Princess Always Learning

My First Dyke March

2009-06-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

June 2001:

Pride was approaching and I thought I should participate. Shobi-wan and I had participated in the Pride Parade in Portland, and I had marched in the Portland and Seattle Pride Parades in the flag corps of the Rose City Gay Freedom Band (a story to be told later), but San Francisco is a lot bigger, a lot crazier, and a lot more formal than the Portland parade was when Shobi-wan and I went.

The Dyke March is traditionally anti-establishment, eschewing corporate sponsorship and march permit applications, but always follows the same route the evening before the Pride Parade. I thought it would be good to go a women's event, and who knows, maybe I would actually talk to someone. I had just recently started attending the Bi Women's Group and hadn't made real friends there yet, so I had to go alone. Which I told myself would be okay; there would be 50,000 people there and I could blend into some group.

I stood on a small rise in the center of the park, looking over thousands of women of all ages, colors, shapes, in costume or without clothing, on blankets drinking and snacking, making out, sunbathing, dancing, cheering, and greeting others with "Happy Pride!" I watched everything with some trepidation, wishing I knew some people so I could join the eating, drinking, dancing, cheering, and maybe even the making out.

A woman came up on the rise next to me, shading her hand while she was looking for her friends (this is so much easier now that texting is a common feature on cell phones!). She told me she was from Minnesota, and I said I was from here. She asked me, "How many times have you been to the Dyke March?" and I replied, "This is my first time."

"Your first time? What kind of a Dyke are you?" she teased.

"About half of one," I smiled.

I Know, A Lot of People Are Doing This

2009-06-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

But are they doing this?

Or this?

And Earth Is Ablaze / And Ocean Aglow

2009-06-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Someone I know in the wedding business told a story about a bride who had finally realized that she was getting too wound up about every uncontrollable detail of the wedding: The weather, a baby crying during the ceremony, what if the limo got a flat tire? As the wedding approached, someone else involved in the wedding plans received an email from this bride asking if the wedding site's event planner could please arrange for a pod of Orcas and dolphins to swim by at the end of the ceremony? It took a minute, but that this request was a joke did dawn on everyone.

Bink and Mr. Bink got married about six months before Zirpu and I did, in a beautiful back yard on an island in Washington State. It was a large wedding party, with seven attendants on each side - my impression was that Mr. Bink was attended by his former crew teammates, while Bink was attended by women who had been or would be part of her life for many years.

Bink had asked me to read something during the ceremony, but I didn't have a copy of the William Jay Smith poem until Zirpu and I arrived. We had taken a ferry to the island and booked a room in an inn "downtown"; during the afternoon before the wedding I sat on the balcony overlooking the Sound and quick-memorized the words. This is a technique I use that only holds the words in my head for a few hours, but it would allow me to look up and out at the gathered folks while reading.

"Now touch the air softly,
Step gently, One, two. . .
I'll love you till roses are robin's-egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red."

Though it was late September, the day was as warm as midsummer, a lot warmer than any of us off-islanders had expected. Bink had jokingly said that she hoped a rainbow would appear over the wedding, but it was a clear day with only a few white clouds in the sky. Immediately after the ceremony, the minister asked all of us guests to remain seated as the photographer wanted to get some photos of the wedding party standing on the deck behind us (so they would be facing the water as well). We all watched as the newlyweds and their friends walked up the aisle to the deck and while the photographer got everyone placed.

I heard a mutter and then another, and looked out toward the water. The timing couldn't have been better: Not only was it after the ceremony, but it was at the moment when the newlyweds were facing the water. Not a rainbow, as Bink had joked about, but a pod of Orcas was swimming through the nearby channel.

The Anchor of My Collection

2009-06-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

As graduation from college approached, my housemates and I started going through our stuff, throwing things out, packing clothes, rolling up posters, deciding whether this paper or that was worthy of storing in our parents' homes as we started to live our lives away from the cocoon of undergrad. Our House was a mess as we pulled things from cupboards and drawers and threw them into boxes between studying for finals and attending end-of-year events.

