christmas card (if I were a Christmas card sender) and I hope they know that I wish them joy and prosperity and love all the time. Still, when someone distant sends a Christmas card, I feel guilty: I should send them one too! But if I do it this year I'm committed and I don't want to set a precedent.


I've actually been wondering if I should give Christmas cards to my volunteers. A lot of them are older, and therefore old school, and it would be a simple way to thank them for their work this past year. I don't want to seem as if I were raised in a barn. I do, when asked, come across as not-Christian (though gently), which should get me off the hook. I don't have any kids or animals to get photo cards made (which Shmeen tells me are difficult to find without a Christmas theme) to send out, though that sounds like the easiest option.



Of course I have to make a decision soon, which means that I might get away without making any decision because eventually it will be too late.

People Are Generous

Because of the ribbon cutting we had at the food bank on Wednesday, there were several press organizations around. Toward the end of the day, I received a call from Amber Lee, a reporter at Channel 2 news, asking who we serve and what food we need. I answered a lot of questions, but when she asked if she could come down and visit/interview, I turned the phone over to the Food Bank Director.


I left to make a delivery to the warehouse. I was gone about half an hour and totally missed the reporter's visit. The FBD said that he was giving Ms. Lee a tour of the food bank and mentioned that we plan to give away between 300 and 400 turkeys next week, partly provided by the Kiwanis Turkey Drive at the Blanden Avenue Nob Hill store and the Italian-American League. She asked if we had received any turkeys for the giveaway and the FBD said that yes, we had one. She said that she'd like to see it.


We had this one turkey because it came in the delivery of random meat from Trader Joe's. It was sitting in the small meat freezer because the big meat freezer was packed. We've been having power issues with the small freezer so I've only been putting as much meat as needed for service in it each day because each night I've had to leave it empty. When the FBD pulled the door open, there were two packages of chicken strips on the top shelf, one package of fish on the second shelf, and the turkey in the bottom. He said that the reporter insisted her cameraperson shoot the freezer. I think one turkey is a lot more pathetic looking than just an empty freezer. The story ran Wednesday night on the 6pm news.


I had yesterday off but the FBD said the phone had rung off the hook with people asking when they could bring turkeys over and if we needed any "trimmings." A woman came to the food bank and pledged a huge donation of turkeys (which should come Monday), and a youth group visited last night, bringing 25 turkeys with them. When I got to work today there was a guy waiting, wanting to know if he could help, and he told me he was going to take his kids to the stores to buy turkeys. Today during the day two separate people brought us a dozen turkeys; a man gave us eight; a mother and her three sons brought us five; and a lot of individuals brought us one or two turkeys. Several people walked in the door and handed me checks made out to the food bank.


Yesterday morning we had one turkey. This evening we have ninety-one, and we know more are coming.

Scouting for Food

** I wrote this this morning, but had to leave before prettying it up. I did not anticipate that I wouldn't come home between work and the meeting, and now it's after midnight. However, since I did write this this morning I think it counts as a post for 11/14.**


Scouting for Food is coming up this weekend. As a citizen I'm not familiar with this program but as a food bank person, I've come to know a lot about it.


The Boy Scouts of America have food drives at different times of the year, and this year in northern California it is the Saturday before Thanksgiving. In the past, the BSA has put printed paper bags on porches, but this year they'll be doing doorknob hangers (you may have already found one on your doorknob this week). The hope is that people will put a grocery bags of nonperishable goods (read: cans, pasta, rice, cereal) on their porches. The Scouts will pick up the bags and give them to local food banks. The SF Bay Area Council, through the Scouting for Food Drive, is the largest donor of canned goods to food banks in the Alameda and San Francisco Counties. Including ours, which is the recipient of all food collected on the island of Alameda.


The Scouting for Food Drive basically gives our food bank enough nonperishable goods to last us through March.


I have mixed feelings about the BSA, because of their anti-gay and anti-atheist national policies (though I've heard of troops that ignore them in practice). I am also not completely comfortable with single-sex organizations. At the same time I have known former Scouts who feel BSA helped make them who they are today and families who appreciate the activities and socializing that their Cub Scout troop provided their sons. Also, Scout troops often do good things for the communities, like park and beach cleanups and food drives - not to mention keeping kids off the streets.


It must be said that at least in Alameda, the Boy Scouts' Scouting for Food Drive should be called the Youth Food Drive. Several organizations of youth are participating, including Girl Scouts, Girls Inc., and Red Cross Youth. There aren't enough Boy Scouts in town to handle this project on their own, and it gives other youth an opportunity to participate in the community.


If you miss the food pickup, you can always drop your sack of goods into the barrels that are appearing in grocery stores all over the country. I know from observation that wintertime is a tight time for folks, which is why we've gotten so much busier at the food bank. Less work and more non-negotiable cash outflow (for heat, for lights, for transportation) are all part of winter for the working poor and the disabled.


