In support of Freedom to Marry, Ben & Jerry's is changing the name of their ice cream flavor Chubby Hubby to Hubby Hubby for the month of September. The citizens of Grrrlville commend this clever strategy of combining activism and ice cream. Thanks, Ben! Thanks, Jerry!
Mombian sponsors the Blogging for LGBT Families blog carnival each year to orchestrate our hundreds of voices in praise of LGBT families around the world. Feel free to join in.
This year Monday, June 1st, is Blogging for LGBT Families Day 2009. It is also Marcia and my 12th anniversary. Lots to celebrate today--love, families, and happiness.
Marcia and I first met because two of our mutual friends wanted us to meet. It was awkward and artificial. It was not a date, but it was most certainly SET UP. We were helping one of the aforementioned mutual friends move into a new apartment. We "ended up" in the same car for each run. It was 5 months later that we decided that maybe they were right. I guess they were.
Last year we both forgot our anniversary. We managed a little better this year, even arranging a date night at an outdoor concert featuring Esperanza Spalding this past weekend. A dozen years together. That's something, I think. Something big. Wow.
Love is what it's all about.
Thanks, sweetie. And happy anniversary!
Get ready, get set! June 1st is the 4th annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day. Anyone can participate. Get the scoop at Mombian and say hi to Dana while you're there.
Just wanted to thank everyone for participating in the What About Love blog carnival in celebration of Freedom the Marry Week 2009. It's been great to read the many different responses to the Some/things. My favorite part about the carnival was the sharing of stories. Stories are the fabric of our community, and whether we've actually met in person or not, we unite virtually when we share them, both as writers and as readers.
Over the past week during the carnival I've been traveling and have probably missed some of your posts. Please leave comments where I have omitted your link or need to correct it.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. That's not exactly what I think, but absence certainly can help put into focus the fondness that you feel. I've been in Chicago this week for the AWP Conference, so I'm absent not only for Valentine's Day but for my valentine's birthday.
Happy Birthday, Marcia. Happy Valentines Day. Thank you for twelve wonderful years, the best years of my life so far. Thank you for your love which is unconditional (I hope) and constant. Let me be your "forever dog."
I love you so much, Robin
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Note: This post is last of five entries, part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. If you'd like to check out all the bloggers who participated, see this complete list.
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
Blue is my favorite color, and it always has been. In my writing I use the word "blue" often. It seems to represent all that is. In this photo, for instance, of earth taken from outer space, the demarcations between land and sea, earth and sky, are impossible to distinguish.
Today's post is dedicated to all of you in the process of trying to start a family. I rarely share my own poems but here is a rare exception. I wrote this about before Marcia and I started to TTC (trying to conceive) process.
Blue That’s Almost Blue
To
a Child, Unborn
A calm moon lends a hush within the room
the night outside fills its envelope with dread
a claw of hope scratches its name across clay
I don't know what to feel because I’m rising into
deep blue music a ceremony of inner weather
I marvel over an imagined, sleeping infant
who dreams of islands I've never visited
never will He and I are two
bodies trembling and separate now and always I
hold my breath, a hostage of the sky.
by Robin Reagler
published in Runes
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Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com: Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook and YouTube
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
When it comes to outfitting the kids, I love hand-me-downs. I love that they're free and easy, of course. That's a given. But mostly I love them because they're full of stories.
The red shirt that Carrie is wearing in this picture first belonged to her cousin Max. He's 15 now. Red was and still is his favorite color. Then it was his sister Sarah's, then Pearl's, and now it's Carrie's. I look at it and remember my niece and nephew. I remember how they grow up so fast--Max is already 5'10"! Perhaps this is overly sentimental on my part, but I really see the shirt as a connection from one kid to the next. Sibling to cousin to friend, and on down the line.
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Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
We have a new pup named Cody. He was a sweet little Jekyll of a boy until exactly 3 weeks after his arrival. On day 22 he transformed himself into 100% pure Hyde-bound hell-on-paws animal chaos. Grrrlville was pretty chaotic before we adopted this fellow. What were we thinking?
Cody has a lot of Marley in him. He aspires to bipedalism. He loves fun and food, and his definition of both of this items is extremely broad. He's scared of Moriah and water. Pearl and Carrie adore him. When visitors arrive as our door, Carrie warns, in the loudest voice she can muster: HE'S NOT TRAINED. She's right about that.
Cody loves the chill winter days. He runs awkwardly, in an unpredictable lope, gulping down gallons of wind and chasing the brittle leaves. He is my boy.
