It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything than a few stray tweets — & not too many of them.

Blame it on skankthrax. I’m not, in fact, a skank; but skankthrax is what a online friend of mine dubbed the nasty cold-that-wouldn’t-go-away that I was afflicted with in early 2007.  Well, of course, it did go away, eventually.  But the word stuck, & comes in handy for the similar kind of nastiness that took hold of me early last month.  (I had a similar cold in 2008, too, whence cometh the photo below — used to illustrate this part of this post since I didn’t take any self-portraits during this latest bout.)

(I’m proud to proclaim my minor claim to fame: the photo was selected by New Hampshire Public Radio to illustrate an October 2008 story about the common cold. Huzzah!)

I intended at the time I caught the cold to write one of my geekily long, super-referenced political posts in followup to the April 28 gun carry protest on the UAA campus, about which I tweeted the day thereof.  Here’s one of several pics passed onto me by a friend that were intended to illustrate that post (see others in my Flickr photostream) –

– but skankthrax sucked all the energy out of me, & I never got around to it.  If I had, it would mainly have been to reiterate in longer form what I’d already said in comments on other people’s blogs on the actual day, & if anyone’s really interested they can follow the links to those posts from my tweets.

But thank goodness for skankthrax. If a nasty cold-from-hell is a crisis of sorts, then it’s also an opportunity; & here along with four days out sick from work was not only an enforced opportunity to rest, but also a voluntary opportunity to pull back & rethink a few things about what I’m doing in my life.  And on this blog, which is a reflection of my life, & on the work I still want to do in it.  (Not, I’m thankful, a period of reflection that required as much time & silence as the cave I dwelt in for a period of 2008-2009.)

Here’s some of what I’ve determined:

Last year, in the midst of the (lost) battle for an equal rights ordinance in Anchorage, & other political goings-on of 2009, I declared myself an occasional political blogger.  But virtually every time I dip into the “occasional”, it distracts & detracts one helluva lot from what I really want to be doing — again again again I must say it, if only to remind myself: writing.  Writing about a local or even state, national, or international political issue is writing, of course — but it’s not the stuff I really want to write.  Important as it is, what feeds my spirit is writing my stuff, which I know darn well what that is.  At the same time, a lot of my stuff is inherently political — just not at that level of “at this very moment in this very place” immediacy such as one can find on, for example, The Mudflats, Alaska Commons, Progressive Alaska, or any of the other progressive (or otherwise) political blogs that I’ve been semi-numbered among for the past year. I count on those bloggers to keep me in the loop on what’s important to me politically — they excel at it, & furthermore they seem to thrive at it.  Unlike me.  So I’ll count on them to do what they do, & count on me to do what I do.

That’s not to say that this blog will become apolitical.  As I’ve already said, a lot of my stuff is inherently political.  Hence, politics will be here; but the emphasis of it will be that which is integral to my work.

My silence over the past month has been in part to give me a break, a distancing from immediate politics, in order to better effect that shift back to my writing & my own direction in life.

Other stuff I’m doing too, that will be reflected over the next few weeks & months on this blog.  For my job, I’ve found myself needing to fill in a lot of gaps in my catch-as-catch-can education on website design. The know-how I’m gaining as a result will have a lot of benefits for my website too, which I’ve long intended to play a central role in my writing/self-publishing life.  That’s another part of my silence lately: I’m busy learning (or preparing to learn) in-depth a lot of cool stuff about CSS, PHP, MySQL, & other such stuff.  As a poet, I can’t quite sign onto the meme that “code is poetry” — but I appreciate the beauty of elegant code that makes websites look good & load fast, & it’s pretty darn cool to learn better how to do it myself.  Especially because it’ll help me get some of my stuff out there for people to read.  (I hope.)

I’ve also got a visitor in town right now, my more-than-a-friend-but-not-quite-my-partner-anymore love Ptery (formerly Rozz), who’s up here for another few weeks.  Ptery is going to be doing some guest blogging soon, perhaps then breaking out into his own blog.  I’m looking forward to the conversations we’ll have here — me, him, & anyone else who wants to join in.  I’ll have a more extensive introduction when Ptery posts his first guest post.  But here we are below, on the day he arrived in town.

And now I’m back to blogging. It’s a good thing.