One of those events was the Senior Art Show. Phil had majored in Art and he had three pieces in the show: A silkscreen of three cattle skulls; a painting of a general store somewhere in Colorado; and a ceramic curving sculpture with a face at the top. I had watched Phil experiment with the curve, seeing how sharp he could make a curve in flat clay without its breaking while being fired. We had spent late nights in the Ceramics Building, talking, while he threw pots and built sculptures and I reveled in the scent of clean mud. As a result, I felt a friendly possession toward this piece, and at the show jokingly asked Phil if I could have it. He said I could have it for $1500, and showed me the sticker on the description tag.

The deadline for moving out of Our House got closer and closer and each of us had to decide what we were going to keep and what we weren't. I saved most of my papers - I'd majored in writing, so the largest output of my undergraduate education was on typewritten and dot-matrixed sheets. Phil, however, had focused on ceramics and had a large number of fragile pieces that he did not wish to ship. He belatedly realized that he should have been taking pieces home with him at the end of each academic year. His cousin agreed to allow him to pack her station wagon with his art and take it back with her to Colorado. Phil shipped all of his clothes and some of the drawings and paintings, and planned the packing of his car with geometric precision. After several tries, Phil couldn't figure out how to fit the large and oddly-shaped black and silver sculpture into the car.

I wasn't moving back to San Francisco, so I offered to hold this piece for him. He didn't know if he would be staying in Colorado or moving to Seattle after his post-graduation European trip, but we both knew that if he decided on the former we could still get this piece to Colorado when we weren't so pressed for time. I took the sculpture to the place I would be staying until Shobi-wan and I got an apartment, and Phil continued to pack his car.

I have since carefully wrapped this sculpture in a quilt and moved it nine times, across a couple of state lines. About a year after Phil died and while his brother was in graduate school in New York, I realized that I had indeed taken possession of the sculpture without paying Phil a cent. A few years after that I sent a photo of the sculpture to Marko with a letter saying that I consider this piece a long-term loan from him, and as soon as he wants it, it will go back to him. Marko called me when he got the letter, exclaiming that he had wondered what had happened to this piece.

I have it, and every time I look at it, I think of those nights watching Phil build it, the smell of clean mud, and the $1500 I never paid him for the anchor of my art collection.

Why Spock Is My Hero

2009-05-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

No and I watched Star Trek just about every night, looking for the rarely-shown episodes and our favorite episodes. My favorite character was Spock: He was the smartest person on the ship, observed everything and carefully drew correct conclusions, and loyal to friends (and to the Federation). Most interesting to me, he didn't have feelings. As I got older I saw that Spock did have feelings, but successfully repressed them except when drunk or in the midst of hormone-related upset, or, much later, in a movie.

When I was a kid I wanted to be like Spock. I also was (and am still) an observer, weighing risks and benefits before making decisions. I imagined myself to be a pretty smart person. I think I'm pretty loyal - maybe not as loyal as No, but loyal. However, the thing I envied most in Spock was his ability to control his feelings: He was never sad, rarely angry, and never had hurt feelings. He was always secure in the decisions he made. He knew he was right.

I especially felt this when I was in grammar school. Many of the kids were cruel, so I thought that if I could be the smartest one in the class, I would know I was better than they were, regardless of what the mean kids thought of me. If they knew what a good friend I could be, the kids who were neither my bullies nor my friends would be my friends and I wouldn't be alone in the class. If I could control my feelings, nothing anyone said or did to me would upset me, make me cry, or write "F---HEADS!!!" repeatedly in my binder in big, blocky, letters.

When I was in twelfth grade I had to take a speech class. One of the assignments was that each of us had to make a speech about someone who was our hero. I wrote and spoke about Spock: I admired his knowledge and logic, his ability to know what to do in every moment, and how he never allowed personal feelings to get in the way of making a decision or executing a decision. Spock was a good friend to Kirk, despite the difference in their characters, and to McCoy, despite the impression of disdain that McCoy constantly had for Spock, and I liked that about him too. I described how I'd taught myself to lift one eyebrow in that classic puzzled Spock look.