Think about participating, and I hope you do. Your neighbors need your help, though they would probably not tell you so.

Babies Coming

I had dinner with a friend who is six months pregnant. It was interesting to listen to all of the changes she's experiencing. Since it's not happening to me I can just be excited, and I've been asked to co-host a shower for her. Yay! Another party! This one is definitely going to be about mama - the baby will get plenty of attention when she or he shows up.


I can't think of another big event that happens in your life that you can plan around but not exactly when it's going to happen. Like, if the hospital's in San Francisco and the parents are in Oakland and the baby starts coming at 700am on a Tuesday, what's the alternate plan, in case the baby comes really fast?


On the other hand, some things being the way they are, you know when the baby's coming and can absolutely plan ahead. That happens too.


Here's a shout out to Bink and her family. I've been thinking about you all day!

A Birthday Story

I come out looking bad in this. The only defense I have is that I was raised that birthdays are a big deal. When we were kids, there would be streamers hanging from the pot-hanger over the table, and all the cereals on the table. Often at school there were cupcakes. On your birthday you chose where the family went out to dinner that evening.


Phil turned 21 the day before I turned 20. At 1130 the night before (on the 13th), people arrived to take him on his "twenty-one run," so he could order his first legal beer at midnight on the 14th. Jujubi, whose 20th birthday had been a few days before, and I stayed home. The next day was my birthday. Phil insisted that we go to wash our cars that afternoon, which I thought a really strange thing to do, though it turned out the purpose was to get me out of the house so Jujubi could hang up a sign.


We often ate together, which is how I got through college without learning to cook. I had a padded envelope from my mom; Phil's gift from his mother had arrived a day late and was a 3'x2' box. As we finished dinner Phil put his box on the table and said something like, "Time to open presents." Jujubi reminded Phil that they had to sing "Happy Birthday" to me first, and as it was actually my birthday I should open my present first. They did, and I did, receiving two books by Rita Dove, with whom I had taken two writing workshops, books I still have. Mom had included a happy birthday note on a "While You Were Out" memo. Phil brought this big box onto the table and after opening it pulled out clothes, coffee, a new coffeemaker carafe, some art supplies, and several other things, plus a birthday card with "To My Son On His Birthday" written on the front in a cheesy font.


The next thing I remember Jujubi and Phil were heading off to the library to study (I always studied at home). I don't remember what specific thing triggered it but I remember standing on the walkway leading to the front door yelling at them for not celebrating my birthday with me. I remember very clearly that I was furious, even knowing that it wasn't their fault that his package arrived late, even knowing that Mom's gift was perfect and probably mailed on the fly while she was at work so it would arrive on time. After they left, I carefully chose books I didn't care about from the shelf and threw them at the wall. I yelled and cried.


I don't know why I threw such a temper tantrum that night. I was really embarrassed about it afterwards and apologized to Phil and Jujubi. I even apologized in my heart to Phil's mom for thinking that she had sabotaged my birthday.


The next year everyone and their brother came out for my "twenty-one run" (also, the next year, many more people were 21; only Bink had to wait for another week). The September Birthdays Party we had that year seemed like it had an especially large turnout and I received birthday cards from all kinds of people. I ruefully enjoyed all the birthday greetings, as I suspected that a lot of my friends had heard about the tantrum the year before.

The Night of Pockets

The Killer Lady, Mah, and I went to Cafe International in SF this evening to attend a Hootenanny Night; this month the songs were all British Invasion, with a heavy rotation of Beatles tunes. The KL has moved to the East Bay, and we decided to take BART, which worked pretty well though the long wait for the Muni made us much later than we would have liked.


The Hoot was really fun, with people taking turns singing and lots of audience participation. Going by BART is like having a curfew, so we chose to leave the cafe at 1045 (right after "Lady Madonna") to make sure we wouldn't miss the last train back. Going home, we didn't have to wait long for a bus, which was pretty full even though it was an extra-long articulated one, including some other people who had been at the Hoot as well.


A couple stops after we got on, a young man in sagging pants and a drunken angry face got on the bus. We were closer to the front than the back and could see some drama going on. He checked all his pockets, though his pants were sagging so low that it took him several tries each time to get his hands into his back pockets. When he shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie his phone clattered to the floor and down the steps of the bus. I don't know why the driver didn't kick him off when he threw a couple of coins into the coin box. When he walked past us he was on his phone: "I lost my m---f--- transfer, n---, can you believe that s--?"


A few stops after that he ran up to the front of the bus again. The KL pointed out that it may have been because of the police car driving alongside the bus, that perhaps he was afraid that they were going to take him off the bus. The same thing happened again, including dropping the phone into the stairwell. This time on the way back he was purposefully bumping people; the KL said that he hit her on the butt and Mah said that he tried to hit her but she dodged it, and that he was hitting people all the way to the back of the bus.