Related posts:

1. About "Cold"
2. NaNoWriMo 2007: What I'm gonna write & how I'm gonna write it (the origin of "Cold")
3. Cold, the blog

Related posts:

1. Divorce, financially interdependent partner style
2. Despite distance
3. Tributaries (poem)

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

Yesterday at lunchtime I had a great IM conversation with Ptery — as my former partner Rozz is now known — & our friend Chris.  I hadn’t talked with Chris in a really long time: he lives in Salt Lake City now, & what with, first, a lengthy period of being in the cave from about last August to last March, followed by Anchorage’s Summer of Hate & other political this’n'thats, I haven’t been that great at keeping in touch with him.  Ptery I’ve kept in better contact with, at least when he’s on the grid: he’s a transman who is living something of a nomadic life right now.

I dug around in my Flickr photostream to get a photo of both of them, & found these: photos of a hike we took along the very northern part of the Kenai Peninsula adjoining Turnagain Arm in May 2006 with Jesse (Rozz’s nephew who we raised from age 9) & Jesse’s dog Sweetheart.  I surprised some emotion looking at them: I had no idea when they were the changes that would follow, which leave us all except Sweetheart & me living in different places now.  (Though I do see Jesse every couple of weeks or so: he’s in the Job Corps in Palmer.)

Distance.

But despite distance — what a great talk! I’ll be talking with Chris more tonight when I get off work.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ll be doing NaNoWriMo again in November, & I was really happy to hear that Chris is too.  We cheered each other along all the way through NaNoWriMo in 2007, and at the tail end of it, with both of us having successfully completed 50,000 words or more in the month, we both kicked back at the Bear Tooth Grill to celebrate.  I don’t know what he was drinking, but I was drinking Pipeline Stout. And that’s Rozz he’s talking with on my cellphone.

I should mention that Chris writes really cool poems. We first met in a small poetry workshop that I facilitated for several years beginning in 1998. Maybe I can persuade him to let me post a couple.

Related posts:

1. Sweetheart lived up to her name. May she rest in peace.
2. Tramping in the woods
3. Divorce, financially interdependent partner style

I met Rozz in rehearsals for the 1993 Celebration of Change; we became friends through the show, & later partners.  Rozz had been a military brat & spent most of her life before meeting me moving around a lot.  I wrote this poem a year or so after we got together.  Now 16 years later, for complex reasons having nothing to do with any failure or loss of love between us, Rozz, now Ptery, is wandering again.

Wherever you are right now, this poem & my love go out to you, Ptery, who stood awhile beside me / overlooking.

Tributaries

You are like a twig someone once, long time ago,
tossed idly in the creek to watch you ride the cold clear water
in the eddies, momentarily, above the rounded stones,
till the current swept you downstream, ‘round an elbow, out of sight,
and forgotten.

Long you rode the waters, creek to creek, stream to stream,
stopping only transitorily — hitched on a muddy bank,
or wattled in a beaver’s lodge, or frozen, captive, icebound
till breakup cracked the river, swelled it with spring flood and flotsam,
and you moved on.

Who knew you would lose you, and what you knew you lost,
gone bygone upon the water’s strong inexorable pull –
one moment near, far the next, not fully grasped, not wholly held –
so you learned to love not closely except water’s clarity,
vitality.

I leaned above the stream. My leaves created shade
on the riffles, in the pools where openmouthed the grayling held
for drifting ants, stonefly larvae. Cotton floated down amid
still willows, rippled water — relativity reflected
on the surface.

And you hooked around the bend, bobbing into view,
and snagged up on my roots. The rushing stream pushed you ashore
where, beached upon the sandy bottom silt, you took a roothold,
provisionally stayed, perhaps to stand awhile beside me
overlooking.

[1994]

Note: For those who are, like me, prosody geeks: this is a nonce syllabic poem. Nonce basically means it’s a one-time form usually invented by the poet.  Syllabic has to do with the number of syllables per line.   In this case, I used the same number of syllables in the same line of each stanza. I also created a requirement for myself of using at least one five-syllable word in each stanza.  How completely geeky of me.

Related posts:

1. Saying "I Love You" (poem)
2. Theodicy (poem)
3. Stone 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

Rozz slicing apples for pie, Thanksgiving 2005

Today is the final day of the University of Alaska system’s annual Open Enrollment period, when we have the opportunity to make changes to the various options in our benefits package. And so it came to formalize what Rozz, now Ptery, & I had come to agree to — that we’re not quite partners anymore. So, with the simple filling out of my Health Plan Enrollment Form removing Rozz (still his legal name) as my financially interdependent partner… well. There it is. Filled it out, walked in the rain to the University Lake Building where our HR office is nowadays, & made it official.*

Is this how heterosexual couples feel when they get copies of their final divorce papers? Surely at least those who still love each other but for whom circumstance or life paths have led them in different directions, as happened with us.