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Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Feel free to write your own post on your blog or facebook page. Then leave the link to your "something new" post, and I will share it with the group. Check out the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life by Kathy Belge
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
SoCal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills
Our cat Moriah is 20 years old. That's 96 for you or me. Or am I presuming too much? Perhaps there are a few cats who read this blog? You never know. My teacher, the poet Adam Zagajewski, knew my cat when she was a newborn kitten. He and Moriah were neighbors. He begged me, Robin, teach this cat to read before it's too late!
I dare say it is now officially too late. At 20 Moriah is not taught; she teaches. And she is one stern taskmaster. Cody the pup is terrified of her. The rest of us play it cool, but we inevitably do exactly what she says.
I never really wanted a cat. As a kid I was frightened of cats myself. But something happens when the cat in question is yours. In other words, one might fear or dislike CATS but still like one cat in particular. Does that make sense?
Moriah was a gift, one given, not one received. My partner wanted a cat for her birthday. Twenty years later the partner is long gone but the cat remains. For whatever reason, I do love her.
Once when Moriah was a kitten I wrote this description of her:
The marks on her face look like a mask. Who is she? Sometimes she leaves for days. Her eyes send out beams of light into the night. She is a hunter. And then she returns to me, small ball at my chest, kneading, needing.
Although it's been many years since Moriah has done any of these things, the magic is still in her. If you know her, you know what I mean.
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Note: This post is part of a blog carnival celebrating Freedom to Marry Week 2009. Leave the link to your "something old" post and I will share it with the group. Check out some of the other posts on this topic:
About.com Lesbian Life w/ Kathy Belge
Melissa Beattie-Moss on Facebook
Susan Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmingham-Luther Family Blog
I probably think this blog is about me
Life induces thoughts, mostly random
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
SoCal Mom by Donna Schwartz Mills
You can join the blog carnival at any time until Feb. 14. This list will be updated throughout the week. To be added, leave a comment with your url. For the blog carnival guidelines, click here.
Melissa Beattie-Moss on Facebook
Susan Naomi Bernstein on Facebook
The Birmiingham-Luther Family Blog
I probably think this blog is about me
Justin's Girl on MySpace
Knot so Different: The Aisle Less Taken
Life induces thoughts, mostly random
The Longest Road - Yet Untraveled
It's Freedom to Marry week, and equality is what it's all about. The nonprofit group Freedom to Marry has organized activities throughout the week that encourage dialogue between all people.
“Conversations with the circles of people around us are the prerequisite to winning, the key to helping them push past their discomfort, complacency, or indifference to becoming supportive of our equality.”
--Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry Executive Director
In order to facilitate these conversations, Freedom to Marry is sponsoring a number of programs,
including 7 Conversations in 7 Days. If you are a blogger, you can kick off the week by joining the blogswarm. Visit Mombian for more information on that.
As you may know, I am organizing a blog carnival this week, as part of the celebration, and YOU are invited. This afternoon I'll post a list of everyone who is planning to participate, so if you haven't done so already, please let me know. Here's the schedule:
Tuesday, Feb. 10... Something Old
Wednesday, Feb. 11... Something New
Thursday, Feb. 12... Something Borrowed
Friday, Feb. 13... Something Blue
Saturday, Feb. 14... Valentine's Day: Celebrate Love
For more complete guidelines, click here.
Next week is Freedom to Marry Week. Who wants to celebrate LOVE?
I hope you will join me in this blog carnival, which we began last year. The way it works is simple. Each day next week, post to your blog or facebook page something on these topics, according to the "olde" wedding tradition:
Tuesday, Feb. 10... Something Old
Wednesday, Feb. 11... Something New
Thursday, Feb. 12... Something Borrowed
Friday, Feb. 13... Something Blue
Saturday, Feb. 14... Valentine's Day: Celebrate Love
You can post a photo, a memory, a poem, some music, or a combination. Try to surprise us. And once you're done with your post, if you leave a link in the comment section, everyone will be able to check out what you've done.
Feel free to link to The Other Mother, using the "Something" badge. If you're not a blogger, you can participate by leaving a comment. I will be posting links to all contributions here. Just leave the URL as a comment. You can participate all week or whenever you have the time. I'll start by compiling a list of participants, so let me know if you're "in".
If you want to make your story easy to find, use the keyword something2009 .
Today we participated in a National Day of Service event in Independence Heights, Houston, which is the neighborhood due north of ours. This event, organized by Change Corps, invited neighbors to come together to paint a mural honoring Martin Luther King and Barack Obama.