After I'd given my speech, Mr. S. told the class that we were supposed to talk about real people, because fictional people can't be heroes.

A Trip To Laugh About

2009-05-07T10:13:00.001-07:00

My right arm was injured (not broken) three weeks ago which has impacted my ability to write and type. I apologize for the extra-long delay, kind reader.

In the spring of 1991, one of Shobi-wan's former housemates was getting married in a lodge somewhere outside Portland, and we were invited. It was spring break (Shobi-wan was a student) so we decided that we would attend the wedding and go camping for a couple nights afterward, first in Tillamook and then in Cannon Beach. As you might imagine, our packing was rather schizophrenic - nice clothes for the wedding, tent and sleeping bags for the camping. Everything was piled up in the kitchen, and we made many trips up and down the stairs to pack The Tub, my first Honda Civic (a station wagon, still my favorite car).

Just before crossing the bridge from Vancouver, WA, to Portland, OR, I asked Shobi-wan to grab me a handful of Hershey's Kisses for sustenance for the rest of the trip to the wedding site. She twisted around in her seat and reached back for the blue cooler (which I still have), but not feeling it with her hand, she turned fully around and said, "Did you put the cooler in the back?" I said, "It should be up against the seats," meaning right behind the front seats. She said, "It's not here."

In that moment, I realized I also hadn't put the shoes I was going to wear with my dress at the wedding. I guess I somehow knew that the shoes had been sitting on top of the cooler, which I could visualize still sitting on the floor in the kitchen. We were in the perfect place for this realization, as we were at the end of the bridge, from which there is an exit to the Jantzen Beach Mall, set up as close to the border between sales tax-less Oregon and sales tax-full Washington as possible. So I zipped off the exit, parked the car, and Shobi-wan and I dashed into a Payless Shoes. We had about an hour to get from Jantzen Beach to the wedding site and to change our clothes, and we didn't know where we were going (and I always tried to allow 30 minutes for getting lost, particularly on the fringes of Portland, in those days). I bought the second pair of flats I tried on, for $12.

The first night of our camping trip we spent next to the Tillamook River. We went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and that night the rain poured down. When we got to Cannon Beach, the feet of our sleeping bags were damp and the tent was soaked through, having been rolled up wet. We also learned that the Tillamook River had flooded that day. We piled all the stuff in the front seats and slept in the back of the car. Shobi-wan is adorably small, and we were able to lie down stretched out lengthwise, only cramped a little side-to-side.

We had great fun on this trip, laughing even when we made tea in a pot that hadn't been cleaned very well from the previous night's canned chili. Unlike some adventures I had when I was young, this one was funny while it was happening as well as being funny years later.

Paying Taxes

2009-04-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

My first political thought had to do with taxes. I remember suddenly realizing that if people wanted something in their town, they would pay for it with "taxes." The image in my head was of a village that wanted a statue over a fountain, and the people would each have to pay some amount to pay for the statue. Much later I realized that fire departments, roads, and schools were paid for by taxes, and that no one wanted to pay into the kitty and wanted to keep their money themselves.

I did my taxes by hand on binder paper with a pencil until 2002, even though for years I always had at least two if not three or four W2s. It was simple math in those days, with the standard deductions, and I found it kind of fun to do. Later in my financial aid life I learned how to read tax returns doing income verifications, and until I had to figure the value of a business that was kind of fun too. I even trained other people on it!

When I've had to write a check to the IRS, I've often been tempted to write in the memo line what I want my money to pay for. "Head Start," I've imagined writing several years in a row, or five years ago, "Armor for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan." I've imagined drawing a circle/slash through "ADM." The check to the State Franchise Board would say "Education" and "Libraries."

I wonder what wouldn't get funded if people could say where they wanted their taxes to go. My first guess is legislators' salaries. What would you pay for?

