photo by Flickr user Stewf

Towards the end of each year, since becoming parents, Moya and I have wondered what to give to the people who teach and take care of our daughter.   In 2005 I asked my favorite former elementary school teacher for suggestions.  She gave me this hilarious compendium:

Here are some of my favorites:
- a letter from a family stating specifically the things I had done that made an impact on their child and/or their family
- gift cards to stores that I use to get things for my classroom (most of these things come out of the teacher’s own pocket).  These would include bookstores (!!! big one !!!), grocery stores, and teaching supply stores.
- movie and restaurant passes, and gift cards for anywhere
- food!  includes chocolates and anything else… at the holidays you need to have stuff around for others, so if you love it you can hide it and eat it all yourself, and otherwise you can share with guests or fellow teachers

Things I would suggest you NOT get (although I can’t imagine you doing these things, but I have gotten multiples of everything on this list!):
- candles
- candles
- candles
- hand lotions in strong smelling scents (who knows what scent another might hate?)
- candles
- bath salts from a strange dad in your class (okay, that only happened once)
- candles
- kleenex (also only once)
- candles
- a free massage from the licensed massage therapist mom in your class – too weird for me, and I never redeemed  (she didn’t learn though, and gave the first grade teacher the same thing the next year)
- candles
- large heavy statues of things like water fountains, angels, and children playing
- candles

Any more suggestions for what to give or not give to all the amazing people who work at our kid’s school?

I went to see a 1hour (condensed) movie of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” today, recorded from San Francisco Opera performances, with Lucy and some of her friends and their parents. I’ve seen it before and I adore opera and I could never see too much opera.  I had forgotten the perfect line in “The Magic Flute” until I heard Tamino and Pamina sing it (for insomniacs everywhere):

set forth and trust in music’s might

to lead us safely through this night

Lucy and her friend Maia do NOT want their photo taken

Will Phillips, a 10-year-old boy in Arkansas, has been refusing to stand for or say the pledge of allegiance because, he says. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.” (he’s referencing no liberty/justice for gays/lesbians who cannot be legally married according to the federal government)

I first read this story, thanks to this a post on Twitter from a friend who protects her tweets.  I thought it was a great story and was impressed with the kid and glanced at the headline, and I wondered why The Examiner used the term “homosexual” when plenty of current newspapers specifically don’t.

Really, now, the term “homosexual” only belongs on a card like this:

The Examiner’s headline reads, “10-year-old refuses to pledge allegiance to country that discriminates against homosexuals” with story by Jennifer Chou.

The source article that is referenced resides at The Huffington Post where the headline reads, “Will Phillips, 10-Year-Old, Won’t Pledge Allegiance To A Country That Discriminates Against Gays.”

GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) writes about how the Associated Press, New York Times, and Washington Post have all restricted usage of the term homosexual in recent years because:

the term “homosexual” — a word whose clinical history and pejorative connotations are routinely exploited by anti-gay extremists to suggest that lesbians and gay men are somehow diseased or psychologically/emotionally disordered, and which, as The Washington Post notes, “can be seen as a slur.” AP and New York Times editors also have instituted rules against the use of inaccurate terminology such as “sexual preference” and “gay lifestyle.”

’nuff said.

On a night in October 1997 I went to a bar with a friend to meet up with some other friends who said they had invited their friend Moya.  Moya walked into the bar and announced to us that she had a cold and would be needing orange juice in vodka to cure her cold.  She read tarot from the contents of my wallet.  She was so dynamic and original and enigmatic and blatantly silly. I got such a crush.

A while later … On November 25, 1997, after dinner with friends, in the middle of an El Niño rainstorm, Moya and I went for a walk in the rain and ended up at a park near my house where there was fog rolling down the rock wall and a flood in the playground and we danced on soggy grass and kissed in the rain.  Thanksgiving was two days later.

My gadgets in 1997 were a cellphone, a 2way skytel pager, and a newton. I had a computer and dialup internet connection at my house.  Moya had a text pager for work and in her home there was a rotary dial phone and a cassette tape message machine and a turntable stereo and big windows.  It was the best studio apartment I ever knew.

We emailed stories to each other.  I paged text messages to her.  She paged text messages to me. It was IM/SMS for 1997. She picked me up at the office of my brand new company and took me out for dinner.  She told me stories about the moon and planets and galaxies. I asked her how far away Saturn is when she showed me her telescope. That wasn’t the point.

