And so I begin the new year by coming out of a period of silence.

A silence, to be sure, less profound than the one I inhabited this time last year.  And for different reasons.  In the last month or so, mainly I’ve just needed a break.

1. The cave

But on New Year’s Day 2009, I was living in a kind of emotional cave, with no desire or wherewithal to communicate with anyone outside my day-to-day life except immediate family.  Especially my dad, who I’d learned just a couple of weeks before had been diagnosed with a terminal lymphoma. That news came on top of stuff I’d already been struggling with for some months, after my then-partner, Rozz who is now Ptery, made the decision while in school in Seattle to transition as a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual, & made accompanying decisions that have essentially ended our partnership as-it-was.

Thus, the cave, about which I wrote on April 2, a few days after coming out of it,

I seem to be have come out of the cave now. Not just feeling better — I’ve felt better a number of times (only to then go back into the grey again) — but actually able & willing to communicate. Maybe it was that I’m finally accepting the inevitable with my partner. Maybe it was finally getting the plane tickets bought to fly down in late April to see my dad. Maybe it was taking enough 5-HTP to keep the serotonin cooking in my brain. Maybe it’s the light coming into the days after a looooooong winter. Maybe it’s all just been perimenopause. Anyway… seems I’m back in the world again.

Now, before I go on, let me explain: this post isn’t just about the history of what I did or experienced in 2009: it’s also about what it meant.  Or, better yet, the meanings I’ve made of it — because that’s what it’s all about, for me — the story, the stories each of us make of our lives.  And this is my blog, of course, so this is my damn story.

And the story of coming out of the cave also has these meanings attached to it:

(1) The cave itself became a new term, describing a new form, of that rather large aspect of my life popularly known as depression (or, sometimes, despair): along with the grey, along with the pit, along with limbo — all of which are described in my late 2006 post The grey — the newly-discovered environment of the cave can include any one of the first three, or exclude all of them; it is chiefly characterized by that deep inability & lack of motivation to communicate.  Big whooptie, a new term — but I do find the language useful in understanding myself around this stuff.  Since, hey, halfway through my life give-or-take, I don’t see the depression/despair gunk suddenly evaporating from my life.  It’s a part of who I am.  I’m just lots better at handling it than before, & part of that is in refining my understanding of how it works in me.

(2) If I were to mark the exact date the cave walls dissolved around me, it would probably be March 30, 2009, which coincided with some important phone calls with Ptery, & also with my brother Mark & I buying our tickets to Spokane to see our dad for what we both understood would probably be the last time this side of our own deaths.  And also on that day, I wrote a lengthy post in memorial to Nicholas Hughes, a fisheries biologist formerly at University of Alaska Fairbanks who had taken his own life the previous week.  I hadn’t known him, but he was the son of the poets Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes, & Plath especially had been an significant figure in my life.  Not for the right reasons, initially — but the post explains that: it was my effort to honor Mr. Hughes not as mere adjunct to his famous parents’ biographies — as many of the news accounts of his death seemed to view him — but for who he himself was & for what he brought to all the people in his life, who were mourning him that day.

(3) My dad knew I’d been having a hard time. He was at peace with his own approaching death, & wanted us to be too.  But beyond that, he wanted our happiness.  He was so glad when he heard I’d come out of the cave.  That was one of the very best things about it.

2. Lima beans against WAR

Wow, after the Summer of Hate experienced by the Anchorage LGBT & allied community over Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64, one almost forgets its political prelude, when then-Gov. Sarah Palin named Wayne Anthony Ross — widely known by his license-plate acronym as WAR — to succeed the disgraced Talis Colberg as Alaska’s Attorney General.  Alaska’s top LGBT blog Bent Alaska informs us that its post about WAR, “Palin’s AG Pick Called Gays “Degenerates” (3/29/09), was one of its two 2009 posts to go viral — & that was even before he compared gays to lima beans, a vegetable that he “hates” but still claimed he could represent if he were, say, the lawyer for “United Vegetable Growers.”  We lima beans were, needless to say, not favorably impressed.

Ross also had a history of biased & even misogynistic attitudes in relation to domestic violence, sexual assault, & violence against women; hostility to Alaska Native sovereignty & subsistence rights; a mediocre reputation as a practitioner of law amongst his fellow members of the Alaska Bar Association; & a pretty shaky attitude about executive branch ethics.  Bad news all around: it motivated me to spend a considerable amount of time & energy researching him, listening to legislative confirmation hearings, & writing a very long letter to legislators, which I posted on my blog — thus embarking upon a part-time career as an occasional political blogger.  I wrote a few other posts about WAR, & commented on other sites’ coverage of him (especially Bent Alaska), & celebrated with most of the rest of Alaska when the Alaska Legislature rejected him by a vote of 23 yeas to 35 nays — an unprecedented rejection of a governor’s cabinet pick.

It took a day or two for the Alaska Department of Law to remove WAR from its website. This screenshot was taken on April 16. The red X is mine.

3. Dad

I flew to Spokane with my brother Mark in late April to visit Dad.  We also saw my sister Mer & brother-in-law Julius, with whom my Dad lived, and my brother Dave drove over from Montana.  Ptery hitchhiked up, at my request, so I got to see him too.

Dad was so happy to have all of us there. He had a lot of energy too, considering how ill he was; but near the end, as we began to return to our homes, he took a turn for the worse, as if he’d been holding to life so that he could see us all before he left us to be with Mom.  She had died in November 2005.

I took this picture during that trip: Dad telling one of his wonderful stories about growing up in the lumber camps of eastern Oregon in the 1920s where Grandpa Claude ran locomotives on the Sumpter Valley Railroad for the Oregon Lumber Company; or about the bootleg operation he & his pals in the Army Air Corps had in England during WWII; or about how he met my mom when he was looking for a job, & guy at Ellingson Lumber Company suggested he head to Izee because the camp cook there had two beautiful daughters. It was the younger of the two daughters, my Auntie Pat, who actually introduced my parents after Dad gave her a ride into John Day, where Mom was then working.

That photo on the wall behind Dad was his favorite picture of Mom, taken by a professional photographer shortly before they met. When I look at this photo, I feel his yearning to be with her again.

I last saw him on April 29.  He died not quite a month later, on May 27.  My sister was with him.

I’ve been at peace about Dad’s death almost from the beginning, partly because the peace he himself had about it put me at peace, & partly because of what for lack of better words I will call the messages that came, three of them — two of them to other family members, & the last one to me. My message was from my mother, in the form of sunflowers.  It told me that Dad was with her, & they are both okay.

On July 12, as many family members as could make it, including me & my sister & brothers, all gathered together in Spokane to remember Mom & Dad & to celebrate all that they gave us.

I love you, Mom & Dad.

4. Anchorage Ordinance 2009-64

The Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO 2009-64 was introduced in the Anchorage Assembly on May 12, & thus was my career as an occasional political blogger made much less occasional.

AO 64 would have added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of personal characteristics in Title 5, Anchorage’s equal rights code, which prohibits discrimination based on those characteristics in employment, housing, financial practices, education, and practices of the Municipality of Anchorage. The summer of 2009 in Anchorage featured a protracted period of public testimony at the Anchorage Assembly, with accompanying sign-waving and letter-writing both by ordinance supporters and those who opposed equal rights — led in particular by Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, who used “perverted” and other hate-terms to describe LGBT people, hence the name given the summer by commentator at the Anchorage Press: the Summer of Hate.