There was a man sitting in the back of the bus who had been at the Hoot. He had been easy to see because he was easily six and a half feet tall. This guy stuck his foot out to trip Transfer Boy, so of course Transfer Boy started a "You want a piece of me?" thing, even after the guy from the Hoot stood up to tower over him. I didn't see this, but the KL said the man sitting next to the tall guy took off his belt and wrapped it around his fist.


Suddenly the doors opened and I saw we were at our stop. The KL said that when I said, "This is our stop" she wasn't sure whether it really was or if I was just saying it was. A lot of people left the bus when he did, including both the tall guy and the man with the belt on his fist, but not including Transfer Boy who was still posturing and shouting as the bus pulled away.


We jumped onto our train and were laughing about Transfer Boy as we sat in the seats behind the three young women sitting in the quad (two sets of seats that face each other). At the next stop a man who was intoxicated or tweaking got on the car. Very shortly afterwards he focused on the girls in the quad and sat in the empty seat with them. He was talking to the woman across from him and showing her his wallet and his cell phone. She ignored him.


I noticed that everyone but one person in our end of the car was watching this interaction. One man who was sitting about fifteen feet away stood up. The man in the seats in front of the girls pulled his cap around and started watching, and the man across from him was watching out of the corner of his eyes. The man sitting across from the tweaker kept his nose in his newspaper. Mah and the KL were watching by looking at the reflection in the window across from them, and I was watching the tweaker directly - I had a good look at him as he was blocking them in the quad.


He started pulling things out of his pockets: First he pulled out a hair pick and a pair of haircutting scissors. Then he threw at least ten Sharpies, some other pens, mints, some Starburst candies, and another pair of scissors on the floor. That was when everyone became alarmed. I got up and pressed the button to talk to the train operator. The first guy to get up stepped forward, covered the scissors with his foot, and pulled them away. I made my report to the operator and requested BART police to escort the tweaker off the train; when he asked if he had a weapon, I said that he had scissors that had been secured but he was threatening some teenaged girls.


We got to West Oakland and the tweaker got off the train by himself. I thanked everyone who had been part of this little drama because I felt really supported when I saw everyone's eyes go to this man. Usually people on BART don't get involved in stupid stuff, so I wanted to thank them so if it happens again they'll do it again, and I had felt really supported, and I knew that the girls in the quad would have been as well, had they seen what was going on with the rest of us because they kept their eyes down the whole time.


We transferred at 12th Street, talking about who saw what and what Mah - who has excellent hearing - had heard. We were laughing about how pockets had played such a big part in both dramas. The young women who'd been with us on the first train got on at the next stop, and we told them that we had vetted this car and no one had any pockets. They thanked me for calling for the BART cops.


As soon as they got off the train, a man who was obviously under the influence of something got on. As he went by, Mah heard him say, "The gummint's what's wrong with them," but he apparently didn't stay on the train very long and didn't cause a scene. All of us noticed that his pants had pockets, but he was wearing jeans that fit more tightly and wouldn't have held more than a small cell phone. Mah, the KL, and I started laughing as soon as he got on.

Almost Heaven

Friday, July 20

The Killer Lady and I drove straight through and arrived about 23 hours after we left - including stops for dinner in Placerville yesterday, breakfast this morning in Grand Junction, and driving around in circles in Aspen to get to the grocery store.


Being on a road trip reminds me so much of all the other road trips I've been on. I've never done this route before, through Nevada. The Killer Lady (who has incredible endurance and drove the entire way with only a 40-minute nap at a rest stop around 730 this morning) and I got a big kick out of the signs for Wendover, that told us how far away it was every seven to ten miles. Wendover straddles the NV/UT border, and boy was that obvious: We went through after midnight and half the town was bright with Las Vegas neon and the other half was black.


Our favorite sign was the one that warned us, "Stay Alert! Lane Shifts Ahead" - only because we'd been on the road for hours and were not being warned to stay alert because we were in a car. Heading out of Aspen and over Independence Pass the signs told us to "Avoid Broken Windshields. Obey Speed Speed Limits." I guess punishment is terrible and swift in the Rockies.



Saturday, July 21

I don't know if it is exhaustion or just "is" but it's been tough so far, being here, thinking about Phil. Both The Killer Lady and I pretty much arrived in tears with the pain of wishing Phil would just walk in the door and say, as he used to, "How's it hanging?" The fifteenth anniversary is bothering The KL as much as it is bothering me. We keep looking at each other and asking, "How is that possible?" In 1992 I knew that someday this day would come. I'm still so sad about his being gone, and I'm surprised in a way that I still miss him so much.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

~ Richard Bach, Illusions.

Mrs. P wrote in an email that Cabinstock is a great legacy Phil left us. It's started me thinking that maybe his mission on earth was to organize this annual event that has created sort of a community. We wouldn't have met each other any other way, let alone remained friends for so many years, without Cabinstock.