(with apologies to Billy Collin’s “Litany”) She is the tray and the letters, the balcony and the plants, the shot glass and the flask, the sleeping bag and the pillow.  She is not the minimalist bare wall or the question mark, she is the double dash.  She is of course the genius inventor and the naked romp in the Pacific Ocean.  She’s the native grass. I’m the palm tree. I am the seams in the sidewalk, full of grit.  She is the eye candy arm candy smoky scotch peat candy. She is a sheet of puffy clouds with a jet cutting through. She will always be the sleeping bag and the pillow, not to mention the shucker and the decanter.

I’m so thankful for the past decade+ of me and her. We are officially a tween!

The stairs of The Alexis (where Moya lived when we first met)

Lloyd Street

Happy! (not because of the parking ticket on Moya's car!)

A few recent adventures of 5-year-old Lucy. WARNING: dead bird.

I’m pretty sure this is her first original pun/joke: I slipped and fell on the stairs and Lucy said, “it’s a good thing you’re wearing your slippers.”

On October 25, 2009 while sitting in the backyard eating pizza with the neighbors, Lucy looked up and proudly grinned, “my tooth fell out!”  Moya and I scrambled to figure out what the tooth fairy would do (the result: a pretty marble and a $5 bill under Lucy’s pillow).

While trick or treating on Halloween evening, Lucy saw an empty bowl by a door (with a sign that said “have a cold, can’t come to the door, help yourself”) and poured half her bag of collected candy into the empty bowl.

Trick or treat!

There have been 2 dead birds on the street at the corner of Collingwood/18th recently, a corner that we often pass by on our walk to/from school.  The first was on the corner for several days and inspected daily by Lucy who was very concerned about how the bird died and whether or not someone would bury it and whether or not it hurt when it died.  It was eventually gone with a few feathers left behind and then another dead bird was added to the corner.  Lucy stomped her feet one morning while looking at the remains of the birds and declared, “I’m done with birds dying! I don’t want any more birds to die!” Then she picked up some of the feathers from the dead bird and put it on the ground near a tree because “the ground is soft and comfy for the bird, the street is hard.”

Lucy’s generally an advocate of kindness to all animals and also an inspector of all animal and insect death that she discovers.  Holding Lucy’s hand while she leans close to a dead bird in the crosswalk reminds me of the times in my childhood when our cows were butchered.  My younger sister wanted some parts of the cow so she could inspect and dissect them.  I had to hold her hand while she walked out to the field to ask the butcher for the eyes, or whatever gross dead animal part.  She was shy. I was brave but queasy.  Lucy’s shy.  I’m still brave and queasy.

Some thoughts that Lucy expressed during the year when she was 4 years old.  Leopard and Kitty are stuffed animals and also Lucy’s invisible animal friends who are a sage source of wisdom and advice, as in “Leopard told me …” or “Kitty knows …” or “Leopard already did that …” and Wanda is our elderly cat.

November 2008
“I have a date with Leopard. We had a fight. We’re going to talk.”

“If you’re zero years old then you’re just a seed that is put in someone’s tummy”

“I can’t take naps at home because my [stuffed] animals are talking and wake me up”

(looking at leaf on sidewalk) “That’s a footprint of a dinosaur made out of a leaf”

(in car with music playing) “My feet are singing”

(smelling the air) “My nose is stinky”

“Since I have food in my tummy I am not having a sad day”

“Did you notice I can jump and twirl my arms at the same time?”

When asked “Do you know how much I love you?” She answers, “yes, five.”

(near harrison/20th in the mission district in San Francisco) “This would be a good place to live because you can see the sun setting and it’s really beautiful.”

February 2009

“A long time ago, before I had a momma and mommy, it was just me and Leopard and Wanda and we were saving pigeons.”

Lucy sits down at dinner table and notices I made her a “cocktail” (fizzy juice with a maraschino cherry) and says, “You didn’t have to make me a cocktail, Mommy. I didn’t ask you for one. Thank you so much for making me a cocktail.”

She put the cap on her scissors and said, “Look at me! Now I can run with scissors because the cap is on and I’m protected”

March 2009

(after her great-grandmother died) “Dead people aren’t as fun because you can’t show them your toys or play with them, you can only remember them, not as fun.”

“I’m tired of running but I don’t want to walk so I have to run”

Listening to Obama read his book and Lucy says “Obama’s grandparents are from the same Kansas as Dorothy!” (devoted Wizard of Oz fan)

April 2009
“I’m thinking of what it might look like inside of a song – how is music made?”