Final Shake-Up

2009-04-03T21:21:00.001-07:00

At CSH, starting in sixth grade we had midterms and finals. In other schools midterms fell mid-term, but at CSH, "midterms" was what we called final exams for fall semester. They were held toward the end of January, four days of two exams each day. The teachers spent the week before exams going over everything they'd taught us the previous semester (which we'd forgotten, of course, over Christmas vacation), and on the following Monday we reported to homeroom to get split up into our first period and second period exams, which lasted 90 minutes. At noon we were let go, to return home to study for the next day's exams.

My science exam was in our homeroom, in the SE corner of the top floor of the grammar school. Since the building was at the top of the Webster Street hill, the classroom in the opposite NE corner, had a fabulous view, seemingly miles above Vallejo Street below. Our classroom had a much less interesting view of Hamlin School for Girls down the street. Tables had been arranged separate from each other, rather than in the rows they usually were. Some of the tables were large enough for three, most for two, several for one. As a low-status student, I got a desk to myself by the door.

About halfway through our science midterm, the building started to shake. It shook for a few moments, and while I did not remember the teacher saying anything, to me it seemed that all at once, all of us two dozen people in the classroom simultaneously dropped under our desks. Once the shaking stopped, it seemed to me that the building was swaying, which to my mind made sense as we were inside the top corner of the building at the top of a steep, high hill. I reassured myself that this building had survived the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (which I subsequently learned wasn't true). The room was silent except for the sound of the pipes in the restroom next door rattling.

After a few minutes, Ms. R. stood up from behind her desk and said, "Return to your seats, girls." We all did, picking up our pencils and getting back to the test. For the minutes I was under my desk, I was certain that the girls who had tablemates had quickly exchanged as many exam answers as they could.

Led Astray By The Nose

2009-03-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

My best guy friend the first half of high school was a guy who lived down the street from me. We walked to school (uphill both ways!) together in the mornings, were in homeroom together, and since we attended a small high school were in a lot of classes together. We wrote each other notes instead of taking notes during class. He was the first boy I made out with, and the first boy I was jealous over. We laughed a lot together - he was very silly, translating "viejo" (which actually means "old") with the name of our Spanish teacher during a vocabulary test. In Biology we learned about a one-celled organism whose English name is "Nasty Nose." Since my friend and I spent a lot of time making up goofy names for each other, I dubbed him Didinium Nasutum.

At the school we attended, homeroom was a 17-minute period between first and second periods. This meant that absence calls from the office were made at 850. Didinium convinced me to cut class with him one spring day. He'd done it before; of course it had never occurred to me to not go to school. We planned that since his mom was home during the day, I would meet him on the corner like usual and then we would walk back to my house and hang out and watch TV, maybe go to the park.

The plan fell apart when I lost my nerve. I did meet him at the corner, and we did go back to my house in time to pick up the phone when the attendance office called. Didinium called himself in as sick, and when the phone rang I answered and told the lady yes, I was my mother, and that I was home with a 24 hour bug. I always had considered myself a good liar, but I knew that she didn't believe me. If nothing else, I didn't sound nearly as much like my mother as Didinium sounded like his dad.

I absolutely lost my nerve. Remember, I grew up in a neighborhood where education was such a high value that there was no question about whether each of us would attend college; the question was whether the college would be Berkeley. I knew the next call would be to my mom at the office, and I would be so busted I couldn't imagine what would happen. My bro No was the rebellious one (and even he attended school every single day). I told Didinium I couldn't go through with it, I had to go to school. I guess I decided that watching Hogan's Heroes and The Monkees wasn't worth getting grounded forever. I don't remember if I called the school back and said I was coming in after all, but I arrived at the beginning of the next class.

I didn't cut a class again until I was in my fourth semester of college when Phil and Jujubi talked me into going to the Antique Sandwich Shop for a late lunch, also on a spring day, instead of my Japanese history class.