Identity Reports (1989) and One in 10 (1986)

From May to September, I wrote in the area of 60 posts about the ordinance, including a number that delved into the background & prevarications of its most vociferous opponent, Jerry Prevo.  I also testified in support of the ordinance on June 16 ( the second of five nights of public testimony). My testimony was based on two major research efforts in the 1980s for Identity, Inc. in which we documented the rampant discrimination in Anchorage & in Alaska based on sexual orientation. (Our research unfortunately did not cover discrimination on the basis of gender identity, which we knew little about at the time.)

The ordinance passed the Anchorage Assembly on August 11, 2009, but was vetoed the following week by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the third time in Anchorage history that equal protection for at least some LGBTQ people in Anchorage was first granted, & then stripped away again.

We weren’t real happy.

5. Friends & allies

The Summer of Hate wasn’t all hate & horror.  There was also some really cool stuff.

Cool stuff was people like Vic Fischer, Jane Angvik, & Arliss Sturgulewski testifying for the ordinance — people with just a teensy bit more credibility than, say, self-declared homophobic Bible-thumping Nazi “rascist” Eddie Burke.

Cool stuff was the huge number of people who turned out on the lawn of the Loussac Library to dance, blow bubbles, & hold signs upholding equal rights for all. The second week of public testimony, on which testimony was heard on two successive nights (June 16-17), was also the run-up to PrideFest, & every time I stepped out of the Assembly chambers for a breather, I felt like PrideFest was already in progress (once, that is, I got past the ABT redshirts & their hot dog tables).

I remember going out there one day & seeing how everyone — members of the LGBT community, & lots of non-LGBT folks including my nephew Miles & some of his friends — was celebrating equality & love for their fellow human beings, as sour-faced, red-shirted opponents stood nearby with their preprinted “Truth is Not Hate” signs agitating against equality.  I thought to myself, I’m so proud of my people — & I found myself for the first time consciously including in my people not just other LGBT people, but all the numerous non-LGBT allies who took it for granted that equality meant all of us.  And were as dumbfounded as we were at the “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech dropping out of the mouths of red-shirts both inside & outside the Assembly chambers.

On a personal level, I was lucky to make some new friendships.  John & Heather Aronno, both now of Alaska Commons, who I met a few days before the first public hearing, became my favorite folks to sit next to at Assembly public hearings: three bloggers, all in a row.

One of my other favorite new people was (& is) Janson Jones, whose fantastic photography at Floridana Alaskiana v2.5 (including of the ordinance battle) first drew my attention. He’s also an all-around cool guy who also became a new dad over the summer — & his photos of his precious daughter Aurelia are pretty wonderful too.

Thanks to the ordinance battle, I also got reaquainted with a friend from way back, Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, who I hadn’t seen in years. I’d known Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska through email, but not until this summer did I meet him in person. I’ve known M.E. Rider of Grrlzlist, E. Ross of Bent Alaska, & longtime activist (& maker of Equality Works buttons) Stef Gingrich for years, though it was only through the summer that we saw much of each other, since normally — yes, true story — I’m pretty much a hermit.

It was the ordinance that brought me out, for ill & for good. Despite the ordinance’s eventual fate — for me personally, thanks to people like these, it was mostly for good.

6. Palinesque

Somewhere in the middle of this was Sarah Palin’s announcement on July 3 that she would be resigning her position as Governor of Alaska.  I don’t blog that much about Palin — there are other Alaska bloggers who cover her quite thoroughly (thank goodness!) — but within a few days after her announcement, I got fed up with how the national mainstream media was uncritically passing along what I dubbed the 2 million dollar meme: Palin’s claim that $2,000,000 taxpayer (or rather, oil revenue dollars — this is Alaska, after all) had been spent on responding to ethical complaints against her. So I started taking it apart, & continued to do so over at total of six blog posts.

Wow did that raise traffic on my blog. I got nearly 1,800 hits on the first post of the series the first day after it was published; to date it’s gotten 5,530 hits, making it the most read post on my blog.  The pie chart I created for that post also proved to be pretty popular.

My stuff didn’t stop Palin from repeating her lie; but then, who expected that it would?  I’m no fool.  I just hoped the damn mainstream media would wake up & do the job they’re paid to do — so that bloggers like me wouldn’t have to do it for free. I am proud to say that my efforts, which Anchorage Daily News reporter Sean Cockerham picked up on, contributed to Linda Perez of the Governor’s Office being forced to admit there were errors in the hokey spreadsheet the Governor’s Office had cooked up in an incompetent attempt to back up Gov. Palinocchio’s claim.  Cockerham’s story (posted, as far as I know, only on the ADN’s Politics blog, but not as a full-fledged ADN story) said that Perez was going to follow up on further questions he’d brought up — I’ve seen no sign that she ever did, or that ADN itself cared.  I didn’t follow up further myself because by time Perez ‘fessed up as much as she did, I was in Spokane with my family remembering my mom & dad.  I have a feeling everyone who had actual responsibility (because, of course, they were more than mere “community organizers”) decided to drop it.  Gee. I wonder why.

7. I got a new couch

More properly, it’s a futon loveseat. Whatever.  I got it in August, & I’ve been vegging more happily (when I vege) ever since.  My cat loves it too.

8. An effort to up-end the Alaska Judicial Council

Other things were going on in my life too, of course.  But the political stuff stands out, because political blogging is not my great purpose in life — writing my own stuff is. And yet, I kept doing it.

And so it happens that in late August I learned of a lawsuit by which certain Alaska conservatives, most if not all of whom have ties to the so-called right-to-life movement, had filed suit nearly two months before — a fact not covered at all by Alaska’s mainstream media in spite of all of them having received the press release when the suit was filed — which would, if successful, overturn major provisions of the Alaska Constitution with regard to the selection & retention of state court judges. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, James Bopp, Jr., is a big name: he has litigated similar issues elsewhere.  My own feeling is that this guy is more likely to have shopped around for the Alaskans who could be named as plaintiffs in this case, than that the plaintiffs shopped around for him.  His agenda appears to be a nationwide effort to politicize judicial selection, so that candidates can be selected through popular vote based on litmus test questions on hot-button issues (“What is your opinion on abortion?” — “What is your opinion on same-sex marriage?”), instead of being selected for their judicial integrity & knowledge of the law.

Through my job on staff of the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, which I’ve held since 1990, I’d become very familiar with Alaska’s judicial merit selection process, & have a lot of respect for it too, & for the quality of judges we have in this state.  Not perfect — but a helluva lot better than in states that have the politicized & often politically corrupt types of selection processes that Bopp seems to prefer.

So, I read about Miller v. Carpeneti, & I wrote about it, & I even took a day off work to attend the hearing before Judge John W. Sedwick in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska on September 11.   I’m not a lawyer, but I read through most of the briefings, & it didn’t seem to me that Bopp’s arguments held much water.  Judge Sedwick apparently agreed: he heard arguments from both sides & then dismissed the case. His opinion was published on September 15.

