Lesbian Dad | Monthly Archive

Archive | November, 2006

MacBaba strikes again

By Lesbian Dad on November 3, 2006 in Miscellaney, Mostly a picture

Tools employed in poker chip-DVD player extraction: beloved nephew’s steady hand on the flashlight; sundry pokey tools; and patience (symbolized by the watch).

That would be “MacBaba” as in a take on MacGyver, by the way. Not as in a take on MacDonald’s, since you know they’d sue my hiney the second they ran across “MacBaba” floating quietly about the World Wide Web. Everyone’s favorite sushi joint in SF’s Mission District, We Be Sushi, is so named because they started as MacSushi and then got popped with a lawsuit by Mickey-D’s. The owners opened up the re-christening process to their customers, and We Be… came in first (If You Knew.. was a contender, along with many others, printed on the backside of their menu).

Now back to more important matters. I think the above pictured get-up is a lot more sophisticated than the one employed for the salvaging of the straw from the cardboard soy milk container, humbly outlined here. Yesterday’s challenge: POKER CHIP IN BOWELS OF DVD PLAYER, courtesy the lil’ monkey. The motivation for home-spun extraction: savings of, in order of importance, (a) face, if I had to get my brother-out-law to dismantle the unit to remove it; and possibly (b) money, if he couldn’t, and I had to haul the rig to some shop for someone else to snicker at. Added bonuses: (a) the fun of it all; and (b) the establishment of a metaphor I was able to use later that same day, during a conversation with the beloved nephew (age: 8 yrs) about gay marriage fights.

He brought up the topic. We were pausing to let some pedestrians cross, and I remarked how much I enjoy doing that, since so often so many cars whizz by. I like to be among those who stop. He then asked, “What would you do if President Bush were in the crosswalk?” My answer: slow down and let him cross safely, the better to show him the kindness he has a hard time showing people like me. Beloved nephew got the logic effortlessly: You don’t teach unkind people how to be kind by being unkind to them. “Then you only just prove that the bad things they thought about you were true,” he said.

He then brought up the gay marriage debate. After I tried to make sense of it to him via its parallel with the fights over misegenation laws a scant forty years ago, he said, “I heard that President Bush would want to take [my kid's name] away from you.” I looked at him, and first clarified that it wouldn’t be exactly like that. Though I did note there are plenty of states in the union we will never spend a red tourist cent in, lest an accident happen somehow and a custody challenge ensue.

Then I added: “But even if he could, that would never happen. You remember how much determination I had this morning to rescue that poker chip? That ‘Never give up, never surrender!’ attitude? It’d be like that, times a million.”

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Ido, pero no olvidado

By Lesbian Dad on November 1, 2006 in Seraphim/dakini

Jana Weston, Flora (detail), 2000. Acrylic paint with mixed media.
At Oakland Museum of California’s “Laughing Bones/Weeping Hearts: DÃas de los Muertos 2006″ exhibit.

Ido, pero no olvidado: Gone, but not forgotten.

Here in California, former Mexican state and forever territory of AztlÃ n, the DÃas de los Muertos are much observed. Spanish speaking folks might be interested in this beautiful and detailed site about the fiesta from the Mexican National Commission for the Development of Indigenous People (at least that’s what I think the title reads). The Google-translated page is an abomination, even to my bad Spanglish-speaker’s eye. But this is a nice piece on the meaning of the fiesta by Iowa State University Professor Ricardo Salvador.

Today is observed as the day of rememberence for children and infants who have died – el DÃa de los Muertos Chiquitos. Tomorrow is observed as a day of rememberence for adults.

As I have written before, our daughter’s birth was closely followed by two deaths: the first, an adult in the extended family, who died in an accident; the second, a child in our close family – my nephew Erik – who died of cancer. In between the deaths of those family members was that of the partner of my friend Paul. In her spirit-filled fight against leukemia, Amilca received treatments at the same hospital where my nephew received radiation therapy. Erik went there three times a week, for six weeks. Most of the time I accompanied him, and on each visit I thought we might chance to see Paul and Amilca and their infant son there. In the well-appointed hallways we might provide solace and mutual acknowledgement along our hard paths. We never did see them, but I conjured them and their love and their parallel journey a great deal, especially when the heavy radiation room door swung shut between Erik and us, and the “Do Not Enter” sign lit up.

Amilca died in early December that year. At the time of her death, she had an ofrenda up at the Oakland Museum of California’s Day of the Dead exhibit. She was a poet and a visual artist, and had collaborated on it with her father, an artist, teacher, and director of Mission Grafica at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center. This year, it was Paul who collaborated with her father; their ofrenda for Amilca is in the museum’s exhibit this fall, “Laughing Bones/Weeping Hearts: DÃas de los Muertos 2006.” I’ll conjure their loving spirit as we make our altar tonight, knowing our paths are intertwined still, now joined up with those of everyone else who mourns and remembers and celebrates.

Won’t take this, nor any other such a night, for granted.
Thanks to you Amilca, Erik, Kay, Melanie, Mom, Sigrund.