I may be speaking for only myself when I say that a little cheering up is in order. Lawrence King’s death (and the poisonous homophobia / misogyny that spawned it) still sits heavy on my heart. Plus my nephew’s birthday is coming up. Nephew that’s in the ether, that is. Would [...]

At left: Glitter glam dress lights up the couch, Dorrington, CA.
Last week when LD was OWON (Offline WithOut Notice), I had written most of a draft piece about the Christmas holiday. In it I wrote about how when I was young, the holiday’s primary meaning stemmed from the repetition of traditional songs, and decorations, [...]

[Note: this is the unedited version of what was read at the 2008 BlogHer conference, where it had to clock in at a lean, mean, under-five minutes' read.]
 
It was a winter morning when we discovered we were pregnant with our first child — our first pregnancy following a very difficult, end-of-first-trimester miscarriage nine months before. [...]

In a nod to the last day of the Día de los Muertos, I post the video below. It’s Mercedes Sosa singing “Gracias a la vida,” perhaps her best-known song (written by Chilean Violeta Parra, the mother of Nueva Canción). Sosa’s voice is among the most expressive of the 20th century.
Why [...]

At right, from Mama’s cellphone camera: Sister lords it over the brother at the YMCA’s Kindergym.
First the bad news: I cannot report on it today, because I missed yesterday’s symposium on the 21st Century Family, hosted by Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. I could blame myself, but I’d rather blame a cascading [...]

The image at right is a chilling one. Most people, if they can identify it as an iconic symbol of the rise of the Nazis, imagine that the books being burned are those of Jewish authors, or others considered enemies of the Third Reich. Many of the authors of the books were Jews. [...]

Steinhart Aquarium, San Francisco.
Love to those who remember and grieve today, and wisdom to us all.
Some of which wisdom can be found, for example, Susan Faludi’s look at the myths underlying the administration’s response (in the NY Times), or Gary Kamiya’s look at the source of the response in a lethal combination of [...]