Rozz & met in January 1993, moved in with each other later that year, & became financially interdependent partners (FIPs) as soon as the university made the program available, sometime in the mid-1990s.  To become FIPs, we had to fill out a form checking off on a number of statements establishing our relationship to one another,  & also had to meet at least five criteria (for example, having a joint checking account) which established proof that we were financially interdependent.

What did this get us?  As stated in the University of Alaska’s explanation of  its FIP policy:

financially interdependent partners and their dependent children will be provided the same benefits as those provided to married spouses and their dependent children, except where expressly prohibited by law. All University of Alaska Policies and Regulations and benefit plan documents that affect employees, spouses and their families also apply to employees and their financially interdependent partner and dependent children.

Through the FIP program, then, Rozz had access to UA-provided health benefits, along with other benefits such as the employee tuition waiver, which enabled Rozz to take classes at UAA.  (I used the employee tuition waiver myself to finance my masters’ degree.)  Had we legally adopted Rozz’s nephew Jesse, he also would have come under my benefits.  (As it happens, it proved too legally complex to put through an adoption; & he fortunately had health insurance through other means.)

Our benefits weren’t exactly at the same level as for our legally married heterosexual counterparts, however.  For one thing, unlike for married folks, the value of the benefits that Rozz received count as income for me — so I had to pay additional taxes on them.

Rozz eating pie, Thanksgiving 2005

Not quite the same as marriage, then.

But for all that, it was the closest thing we had to a legal recognition and honoring of our commitment & love for one another.

And so filling out my Health Plan Enrollment Form removing Rozz as my FIP is the closest representation we have of a “divorce.”*  (It also, to my great regret, means that Rozz-now-Ptery no longer has any health insurance at all.  C’mon, President Obama & Congress, we need universal health coverage now!)

I picked these particular photos for this blog post because my memories of Rozz making that apple pie on a beautiful snowy Thanksgiving Day in 2005 is one of memories that went through my head as I walked in the rain to University Lake Building at lunchtime today, feeling pretty rainy inside myself.  Thanksgiving 2005 was a beautiful snowy winter day, & I remember Jesse (who is partially seen behind Rozz in the upper right pik) spending some time outside with the neighbor shoveling driveways & throwing snow up in the air that the neighbor’s dog would jump up into.  Later, after the pies were done, we headed across town to have Thanksgiving dinner with Mark (my brother) & Linda & Lauren & Miles — finishing off with pumpkin, pecan, & Rozz’s apple pie.

It was a wonderful day.  I miss days like those, & all the other days & nights that we spent together as friends, lovers, & partners over the past 16 years.  I feel lucky to have spent so much of my life with you, my love.  Knowing I’ll have less income tax to pay next April 15 is only partial recompense for not being able to spend more years the same.

Postscript: By coincidence, just as I was finishing up this post, I got a call from Ptery, who just came into cellphone range again after a week & a half out of it.  I told him the news of our ex-FIPness & about the blog post I was writing, & the sadness I was feeling.  But also, how glad I am that he’s happy doing what he’s doing & following the life he’s chosen.  With or without marriage or FIP, whether or not we live together or are partners, the love is still there, strong as ever.  And that feels pretty good.

——-

* Found out later I need also to sign a “Termination of Financially Interdependent Partnership” form in front of an official UA HR representative, so I’ll trot back over to University Lake Building on Monday & do it.

Related posts:

1. Tributaries (poem)
2. The Daily Tweets, 2009-10-12: UAA moose
3. Same-sex marriage: A personal history

Mel & Rozz, 2006

Good news from Maine Wednesday: its legislature passed, & its governor signed, a law making it legal for same-sex couples to marry.  This makes Maine the 5th state in the U.S., after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, & Iowa, to grant the same civil rights & responsibilities of marriage granted to heterosexual couples, to lesbian & gay couples.  On the same day New Hampshire’s legislature passed a similar bill, which is awaiting its governor’s action.

Good news indeed; so why was it simultaneously making me feel a bit blue? Fact is, I always feel some ambivalence anymore when I heard news about same-sex marriage, regardless of whether it’s good or bad.  Maybe I always will.

(Which isn’t to say I won’t stand up for it.)

But why?  I was feeling enough of the blues on Wednesday, that I decided to write more about it.