But we haven’t heard the last from Mr. Bopp: he’s appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, last I heard, the last briefs in the case must be filed no later than February 10, 2010. Oral arguments might then follow.  If Bopp fails at the Ninth Circuit, there’s every possibility he might appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court — he’s argued before them before, & won.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder what in hell is wrong with the Alaska mainstream media, including our supposed paper-of-record, the Anchorage Daily News. First they all failed to follow up any further on Palin’s spreadsheet-of-hooey in support of her 2 million dollar meme-of-hooey; now it turns out they sat for nearly two months on a press release issued in early July about a lawsuit that could theoretically undermine our state constitution with regard to judicial selection.  Phil Munger at Progressive Alaska has drawn attention to numerous other instances in which the press has sat on its duff instead of investigating & reporting stuff that in some cases is right in front of their faces — for instance, the numerous lies propounded throughout Palin’s putative “memoir,” which the ADN has yet to write any review on.  What else are they sitting on?  How are we to have democracy that way, if the MSM isn’t doing its job?

Oh yeah, I remember now.  Bloggers like me are supposed to do that job nowadays.  In our spare time.  For free.

(All due respect to those reporters who as far as I can tell are doing their best to do their job — but are being shut down by management. I know you guys are out there.)

9. True Diversity Dinner

In the aftermath of Sullivan’s veto of AO 64, several of us bloggers who had been heavily involved in writing about it started talking about what we might do keep the flame alive.  Several of us met at lunchtime one day, & out of someone’s suggestion — I don’t remember whose — next thing you know, the True Diversity Dinner was born.  Its immediate impetus was that the upcoming Mayor’s Diversity Dinner, an event originally created during the administration of Mayor, now Senator, Mark Begich, had been renamed Mayor’s Unity Dinner by Mayor Dan Sullivan — the same guy who had just vetoed equal rights for Anchorage’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transfolk.

Instead of protesting, we decided to celebrate the rich diversity that the Mayor’s renaming of the dinner seemed designed to whitewash away. The True Diversity Dinner was our alternative, with the motto, “Because we all deserve a seat at the table.”  It was organized by the bloggers of Alaska Commons, Anchorage Won’t Discriminate, Bent Alaska, Floridana Alaskiana v2.5, Grrlzlist Alaska, Henkimaa, and SOSanchorage.net — but especially by John & Heather Aronno (Alaska Commons & SOSAnchorage.net), who I fear fell far behind in their studies thanks to the dinner.

But it was well worth it, right guys?  It was a tremendous event, with great speakers including my Assembly person Elvi Gray-Jackson, former Congressional candidate & longtime activist for Alaska Native rights Diane Benson, Rev. Marquita Pierre of the Center for Spiritual Healing, & radio host & blogger Shannyn Moore.

On top of that, I was honored to be the recipient of a True Diversity Award for Excellence in Online Media for coverage on my blog of the battle for the Anchorage equal rights ordinance.  Booyah!

10. Hilton workers

And more occasional politics.

When the True Diversity Dinner was first thought up, I hadn’t known that Mayor Sullivan’s Unity Dinner was booked for the Hilton Anchorage Hotel — which was (& still is) under boycott by its workers due to the bad faith practices of its management on orders of the Hilton’s owners, Kentucky-based Columbia Sussex Corporation.  A blog post by Shannyn Moore brought my attention to the fact that the Mayor’s Unity Dinner was also a union-busting dinner. I spent some time researching & writing about the labor dispute, & also attended the Hotel Workers Rising March from the Sheraton (which is now also under boycott due to similar management abuses of workers) to the Hilton two days after the True Diversity Dinner was held.

11. But I’m really about writing my own stuff, & that’s what I need to do now

I’d like to follow up on the hotel workers struggle, both at the Hilton & now the Sheraton.  I hope someone will.  But I can’t.  Here’s the deal.  There are people on this planet, there are people in this state, who thrive on political blogging, & what’s more excel at it.  I think I’m pretty damn good at it when I’m doing it — but I don’t thrive on it.  I start with enthusiasm, but over time… I wear down, my spirit flags, & pretty soon it winds right back into what I started this post with: depression & despair.

Midyear, in the post in which I claimed to be an occasional political blogger, I wrote,

The main reason I set up this site & blog was to help me get back into the flow of writing, of living my life as a writer.  And while writing about politics is writing — well, it’s not my writing, the stuff close to my heart.  Besides, I also work a full-time job.

Besides, sometimes the political stuff can really whack me out….

Another factor about how I handle political posts is that my style isn’t really amenable to fast-response writing, which is a feature of a lot of the best political bloggers I read.  But me, I like to think a lot about what I’m writing.  I like to go deep.  I like to be thorough & as comprehensive as I can.  I like to source all my references thoroughly.  I like — apparently — to write term papers.  (I sure never thought so when I was in college).  And that takes a long time.  Especially since, as previously mentioned, I work a full-time job.  And I also need a certain amount of down time or I am liable to put myself into a depression.

Sometimes, writing my own stuff actually feels like down time.  Reason: I said it above, it’s stuff that close to my heart.

So October saw me returning to writing — at that time, mostly background stuff or responses to stuff that I was reading in preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2009 (NaNoWriMo).  In looking back, I remember that True Diversity Dinner month — that is, September — also saw a bit of focus on writing: a couple of politically-oriented pieces about homophobia in science fiction, including one involving a publication I was writing a story for.  As it happened, I wasn’t far enough along on that story to meet the submission deadline of September 30 — so I picked up & polished an older thing instead.

And whaddaya know! in early October, I was told they wanted to publish it!  Which did much to make me feel like a writer again.

“Cold” was published on October 31, 2009 in Crossed Genres Issue #12, the LGBT issue, & you can still read it online there.  (When it’s no longer live there, & my contract with Crossed Genres permits, I will republish it right here at Henkimaa.com.)  “Cold” was also selected for inclusion in Crossed Genres‘ first-year anthology, which will include one story from each of the magazines first 12 issues.  I think it’s still on schedule for publication in February.

My username on NaNoWriMo: yksin.

November for me was the headlong hurry of NaNoWriMo.  As a result, as anyone who knows this blog saw, I didn’t do much blogging at all.  Such blog posts as got posted were mostly automatically generated “Daily Tweets” posts from my Twitter feed.  And I haven’t done much blogging since NaNoWriMo ended, either.

But whoa! I did a lot of writing — 51,607 words worth of it in November, making me a NaNoWriMo winner this year…. er… I mean, last year.  I was writing in the same story universe as “Cold,” which is about two young women on an extrasolar planet (that is, in another solar system) in the late stages of terraformation, which I’ve finally named Oikos — but my NaNovember 2009 writing was mostly about three centuries earlier in the timeline, before & around the time the ships that will eventually arrive at Oikos leave our solar system.  I called it Long Dark.

And a lot of it was background writing, rather than the story itself.  Because there is so damn much science that I need to have at least some kind of grasp on before I can do the story for real.

Though I came up with at least four stories over the course of the month that I know I can shape into good damn stuff.  And I also discovered that a character of mine from a supposedly completely unrelated project is, whaddaya know, an important historical figure for the society in Long Dark and Cold.  And since that character is very closely based on me… whoa, it’s an awful lot like, well, writing myself into history.  How cool is that?

(Or how egotistical?)

12. Since then…

… that is, during December — what have I been doing?  Not blogging, clearly. Except for one extensive rant about the leakage in various portions of my ceiling.  (Now cured, but the holes in the ceiling still need patching.)  Other than that, lots of vegging out, some writing, lots of reading — my latest topics have included atmospheric pressure, altitude sickness, & spacesuit design (background research for a story in the Cold universe) & how people with strabismus or amblyopia (the latter being the case for me), most of whom grow up stereoblind, might be able to develop stereo (binocular) vision.  Even at 50 years old. Which is what I am now.