10. She Is - Pearl's Birth Announcement (March 2004) includes a recipe for smothered okra!
9. Birthday Rap - Marcia's Song for Robin's Birthday (September 2008)
8. Question of the Day: Politics and the English Language (October 2008) your thoughts on the BIden/Palin debate
6. Meet the Blogger: Polly Pagenhart of LesbianDad
5. A Costume Question (October 2004)
4. Reader Appreciation Day (April 2008) introducing a meme for bloggers to thank the readers
1. She Was Really Saying Something (Feb. 2008) introducing a meme to celebrate Freedom to Marry week
Starting today eight lesbian bloggers are launching 8 Against 8, an eight-day collaborative online fundraising drive to defeat Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that seeks to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in the State of California. The campaign aims to raise both funds and awareness. Visit the 8 bloggers and support Equality California.
The 8 Against 8 campaign donation page is located right here.
Often my own response to poverty--my response to seeing a person who's homeless or begging or sleeping on cardboard--is to avert my eyes. This reaction is a complex one which involves judgment and respect and fear and shame. Rather than processing what I've witnessed, I often move mentally a.s.a.p. to an new idea. Pretty much any idea will do.
The exhibit currently showing at DiverseWorks in Houston is called Understanding Poverty. With photography by Ben Tecumseh Desoto and text by Ann Walton Sieber, the exhibit provides us a way to examine our reactions to poverty in a safe space so that we do in fact understand better. Understanding poverty will not solve the problem but it's a smart place to start.
What:
Understanding Poverty
Photographs by Ben Tecumseh DeSoto
Words by Ann Walton Sieber
Curated by Clint Willour
Works by Sarah Whatley Ayers & Forrest Prince
Where:
DiverseWorks, Houston, TX
When:
September 19 - November 1, 2008
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Special Request:
If you blogged about poverty for Blog Action Day 2008, would you please leave the link so that we can read your post? Thanks!
This is the second installment of Meet the Blogger, a series of interviews with some of the bloggers I admire most. Polly Pagenhart is the author of Lesbian Dad.
RR: Hi, Polly. Tell us a bit about yourself.
PP: My kids call me Baba, also Babi (I choose to mentally spell it that way, otherwise it's the youngest kid from the Brady Bunch, and I wasn't prepared for that). In our familial bunch we have living: me, my partner, a daughter, a son, a kitty named Mrs. Mooney. (Do you know the musical Sweeny Todd? "Mrs. Mooney had a pie shop" goes the first half of the line. Then there's more ("popping pussies into pies" is another refrain. It's kind of about reclaiming one's power.) In the ether, and always always in my heart: Maxi, the dog that helped me back from the coldest place I've known.
RR: In a good interview, readers find out things about you that they can't find out on your website. To that end,
I must ask: what's best snack ever?
PP: Hmm. I'll have to think about that. A friend plops salsa in a bowl with cottage cheese, and then scoops it up w/ tortilla chips. That works pretty nicely. With more time, a quesadilla with just about anything in it (in the cheese and vegetable dept) is always a hit. My mom made a dip with cream cheese and chutney, and so that, scooped with Wheat Thins, reminds me of her. Making it a heavy duty contender for "best."
RR: Could you talk about a few favorite books or authors?
PP: Gosh. I've read so little since the kids came along that many of these will be people I came to love before becoming a parent. Joan Didion got me to fall in love with the sentence, the essay, the mind as it weaves itself around the task of conveying essential truths with the written word. Thereafter also, authors I love, in no particular order: Virginia Woolf. Paule Marshall. Sarah Schulman. Audre Lorde. Adrienne Rich. Pablo Neruda. Mary Oliver. David Gutterson. If I started trying to name favorite books I'm afraid I'd get myself in trouble. Though I do want to say that Adrienne Rich's "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying" is an enormous gift. As is most of her poetry. Audre Lorde's essays account for most of my proper awareness of the world. Sarah Schulman, in Rat Bohemia, accomplished something amazing. I think if every family member of every LGBTQ person read it, lots would be different. Or could be. What can one say about Didion? Except when poet Gary Soto asked me to read her Slouching Towards Bethlehem in a high school enrichment class, it changed my life.
RR: That's a wide ranging list of writers! Tell us about your academic and/or writing background?
PP: Dear me. Too much of it, I fear. Or maybe just enough. In college (UC Berkeley) I majored in English (minored in Ethnic Studies) and tutored writing and led writing workshops. In grad school (Minnesota), I taught composition as well as Women's Studies and American Studies. The original idea was to get me a Ph.D. in American Studies (Feminist Studies minor) and become a professor somewhere, but plans kind of shifted (that's a whole interview in itself). I did leave with an M.A. and a life partner, though. Not too shabby.