More than a decade ago, my friends Jay Brause & Gene Dugan were amongst the first in the nation to challenge the unquestioned custom of refusing marriage licenses to gay or lesbian couples.  Exact details elude me — it was a long time ago — but lucky for me: online sources are kind.  Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (incidentally one of the best websites on religion out there) has a great summary of the events (& there’s some other sources below).  Basically, Jay & Gene applied for a marriage license in Alaska in 1994, were denied, & took it to court.  In February 1998, Judge Peter Michalski of Anchorage Superior Court issued a decision in their favor, ordering the State of Alaska to show a compelling reason why heterosexuals should be granted special rights to marry that were denied to gay men & lesbians.  The State of Alaska appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, & meantime the Alaska Legislature acted to prevent same-sex marriage, placing on the November 1998 ballot a measure — Ballot Measure 2 — which would, if passed, amend the state constitution to define marriage as being “between a man and a women.”  Similar stuff was going on in Hawaii at the same time.

Jay Brause, Gene Dugan, Fred Hillman, & Les Baird at Alaska Gay & Lesbian Resource Center, 1982

Enter the personal history part of the story.

Personal #1 is that I’d known Jay & Gene since first arriving in Alaska in August 1982, in fact shared a house with them & our “landlady” Sami & her three kids, until Sami remarried & we moved to our own separate households.  They were (& are, despite distance) my  my very good friends, & they were also — especially Jay — guys I worked very closely with on the activist front of working for equal rights for lesbians/gays in Alaska. At the time of our meeting, Jay was executive director of the Alaska Gay & Lesbian Resource Center (now known as Identity, Inc.), & he coaxed me (without too much difficulty) to join its board of directors as secretary.  We later worked together, along with a whole lotta other people, on two important studies of Alaska’s lesbian/gay population, One in 10: A Profile of Alaska’s Lesbian & Gay Community (Anchorage, AK: Identity, Inc., 1986) & Green & Brause, Identity Reports: Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska (Anchorage, AK: Identity, Inc., 1989). Meanwhile, Gene was doing the work that led to the creation of the theatre company Out North, beginning with his bringing to Alaska the play “My Blue Heaven” about two lesbian homesteaders. They worked together for years at Out North, Gene as artistic director & Jay as managing director, until their departure from Alaska in 2006.

Mel & JJ on backpacking trip to Williwaw Lakes, Chugach State Park, 1997

By the time the marriage stuff rolled around in 1994, we didn’t see quite so much of each other.  This was thanks in part to my general burnout on matters political, organizational, & activist-oriented; in part to my pursuit of an MFA degree at University of Alaska Anchorage; & in part due to Personal #2, which was the relationship I’d formed in 1993 with my partner, Rozz.

The establishment, after many long years of living alone & single, of a relationship & family life became even more a factor after December 1996, which was when Rozz’s nephew JJ (as he was then known) came to live with us: age 9, his life to that date one of abuse, neglect, & a succession of foster & group homes.  He came to us violent, striking out at us preemptively before we could hurt him, as he was sure we would do — after all, everyone else in his life had.

It was a rough time.  I’m talking rough.  This was a boy who had been at the very least witness to sexual abuse of one of his siblings, if not a victim of it himself; & had most definitely been victim of physical & emotional abuse & neglect.  And for many long months in his fear of more of the same, he took it out on us.  I had never lived with abuse before — an abuse that I reckon was not him abusing me, but was his father reaching through him — as JJ used to say, “[My father] is in my head.”  It messed me up so badly, it took months to for me a wordworker to fnd words for it:

Cycle

the man in the head of the boy
the father of memory
the father who could pitch
his sons into the wall
the man who used their sister
for his “needs”
who sold them back for
four hundred dollars
in an Oklahoma City
KFC

the man in the head of the boy
the man in the boy’s fist
in his kicking feet his butting head
his spit on my face his biting teeth
in the bruise yellow and purple and green
on my arm the blood beneath my skin

the hurt that cannot speak

[August 4–November 14, 1997; rev. 11/18/97]

But now jump ahead to 1998.  Judge Michalski has made his ruling in Jay’s & Gene’s case.  The Legislature in reaction has done its thing.  Ballot Measure 2 is on the ballot for November: a measure that will, if passed, enshrine in the very basis of our society, our state constitution, the belief of the body politic that the close intimate relationship & commitment of two women with each other, or two men with each other, isn’t worth a bloody damn thing.

I was barely aware of any of this.  Because in spite of everything — in spite of completing my MFA, in spite of us having successfully gotten through the difficult first year of JJ’s life with us, of JJ giving up his violence & learning to trust us — in spite of all that, Rozz’s & my relationship came apart.