Sunday, July 22

I suggested that we rewrite "When I'm Sixty-Four" so it's about doing Cabinstock in the future (I'll be 64 in September of 2032!). The Killer Lady and I helped, but Spudwhip really ran with it. I have the chord notations but I'm not going to include them because I know they won't format correctly. Y'all know the tune, anyway.

Note: There are a few inside stories, but the only one I'm going to comment on is the dry compost toilet, which requires some good use of the Kegel and suchlike muscles.

"When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now

Will you still invite me to the Cabinstock?

Tunes and hooch still served on the rock?

If we play on till quarter of three, will you scream for more?

Will you play for free here, still be a tree here, when we're 64?


You'll be older too

And if you say the word, I could tent with you.


I could be handy, mending a tube

When your amp is gone

You could drink tequila by the fireside

Monday morning, whimper and hide.

Doing a keg lap, smoking some weed, who could ask for more?

Split pee and poop here, fall off the stoop here, when we're 64.

Every summer we will storm the Cabin by the river with a keg of beer

Three vacation days...

Guitar on your knee

Singin' through the haze

Send me a flyer, drop me a line, at least by May or June

Indicate precisely when the dates will be

Yours sincerely, Mister Bony.

Scrape up the money, scrape up the time, scrape me off the floor

Huevos and beans here, measure your penes here, when we're 64.

Drown in the creek here, still be a freak here, when we're 64.

Soak up the scene here, play key of Gene here, when we're 64!"

Monday, July 23

The music starts one piece at a time and adds up. We have lots of guitars this year, a washtub bass, an electric bass, harmonicas in the major keys, a fiddle, and a drum kit. Lots of voices, of course, including mine.
















The music is hella loud in the Cabin. We've been in and out because of rain. I asked SRV Rick if the music is louder than in years past, but he said no. Guess it's my old ears!

This photo is from the first night when most people - and the PA system - hadn't arrived yet. Kid Paully and SRV Rick are picking up where they left off last time.




Tuesday, July 24

I am really in touch with the fear-is-part-of-anger thing today. Spudwhip and The Killer Lady crossed the river and on the way back, The KL lost her nerve and was pulled downstream by the current. Spudwhip grabbed her, but then he started down the river too, and Shawnee, who'd gone with them into the water (but not across the stream), lost his balance when he grabbed Spudwhip and the three of them headed downstream.


The KL went down the river once before, in 1995, when she lost her balance, and I was just filled with dread about their crossing back. I have this sense of everyone else positioning themselves along the rocks in various places, as if we all expected someone to head downstream. It was like we were Team River and were taking our places. Johnny Half-Song and I stood near the confluence of the river and the creek, and when I saw them coming toward me reached out for the three of them. For less than a second all five of us thought they were going to make it, but they didn't. Johnny and I didn't want to pull too hard because we didn't want to go in the river also. Shawnee said he saw how quickly I was moving; I don't remember moving at all. I didn't realize I was wet up the chest until I dashed in the Cabin to get towels and heard my sandals squelching on the carpet.


Shawnee and The KL came up against the first big rock and were able to climb out; Spudwhip went around to the next one and was also safe. All's well that ends well but I was furious. I had to hide on the next-door property to sob for two minutes to get it out of my system. The KL was abashed, and quietly took the lecture the OG gave her. Shawnee was pretty calm, smoking a cigarette afterwards - he said he figured that they would get out. Spudwhip was jacked up on adrenaline and I just wanted to smack him. I felt like he didn't really understand that the OG and I were angry that he put himself and The KL in danger, even though he apologized for scaring me.


Spudwhip brings the mama out in me.


Wednesday, July 25

Yesterday was a long day. It felt like several days in one, in fact. The morning was full of people packing up their vehicles and leaving, and there was music. Johnny Half-Song, Marko, and Spudwhip played some of Johnny's original tunes until some kayakers appeared. All the times I've been to the Cabin, this is the first time I've seen kayakers. Marko says this stretch of the river is famous for kayaking and the Cabin is called "the crooked cabin" in kayaking guidebooks.


We had the swimming in the river incident, and more music. The OG and Shawnee played some CSN, and the OG taught me the secret parts of "Teach Your Children."
After dinner those of us who hadn't left had a long talk and Marko played his fiddle in accompaniment to the OG's guitar and voice. When I went back to my tent, I was exhausted.


Today has been very low key, as Marko, the OG, Shawnee, and BJ were gone by early afternoon. The KL and I took down our tents very quickly, thinking it was going to rain, but so far it hasn't. Looks grey and gloomy, but we're still at the Cabin and The KL has built a nice fire.


Thursday, July 26

I'm reading Three Cups of Tea. It's about a former ER nurse/mountain climber who builds schools all the non-controlled, high-altitude parts of Pakistan. Each chapter has an epigraph, and I adapted this one from "The Warrior Song of King Gesar":

This beautiful and splendid land
With snow-covered rock mountains, cold-crystal streams,
Deep forests of aspen, pine, and spruce,
Is as much my body as what you see before you here.
I cannot be separated from this or from you.
Our many hearts have only a single beat.