RR: When you first started the
blog Lesbian Dad what was your mission and how has it changed over time?
What do you hope to deliver to your audience?
PP: Great question! Initially, I wanted to work out some ideas about what a "lesbian fatherhood" might be, if indeed there was one. At the least, I wanted to find company in the fairly specific parental place I felt I existed: a lesbian co-parent who was socially & not biologically connected to her kids (where the partner was bio), and one who chafed at "mother," for a host of reasons, most of which gender identity-related. A blog provided a venue in which to think out loud about these things and gather people around me who knew better and could school me (and anyone who listened). I actually first thought it would be a kind of a discussion forum that I would merely moderate, but I soon discovered that -- news to me -- it's fairly easy to launch a solo blog, and people who wanted to talk a LOT about the subject of their parenthoods tend start their own blogs. I didn't have the energy or the time at the outset to begin as a group project, and that might have made a difference, too. Also, I discovered that many other people prefer to converse and comment in response to another's catalyst, and are happy with that degree of contribution.
RR: How does blogging compare to other types of writing you've done in the past?
PP: Great question! (I suspect I'll preface all my answers to these questions this way.) It's like my epistolary voice (!), but public. Which makes it some kind of cross between my most informal, breezy writing in letters to friends and a polished essay. Probably both writerly voices appear (formal and informal), depending on the subject matter. Blogging is unusual, for certain, in the degree to which it is public, instantaneously, and a dialog as well. I've written in some public venues (academic essays for journals or anthologies, op-ed pieces, a personal essay in Confessions), but feedback on that stuff comes so slowly. And it's not even really part of the form, that it anticipate dialog from readers. At most, I'd bump into someone at an academic conference, say, and hear they were using an essay of mine in a class. Or find, after the advent of the World Wide Internet, that someone was referring to an essay.
But
of course with blogs, the impact is instant. Most exciting is that it
is for the most part supposed to be a conversation! A blog is a DIALOG,
not a MONOLOG. ALL CAPS, BABY. That is a thrill, and what so much
writing (tacitly) aspires to. Or rather, I'll say that I would always
want my own writing to spark some kind of dialog. It's a privilege to
be able to hear that dialog going on, and even be a part of it.
RR: What are your favorite children's books (yours and opposed to our kids')?
PP: Hmmm. There's a crop of books that touched me as a kid, and then some that I like as a parent. From my own childhood, I'd still say Winnie the Pooh is a sentimental favorite. The kids aren't old enough for Harriet the Spy yet, but I can't wait. A number of more obscure ones just happen to touch cords of memory, like Tico and the Golden Wing, for example.
RR: What's the strangest thing that's happened to you since you became a parent?
PP: Now
that's an interesting one. Mmmm. Well I'm not sure this is as strange
as it is interesting to me. I've realized that I am connected to so
very many very different people, by virtue of our common parenthood.
The simple fact that we both are parents to children provides a point
of contact that would never otherwise have been there. Experiencing
that has been really a phenomenal, fairly unexpected part of becoming a
parent. Totally didn't anticipate that, and -- other than the
incredible experience of witnessing the development/ self-realization
of two different human beings -- it may well be the best thing about
this gig.
RR: You've won a number of awards for Lesbian Dad. What do you think the blog offers its readers?
PP: Well!
I would have had a harder time answering this question if I'd have
responded before the results from my reader survey came rolling in, or
before I went to BlogHer and got a wider sense of women's communities
online. But now I can do more than speculate. I
would have initially thought that a blog like Lesbian Dad might keep people
like me company -- offering the betwixt/between gals an example of
someone else who was parenting from this gendered standpoint
(both/and) and doing just fine. I might have hoped that it would also
offer straight readers an opportunity to listen in on our
thoughts/feelings/
But
I've been very pleasantly surprised that a lot of folks just like good
writing for its own sake. Great news, eh? For its own sake. Gives
us all something to strive for.
RR: Would you like to add a question that I haven't asked?
PP: What
fun! Gosh. Well, the first thing that occurs to me is a question that
I asked folks in the survey I did in a recent survey of readers,
which was essentially: What do you get from the online communities of
which you are a part? To which I'd answer: so much, and so much more
than I would have expected! I feel like I've had the opportunity to
learn how many commonalities there are across lesbian and lesbian
parenting experiences in different countries (in the UK at least, and
Australia).