Ice Cream for Aunt Alice

2009-02-28T20:22:00.000-08:00

Every summer for the last fifteen years or so, my mother and her younger sister, Grandma Hip, rent a cottage in or near Charlestown, RI, near a beach. My mom's (and now my aunt's) good friend Bethie completes the trio that hang out at the cottage, spending mornings and evenings at the beach, "going on a toot" as they call a drive around the area, sharing the crossword in the Providence Journal, buying corn, tomatoes, and pies at the farm stands all around, stopping for ice cream along the way.

All kinds of people come down to the cottage during the three weeks they're ensconced there. My cousins come and go in waves, some overnight, some just for the day, and Grandpa Hip and his youngest (the youngest of all of us cousins) spend their days off down there. Grandma Hip's brother-in-law and his wife and their children and grandchildren usually get a place nearby. My mom's older brother, UD, used to go for days at a time starting political discussions just to get a rise out of everyone. My Aunt Alice would go as well, though she was the only one who never went to the beach. Everyone in the family really enjoys the water, and synchronized swimming, which Mom and Grandma Hip did in high school, has become one of our favorite water pasttimes, buffeted by the waves. But Aunt Alice rarely even came to the beach. She probably enjoyed being the cottage by herself.

I was there in 2002, and one night Grandma Hip, Bethie, Mom, aunt Alice, and I went to a big Italian restaurant for dinner. I introduced Grandma Hip to the Appletini that night, and we had a long leisurely meal with cocktails and appetizers. After the server had taken our empty dinner plates away, she came back to ask if we would like dessert. The rest of us ordered off the menu, but Aunt Alice demurred. The server asked, "Are you sure?" Mom said, "Maybe they have ice cream, Alice." The server said that they did indeed have ice cream, vanilla, chocolate, coffee, and strawberry. Aunt Alice, a small woman, looked up at the server and said, "May I have a dish of vanilla ice cream please, with some hot fudge sauce if you have it?"

Aunt Alice passed away a couple weeks ago, and though it was expected and my mom was with her, it's been hard. The evening of the day we learned she'd passed away, No, KT, and I met at Fenton's Creamery. It seemed like to eat ice cream would be the best way to honor her memory, and it was.

Big Brown Eyes

2009-02-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

The summer after college I worked as a day camp counselor at the SF Jewish Community Center. I had about a dozen seven and eight year olds in my charge from 930am until 330pm every weekday, with a two-night overnight in the middle week of each session. I worked with a Junior Counselor and a Counselor in Training, whom I supervised/trained. I designed half-hour activity sessions, planned around activity level, travel time, and scheduling around other counselors' equipment desires ("If we can have the parachute in the 10am "thirty", we go to swimming and then you can have it at 1030"). I also taught swimming. I wrote reports on each camper each week, and performance reviews for the JC and CIT at the end of each session. I was also the Hokey Pokey Queen and could lead the whole camp in it for hours: "Put your right thumb in, put your right thumb out..."

I was seventeen and "earned" $100 a week for my efforts. I had almost no idea what I was doing.

My JC was a 15 year old going into her junior year. The Moon was the very savvy daughter of artists who tolerated no bullshit. She had huge brown eyes that would look deeply into your heart if you weren't telling the truth, or, more specifically, the whole truth. Besides working together, we hung out during our precious away-from-camp hours. When The Moon spent the night at my house that summer, she insisted on sleeping in the bed and not on the floor in a sleeping bag, and it became a "Who's more stubborn?" thing. We both wound up sleeping in my bed, which at the time I thought was the weirdest thing.

When I came home for winter break my first year at college, The Moon had won tickets on the radio to a Buddy Guy "early" show at The Fillmore for New Year's Eve and she invited me to go with her. I didn't know who Buddy Guy was, but I liked the blues in a general sort of way, I'd never been to The Fillmore, and it sounded much better than watching TV at home.