50 years old, soon to be 51. And now I reflect on where I was at when I turned 50, early in 2009.  I was still in the cave.  But there were inklings of possibility.  I was still in the cave, for instance, when a confluence of ideas led me to decide how to go about my writing life, which included blogging & other forms of social media to get my stuff out there, instead of just through the old “send out craploads of query letters & get a shitload of rejection letters back before someone finally decides your stuff is good enough to publish” method that has been standard for a very bloody long time.  I knew I’d feel a lot more at ease finding my own audience through social media than going through the query letter drudgery.  It was still pretty remarkable that I made such a decision at such a time, though: social media? for someone who, at that point, was incapable & unmotivated to communicate at all?  But then, I knew the cave walls would dissolve sooner or later.  And they did.

I was also deciding, back in February of 2009 that age 50 was a good time to reach the milestone that I had apparently reached in the sorrows of that time.  The boy that I & Rozz-now-Ptery raised from age 9 was now 21 (& now, some months later, is actually 22), & is setting out on his own course in the world.  He’s in a residential job training program; I seem him some weekends when he comes into town.  Ptery is embarked on another course, living a nomadic life mostly off-the-grid in the Lower 48; we are no longer partners, however much we still love each other. So, I am single &, except for my cat & the boy’s dog, essentially alone.

When I was in college & took a class on Hinduism, I learned that the traditional life path for very pious Brahmin males was supposed to consist of several stages — four of them, I think — with the third stage being that of husband, father, & householder.  When the householding stage was over, these guys were apparently supposed to just up & lickety-split out to the forest to become religious ascetics.  Or something like that.

And when I turned 50, I thought: that’s it, I’m no longer a householder.  Well, I still have my apartment.  And I don’t plan to go live in the woods as an ascetic.  (Ptery’s path is a little closer to that, really.)  But I no longer have the responsibilities of a spouse/partner or of a parent to a minor child.  I can do what I want.  And what I need.

Which is to write.  But dang, it sure takes me a long time to get the politics out of my way to do it.

But I got to that point, & now I plan to continue.

That’s my story.

I’m such a cathead.

Related posts:

1. True Diversity Dinner 1 & 2: Video by Janson Jones
2. True Diversity Dinner video, part 3: Hotel workers, & Elvi's speech
3. True Diversity Dinner: September 25, 2009

Today’s a day that’s had a lot of deaths in it.  The first was the death of someone I hadn’t known of before, a woman named Jerri Nielsen, an ER doctor from Ohio who was working in Antarctica and had to treat herself when she discovered she had cancer. That was in 1999, & she survived, but today a friend of mine — herself a breast cancer survivor — posted a link to Jerri Nielsen’s obituary in the Washington Post: she died on the June 23, the cancer having returned and spread.

Someone commented on my friend’s link to the story: Farrah Fawcett, who had been fighting for her life against anal cancer since 2006, had died this morning.  I felt sadness for both, & for their families, & for my friend who first posted the Jerri Nielsen obit; & I felt sadness for myself too… for my family, for my dad who died last month, also of cancer.  About whom I have a deep sense of peace, for complex reasons I’m not ready to write about… but right now, writing this, there’s tears… if he is at peace, still, for us, there is loss.  I thought about my mom, too: she was a breast cancer survivor, but died in November 2005 of complications of diabetes.  My dad was with her when she died.  Now he has died, and is with her again.

Later, by way of another friend’s tweet on Twitter, I heard that Michael Jackson was reported in a coma, possibly dead.  I did a quick check of Google News and found that in fact he had died.  Facebook & Twitter have been full of that news & reactions to it ever since.  So I’ve been reminded of other deaths.  David Carradine, who died just last month — as sudden, as much a shock.  But especially John Lennon: he, like Michael Jackson, was a figure I’d been aware of virtually all of my life, whose music I had always heard, but I had no idea of just how profoundly either of them had affected the lives of many around me, to the point of tears at their deaths.  I still remember have clear memories of a night in December 1980, being in Info Box, a ticket & information agency I headed up during my senior year at Wellesley College, coming down off one of my few experiments with speed (in other words, I was deeply & horrifically depressed, because as I learned in those days, coming down off speed is a very powerful way of sending oneself into depths of despair, at least for someone like me already vulnerable to it), just keeping my head above water, & getting the news of John Lennon’s murder.  It’s a good thing he wasn’t as influential in my life as he was in the lives of some of the people I knew — I’m sure I would have gone to the very worst depths.  As it was, his death, & the sorrow people had for it, haunted the campus for weeks.

I have no idea if Michael Jackson’s untimely death will have a similar lasting effect on the people around me: he was a much different man.  The kinder words I’ve heard of him are troubled, weird, eccentric.  But no doubt about it: talented.  And comes down to this: that for all the troubles of his life, & the crimes of which he accused about which I don’t know enough to judge his guilt or innocence — he was, like every other person, a human being deserving human compassion. He has three children left behind, & family, & friends; as did John Lennon, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Jerri Nielsen.  My dad.  My mom.

All of us live at the center of our own lives, & bear so much influence on the lives of those we love, & those who love us even if we don’t know them.  Not knowing any of these famous people as well as I knew my mom & dad, I can’t say the tears I’m having tonight are for them: my tears are for my mom & dad.  But I know there are plenty of people crying for their loss, & the losses of other people who aren’t mentioned in this post of the papers.  Life is so strange, that death is so much a part of it, & then those of us still this side still go on, remembering the dead or not, writing obituaries, writing elegies, or just dancing to what’s left to us of those lives.

That’s one thing I’ll do for Michael Jackson.  Not tonight — it’s getting late.  But other times.  I remember hearing him, a  kid singing with the Jackson 5 when I myself was a kid — I’m the same age as him, 50. But it’s the Thriller-era music in the mid-1980s I remember him best for, when I was in my 20s & dancing up a sweat in the local queer bar four or five nights out of the week, all the way to last call. I’ve got a snippet of poetry from a series of couplets about my old bar days with him in it:

Smoke, sweat, the glitter ball, Donna Summers, Michael Jackson —
make your fun, but I lost 20 pounds there one summer, dancing.

Rest in peace, Michael jackson, John Lennon, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Jerri Nielsen, Dad, Mom. And I, thinking of you, will keep dancing, for as long as I’m still able.

A postscript about dancing

This is the last photo I have (that I took) of my parents together when my mom was still alive. It was in my hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana, on August 7, 2004 at my niece Cassie’s wedding.  As I wrote in the description of this photo in my Flickr photostream:

Right after I took this photo, Dad & Mom wheeled smack dab into a big group of post-wedding revelers who were enjoying themselves dancing.  Mom & Dad just started boogeying down right along with them!  But unfortunately my camera battery ran out of juice before I could catch them at it.

Boogey down, Mom & Dad!

Related posts:

1. Bar Fragments (poem)
2. Blogging health
3. Green family

Conflation

I found home far from my birthplace,
but at night my dreams remind me:
I see them, Mom and Dad and their home
at one with the landscape I now call my own
and in daylight reality I know
that my dream is more true than the maps which show

the distance between my home, their home.
Dreams evaporate the miles
and place upon the self-same soil
the place now my own,
the place I was born,
my mom, my dad, our home.

