Just a little public service announcement. You know how some people think squirrels are cute? And that feeding them nuts on the porch kind of brings a little bit of cuddly nature nearby?
And, you know, like, these people might have thought that it’s okay now that they no longer feed the squirrels the nuts directly out of their hands, holding the nuts between thumb and forefinger, like blithering IDIOTS?
Well, I’m just saying, IT’S NOT OKAY.
At the Oakland Museum of California, taking in Domenico Tojetti’s “The Progress of America.”
Most of the Mother’s Day fun yesterday was outside the museum, at the California Families event, “A day of fun that celebrates ALL families, especially welcoming those with adopted, foster, mixed-race, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members.” Produced in partnership with Our Family Coalition, Family Builders by Adoption, the City of Oakland, and I-Pride, and with support from the museum’s LGBT Task Force.
What’s not to love. We were ducks in water. And at puppet-making tables, and family photo booths, and magician shows. If Tojetti could see us now.
[It's a month o' photos; no prose. Words froze due to work woes. Come June, back it flows.]
Chuck’s got nothin’ on her. Okay, so maybe he does, but he has a lot more practice. At least she can accurately identify most of the instruments pictured in the book. Try that, Chuck!
The Philharmonic Gets Dressed is a current fave. Highly recommended, with the caveat that I keep having to ad lib a coupla mannish lesbians getting dressed in men’s duds (all 105 orchestra members are tracked from their showers to their dressing up to their subway rides to Philharmonic Hall; it’s pants for the mens, dresses for the womens, and the devil — that would be me and my cross-dressing kin — take the hindmost).
It’s a familiar routine, though. She’s quite well aware how un/underrepresented our family structure and her Baba’s gender are, in most of the media we consume. And she’s also learning first-hand how you re-write whatever it is you’re reading, so as to push yourself from margin to center. Her future English teachers are hereby forewarned: free thinkin’ maverick chick, coming down the pike!
This archival pic’s from last fall’s Halloween Block Party. She’s chilling, you know, in between terrorizing people with her fierce dragon breath or what have you. Slightly (but not that much) more revealing angle of fierce dragon action here. O, what I could do with a costume like that, in the right venue.
Reminds me of the giant winged eggplant, the mascot of a Minneapolis vegetarian collective, the late, great New Riverside Cafe. It went to May Day parades and fairs and such, but it also made cameos at things like Phyllis Schlafly’s speaking gig at a nearby college. There was nothing us feisty Lesbian Avengers could do to disrupt the proceedings any more than that winged, 7-foot tall eggplant did, just sitting there. God love it.
Now don’t get me started on my brush with lesbian celebrity I had at that cafe one time in the mid-1990s. Otherwise it would begin to smack of a post, and all this text is in that light colored font, just to remind me that I’m not actually writing a post, but a modest caption. But remind me sometime. I will let on that it includes none other than k.d. lang, and a corn cob. Umm hum, yup.
[It's a photo a day for the rest of this month, whilst under a work-induced prose post moratorium. Back in full (wordy) gear Monday, June 2; my thanks for your kind indulgence.]
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Other people’s Mother’s Day posts we like
Since I’m not doing one this year (alas), I’m acting as directional signpost. I’m hoping that Blogging for LGBT Families Day may take up some of the Mother’s Day thematic slack for me when I’m back to my regularly scheduled publication practices. (By the way, Vikki, does this count? A non-post post?)
What I want to do here is clue you into something from Harlyn Aizley: Who’s Your Mama? Very much worth reading, as is everything she writes, I’m sure including shopping lists. It’s first appearing at the Beacon Broadside, a blog they run for their authors. Harlyn, of Are You My Mothers? fame, was editor for Confessions of the Other Mother, which Beacon published. (Her other book, Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, was published by Alyson Books).
Anybody else write something you like, on the occasion of Mother’s Day? Let us know, in the comments.
Now back to work.