Also, I've come to consider that we really can help one another a great deal using this medium. Being able to carry on a conversation across such distances and so many differences, all mediated not by publishing conglomerates, or limited by physical logistics (how long it takes to get a letter from here to there, much less gather multiple voices into it). We're still limited by human emotion -- the ease with which we can misunderstand each other, peoples' tendencies to gather into clumps of like groups. And online spaces are definitely communities, governed by etiquette and expectations and so on. It's easy to only learn these things after inadvertently stepping on toes. But what we can do with and for each other in this realm is so worth it. I think the community building you do is probably the best example of that.
Pearl did six of these earth day ish posters on Saturday morning. She wanted to take them to the farmer's market.
Lions who are reading this blog, if you ever see a forest fire, watch out for your manes and tails.
The second example must have been inspired by conversations with Marcia who is a vegan. However inspiration can only take you soooooo far. What did Pearl choose for dinner at a restaurant that night? Hot dogs. In her defense, however, I should also add that they were 100% beef.
I decided I'd like to do a series of short interviews of some of the bloggers I admire most, and brave Dana Rudolph of Mombian stepped up, willing to be the first, as she often does.
Dana started Mombian nearly 3 years ago. She and her partner Helen have a four-year-old son and two cats. Her interests (besides her family) include history, fencing, taekwondo, rock climbing, and the Red Sox.
RR: Tell us a bit about your background.
DR: I have over a decade of experience in the online industry, at both the startup and corporate levels. Most recently, I was a vice president at Merrill Lynch, developing marketing and business strategies for several key online initiatives. I was also the first leader of the firm's global LGBT employee network. Prior to the business world, I was on an academic track, doing graduate work towards a career as a medieval historian. (No, I didn't dress up as someone from the Middle Ages; I dressed in jeans and spent time in stuffy old libraries.) In some ways, however, blogging combines my previous disparate endeavors: I get to write and do research like an academic, while marketing and maintaining my Web site.
RR: When you first started MOMBIAN what was your mission and how has it changed over time? What do you hope to deliver to your audience?
DR: From the start, I knew I didn't want to
write a diary-type blog. There were already many good ones like that,
and I didn't think my own family life was interesting enough to keep
people coming back. (My writing 
background, a mix of marketing and
academia, may also have influenced this choice. See next question.) I
also noticed that most of the existing parenting sites didn't often
include lesbians, and most of the lesbian sites didn't often include
parents. I therefore decided to make Mombian a site for news and
information of interest to lesbian moms and other LGBT parents.
I think that mission has pretty much stayed the same. I hope to deliver posts that are both informative and entertaining, that look at LGBT news and culture with a parent's eye, and at parenting topics with an LGBT eye. I cover everything from politics to entertainment—but I'm not trying to cover all politics, like, say, PageOneQ, or all entertainment, like After Ellen. I want to extract what's of interest to parents and try to make connections that others may have missed. Of course, since I'm the publisher, I sometimes break my own rules and post about something random that catches my attention, but I try to keep it to a minimum.
DR: The closest predecessor to my blogging was a weekly update I used to compile at Merrill Lynch, summarizing news in online financial services. It went out by e-mail to over 150 executives at the firm, and was similar in style to the Weekly Political Roundup I do on Mombian.
Some of the marketing material I used to write has helped me in promoting my site, but not in creating the actual posts. Likewise, my academic work gave me a foundation for some of my longer pieces that require research, but they are not a perfect analogy. Blog posts have to be shorter and punchier, more like newspaper articles than research papers.
RR: What has been the high point of blogging for you, so far?
DR: The constant high point is the number of friendly and interesting people I've met—bloggers, commenters, and others who have reached out to connect in some way. I'm also proud of the growing success of Blogging for LGBT Families Day, which had over 150 participants last June. The diversity of people and experiences always amazes me. (It will be held again this year on June 2.)
RR: What's the strangest thing that's happened to you since you became a parent?
DR: Becoming a parent was pretty strange in itself. I'm one of those for whom the parenting urge came late; I wasn't against it when I was younger, but it wasn't a burning priority for me as it is for some people.
It's also been very strange being the stay-at-home mom. Both my partner Helen and I have done stints as the SAHM. She gave birth to our son (using my egg and donor sperm), and started out at home, but some changes at the company I worked for led us both to throw our resumes into the ring. She got the better offer, and so we switched roles. We'll probably stick it out this way now until our son is older; going back and forth too much probably wouldn't be good for him. It wasn't something I was expecting, though, even when we started on the road to parenthood. Not that I'm complaining; as I tell Helen, my boss is a lot cuter than hers.
(via Evil Mommy)
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