[March 18, 1997]

Related posts:

1. Saturn is Heavier in My Dreams
2. Saying "I Love You" (poem)
3. Alaska Love Poem

Equality works -- but only if it works for everyone. Otherwise, guess what? It's not equality.

Yesterday I came across a new opinion piece in the Anchorage Press called “Prevo’s right, sort of” by Anchorage pollster Ivan Moore. It was about the Anchorage equal rights ordinance, of course, so I went on to read it, figuring to stick it in the “supports ordinance” or “doesn’t support ordinance” listing on my Equality page‘s listing of resources about the ordinance, whichever applied.

But y’know, I couldn’t figure out which category applied. Both? Neither?  Just like its title, it seemed like six of one, half a dozen of the other: Mr. Moore wanted the ordinance to pass, but he didn’t.  Maybe he wanted two ordinances.  I dunno. It was hard to figure.  Still is.

Mr. Moore seems clearly to favor adding sexual orientation to the Muni’s equal rights code.  He also claims to favor protecting people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity.  But he’s got a problem with the definition of sexual orientation as written in the proposed ordinance because, he says, the definition confuses the two.  And he wants gender expression tossed altogether.

Here’s the definition of sexual orientation as contained in the ordinance:

Sexual orientation means actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality or gender expression or identity. As used in this definition, ‘gender expression or identity’ means having or being perceived as having a self-image, appearance, or behavior different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth.

The problem is, as Moore points out, that sexual orientation and gender identity are two different things. In the word of Jennifer Finney Boylan the male-to-female transsexual whose book I’m Looking Through You Moore is reading right now, sexual orientation is “about who I wanted to go to bed with” — i.e., which sex one is physically and emotionally attracted to; whereas gender identity is about “who I wanted to go to bed as” — i.e., whether one understands oneself to be, at root, female or male.

So to Moore, because the definition the ordinance’s crafters are using seems to include gender identity as a subset of sexual orientation, it’s wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the definition even plays right into the hands [gasp!] of the scatalogically-fascinated Prevo et al. religious right, much to Moore’s colorful chagrin:

By contrast, religious definitions of sexual orientation all intermingle the concepts of gender identity and sexual behaviors, all of them filthy nasty, for no other reason than because it’s in their puritanical interests to do so.

The shockingly numbnuts move here was that the AKCLU and Pat Flynn and whoever else was responsible for crafting this ordinance played right into their bigoted hands by including gender identity and gender expression as “subsets” of sexual orientation.

What’s Moore’s solution?

On June 9, the Assembly should cut the words “or gender expression or identity” and the related language, and simplify the ordinance down to its real intent, to protect gays from being discriminated against. Gender expression and identity are simply not nice tidy subsets of sexual orientation, and so their placement as such is wrong.  Personally, I think they should consider the inclusion of gender identity, but separately from orientation.  Gender expression should be gotten rid of entirely, the mostly heterosexual crossdressers can just freaking do it in private, and the drag queens… well they don’t care, they like the controversy anyway.

The part I’ve emphasized in bold is what has really created a stir amongst supporters of the ordinance.  It gave a lot of us the feeling that Moore was advocating — if only “temporarily” — throwing transfolk under the bus this go ’round. Something like the way John, one of the people whose commented on the story on Anchorage Press‘ website, thought.  John opined:

Ivan’s polls are usually accurate, and his opinions are also worth considering. He makes a good point here. I think Sexual Identity is also worth protecting, but it is different than Sexual Orientation (or preference if you prefer). Let’s take the easy one first and see how that works.

So here we see equal protection from discrimination for lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, along with heterosexuals, described as “the easy one” (wow, I’ve been involved in these battles before — you call this easy?!!!), but transsexual/transgender people?  They can just wait.

Let’s be fair to Mr. Moore.  He did say, already included in the quote above:

Personally, I think they should consider the inclusion of gender identity, but separately from orientation.

And earlier today, addressing other people’s comments (including mine) on his article, he said further:

I’m not throwing anyone under the bus. I would be the first to vote in favor of gender identity as a separate protected class if I was on the assembly. But it just doesn’t belong under the umbrella of orientation.

Well, Mr. Moore, I’m afraid I’m going to have to wait until you’re on the Assembly to try testing that out.  Meanwhile, I’m sorry to say that I’ve got the same suspicion that a lot of other folks have had: did Moore, a politically-connected pollster, write the article to float a possible compromise on the ordinance, much along the lines of what commenter John wrote: “Let’s take the easy one first and see how that works”? Let’s just do gender identity as a separate thing — but not quite specify whether that should be done now, or later.  And since it is true that gender identity and sexual orientation are two different phenomenon — we’ll just use that definitional nitpickiness as a wedge to kinda split the two apart — one can hardly complain about the integrity of our nomenclature, can one?  Oh yeah, and that other pesky part of the definition, the part about gender expression? — well, let’s just toss that part out altogether, because after all, Prevo is right (says Moore) about the spectre of predatory guys in dresses invading the women’s restrooms of the Anchorage heartland.  Wrote Moore:

Gender expression? I tell you, JERRY PREVO IS RIGHT! Some guy with a beard is going to get dolled up in a fearsomely attractive outfit and go hang out in the ladies bathroom in City Hall, looking for a lawsuit. Men aren’t going to be lining up to troll the ladies bathroom looking to “prey on women and children” like the loopy right says they will, but the fact that the law could be made an example of in this way shows that it is bad public policy. I bet you someone does it, just to make a point.

And as previously quoted:

Gender expression should be gotten rid of entirely, the mostly heterosexual crossdressers can just freaking do it in private, and the drag queens… well they don’t care, they like the controversy anyway.

Red herring, red herring / the Prevo treat / more fun to look at / than it is to eat

Which all just means to me that, whatever else of Prevo’s that Moore has steered clear of, he’s swallowed one of his super smelly stinky inedible red herrings — in this case the one about what gender expression means — hook, line, and sinker — and somehow without managing to arf the smelly red herring up all over his keyboard.

(Unless he didn’t.)

So what the heck is gender expression, then?

My mom & dad, about 2003

My mom would’ve known what gender expression is, because to her frustration, all our lives that we shared together, I simply wouldn’t cooperate with the gender expression she thought I ought to have.  Female as I was, female as I continue to be, I simply refused to be feminine.  I hated wearing dresses; nylons, shiny slick high-heeled dress shoes.  Put barrettes in my hair — I’d take ‘em out as soon as I got out of sight.  She cried when I wouldn’t wear a dress under my cap and gown when I took my diploma at my college graduation.  As a poem I wrote to her long ago ends,

I will not be your daughter in a dress
but I am your daughter and
I want you to accept me
because I love you.

She did, too, because in the end my mom always knew what was really important.  And so I haven’t worn a dress since my oldest brother’s wedding in 1982. Even now I feel completely wrong, not myself, to wear women’s-cut t-shirts, blouses with lace or puffed-up sleeves, anything that’s designed to show off cleavage.  (Outer wear, that is — what I wear “under” would meet my mom’s approval, no prob.)

So let’s look at this part of the ordinance definition again:

As used in this definition, ‘gender expression or identity’ means having or being perceived as having a self-image, appearance, or behavior different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth.