<--- Both Ways --->

It's LGBTQ Pride Weekend in San Francisco. I went to a kickoff party at The Killer Lady's place last night and will be meeting friends and bi group people at the Dyke March this afternoon.


For the last several years I've gone to the Dyke March with the specific agenda of increasing bisexual visibility. The philosophy behind the Dyke March is to include all women who love women, but because of assumptions, bisexuals disappear unless we claim ourselves loud and clear. A few years ago someone started selling stickers that said "bi-identified dyke," which was a start (I tore the "dyke" part of the sticker off and wore it on my back), and since then I've always worn something to show that I love men too (especially one in particular).


There's a part of me that specifically wants to show the lesbians at the Dyke March that when they see me they see a bi person. I'm a political bisexual, as most of my queer identity is tied up in my political beliefs, and when I'm feeling it, I have to be political for people at both ends of the Kinsey Scale, and also for the middle: So many women have come to the bi group over the years saying that they felt alone because it seemed to them like they were the only person they knew who didn't fit one way or the other.


The other night I made myself a shirt with two of my favorite phrases so I can wear it today at the March. I wear a wedding ring so I think that most of the time people assume I am straight. At an event called the Dyke March, with thousands of women participating, I feel like people may assume that I'm a lesbian. So to be visible as a bi person, I have to have a visual marker to show it.





















We're here, we're kind of queer, we're not going anywhere, and there are more of us than you think.

Flower Power

This was written by Ken Kesey, in the "Tools From My Chest" section of Kesey's Garage Sale:

All our symbols rust and fall; our flags fray; our banners are ripped off by Seville Row; our slogans are snapped up for Coca-Cola commercials. . . Only the flower has survived, just as potent as the first time we put a jonquil in a pop bottle for the third grade teacher. Flower children change but the effect of the tool that gave them their name remains the same. How about more flower adults?

Political vs. personal

Last Saturday I gave a phone interview to a reporter with the Bay Area Reporter, who is doing a story in the Pride issue (to be published June 21) about bi visibility. We had a forty-minute discussion about being out; her first question was whether I had been out at work, to which I answered both yes at some places and no at others. That led to her second question, which was how it felt to be out at work versus in at work. Her last question was if I thought it was important for people to come out. I said yes, because the more people come out, the more people who think they don't know any queer people will know that they know queer people. That will lead to a liberalization of attitudes, which will make it easier and safer for people to come out.


For me, it was a pretty productive conversation, having to articulate things I've felt for years about coming out and not coming out. I definitely have this strong feeling that people should come out, including myself, for political reasons, like the one stated above. On the personal side, I feel that each person should do what they feel comfortable with, coming out to the people they choose when they choose, also including myself. I recognize that it's safer for some of us than it is for others, and I don't believe that people should be yanked out the closet (much as I wish they would open all the doors in Hollywood and on Capitol Hill). I often feel guilty about not coming out, because the political angel on my shoulder tells me I should, at the same time that the personal angel tells me I should do so when I feel safe. It's a big struggle for me, and has gotten much worse since I married, due to feeling defensive about protecting my husband and my marriage from other people's stereotypes.


Later that day I sent the reporter an email saying that I wasn't comfortable with her using my whole name in the story. I acknowledged that this might mean that I can't be part of the article, but explained that an acquaintance lost her job because her employers discovered she is bisexual. I also explained that a friend who had been positively profiled in a local paper was slaughtered in an online news"paper" due its very different slant on the same story. It would be different if the BAR was a paper paper, but it is on the Web, too, and coming out in this article literally means coming out to the whole wide world, without being able to control any of it.


I do not feel good about the choice not to come out in the article, though it was supported by Zirpu, who has been stalked and who is more than 50% responsible for my use of nicknames, and by a friend who has more than one presence online to keep her vocational and her avocational lives separate.


The reporter and I finally talked today, after I left a voicemail message following up on the email I sent. She said, and I wasn't surprised, that she wouldn't be able to use my remarks because I'm not willing to use my whole name for the story. She quickly added that that is BAR policy, which she hadn't mentioned at any time during the interview last weekend, but was especially true of the Pride issue, which only made me feel worse. I did not engage her again in my reasons for not using my name, and said I was sorry for wasting her time (I was annoyed that she hadn't mentioned the policy until over a week later, so it came out passive-aggressively. Oh well). She said I hadn't and thanked me for participating anyway.


I was really disappointed. Sure, part of it was because I wasn't going to be in the story, but also because I felt like I had some valid things to say, and because of the irony that I didn't want to be named because of homophobia.