I really enjoyed the music. We wound attending both the 9pm and the 11pm shows because partway through the show we had tickets for, there was some problem with the electricity onstage and Buddy Guy couldn't play. It was worked out with the venue that everyone at the early show could stay for the late show. What I remember the most from that night happened in the lobby while they were trying to fix the electricity. The Moon and I were looking around and a man started talking to me. I had just turned 18 three months before, and The Moon was probably 16. Of course he was older than we were (we were probably among the youngest people at the show), and when he asked how old I was, I said, "Almost nineteen." My judgment to respond this way was, of course, due to the fact that I was still basically 17.

The Moon turned her big eyes on me, blinked once, and said, "You just turned 18."

I don't remember being mad at her for doing this. I remember thinking, and still think now, that The Moon was saving me from my own poor judgment. Even though I haven't seen The Moon since that time, whenever I tell a half-truth or lie by omission, especially when I doubt my judgment about why I'm doing so, I always think of The Moon's big brown eyes.

My Long Association with Geeks and Nerds

2009-02-17T20:20:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, almost everyone at my high school was a geek or nerd.

The guy on my right was in the club because he was my friend. I was in the club because of a crush on the guy on my left.

How I Know He's The Right One

2009-02-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

Zirpu: I knew I would never tell my mom about the time I almost got arrested [as a teenager].

Samatakah: You almost got arrested?!

Zirpu: We were playing D&D...

I totally would have dug him in high school. Totally.

Long Time No See

2009-02-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

I had planned to start writing more stories about my growing up and being (or becoming) an adult. I hadn't planned to write nothing for four weeks, but life absolutely got in the way.

The last three weeks have been absolutely crammed full of unpleasant family and personal events, which ultimately wound up with me totally melting down on Thursday with JR, even though by then all events had resolved into happy endings in the natural progression of things. I think I just had been moving through with my head down and when it was over flipped out in retrospect.

I did something different this time, which was ask for help. And I got it! It's not surprising that I got it, so I recommend asking for needed help when it's needed and not after after the fact. Friendship is a two-way street, they say, and I really needed quite a few people to come down that street and pick me up. Which they did. Yay for them!

Anyway, hopefully back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Hope

2009-01-20T07:05:00.000-08:00

Now I've been happy lately,
thinking about the good things
to come
And I believe it could be
something good has begun.

       - Cat Stevens

The View From The Mountaintop

2009-01-19T21:14:00.001-08:00

I read about this on SFGate's politics blog and want to spread it around.

In 1964, Dr. King told BBC News that he expected a "Negro President" in less than forty years.

Of Thee I Sing!

2009-01-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

The first song I learned about America was This Land Is Your Land. I was in a hippie classroom, and the other songs we sang during "rug time" were Old MacDonald, Farmer In The Dell, Yellow Submarine, and Love Potion Number Nine. Of course we all sang Elbow Room from Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings in front of the TV.

I learned America The Beautiful once I started attending CSH. I guess I knew the tune, but during Mass I would read the words in the hymn books tucked into pockets on the pews, and "America The Beautiful" was on the last page. When I grew up, I learned from a friend who worked in the Colorado State Parks that the lyrics were written by a lesbian after she had ridden a wagon up to the summit of Pike's Peak and she had looked over the plain below.

When I was hanging around with ComedySportz, like every other athletic event, the evening always started with the singing of the National Anthem. I don't like this song as much as I like "America The Beautiful" or "My Country 'Tis Of Thee," but I heard on NPR during the Olympics last year that most national anthems include lyrics referring to battle (the French one famously so). What "The Start Spangled Banner" does have as an advantage is its challenge to sing well. When I went to East Bay Harmony for the first time, I sang it to determine that I should sing with the altos.

I'll be singing some song on Tuesday, and after Tuesday. There's a lot to be done and the ideal will never match the reality, but I, like the ant with the rubber tree plant, have hope.

Wow

2009-01-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the January 18 Candorville.

Thurgood Marshall is leading the swearing-in, and the bible is being held by Martin Luther King, Jr. I recognize Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell, Lyndon Johnson, Harriet Tubman, Condileeza Rice, Abraham Lincoln, the three Freedom Riders killed in Mississippi, Louis Armstrong, and others whose images I recognize but don't know to which name they belong. It's kind of like looking at the cover of Sgt. Pepper's.