Jesse & his dog Sweetheart, resting up during a backpacking trip up Powerline Pass, June 2004

I won’t go into all the details of that here.  I’m doing it & have done it elsewhere, much of it in private where it will stay. Suffice it to say that we came back together again a year later, we talked it all out, we came to understand that our breakup or breach came about due to the incredible pressures that came with taking on a very hurt child, we forgave each other, we continued to raise the boy, & the boy, now a young man at 21, is — oh damn, just a very very fine young man, who even as I write is well on his way to an independent life doing just what he wants to do.  (Meantime, I’m taking care of his dog Sweetheart.)

At the time I didn’t know things would turn out that way.  At the time I only knew I felt a deep sense of betrayal because it all came so unexpectedly.  One day we met a new friend — I’ll just call her D — & a month later, Rozz was gone, & JJ with her, & I was just a 160-pounds-or-so mass of confusion, grief, anger, & dumbfoundedness.  (A month or so later: I was a 140-pounds-or-so mass of the same, having lost my appetite on what I dubbed at the time the Official Grief & Dumbfoundedness Weight Loss Program. I’ve got better ways of taking off the excess nowadays, thanks.)

And so my life through most of 1998 from the late spring on was one of trying to make sense of it all, & put my life back together after it had been tossed into the air & scattered like a game of 52-card-pickup.  I felt that all the meanings of my life, of my life together with Rozz, had been summarily & unilaterally flushed down the toilet.  I was scraped down to bedrock, & didn’t have the emotional reserves to give much attention to the Ballot Measure 2 & the battle for marriage equality.

And yet it did come up.  Because, you see, the pain I was feeling was pretty damn illustrative of the whole point. Do you feel that kind of anguish for the loss of a relationship when it means (as our enemies would like to have it) absolutely nothing?  Of course not.

And you know what? The people in my life — not just the lesbians & gay men, not just my family members & friends, but my coworkers too — they knew it. They treated me accordingly.  Just after I voted against Ballot Measure 2 that November, I wrote to some friends:

I’ve gotta say, though, that what indicates to me changes toward the good for lesbians & gays…which will be present regardless of the votes outcome…are present every day in my life, and have especially been present for me this last nasty year, as all my coworkers, family, friends have treated me with the same love & respect & concern in my hard times as they would have treated any nongay person going through the same nasty shit. Just as a matter of course.

Just as a matter of course. No aren’t we so very special for being so knee-jerk-liberal compassionate to this poor sad second-class citizen.  Just simple care & compassion because they knew that I was worth something, & that my relationship was every bit as valuable to me, as their own relationships were to them.

Tell me, Jesus: who has followed your way more closely: my coworkers, who treated me with compassion during a devastating period of my life, or the Alaska Family Coalition, financed mainly by out-of-state interests that worked so hard to make discrimination against people like me part of Alaska’s foundational document — & telling lies in the process?

From an Alaskans for Civil Rights/No on 2  press release dated October 31, 1998:

False and misleading information fills the Alaska Family Coalition display ad published in today’s Anchorage Daily News. The ad claims that the decision of an Alaskan judge found Alaska’s marriage law unconstitutional and would “replace…Alaska’s existing marriage law” and that the NO on 2 campaign’s claims to the contrary are “completely false.”

In fact, it is currently illegal for same-sex couples to be married in Alaska and this will not be changed by the defeat of Ballot Measure 2….

… “Yes on 2″ fliers also claim if the measure is defeated, young children will be introduced to homosexual doctrine at an early age and schools will be required to teach that homosexual relationships are “normal” and equal to traditional marriage….

Another lie. Apparently to the Alaska Family Coalition, family values & let’s tell another lie are tantamount to synonyms.

And was it really the Alaska Family Coalition, or was it rather the Coalition of a Few Conservative Alaska Figureheads Funded Mainly by Interests from Out-of-State who Might Have a Sister Living in North Pole or a Nephew Who Served in the Air Force in Alaska for a Couple of Years but Probably Not Even That? The press release goes on to say:

Alaskan Public Offices Commission (APOC) reports filed by both campaigns on October 27 reveal that the Alaska Family Coalition has raised more than $637,000 while the Alaskans for Civil Rights/NO on 2! campaign has received just under $190,000 in donations.

