Elliott busts a move

I often brag that my son is the coolest kid in town, so it's probably high time that I proved it. I submit the following clip as evidence. Please note the crowd that starts to gather to watch this adorable nine-year-old match a teenager step-for-step on the arcade's Dance Dance Revolution machine.



For the rest of our afternoon at the State Fair, I had a huge grin on my face. What other parent can brag that their son's DDR moves are so hot they draw crowds??

Overheard at Quiet Time

Miriam: My daddy is the best daddy in the whole world.
Me: I know! Aren't you lucky? Now, who do you think is the best MOMMY in the whole world?
Miriam: Beth.


(looooooong pause)


Me: Are you sure?
Miriam: Yep. She's really nice.

My Facebook response to an anti-choicer's heartbeat argument

I heard my daughter's heartbeat eight weeks from her conception. I saw my son's heart fluttering on an ultrasound screen nine weeks from his conception. These two moments were profoundly meaningful for me, but they did not change my stance on every other woman's right to reproductive independence.

Those two heartbeats could not exist outside of my body. Whether you or I think those hearts beat within sentient beings is irrelevant; the desires of the adult woman surrounding them will always need to come first.

Our books, ourselves

As a writer of one or two as-yet-unpublished books, I tend to have stronger than usual reactions to whatever book I'm reading. Whenever I read Margaret Atwood, for example, I pause every few chapters and praise the heavens for Canada's invaluable contribution to world civilization. Atwood is so phenomenally brilliant that I never feel envious of her gifts--she's simply operating on a different plane of existence. I never think "I wish I'd written that," because I am fully aware of, and at peace with my limitations.

I just finished a wonderful nonfiction book, Zoe Nicholson's The Hungry Heart: A Woman's Fast for Justice, and with every page I thought "I wish I'd done that." Nicholson participated in a 37 day fast at the Illinois state capitol in 1982 to pressure that state's legislature to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and the book is her diary from that time. The jealousy I feel when reading is for the passion and conviction felt by the feminists of that time. While Nicholson and her sisters put their lives on the line for the cause, a dedicated group of NOW members offered them support and security, and a crew called the Grass Roots Group of Second Class Citizens were chaining themselves to whatever and wherever necessary to draw more attention to the cause.

DAMN, I thought on every page, I want to chain myself to something! (Zoe, forgive me, but as I mentioned I know my limitations and fasting even one day is beyond me.) When I made plans to march in the Labor Day demonstration against the Republican National Convention last fall, I joked to all within earshot that I was preparing for my first civil disobedience arrest. The closest I came to handcuffs that day was when Elliott made friends with a nice SWAT officer, before a march organizer yelled at us for consorting with the "enemy." I reminded Elliott afterwards that the SWAT officers weren't the enemy, Dick Cheney was, for he was the one who wanted polite young men like the one we met to die so that we can have cheap oil. Teachable moment!

I wish that the fight for the ERA had one enemy. I wish Phyllis Schlafly could be blamed for every wrong in American society, but as The Hungry Heart acknowledges, patriarchy is deeply embedded in all of our lives, making it a very slippery target indeed. Gandhi fasted against a clearly defined oppressor: the British. His campaign worked. You don't have to buy this book (though you should!) to know how the ERA fast turned out. Sigh.

Then there are the books that make me die a little, that make this as-yet-unpublished writer scream and rage and rephrase Dorothy Parker. For Infinity Blues by Ryan Adams is not a book to be checked out from the library and tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force. It is far, far worse than its obvious inspiration, the anthology Very Bad Poetry, a book that I quite enjoy. The poets in that anthology were a sad lot, most of them confined to publishing in 19th century broadsides or in self-financed chapbooks to be thrust upon unassuming relatives. The Very Bad Poets did not get blurbed by literary luminaries like Weeds actress Mary-Louise Parker, Cameron "I created Lloyd Dobler" Crowe and Stephen King.

Usually when I read something this awful, I bang my head upon the table and wonder why this shit is in print, not mine. Not so with Ryan Adams. He has earned the chance to prove himself by virtue of being a "critically acclaimed songwriter." I remember being dragged to the 400 Bar in 1996 by a guy I wanted to like me more and forced to watch Adams' first band, Whiskeytown. The music was fine, but no one could miss what a self-absorbed prick the singer was. He only redeemed himself in my eyes with his truly outstanding 2003 solo album Rock N Roll, which was exactly the kind of explosively melodic rawk record I hoped Paul Westerberg would make in1994. It's that good.

Not so this selection from Infinity Blues, entitled "Asshole." I will excerpt a portion of it in the name of FAIR USE, since I do not want anyone (read: Ryan or his starlet wife, Mandy Moore) to sue me.

What an asshole.
...