Shobi-wan and I talked about it. She is currently out as bi at work, though, like me, she has worked places where being out felt comfortable and where being out didn't feel comfortable. She supported my decision to be unnamed and therefore not in the story. She said that she and her husband have a friend who was stalked by someone who read his blog about having and receiving treatment for cancer. She said it turned into a big ordeal that their friend had to endure while going through chemotherapy, and his blog was about cancer, not about sexuality. She feels that coming out online is a potentially unsafe thing to do, and said I did the right thing.


I'm still not sure. I did the right thing, the personal angel says. The political angel says I did the hypocritical thing, especially in the face of a person who is totally out online. I feel better than I did before I talked to Shobi-wan, but the political angel has a very loud voice.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

A Story In Several Parts.

About ten years ago, I was driving east on highway 26 through Portland at about 830 on a weeknight, when my car broke down. That is to say, the engine stopped running, though due to inertia I had enough power to get the car over three lanes and onto the shoulder. This had happened before (for a different reason) so I knew what to do, and I was lucky because there was no traffic to navigate thorough in the car's powerless state.


I got the car onto the shoulder a few hundred feet or so from an entrance onto the highway. This was in the days before cell phones, so I walked up the exit to call AAA, an organization with which I have had a long and useful relationship, for a tow. The entrance came out in a residential neighborhood bereft of pay phones, so I walked a bit, looking for a house with the lights on. I found one in which not only the lights were on but I could see people sitting around a table in the front parlor, so I rang the bell.


I explained my situation and asked if I could use the phone to call a tow truck, and the person who answered the door not only agreed but insisted that I wait at her house for the tow truck to come, rather than on the highway shoulder. I sat on the stairs in the hallway and made my call to AAA, and then waited for the yellow truck to arrive to take me back to the car and ultimately to the auto shop.


I didn't speak to any of the people in the house, except to say thank you and goodbye. They were playing a dice game like Yahtzee or Boggle. At the time I felt strongly that they were so kind to me because the kindnesses I was doing in my life were coming back around to me. I hadn't had to walk far to find a household that would allow me to use their phone, and I had been asked to wait inside, where it was warm and safe, until the tow truck came. I was very aware that I had received kindness from strangers, and felt enfolded in the arms of the universe.

Through The Glass

A few weeks ago the executive director at the Pacific Center sent a couple of us facilitators an email saying that he had received a request from a college student "to sit in [our] group and observe."


I sent my response back to him and cc'd all of the facilitators so everyone could be in the discussion if she wished. I'm particularly exhausted on Fridays after the food bank so perhaps my email could have been more diplomatic, but I said NO in capital letters. Some time ago another student came to the meeting and announced at the beginning (fortunately) that while she is not bi, she was interested in doing some research and her professor told her to find and attend a meeting of bi people, to which my friend privately responded later, "What kind of professor doesn't say, 'Go read a book'?".


It made me feel like she was an anthropologist and we were some weird tribe, the "other." Or Jane Goodall and the gorillas. I expressed that at the time and another woman said she was also uncomfortable with this person being there to observe, and the student left the meeting. She hung around until it ended and came with us when we went out for a drink afterward. She "interviewed" people individually while we drank our beers. Even I talked to her. And then she disappeared.


So when we were asked if we would be open to this person observing, my answer was unequivocally no. I did offer to meet with her one-on-one, if she would settle for that. There is very little research out there on lesbian women and even less on bi women, so if it's research subjects she's after, I don't have a problem with that. She went through appropriate channels, by asking first.


I wasn't the only facilitator who rejected the idea of being observed, I was just the first (and that was because I look at my email all the time when I'm home). I am protective of the group as an entity and of the individual members. Recently we have had several new people coming to the meetings and I already feel like I'm working hard to make them comfortable and feel safe. I do not think allowing someone else to "observe" would make that mission any easier for me. I know that if a straight person attended one of the first queer meetings I went to (shortly after I came out as a lesbian) I would have wondered whether this was where I belonged.


I keep coming back to the idea of others thinking we are members of some odd tribe, as if we are not like anyone else. I heard recently that the majority of people in the LGBT community identify as bi, which of course fits right into the Kinsey Scale. If there are seven points people can land on, and only two of them are "one or the other," well, that makes sense, doesn't it? But we are invisible most of the time (for example, I wear a wedding ring so most people who don't know me, but pay attention to the left hand, will assume I'm straight), so it doesn't seem like there are that many of us.


I'm not really sure how I want to end this, because it's part of a larger, ongoing conversation in my head. But the fact is that it is creeping toward midnight and I'm tired from adjusting to the new hours and I want to go to bed. Tune in next time...

Clay Feet

When I was involved with Camp Odyssey I started working with the people who designed the curriculum and the program. I really thought that they embodied the values of the program. In fact, it was D who came up with the thing about staying in the boat, and T who encouraged everyone to close loops. M always seemed to bring a soft consciousness to the hard parts. Because J was so tall, I felt like he was able to see what was going on everywhere in the big meetings, and would step in if something was going haywire.