Wise Words

2009-01-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

None of the people in this photo is Dances Under The Moon, but we are all wearing hats

YaYa Dances Under The Moon sent out this email the other day, so I'm sending it out to you as well.

Well it's official, I am now a true old lady. What? you might say.
Well the other morning I got up, took my shower, then proceeded to slather
Jean Nate' lotion all over my body. That was bad enough, then I realized I
liked it. So I may never let my snow white hair grow out, but underneath it
all it's true I have arrived. Well I am the senior of all of us. So remember
I demand respect! I also have realized although I am old, I am not dead!!! I
have decided that I have much to do in the next 50 years. It starts in 2009.
I will have my list completed when we meet in March. I will look forward to
seeing your list also.

I will tell you one on my list. I have decided to wear hats more. Hats are good.
They keep the heat in, they are good for bad hair days, and they give you
different personalities, I mean a good mood change thing. God knows I need some
mood changes sometimes. All in all what I have realized is that I am damn happy,
and I plan on staying that way. Hope all the yayas have a fantastic 2009.
Love you all.
Dances under the moon

I get up, I walk, I fall down, Meanwhile I keep dancing.

You're never too far, wherever you are

2009-01-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

The first movie I ever stood in much a line to see was Star Wars. We went to see it the first time at the Coronet, which was the movie theater in town. It was a huge theater with over a thousand seats and showed first-run, exclusive films. Apparently George Lucas was a big fan of the Coronet and selected it to premier Star Wars in San Francisco - and it played there for seven months. Tickets to the show were $3 for adults, and one could pay an additional fifty cents to sit in the balcony, where smoking was allowed. My mom says that a friend of her remarked, "If I'm gonna spend three bucks on a movie, I might as well pay the extra fifty cents so I can smoke during it!"

Grush took a bunch of us neighborhood kids to see Star Wars again at the North Point near Ghirardelli Square. That was pretty far afield for us, as we only went to that part of town when there were out-of-towners visiting as part of the "tour guide." We were standing in line when a guy with a guitar and two guys with a camera and recording equipment came down the line asking people to sing the "Reach out and touch someone" jingle from AT&T (as it was known in those days, and is again). They got to us and we were soooooo ready we were jumping up and down, "We know it! We know it!"

And we sang:

Reeeeach out
Reach out and touch someone
Reach out
Reach out and just say hi
Da da da de dum
Da dum de de dum to
Reeeeeach out
Reach out and touch someone!

He told us they would not be able to use us in a commercial since we didn't know all the words. I don't think we even knew it had other words until we got to where they were supposed to go. Needless to say we all very disappointed that we had missed being "discovered" outside the movie theater. The next one of us who saw the ad paid very close attention and taught us all the whole song, just in case a guitar and a camera appeared the next time we went to see Star Wars.

True 'Nuff

2009-01-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

Check out the January 4 Bizarro comic about pirates that strike fear into people's hearts.

The SDS Show

2008-12-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

Growing up, "warm fuzzies" meant two things: "Warm fuzzies" were what you got or what you gave or what you felt (or all three) when someone did something nice, like gave you a hug, or helped pick you up when you fell, or rubbed your back when you were sad. "Warm fuzzies" were also what we called one-piece footed pajamas, which all of us kids in the neighborhood had even though we only wore them in the winter and in July when it was cold enough.

My mom's friend Grush has a granddaughter almost exactly my age with whom I share a name. She lived in Utah but would often be in San Francisco for what I remember as weeks at a time in the summer. One morning after a sleepover, she, DeeKay, and I, while sitting in our pajamas, decided to put on a show. We'd noticed that we were each wearing one of the primary colors - I know I was in yellow, but I don't remember which of them was in blue and which in red. We picked a song that was very popular among us kids that year and choreographed our steps. We had color-coordinated hula hoops instead of canes to dance with, though I don't remember why we had three hula hoops at the house; not only were there only two of us living there, but none of the dozen-plus kids in the beighborhood, except maybe Tam, could hula hoop for longer than half a minute.