You don't care, do you?
No.
So you will now be happy and certainly sleep easy and of course
get fucked royally
but if by other royalty
still...
What an asshole.
What an asshole you are.
swallowing yourself in shit.

Believe me, I did not cut out the good stuff in order to skew your impression: THIS is the good stuff, what Oscar winner Crowe considers "Strong and beautiful and funny and pure."

Oh Ryan. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. I am searching for a teachable moment here, but I can't find it. Perhaps I will discover it when the Washburn library stocks his forthcoming work, Hello Sunshine, which the poet describes on his publisher's website as "my best work yet."

I have a lot of work to do.

Overheard in a tent at Oxbow Park, Olmstead County, Minnesota, USA

Me: On the list of all the craziest shit we've ever done, where would you put this?
Matt: (teeth chattering as it is all of 48 degrees Fahrenheit) I think it's pretty high up there.

Safe in south Minneapolis

A tornado touched down in my neighborhood yesterday afternoon.

It happened too quickly for the sirens to warn anyone, but miraculously, no one was injured. Our house escaped unscathed, but many homes nearby have been damaged by the enormous, 100+ year old trees that the tornado yanked up from the ground. Here's Elliott surveying the damage yesterday evening:



We are a lucky family. My neighborhood is a lucky place. My town is a lucky town.

The "benefits" of marriage

As I've written before, I like listening to right wing talk radio. I live in a safe, liberal bubble here in south Minneapolis, and I feel it's important to peep outside my comfort zone from time to time.

My favorite right wing nut is Rush Limbaugh, of course, but on yesterday's drive to Target the host was Jason Lewis. I find Lewis fascinating. He's an avowed libertarian who spoke out forcefully against RINOs like John McCain and Norm Coleman during last year's election. I have no problem with libertarians: I find them to be a remarkably consistent bunch, and consistency is something I respect. To libertarians, a small federal government will keep its nose out of your health care AND your personal life.

So I was somewhat shocked to hear Lewis contort all reason in his attempt to justify the Defense of Marriage Act. He acknowledged that the act infringed upon the rights of states to determine how they wish to recognize civil marriage, and libertarians love them some states' rights. I stayed glued to my radio in the Target parking lot while Lewis declared that civil marriage for heterosexuals existed because the state needs to offer this benefit in order to give folks incentives for having children. The state, he argues, offers this carrot to heteros because a mommy and a daddy are just naturally better at raising kids.

!!!

Did I miss something in American history class? "We the People, in order to breed more Well-Armed Citizens, shall offer Tax Breaks that are Significant, in addition to Inheritance Rights and and Health Coverage (through Employers only) to One Man and One Member of the Weaker Sex entering into a Civil Marriage Contract with this Federal Government. Amen."

I have heard a lot of stupid ideas on KTLK, but this one really took the cake. I thought about my neighbors across the alley, who have enjoyed the benefits of civil marriage for 20 years without producing a single new taxpayer. I thought about the millions of children removed from the homes of abusive, neglectful heterosexual parents, many of them married! Mostly, I became blind with rage when I thought about my two best friends, and the insinuation that that they can't raise their three kids as well as Matt and I raise our two.

I remember well the time Cathy sat in our living room and recounted with exhaustion the years, tears, and big bucks she and her partner went through to become parents. "And all you two have to do is SCREW!" she laughed, but I understood her bitterness. Gays and lesbians have to work a hell of a lot harder to become parents: they have to WANT it. They're nothing like Bristol Palin and her ilk, hetero humpers who think that it's a terrific thing for a child to be raised by a seventeen-year-old. Guess what? It's not. Practically speaking, a child would do better to be raised by an adult for whom parenthood is not a surprise, but a considered life choice.

Speaking of choice, I became far more convinced of the pro-choice mantra "every child a wanted child" when I had a squalling infant at home. If you're not mentally prepared for the pure hell on earth that is caring for a baby, you're going to fuck it up. I daresay that the obstacles facing gay and lesbian parents make them better qualified for the job than quite a lot of breeder parents. They have to WANT it.

In other news, some more nuts are unhappy that the Obama administration is not taking into procreation into account in their defense of DOMA. Others, like me, are pissed that the Obama administration is defending DOMA at all.

And don't even get me started about the MESS that is health care "REFORM" which has to be qualified because without a public option there is no reform whatsoever! Jeez Louise!

I think it might be best to turn off the radio for a while, crawl back into my bubble, and hide.

Gone daddy gone

Not long ago, Matt commented on something he'd read in the newspaper: "It says here that heart disease is the leading cause of death in this country," he said. "If that's true, then why do we know so many people with cancer?"

Good question. I wondered if it was because of our demographics--as thirtysomethings, we tend to hang with folks whose cholesterol profiles have not yet caught up with them. We eat cheese and drink beer with abandon. "That still doesn't explain all the cancer," he grumped.