Then in the summer of 1997 we had the Camp From Hell, when it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Because Camp was so intense, even small things going wrong felt much bigger. I had participants bolt out of meetings and people not talking to each other by the end of the week, and that kind of thing was happening in other meetings too. At the time I blamed a lot of what went wrong on one person, who happened to be someone with whom I had had a lot of personal conflicts and didn't like very much.


It didn't occur to me that maybe those people who were the Curriculum Committee had anything to do with the craziness. I now remember that, in a place where structure was the highest priority, they were deleting some things and reducing the time allowed for others while Camp was running. At the time, that seemed like the last thing that group of people would do, which is probably why I couldn't see it was they who were making those changes to the curriculum. It's so clear now, but that's partly because YaYaWOT, who was there, reminded me of some things that happened after Camp ended that summer, things that are reflected in my journal from that period.


I've recently come to see that these people were flawed like we all are. If I cared about any of it now with anything like the emotion I felt then, I would be angry at them for not being much like how I imagined. When I asked for help then and didn't get it I thought it was because they were too busy to help, but now I think it may have been because they were too overwhelmed themselves. It was so long ago that I don't now remember if I was disappointed in them then. I suspect that I thought that they would fix everything, because they could do what was best for Camp. They were giants to me.


I didn't go to Odyssey the next year, a long story sort of related to this post. I don't know what happened in '98 but the program as I had known it ended that summer or in 1999. YaYaWOT says that partly happened because some people chose to honor a personal relationship over Odyssey ideals. It's too bad Odyssey was the casualty, because I thought then and think now that it was a powerful transformative experience and could have had a huge impact on our communities. Choosing friendship isn't a bad thing for humans to do.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

But does it matter?


There is a woman who occasionally stands on the corner of the big busy intersection near my house. The light is long, and she stands on the sidewalk with a sign that says "Will Work For Food." I've seen her several times; she has straight black hair and dark skin, and from the car looks to be in her late twenties. Whenever a hand reaches out of a car, she makes the sign of the cross twice, old-school style, kissing her hand at the end.


I very very rarely give money to panhandlers. I don't want my money to go toward a 40, or a bottle of MD20/20 or a rock, and I can't give cash and not feel attached to where it's going. The food bank director pointed out that sometimes that people sometimes need to self-medicate to get through the day (or the night), to keep the demons, or even just the cold or discomfort, at bay. I'm still thinking about that, and in the meantime feel much more comfortable giving some kind of consumable.


I realized that I had an extra loaf of bread and a ball of store-brand mozzarella cheese in the freezer and when I got home I tossed them in a plastic sack to take out to her. She looks young, maybe she has some children. I added a can of tuna, one of soup, and a handful of Hershey's kisses. I looked up the words for "frozen" and "can opener" in my Spanish/English dictionary and headed out.


When I returned to the corner, I saw that she was standing with a man who was sitting on a low wall behind a landscaping bush. She appeared to be much older than I thought, even accounting for how much more quickly street living ages people. When I said, "I have some food for you" she responded in English. I explained that some of the food was frozen and asked if they had a can opener. In our two-minute conversation she told me that she and her companion had lost their jobs and were living in a tent, and which churches' soup kitchens they go to. She offered to do some yard work, or wash my car, and apologized several times for smoking.


Afterwards I was thinking how she had not turned out to be at all what I had thought, except female. I found myself thinking that if I had known she wasn't what I had thought, would I have still given her the cheese and the bread?

What was Odyssey?

Recently I've been thinking a lot about my Camp Odyssey experience, which was transformative at the same time that it was difficult. Without comparing Odyssey to Peoples Temple, seeing that movie about Jonestown and reading Raven (which I got from the library) has me thinking about my own experience with "trying to change the world."


Camp Odyssey was an immersion diversity training for youth and adults. When I was on staff, I (and others, obviously) worked with youth entering 10th through 12th grades and examined all the "isms" - racism, sexism, heterosexism, prejudice against immigrants, ageism, and even touched on classism (when I moved back to California we were thinking about working more class issues into the curriculum). Everyone who attended was split into ethnic groups according to their identification, into gender groups, and into sharing circles which were carefully balanced for ethnic identity and gender. Each group would meet with each other group to talk about stereotypes and then the sharing circles would meet to process the experiences of the day. It is very difficult to explain, and it was really really intense.


One of the things I believed was that Odyssey was led by some amazing, fabulous, dedicated people who saw things clearly. I also felt like a lot of the "regular" staff people were pretty amazing as well - Odyssey consisted of two demanding weekends and one really demanding week each year and we all worked very hard during those times. Ironically, the person who was the Camp Director was not someone I believed was any of those things. He and I didn't like each other, and I thought it was because I was in the not-straight group and the only strongly-identified bi person in Camp for the time I was involved, which was about two years, I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. Also, I have a memory of heated disagreements between us, including at Advisory Council meetings when I was in the leadership circle.