“The clouds in the sky look like blurry thunder”

Lucy ate a sardine and asked, “Where did it come from? Does it know that I’m eating it?

At the top of Twin Peaks at night, looking at the city, Lucy gasps, “it looks like a toy! So pretty!”

May 2009

Woman with a child was shouting expletives on F-Market and apologizes to Lucy.  Lucy says, “she’s angry because didn’t sleep well.”  I asked Lucy if she heard every expletive and insult that was screamed for 10 minutes. She says, “No, I didn’t open my ears.”

June 2009
(talking about dealing with being afraid of the dark) “I can go under the covers in my bed and then I own my own darkness”

“I didn’t step on the millipede because I think it wants to live”

July 2009
Lucy’s invisible friends Leopard and Kitty (who are also stuffed animals) apparently had their first day of kindergarten today and Lucy has a talk with them about what it was like and how they feel about kindergarten.

“The spinney thing makes the dizzy part of my body go to my tummy,” says Lucy while spinning on playground equipment.

August 2009

“I know everything I already need to know. I never need to know anything else”

“Being smart means you know a lot of stuff and your brain is really strong and you can think of lots of things”

“Even if I already know how to do the whole thing I need to practice to get more good”

For years the right-wing has used a mantra something like “no special rights for gays” or “gay rights are special rights” to fight against and to legally deny any sort of protection or rights for LGBT people and couples.

In 2002, “President Bush announced that ‘gay rights are special rights,’ as his defense against criticism that came when he refused to enact various civil rights laws that would protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people from discrimination in their daily lives.”

March 5, 2009 in front of California State Building

The campaign for Prop 8 in California last year mostly used slogans of “marriage is one man plus one woman” and themes of “protecting” marriage and “protect the children” and so on.

However, by passing Prop 8 they unwittingly gave those exact “special rights” to a special class of approximately 18,000 couples who remain legally married, caught in time, in California in spite of Prop 8.

Yeah, sure that wasn’t their intent of Prop 8 but they didn’t include anything retroactive in their proposition language.

That’s exactly the “special rights” that these campaigns have been trying to fight against – to keep us from having any protection, from having any rights and responsibilities within our families, all in the name of “protecting children” and “protecting marriage.”

So then what’s my special locked-in-time-marriage status?  It’s special gay rights!

These anti-LGBT slogans and campaigns are slowly dying.  Even if, fingers crossed this doesn’t happen, Ref 71 in Washington is rejected and Question 1 in Maine is passed, the mantras of “protecting children from gays” and “keeping gay marriage out of school curriculum” and “saving traditional marriage” are being slowly dismantled because the anti-gay groups have no proof that marriages such as mine do any damage at all to the institution of marriage, to schools, and to children.

My special gay marriage protects my kid.  Before my special gay marriage was legal, domestic partnership protected my kid and me and my sweetie and helped define our family and give our family rights to each other that married people usually take for granted.

Approve Referendum 71 in Washington State!

Vote No on Question 1 in Maine!

Be kind.

Thanks, Belinda Carlisle, for supporting and endorsing No on Question 1 in Maine!

Apologies to “My Fair Lady” *

Bill Nemitz, a respected Portland Maine columnist, has skewered the Yes on 1 campaign and smartly pointed out that No on 1 (a.k.a. Protect Maine Equality) is using real local citizens while the Yes on 1 campaign is mostly relying on stock images and an ad recycled from last year’s Prop 8 campaign in California and people who don’t live or work in Maine:

The anti-repeal “No on 1″ campaign overflows with real Mainers who are willing – no, make that eager – to go public in their support of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

And the pro-repeal “Yes on 1″ campaign? Not so much.

Since it took to the airwaves a month or so ago, Stand for Marriage Maine has attached four – and only four – faces to its televised ad campaign. And of those four, only one person is actually from Maine.

-from  Real Mainers step up for ‘No on 1′ ads

Paul Redicker, Catholic, Veteran, Mainer, stands up for all of us, “Maine’s moving along in the right direction …” — these real people standing up for marriage rights still make me cry because they don’t have to stand up for us and talk in front of a crowd, be video recorded and put on YouTube, and they do!

* “The rain in spain stays mainly in the plain …” (Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady)

Shown during keynote session at the Grace Hopper conference this morning. Wish I’d seen something like this when I was a young girl! Fabulous montage of women in tech. I’m going to show this to my 5 year old daughter.