This weekend Matt is on the east coast visiting a good friend and cancer survivor. It is a trip I made several times myself, before my own east coast friend succumbed to the disease in late 2007. This week alone we experienced both of cancer's schizophrenic extremes: a diagnosed family member received wonderful PET scan results, while an old friend from high school had a five hour operation to remove a tumor from her brain.

I'm at a breaking point. I AM QUITE LITERALLY SICK TO FUCKING DEATH OF ALL THIS CANCER. It doesn't help that the national nightmare that is health care reform in this country has brought end-of-life care and medical rationing into the debate.

I keep having flashbacks to the one time I accompanied Liz on her chemo day, at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. One tiny positive through her whole ordeal was the fact that her insurance picked up the tab for all of her treatments. Avastin alone, she gasped, would cost over a hundred grand to someone who didn't have insurance. Liz had Avastin, and a seemingly endless string of chemo drugs in addition to radiation, several surgeries, and many long hospital stays.

Liz was 33 and a half years old at the time of her diagnosis. She died two years later. How much did those two years cost her insurers? I don't know. What would it cost not to pay for them?

Take a guess. It's been nearly two years since she died and I can't type this without feeling the too-familiar panicky clutch in my chest, the stinging tears welling up in my eyes. I would do anything, anything, to have her back again.

I think about her a lot. At times I smile when I think of the venom she would spew at those who believe that a single-payer system would limit access to the treatments that kept her alive--she knew that these treatments were out of most people's reach already! Liz knew that our health care system was a moral disgrace. She had no doubt that thousands of other people with colon cancer would love to sit in her chemo chair at Dana Farber, but couldn't. She knew those people would die more quickly, less hopefully, and certainly a hell of a lot poorer than she would.

Of course, she never planned on dying at all. I last spoke to her on October 29, 2007, when she called from her hospital bed to wish me a happy 36th birthday. She sounded frail, both physically and mentally. I was too afraid to ask about this strange thing called "end-of life care", and she never mentioned it. All I could tell her was that I loved her, and that would have to be enough. She died two weeks later.

What DON'T we talk about when we talk about health care? Death. Money. Economic class. Equality, or the lack thereof. Fear. Mortality. Losing the illusion of control that we all hold so dear.

I can't think about "health care reform" and not think about all the fucking cancer. I can't hear "end of life" and think that death is going to happen to someone else. Death is coming, and death is real. Death is in the future for you, for me, for my children, for President Obama, for Rush Limbaugh, for everyone who panics at the idea of a single payer system. Death is a certainty. No one can escape it. The existence of death ought to humble us and make us more respectful of life. After all, if a dying woman can muster the strength to give a shit about the uninsured, why can't everyone else?

Dedicated to a loyal reader who is currently vacationing in scenic Queens, NY

I miss you.

From the vault (aka MySpace)

My essay for Skirt! mag mentioned that Elliott had the distinct honor of being harassed by Michele Bachmann before she became Michele Bachmann. While digging through the vintage posts in my old MySpace blog, I found my account of that day:

Friday May 5, 2006
Pissing Off Michele Bachmann!
For out-of-towners, you should know that state senator Michele Bachmann is a hateful old cow who keeps introducing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and any legal equivalent in the Minnesota legislature. And she's decided that poisoning Minnesota politics is not enough--she's running for Congress! Yechhh.

Yesterday I took the children to the capitol to show our opposition to the so-called "Abortion Regulation Act," one more law designed to take us a step closer to the dark ages. We were joined by sister Leah and nephew Aidan. The boys quickly grew bored with holding "Pro-Choice Pro-Family" signs and wanted more fun, so they began chasing each other around a bronze statue of Cass Gilbert. A pinchy-faced woman approached and nagged, "You should stop them from doing that. That statue is really valuable." As she walked away I whispered, "You don't have to listen to her. She's MEAN." Yep, it was our pal Michele.

We returned to the cluster of sign-holders, while Michele returned with one of her staffers in tow. She strode through our group, then turned to look behind her with a classic "who farted?" grimace on her face. Though she was staring at me and my kids, I thought her look of disgust was probably a delayed reaction to the gentleman displaying a sign with her picture and "HATEMONGER" written across it. As Michele stomped off into the Senate offices, the women behind me gasped, "did you see that? She was staring at the kids! She was grossed out by pro-choice kids!"

I was so proud. We'll be back soon to destroy that fucking statue, Michele, just you wait!

I have nothing against Cass Gilbert, so we never made good on our promise of more mayhem. And as we all know, Michele was elected to national office later that year, terrorizing children on a larger scale and making a mockery of my beloved home state.

Please, for the sake of the pro-choice kids, consider making a campaign contribution to a smart, experienced candidate who has a great shot at beating Ol' Fart-Face in 2010: State Senator Tarryl Clark.