I don't know where the curriculum came from, though some of it came from other diversity programs and some of it grew out of the work that had been going on. When I got involved in 1996 Odyssey had been around for about three years (it only lasted maybe two years after I left). There were several two or three day adult trainings a year, but Odyssey was really focused on the Camp for youth which lasted for one week in late June. After Camp in 1997 I "forgot" to turn in my script/agenda/curriculum and while I haven't looked at it in years I haven't been ready to shred it.


Hard as it was, I loved Odyssey. I thought the things we did were important and there are lessons I carry to this day. I wonder what the people who were 14 to 18 years old at the time think now of that experience (some of them are as old now as I was then). We had some guidelines that were posted on a banner in the main hall, and I have found them pretty good guidelines to live by, some of which I see now are woven together for me:

Be honest

Take risks - a hard one for me, being naturally risk-averse.

Respect others

Close the loop - it's not always easy to follow up when I think I've offended someone or when someone has offended me, but working it out means I don't have to fret about it anymore.

Take responsibility for Self - this ranges from going when I need to go to the bathroom to being responsible for doing something stupid or hurtful.

Use "I" statements - I joke that my favorite "I" statement is "I feel you are a jerk" but I've noticed I get heard more easily if I really do say "I feel X when Y" and "It's been my experience that..."


There's more to write about Odyssey but not today. Odyssey was hugely important part of my growing up, even though I was 27 when I got involved. I don't think I would be the person I am today if I hadn't had that experience.

Vote By Mail

Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Secretary of State, is proposing a poll duty, like jury duty, to get enough poll workers to run polling places on election days. The average age of poll workers in the US is 72 and they are not being replaced by new poll workers when they "retire" from working on Election Day, not to mention that a lot of these older pollsters are not comfortable with computerized booths and records (which we didn't use in Alameda County last time, due to the controversy about Diebold machines' reliability).

Well, no wonder the states and counties are having a hard time finding poll workers. I can personally attest that working the polls is a very long day for very little compensation. When I did it, in 1998, we had to be at our central location at 5am, and didn't get home until almost 10pm. I worked a polling place in Berkeley, not particularly near home and not in my neighborhood (where I was voting absentee). There were five or six of us at our polling place and we were between 25 and 60 or so, apparently a relatively young crowd. We earned less than $100 for our time, and our Poll Captain's wife brought us a pizza because none of us could leave the site.

One part of the opposition to Sec. Brunner's proposal is that if there were a poll duty drawn from voting registration records and drivers' licenses, like jury duty, people would just not register to vote so they could avoid being drafted to work the polls. Few enough Americans vote as it is to disincentivize voting any further.

I think the answer is to make elections "vote by mail," like they have in Oregon (and thank goodness they did that; I remember an election in which there were 44 issues or political positions open on the ballot). There have been some objections raised about voting by mail because the stamp could be equivalent to a poll tax. I wonder if it would cost much more to have the envelopes prepaid than what it costs to pay all the poll workers and transport the machines to the thousands and thousands of voting precincts across the state.

Maybe more people would vote that way, too (though I would rather have people vote who educated about the issues). Most people don't know that State law requires employers to allow a couple hours for voting, so people have to get up early, or rush home, to vote, or they don't vote, because Election Day is always on a weekday and is never a holiday, like it is in some countries. What's wrong with vote by mail? Would it make a difference?

Better Living Through Harmony

A few years ago I joined East Bay Harmony after hearing them sing at the Live Oak Park Fair. I joined right away when I discovered that I didn't need to know how to read music to be part of the chorus. It's a community chorus, part of a project of the Contemporary A Cappella Society; there are wonderful singers and great people in the chorus. I left the chorus when I moved out of Oakland, but I lurk on their listserv, I attend the Friends and Family Concerts (the next one is March 26th), and wish I was back in the chorus.

I never did learn how to read music, but I learned a lot of music theory and all kinds of songs while I sang with them. I loved singing all the songs, though there were few songs in which altos sang the melody. I like singing background, and I enjoyed the circle-singing-style warmups, nonsense syllables that blended and harmonized as our director led us. "Somewhere," "The Longest Time," the old Rice Krispies jingle, and "Embraceable You" were some of the songs in the repertoire when I was in the chorus. The chorus has gotten better and is singing more technically difficult songs, which is why I love the F&F concerts.

The slogans of the chorus were (and probably still are) "peace through harmony" and "community through harmony." One song indicates what a community it was, to me: At the September 17, 2001, rehearsal, one of the tenors brought multiple copies of the lyrics to "Imagine." I'm not a churchgoer or a religious person, and was not seeking divine comfort in that scary time, but singing that song, at that time, with people I didn't know well, is one of the most religious experiences I have ever had.

As I'm writing this, I'm daydreaming about rejoining the chorus. They still don't require the ability to read music, though in all other ways it has gotten more professional-sounding. From the pictures it looks like a fair number of the people who were in the chorus when I left in 2002 are still singing there.