Dan Carter, treasurer of Alaskans for Civil Rights/No on 2, explains further in a letter to Alaska newspapers dated October 30, 1998:

But the amount raised is only part of the story. Who and where it comes from is the real news in this report. While Alaskans for Civil Rights has received $35 from Outside gay/lesbian organizations ($25 from the Philadelphia Task Force and $10 from Pride, Inc. from Macon, GA), the proponents of this unnecessary measure were receiving almost $560,000 from Outside groups trying to rewrite Alaska’s constitution. When you look at how much money each side has raised from INDIVIDUAL ALASKANS, the financial reports are even more revealing. For every dollar raised by the NO on 2 campaign, 89 cents has come from individual Alaskans. On the other hand, for each dollar raised by the so-called Alaska Family Coalition, less than 9 cents has come from individuals living in Alaska. That’s the real issue in this campaign. Why should Outsiders determine if Alaska’s constitution should be amended? What is their agenda?

But that’s just some of the info that arrived in my email inbox.  More personally, as the debate leading up raged on in the media, some of it inevitably showed up on the radio that I listened to at work every day. Probably KSKA, then, Anchorage public radio. There was a call-in program about Ballot Measure 2, & some self-defined Christian brought up an argument about “family orientation.” I couldn’t hold back. As I later described to friends in an email:

I called up and talked about how this boy, JJ (I didn’t name him), had been the product of one of these much-vaunted heterosexual unions, had been severely sexually, emotionally, physically abused and neglected by his heterosexual father and his heterosexual mother…and the only reason he had a chance now was because we, two lesbians, had brought him into our family.

And you know, even with all that has happened since, it’s still true.

So to damnation to all you self-righteous “family values” advocates whose dictionary definition of family is so far from reality.

Jesse's graduation, West High, May 2006

And you know, even with all that has happened in the ten & a half years since, up until this very day, it’s still true: though I have no legal relationship, & never have had a legal relationship, with the boy once know as JJ who is now the young man Jesse — I am more a mother to him than his heterosexual biological mother is or has ever been, excepting only that she gave birth to him & he carries her (as well as his abusive father’s) genes.  (Though I credit her with caring more for him than his father, & staying in touch with him in ways he’s okay with, whereas his father he outright hates.) And furthermore, it was Rozz & me, two lesbians, whose bond of love & commitment despite its lack of sanction by our fellow citizens made it possible for Jesse to have a life of possibility & love, rather than life that would likely be no more than a repetition of the same cycle of abuse that had brought him to us in the first place.

So much for the superiority of opposite-sex marriage.

Which isn’t to say that opposite-sex marriage is inferior either. I am the child of heterosexual parents, whose love for & commitment to each other & to their family has been just as powerful a foundation for my life, as mine & Rozz’s has been for Jesse’s.  Marriage equality — get it?  Some relationships suck, some are marvelous.  Sexual orientation does not on its own make for one or the other.  It takes the individuals involved, their love, their committment, their elbow grease.

Be that as it may, on November 3, 1998, Ballot Measure passed by a 2 to 1 vote. With the vote half-counted, the Anchorage Daily News reported the following day:

The campaigns working for and against passage of the amendment steered around the thorny question of whether homosexuality is right or wrong.

But some voters saw the question as a referendum on homosexuality itself.

And in an email to friends, I commented:

And the majority rules, so therefore homosexuality is wrong? Of course not. Because us lesbians & gay men, dykes & faggots, queers, lezzies, homos — whatever else we may not know about ourselves, we do know this: Who We Are, from the inside, in regards to our sexuality. The meanings of our lives, from the center of our lives. Not defined, not prescribed or proscribed or whatever by the homophobic jerks or the plain dumb ignoramuses.

But it wasn’t just me or other lesbians & gay men who remained integrally human, regardless of the votes of ignorance or hatred. It was also many, so many, of our nongay families, friends, & coworkers:

Today I still go into work and find Bob, Jan, Nancy, Cassie, Sharon, Krista, Larry, Lisa — people, all of them heterosexual, who know me and who are not influenced in their feelings about me by this so-called “referendum on homosexuality.” They are still the people who watched my love for Rozz blossom & grow, saw the bite marks on my arm when JJ was terrorizing us, saw the results of her betrayal of me, all my pain. I have not changed as a result of this vote, nor have they.

So much for definitions applied externally. So much for the right winger denotation of “homosexuality.”

But you see now, I think, the reason for my ambivalence about same-sex marriage made clear. So much of my response to the events of 1998 arose out of the dilemmas of my own personal situation.  Not matter how much I might philosophize about the difference between enacted law & real reality, a part of me was deeply upset & angry that Ballot Measure 2 passed.  But another part of me was cynical about it all.  How could I help but be cynical, when D, the new girlfriend of Rozz who just scant weeks before had to my knowledge been my lifelong partner, somehow set herself up as some sort of spokesperson for marriage equality, & even finagled Rozz into appearing with her on Herb Shainlin’s radio show to tell Anchorage all about it?  I was self-preserving enough to avoid their radio appearance (I stuck with my normal radio station KSKA instead) — but yeah, of course it disturbed me.  Of course it affected my feelings.