A recent depiction of my typical gender expression (with Sydney, my neighbor's sister's ball python)

Unlike a transsexual person, who has a self-image different from the sex assigned to that person at birth, my self-image completely matches my biological sex: I am female.  But I don’t express my femaleness in the way my mom always wanted me to express my femaleness, with the clothing and other accoutrements that I was told from knee-high was supposed to fit me to my sex.  It didn’t fit me. It made me feel like someone being forced to be something, someone, that she is not.  It’s still that way.  I’m your proverbial lesbian-in-sensible-shoes.  And trousers, t-shirt, and baseball cap.

So when I see gender expression in the proposed ordinance, amongst other things I see is me being protected from getting fired, evicted, or otherwise unfairly discriminated against only because I don’t fit someone else’s arbitrary idea of “femininity.” If I’m qualified and do the job well, if I have a good credit rating and pay my rent on time, what right does my employer, landlord, or anyone else to tell me that I must wear a dress or lipstick in order to match their concept of how I should express my genderedness?  Doesn’t mean I won’t dress nicely if the job demands it.  Does mean that I can’t be forced into a dress or lacy blouse, pocketsless pants, and lipstick.  And let’s not forget that my appearance (which, yes, often gets me once-overs in women’s rooms & “sirs” in stores) marks me to people with the slightest bit of gaydar as a lesbian.  If the ordinance passes with only sexual orientation as part of it, I’m still fair game for arbitrary discrimination — the agent of bias can always just hide their anti-lesbian sentiments when they explain to the Equal Rights Commission: “Hey, I’m within my rights — I didn’t like her gender expression.”

Not all lesbians are like me in this regard — we’ve got our “lipstick lesbians.” Nor are all heterosexual women unlike me in this regard. Same goes for men: there are so-called “effeminate” men of all sexual orientations, just as there are “macho” men of all orientations.

Then there’s the gender expression of transfolk, for which another definition, this one from About.com, might be helpful in understanding:

Gender Expression is the physical manifestation of one’s gender identity, usually expressed through clothing, mannerisms, and chosen names. Transgender people usually have a gender expression that matches their gender identity, rather than their birth sex.

So gender expression is another part of the protection designed into the proposed ordinance for transsexual/transgender people, just as much as it is for more “masculine” or “butch” women like me, regardless of sexual orientation; or more “feminine” or “androgynous” men like — oh, say, Prince — who has a well-documented history as a heterosexual. For transfolk, being protected from unfair discrimination on the basis of gender identity without also being protected on the basis of gender expression is just another way of saying: you’re not protected.  Particularly those transfolk who are in the midst of undergoing the long, arduous process of so-called sexual reassignment, which generally requires lengthy periods of time living according to their gender identity (as opposed to the sex they were assigned at birth) even before they’re permitted to undergo any sexual reassignment surgeries.

So you see what Ivan Moore is throwing under the bus by accepting Prevo’s skewed and fear mongering “definition” of gender expression at face value.

Later in comments on his Anchorage Press article, Mr. Moore added a comment:

I’ve changed my mind on one point. If a beardo dressed up as a woman and hung out in the ladies restroom, he would probably still be arrested and led out in cuffs. Just because a man could be guaranteed freedom from discrimination based on gender appearance, that wouldn’t make him a woman. And last time I looked, men weren’t allowed in the ladies’.

Bingo!  This is at least a step in the right direction — though I am helpless not to point out Andrew Halcro’s much more elegant (and refreshingly campy!) takedown of Prevo’s ludicrous beardos-in-the-bathroom meme on June 1 in the Alaska Dispatch. (Which just goes to show you that camp isn’t restricted to drag queens — Mr. Halcro is also a well-documented heterosexual, with wife and two adult children. You go, Andrew!)

Meantime I suppose we must take at his word Mr. Moore’s assurance that he is as much in favor of protecting people from arbitrary discrimination based on gender identity as he is on sexual orientation. And hope that he will read beyond Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book and Rev. Jerry Prevo’s raise-funds-for-the-Anchorage-Baptist-Temple-through-a-pack-o’lies website to come to a more complete understanding of gender expression.

Meantime, I personally am satisfied that the crafters of the ordinance perfectly well understand the difference between actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality or gender expression or identity — the terms included for convenience, if not strict sexologist definition, as being covered by the proposed ordinance’s term sexual orientation. I haven’t met even one lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans person — I have talked with lots and lots of them — who is in the least bit confused with the definition as used in the proposed ordinance, or fails to understand why the Assembly in crafting it chose to use sexual orientation as an umbrella covering all three related but different terms: sexual orientation proper, gender identity, and a term that applies to members of all sexual orientations and gender identities in one way or another, gender expression.

And meantime, if there is any question at all about whether the LGBT community or our allies, will accept some sort of politically expedient “throw the transfolk under the bus” compromise in order to buy protection for the “easy” bunch of us, think again.

Ptery, my 16-year partner, in early transition as a female-to-male transsexual (& who I'm not going to throw under a bus)

One of the first questions I had about this ordinance when I first learned it would be proposed was “will it also include transpeople?”  That’s not just a matter of some ideal of LGBT unity with me:  my partner of 16 years (now my ex for complex & mainly unrelated reasons), after many long years of struggle with feelings about gender identity, came out as transman last fall.  Is he any less deserving of protection from discrimination than I am?  The answer isn’t far from my heart at all: if gender identity were written out of this ordinance, my support for it would instantly evaporate, on those grounds alone. I could not face my the woman I fell in love with 16 years ago who now knows himself as a man if I were to stand still for such a betrayal.  I couldn’t face my trans friends.  I couldn’t face anyone.  Nor will the rest of us.

In the words of Equality Works’ recent press release (posted earlier here):

People need protection from discrimination on the basis of their gender identity/expression. No one — straight or gay — should be treated unfairly in work or the public sphere. Equality Works believes the small minority of transgender people in our community — people  who have served in our military, who drive our taxis, and who have children and families to provide for — are no less deserving of employment and housing than anyone else. While some in our community try to paint transgender people as a dangerous threat, transgender men and women are far more likely to be the targets of violent harassment and discrimination than those who would refuse them equal opportunity under the law.

In the words of the my friend E. Ross at Bent Alaska:

Don’t play Prevo’s divide-and-conquer game. Stand with us in support of a transgender-inclusive nondiscrimination policy.

… And now I check the comments on Mr. Moore’s article again, to find that Ivan Moore added another comment today at 4:00 PM:

I am not trying to divide and conquer, that’s absurd. If I have an agenda here at all, it is to see something get passed that is amenable to both sides. I think the religious right would live with the ordinance just on gay-straight orientation.

There you have it.  He does want to just do the “easy” stuff now, in order to satisfy the blind prejudice and willful ignorance of the Prevo-dominated radical right.  Transfolk, in his opinion, can wait.

The way it’s written right now, I think it comes back to us as an initiative, it will go to the voters, the community will really fight a war, and your “side”, knowing Anchorage, may end up with NOTHING.

Well, I guess that’s the risk we’ve decided to take.  It’s not amenable to our “side” to betray transfolk for political expediency.  We stand together.

In the words of one of my friends who stands at the forefront of this decades-long fight for equality:

We are all, or none.