I'm a little nut of brown
Lying on the cold cold ground
Everybody steps on me
That is why I'm a cracked you see

I'm a nut (cluck, cluck)
I'm a nut (cluck, cluck)
I'm a nut, I'm a nut, I'm a nut (cluck, cluck)

So, Long Time No See!

2008-12-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

I haven't been away. I haven't been sick. I have been busy at work, but not so busy I had to stay away from the blog for two weeks. I've just lost interest.

It's not you, honey, it's me.

I've also been wanting to write somewhere else than here. It's time to change our relationship - I think it would be best for me to use other media. In fact, old media: Paper. I have an old journal waiting for me to come back. I've already touched base there, in fact.

I've been slacking in the story-telling, and that's what I originally wanted to do here. I haven't told a story since mid-November. I didn't really want this blog to turn into "what I did today" posts.

I'm not going to take the blog down, I'm just going to use it differently. Instead of setting myself writing goals that are attached to quantity, I'm going to work on quality. Of course I reserve the right to remark on what's going on around me. With a blog, I can be a columnist.

Anyway, anyone dropping by might see longer periods between posts. but I mean for it to be that way.

May all your wishes for 2009 come true!

Warning

2008-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

A Poem For The YaYas
(with a nod to Jenny Joseph)

When I am an old woman, I shall wear lavender pajamas
with a red robe that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my 401(k) on vodka and hair color
and ingredients for blackbottom cupcakes, and say we've no money for gasoline.
I shall sit down on the BART train floor when I am tired
and drink lots of coffee in tiny cups at Trader Joe's and press kids' bellybuttons
and skip along the sidewalks
and make up for the sobriety (!) of my youth.
I shall go out in the rain without gel in my hair
and pick the french fries off other people's plates
and teach children to curse.

You can wear terrible wigs and grow more obnoxious
and drink three bottles of champagne at a go or only banana bread for a week
and hoard Christmas ornaments and things in boxes.

But now we must have jobs or partners that keep us solvent
and insist on equal pay for equal work and celebrate Obama
and set a good example for the children.
We must meet friends on retreats and read our favorite blogs.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to drink champagne.

Christmas In San Francisco

2008-12-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

Today was Cookiethon! over at Park Place. This is a day in December on which HR and some others have a cookie-baking frenzy and bake a boatload of a bunch of different cookies.

I do not make cookies, but I have mad skillz when it comes to eating cookies. Hardly anything is too rich for me and the only thing that keeps me from eating butter and sugar on bread every day is being a grown-up. I had to leave the house for a little bit when the peanut butter cookies came out of the oven, only because the scent was so overpowering I couldn't breathe.

When I mentioned I had never heard the song "Christmas in San Francisco", Nutmeg and I went on an online search for it. We could only find the lyrics and Nutmeg said the song is so bad she couldn't sing it for me. Then she got the idea to ask KOIT, the local easy-listening radio station, and ask them to play it. KOIT is famous (or infamous) for playing Christmas music from sometime in November through Christmas. She wrote an email asking that they play this song for her friend who'd been raised in the city and had never heard it. Just as Zirpu and I were getting ready to leave, the song actually came on. In these multi-cultural times, I think it's okay to use a Yiddish word to describe a Christmas song, and that word is schmaltzy.

All of my favorite Park Place people showed up, including Gaia and Byronium who had just arrived the night before from two weeks in India, and Pumpkin, whom, I believe, I conjured by wearing socks that don't match (as he often does). A couple of very young girls had a grand time decorating the spritz cookies (sugar cookies from the cookie press). Nutmeg insisted we watch Steven Colbert's Christmas Special and we listened to carols on the iPod/CD player. JR brought home a 7' tree on his bicycle. HR, Cutie G, Byronium and others made cookies. The rest of us ate them and drank coffee and eggnog. It was raining and cold (well, not New Hampshire cold) all day.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.