But see, that’s the thing, all over again.  The demand for marriage equality isn’t a demand for people to believe that our (lesbian/gay) relationships are perfect, to require they be free of mistakes, breakups, divorces.  Marriage equality, get it?  The demand is simply to recognize in law the reality that already is fact in the substance of our beings: our relationships count to us, as much as yours do to you.  Yet in our relationships we will struggle just as much as our nongay neighbors with communication, commitment, love, all the stuff that makes up marriage.  When our rights are honored, no doubt we’ll be a good match for heterosexuals in our divorce rates, too. (Though I’d like to hope for better.)

But the law as it stands in Alaska &, at this writing, 43 other states, puts extra obstacles in our way at the outset: discouraging our commitments, treating our care for one another with contempt, destabilizing our families & our ability to take care of our children, making life harder.

How amazing, then, that so many of our relationships last out the years — as indeed with Jay & Gene, who met in 1978 at the Alaska Gay Community Center (as it was then called)  & are still together 31 years later.

The happy family, 2006: Mel, Rozz, Jesse (playing w/ Photobooth)

Fast forward again, then, to 2009, the present day. A lot of water under the bridge, both in the continuing fight for marriage & other forms of social equality, & in my personal life.  As already stated, Rozz & I returned to one another (only a year after our separation), talked a lot, worked it out, reestablished our relationship, & saw Jesse through the rest of his childhood, into his early adulthood.  What’s that, you say?  Family values?  Yes.

But as I’ve alluded to elsewhere, our relationship is changing once again, & we can no longer be called partners.  The stresses & pressures now are quite a bit different.  That’s for another post, or many, who knows: the upshot is that my partner Rozz, who I always understood to be a woman & a lesbian, decided last year to finally honor an understanding long in the making: not a she, but a he: an FTM, female-to-male transsexual, a transman.  Which has just a tiny bearing on me, since I’m still… well… a lesbian.  And more on that in later posts, perhaps.  But even more a difficulty for me: that Rozz — or rather, Ptery (pronounced like Terry) — has chosen, at least for now, to live his life off the grid, from the land, out of a backpack & tent, & not in Alaska.

So now Maine, now New Hampshire.  Before that, Vermont, Iowa.  A few months ago, California won, & lost again with Prop. 8. Before that, Massachusetts.  And I look at it all, & I’m of two minds: the one, rejoicing for those like me whose relationships are finally being honored in law as they are in our hearts.  And the other, in sorrow for my own loss.

Mel at Anchorage protest of California's Prop 8, 15 Nov 2008

But marriage equality, get it?  My loss is special, special to me; but no more special — nor any less — than is the loss experienced by anyone who suffers a breakup or divorce.  It is a private sorrow (though I speak of it publicly), that proceeds out of private lives, private choices.  It is not directly the fault of public institutions like marriage, even if those institutions exclude me. (Though that exclusion might well have been a factor contributing to our difficulties.)

And so despite the ambivalence born of my private sorrow, I will celebrate every advance that leads to the public recognition & honoring of any relationship between two (or even more!) consenting adults.

Go Maine!  Go New Hampshire!

* * *

Marriage is a public institution that grants certain rights & privileges, & also responsibilities, to people who have chosen to bond with one another in private relationships. Jay’s & Gene’s case in Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics was based in part on Alaska’s constitutional right to privacy.   And so in his judgment in February 1998, Judge Michalski wrote:

The relevant question is not whether same-sex marriage is so rooted in our traditions that it is a fundamental right, but whether the freedom to choose one’s own life partner is so rooted in our traditions.

Judge Michalski ruled that the Alaska Constitution, as it then stood, upheld our private freedom to choose our own life partners, whether we chose partners of the same or of opposite sex.

Ballot Measure 2 maintained that right for some people, but stripped it away for others.

We claim it still.  Nor are we alone.  From the Anchorage Daily News story on Ballot Measure 2′s passage published November 4, 1998:

Julie Stephens, a married mother of two, said she mulled the question over a lot and discussed it with her husband. In the end, she decided to vote against the amendment.

“People should be allowed to marry who they want to marry,” she said. “Times change.”

And sometimes they don’t.