Related posts:

1. Against discrimination in Anchorage
2. What's on the table: Anchorage equal rights ordinance
3. Equality Works Sets the Record Straight

blinks.  He posted a brief little meditation about it a few days ago, & this morning a wonderful short poem called “Blinking” that I wish I could post here but I haven’t asked him so I won’t.  But his poem led me to dig up a nonfiction piece I wrote many years ago, 1994, in an undergrad nonfiction workshop taught by Gretchen Legler at University of Alaska Anchorage.  It’s about memory.

At the time of writing, my partner Rozz and I were early in our relationship, & had lived for about a year together in a small rented house in the Mountain View neighborhood of Anchorage — the first place we shared.  My mom was still alive, & my parents still lived in the same house in Columbia Falls, Montana where I grew up.  I still had my cats Lemminkäinen (Lem for short) & Eight Lives, & Rozz still had her dog Whylie.  A lot has changed since then.  Which makes the blinks described here, both of 1962 (or whenever) & 1994, all the more precious.

Blinks

I lie in a bed, warm.  It’s my parents’ bed.  I lie on my left side with my back to whoever lies in the bed with me.  It might be my mom, or maybe it’s my dad.  Maybe it’s both.  But I can’t see them because they are behind me.  The room is dark, but the door is open and light spills in from the next room.  I hear voices from the next room, and feet, stamping.  It’s my brothers, getting ready for school.  Outside, I know, it’s raining.

This is my first memory, lying in my parents’ bed, warm, aware of other people’s presence — the weight of my mother or father behind me on the mattress, my brother’s voices — but seeing no one, seeing nothing but the dark room and the light coming from the next room.  It’s as though I blinked into existence merely to collect this memory, and blinked out again once I’d retrieved it.

But I blink in equipped with some knowledge, for while there’s a lot I don’t know, there are some things I do.  That I have brothers, for instance.  I don’t see them, and while I hear their voices, they are blurry, indistinct, unsexed.  I don’t know their names.  But I know it’s them and I know they’re getting ready for school.

What is school?  In my memory it’s merely a word to describe a place they go when they’re not here, where I am.  And where is that?  In my parents’ bed, but I’m not sure which house.  I want to say it’s the big two-story house where my parents still live, but that may be only because it’s the only house I remember in detail.  But my parents have told me we lived in a different house for the first few years after I was born, so it could be my first memory takes place in a room of that house.  But they’ve pointed that house out to me — I’m certain it had only one floor.  Yet I can’t hear the rain — surely in a one-story house I would hear the rain hitting the roof.  So I must be in the big house, I must be in my parent’s bedroom where I slept in a crib till I was five, because there weren’t enough bedrooms to go around, because my dad hadn’t yet built the bedrooms in the attic.

But why am I in my parent’s bed, not in my crib?  Maybe I was crying in my sleep and Mom or Dad came and got me to comfort me, and my blinking into this scene was my waking up.  But no, there’s no sense of sadness or discomfort as I lie there, nothing to indicate I was, or had been, distressed.  Maybe one of my parents got me up for the day, brought me out of the bedroom for breakfast, or to the bathroom — surely I’m out of diapers by now — and when I got done, I found my other parent still in bed and jumped in, wanting to cuddle.  Yes — and that would explain how I know it’s raining — I’ve been about in the house, I’ve seen the rain out the window.

I feel like a detective.  Why am I aware of my brothers and not my sister?  She was born before me — she must be around somewhere.  In my early childhood she and my brothers shared the bedroom next to our parents’ room.  She slept in an old-fashioned trundle bed, a little bed on casters that was rolled under my brothers’ bunk beds during the day.  Maybe I’m not aware of her because she’s not getting ready for school.  Maybe she doesn’t go to school yet.  And if that’s so . . . I can learn how old I am.  Mer is just a year younger than Mark, so if he’s going to school and she isn’t, he must be in first grade.  That would make him 6 years old, and Mer 5.  Dave would be 10.  And I would be 3.  It would be 1962, a rainy fall day, far away in Montana where my parents still live, in the house they still live in, in the room that long ago, after Dad built the upstairs bedrooms, turned into the “sewing” room, then the “utility” room, then finally — more honestly — the “junk” room.

But in 1962 it was the bedroom, my parents’ and mine, and I lie on my left side seeing the dark of the room and the light of the next room and hearing the voices and feeling . . . how?  Not distressed, that’s been established.  But I don’t feel ecstatic, either, not transcendent or joyful or anything one would consider so remarkable as to pop me into existence to experience that moment.  I just feel . . . okay.  Warm.  Comfortable.  Dry.  Secure.  Like so many moments of my life it’s a moment I imagine someone outside myself would find endlessly dull and prosaic, but to me it’s fascinating, something I return to.

As I will return to this morning.  Rozz has already gotten up, gotten dressed, made breakfast, made lunch, and written some in her journal.  Now she comes in to snuggle with me for a few minutes where I lie on my right side, facing toward the window with its venetian blinds, my right hand tucked under Lem’s warm purring belly.  My other boy, Eight Lives, regard me with benevolence from atop my left shoulder.  Probably he’s purring, too.  Rozz is behind me, her left arm thrown over my waist, her breath in my hair.  Whylie, her dog, is probably behind her somewhere, on the other side of the bed.

I know it’s raining outside because I can hear it — we live in a one-story house.  I feel wonderful and lazy, except I know in a minute Rozz will tell me what time it is.  Then she’ll get up and take Whylie out for a quick walk, and I’ll have to get up and get dressed and put on my shoes and wash my hair and comb it and be ready, by the time Rozz gets back with Whylie, to drive us both to work.  I’m not so lucky as the little girl of 32 years ago, who gets to lay about warm and sleepy while others go out to the work of the world.  But until it blinks out, there is this moment.

[October 6, 1994]

Related posts:

1. Green family
2. Side Street Mel
3. Continuing the new routine

First day of snow in Anchorage this year, though doesn’t look like it’ll last. Enough that I had to brush the snow off my car this morning, & take it real slow & easy driving to work. At lunchtime I decided to take a brief walk to take pics of the snow for Flickr contacts who had a lust to see snow. (Whereas I’ve been rather dreading it.) And took a self-portrait along the way. Didn’t completely notice until I downloaded this pic to my camera that I don’t seem to be feeling too wonderful… well. It’s October 23. My mom‘s birthday. So I’m thinking about her a lot today. Yet hoping that this mood doesn’t carry through to another day. She’d want me to be happy. But today, Mom, I’m missing you bigtime.

Related posts:

1. Sunflowers for my mother
2. Blinks
3. Legacy

Tuesday, 11 July 2006: How it feels

One thing I’ve noticed more & more lately is how good it feels now to walk. Even going up hills, as I did this morning on my bus stop walk: I remember how just last year, when my car at the time was out of commission & I was walking up to the bus stop on Spenard with Rozz, I would resent the work of that hill, how it made me out of breath, how weak my legs felts climbing it.

Ha. Not no more. Not just since the Start Walking program, but since the ice melted & I began going to that bus stop (instead of waiting at a nearer one to take one bus downtown & transfer to another), I’ve welcomed the opportunity to climb that hill — even when it made me huff & puff, even when my legs felt weak. Just as I welcomed the stairs at work, over the elevator I’d been taking for 15 years. Because that work was doing something inside my body that, as that work accumulated day by day & week to week, would make my body healthier, & prolong my life. When I walk past the photo of my mom in my apartment, I can say to her, as last year, when she was still alive, I couldn’t have: See Mom, I’m taking care of myself. Just as I know you would want.