That little flourish from ADN, more than anything, really riled me up.  And sometimes they don’t?!!!  I commented in email to friends:

And yet, in spite of the vote, they have. The ballot box does not measure the hearts of the people I work with, or my family, or my friends, or the families & friends & acquaintances of innumerable lesbians & gay men, who as the result of us coming out, as the result of their willingness to grapple in their own souls with the meaning of Difference, found themselves capable of still caring about us, of loving us *for* our Difference, even, not just in spite of it.

The changes that have happened have still happened. Regardless of the vote. The meanings are deep underneath, in our lives.

And that’s why ultimately we will achieve our goal of marriage equality, as well as other equal rights under the law.  Not just because of our own efforts, but because of the good hearts of our nongay friends and families, who recognize just as Julie Stephens did that it is indeed our right, everyone’s right, to choose their own life partners.  Who recognize that even with our differences, we are fundamentally the same in our humanity, no matter the propaganda that seeks to dehumanize us as degenerates or (in Wayne Anthony Ross’ 2009 update of his 1993 terminology) lima beans.

Remember that in the next weeks & months & years.  Yeah, we’ve still got a long way to go.  But how far we’ve come. Have heart.

* * *

I know you didn’t ask for it, but thanks all the same to Jay Brause & Gene Dugan for your efforts to establish marriage equality under the law not only for yourselves, but for all gay men & lesbians in Alaska &, ultimately, the U.S.  And also to all those in Alaska & elsewhere who have fought for those rights, & have voted for them.

I know you didn’t ask for it, but thanks all the same to my colleagues & coworkers, past & present, at the Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage, who did me & continue to do me the great service of treating me, simply, as a human being, as a friend, as a colleague.  Hey, folks: that’s what it’s all about.  May anyone who reads this blog take a lesson from you.

Mel & Ptery, Spokane, Apr 2009 (my brother Dave in the background)

And Rozz who is now Ptery, you’ll read this at some point, I’m sure.  Sorrow blah blah — we’ve come through so many times together, good & bad, easy & hard, & we are family & love & deep deep friendship to one another regardless of cis/trans, or whether we live in the same place, or however our relationship is shaped.  Thanks for coming to Spokane to see my dad with me, & thanks for being an ever-presence in my life.  I love you.

* * *

Further reading on Brause & Dugan v. Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics and Ballot Measure 2:

Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics, No. 3AN-95-6562 CI, 1998 WL 88743 (Alaska Superior Court, Feb. 27, 1998).

The original ruling by Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski; ruled that Alaska’s marriage laws violated the state constitutional right to privacy and the fundamental right to marry, and constituted sex discrimination. Also available through the Freedom to Marry website, which also provides a list as of 1998 (I think) of Alaska statutes pertaining to married people in Alaska — i.e., the specific ways in which same-sex couples, not permitted to marry, are discriminated against by the Alaska Constitution as amended by passage of Ballot Measure 2.

Ruskin, Liz. (4 Nov 1998). “Gay marriage ban approved.” Anchorage Daily News.

ADN’s day-after report on passage of the Ballot Measure 2. Rachel D’Oro and Lisa Demer also contributed to the story.  I will attempt to forgive the rhetorical flourishes that pissed me off at the time.

Alaska Constitution, Article I, Section 25 (1998) — “Marriage.”

Ballot Measure 2 passed by a vote of 152,965 in favor, 71,631 against in the election of November 3, 1998. States that: “To be valid or recognized in this State, a marriage may exist only between one man and one woman.”

Clarkson, Kevin G.; Coolidge, David Orgon; & Duncan, William C. (Dec 1999). “The Alaska Marriage Amendment: The People’s Choice on the Last Frontier.” 16 Alaska Law Review 213.

Law review article examining the history & constitutionality of the marriage amendment.  Authors were all supporters of the amendment.

Molsberry, Ken. (26 Apr 2009). “1997-1998: Brause & Dugan v. Alaska.” The Freedom to Marry: Rites & Rights. Retrieved 7 May 2009. [Note 9 May 2011: individual article no longer available online.]

Puts Brause v. Bureau of Vital Statistics in the context of the overall history of the fight for marriage equality.

Molsberry, Ken. (26 Apr 2009). “1998-1999: Constitutional amendments.” The Freedom to Marry: Rites & Rights. Retrieved 7 May 2009. [Note 9 May 2011: individual article no longer available online.]

Covers the passage of constitutional amendments in both Alaska & Hawaii, the first states to enshrine discrimination against gay & lesbian couples into their state constitutions.

Robinson, B.A. (10 Sep 2007). “Same-sex marriage in Alaska.” Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Retrieved 7 May 2009.

A basic summary of the events leading to the passage of Ballot Measure 2 and its immediate (legal) aftermath.

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