Now both hill & stairs are easier to go up. It was easier than I would’ve thought to go hiking uphill around Independence Mine last week too. On a daily basis it’s easier & more pleasurable to walk than it used to be — & I mean not just at a leisurely pace either, but at a pace that ups my heart rate & gives me aerobic effect. There’s a point at which the mechanics of the legs moving, the arms moving (as I’ve learned to take my hands out of my pockets), the lungs working, becomes so smooth & easy, as though like the Tin Woodman my joints had finally been oiled so that at last I could move freely & easily.

My first motivation came from a fundamental shift within myself in the wake of my mother’s death, to become healthy myself & in some sense perhaps also to heal her, though some would say that in death she is beyond healing. I disagree.

But now there is also movement itself: it’s built its own momentum. The first motivation is still there & has become one with the second motivation, & together they’re unstoppable. There’s no turning back to the old ways. Even if I might (& undoubtedly will again, being human) suffer disappointments or grief again, it won’t lead me to go back to being the sedentary, junk-food eating person I was this time last year. Just as a few years ago, when I suffered a horrible disappointment & grief, I chose not to start smoking again, using my grief as an smokescreen (ha!) & excuse for my weakness. In grief or not, I’ll be better & stronger in mind as well as body for being healthy & fit.

Later…

A fairly routine day exercise-wise. Dance, weights, bus stop walk, cross-campus walk (in the morning). I intended to bus after work to Northern Lights & C or thereabouts & walk to the new apartment just off Fireweed to meet with the new landlord & put down some earnest money on the apartment, but he proved to have an appointment at that time, so I did the normal bus walk home & drove up later to meet him.

Day total: 10,354 steps (or equivalent).

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1. Sanity & caffeine & a generous friend
2. Energy consumption
3. Slow day

Mom, these are some of the sunflowers Mark’s work sent for Dad, because they were your favorite flower. I was always lousy at remembering Mother’s Day or your birthday early enough to get a card to you. But Mom, today I remember & love you. I’m taking good care of myself. I promise.

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1. Green family
2. On a health road
3. Time to remind myself

Monday, May 8: Waiting for the pedometer

Okay, my blog’s up & running!

First, a big thanks to [name deleted for privacy], who’s been doing all the work mailing out the pedometers & setting up these blogs for us. It’s not her fault my pedometer’s not here yet: it’s mine for having not paid attention, & so not noticing until late that that this was going on, so I didn’t sign up until Wednesday. But with the speed a couple of my coworkers received their pedometers, I’m guessing mine might show up in the mail when I get home tonight.

A little part of me sat here last Wednesday whining, No fair! why can’t my baseline be from two weeks ago instead of now?!!! That’s because two weeks before was when I started riding my bike to & from work at least two days of the week — four miles either way. Thanks to the step conversions, I think I’m going to have some pretty high step counts for my baseline, not only for the biking, but also for a mainstay of my exercise program that’s been going on since late December: plugging myself into my iPod & dancing to whatever’s on my playlist for the day. I seldom fail to work up a sweat. On days I don’t bike or take the car (the car is only one or two days a week), I take the bus, using a bus stop some 15 minutes’ walk from home. And I do some weights too.

I’ve been on this health track since late December as one of my responses to my mother’s death in late November from complications of diabetes. I myself am prediabetic, diagnosed as such about five years ago, but sad to say it took my mother’s death to shake me out of my torpor about doing anything real about it. Now, nothing can shake me back into that torpor. Since end of December, I’ve bought a glucometer (on my own dime), changed my dietary habits, and begun to consistently get exercise.

And I’m seeing results: thanks to the dietary changes (lowered carbs from the low to medium end of the glycemic index, smaller & more frequent meals, lots of vegetables, minimal packaged/processed foods & absolutely no vending machines, mostly organic) I no longer have problems with acid reflux, & I feel much more energetic. Thanks to consistent exercise, I’ve taken off 10 pounds, but I’m pretty sure I’ve taken off even more in fat, & replaced some of it with muscle: my clothes fit a little more loosely, & I had to make a new notch in my belt because it was too loose too. My face is a bit thinner too, & my leg muscles & glutes (butt) especially are firmer & more muscled.

So this program fits right in with my goals for health anyway.

I’m not complaining any more about what my baseline will be, because it’s not a matter of what goodies I might get; it’s a matter of seeing continued improvement to my health & fitness. I’m just glad that other people will be doing this too, & I hope seeing similar really good results.

But I do want to run some estimates of what my baseline might be.

Step conversions for things I do:

• Dancing: 131 steps per minute of dancing. So if I dance for 30 minutes, which is pretty typical for me, that’s 3,930 steps.
• Biking: this depends on the speed. I figure that however hard I feel I’m working, I’m going maybe 10 mph (“easy”), which converts to 133 steps per minute of biking. It takes me about 35 minutes either way, for a total of 70 minutes biking each day I ride: 9,310 steps.
• Hiking: I haven’t done any of that yet this summer, but it’ll be 232 steps per minute of hiking if I’m carrying a load of 21 to 42 pounds; 217 if I’m carrying 10 to 20 pounds. Gee, guess I ought to weigh my daypack even for a simple day hike, like our walk in the Ft. Rich woods Saturday before last, I may have been carrying that much in food & water.

So with just dancing & biking from last week, that would come up to about 19,650 steps in the week for about five half-hour sessions of dancing; 18,620 for the biking to/from work on two different days; call it another 5,320 or so for the biking I did on Saturday downtown & along the coastal trail. That’s 43,590 steps for the week. Divide that by 7: I’m at 6,227 & some change as a daily average — & that doesn’t even include the actual walking I did.

I think I’ll have a fairly high baseline. If the goal is to get up to 10,000 steps per day by the end of the program — gee, I just have to do a little more.

Will see how my estimates match up with reality, once the pedometer comes along.

And in hopes this cold I came down with over the weekend goes away, because with it I don’t feel much like biking four miles to work!

Related posts:

1. Start walking
2. Start Walking: Baseline set
3. Start Walking: Baseline week (May 8-14): Summary

Sometime last fall, we started driving the car less often, & began taking the bus to/from work & other destinations more often. For me, that’s usually meant taking the bus sometimes as many as three or four days of the week, driving only when after-work errands or appointments were necessary.

The two big reasons for this were to save on gas money & to pollute less. After my mom’s death, & the growth of my commitment to my health, another reason became that it led me to walk more. Especially after it warmed up a bit, & the streets became walkable: instead of taking one bus from near my house & transferring to another that gets me the rest of the way, I take a 15-minute walk to the nearest bus stop for the second bus.

But today I finally made good on my resolution to ride my bike to work some days. It’s a distance of about 4 miles. Since I live in the valley of Chester Creek, this means at least one uphill climb every day as part of the ride.

This morning I went through midtown; took me about 40 minutes to get to work, & a fair lot of huffing & puffing. When I got to work, it took me a lot longer to climb the stairs up to my third floor office than usual, because my legs were tired & weak.

But I imagine that a month from now, the ride will be quicker, my legs will be less feeble at the end, & I’ll be a little less fat.

Related posts:

1. Bike day #4
2. A bike day, long walk
3. Bike day #2