A Pride Month Poem

Happy pride month! Here’s a poem I wrote in 2007, about being pregnant (which I was in 2005-2006) before I knew I was gonna have genderqueer kids, but still found the societal obsession with picking out genitalia from blurry ultrasounds really weird.

First Poem for My Child

Are you going to find out?
They ask
And I say yes
Oh yes

We are going to find out
the length and timbre
of our heartstrings
And the thousand colors of no.
We are going to find out
at what angle you squint your eyes
into the sun,
which chords your voice wants to climb into.
We are going to find the gut of 3am
and the pinnacle of the catnap.
We are going to find out
the weight of our dark corners
and how you will name the sky.

We are going to find out who you are,
slowly,
and who we are with you,
more quickly.

But that’s not what they mean.
They mean, it seems,
your gender, or rather,
your chromosomes and hormones
and genitalia.
They mean now, before you’ve even thought of tasting air.

They mean will we find out
what color of ribbon they should
wrap your shower gift in
find out if your beauty will be pretty
or handsome, whether your first smile
will be coy or mischievous,
whether you will cry too easily
or not easily enough.

They mean will we find out
if you will stay friends
with their kids after the cooties
arrive in kindergarten
and if they should pass us the soccer balls
or princess dresses from their attics.
They mean are you going to find out if
it’s Mars or Venus who gains a new recruit.

And I say yes, all of the above
And I say yes, we will find out
but the full picture
will probably take your whole life
to develop
and the answer might just be
yes.

Image: Black and white photo of me performing a poem while pregnant.

How Not to Be a Jerk to Your Friends with Messy Houses

A while back there was an article going around about why you shouldn’t hold yourself to super high standards before having people over. I can’t find the particular one I had in mind, but I remember thinking, “That’s sweet, but oh, his definition of ‘messy’ is precious.” I’ve been on many points on messy-house spectrum over the years, and have had friends and family at many more points along it as well. It’s a symptom of how strong the judgment can be that I wrote this years ago and only feel comfortable publishing it at a moment when I’m on a clean and purge kick.

That said, here’s my list of do’s and don’ts. Judgy comments will be gleefully deleted.

It Kept Burning: A Chanukah Poem

A Chanukah poem

Things Fall Apart

A poem for the autumnal equinox

A Weekend in Manhattan for Percy Jackson/Kane Chronicles Fans

My 7-year-old is a major fan of Rick Riordan’s novels, and this weekend for a birthday present, I took them on a tour of sites from the books located in Manhattan. When I mentioned my planning for the trip on Facebook I got a lot of interest from other parents, so I figured I’d write up what we did and how it worked.

Obviously your mileage will vary with age of kid, willingness to walk, attention span, and level of obsession. My kid knows the books well enough that we could drop into the stories at any point and read the chapter that bears upon the site we were visiting and have it make sense. Also they can be read aloud to approximately forever and not get tired of it. And we did–there’s something pretty neat about sitting in the spot being described and reading the story. You pick up on details you wouldn’t notice if you just walked up to something and said “Look, there’s the Plaza Hotel where the demigod army made their headquarters in the Battle of Manhattan” and stood there for five minutes. Given that the passages we wanted spanned several physical books and we were traveling light, I brought with me our paper copy of The Last Olympian (TLO), and then sprang for ebook versions of The Lightning Thief (TLF), The Red Pyramid (RP), and “The Crown of Ptolemy” to read from my phone. (Plus a backup battery stick for the phone.) That worked out quite well.

“Non-Racist Trump Voters” Have a Moral Obligation to Stand Up to Hate

Dear Trump Voters,

I’ve seen a lot of you being very angry at being assumed a racist. I’ve seen you claiming you love everybody and believe your “rough around the edges” candidate really does too, and you were voting based on economics or sticking it to the establishment.

Let’s say for a minute that the rest of us take you at your word that you do not believe you are racist or hateful.

Albany Cops Sound Like Abusive Spouses in Teen Workshop

There’s this pattern that happens with abusive spouses. They often explain to their victims how to behave so they won’t get beaten up again. All the victim needs to do is give them proper respect, not burn their dinner, remember to leave out their slippers at the right place, never buy the wrong brand of toothpaste, never make them feel like they are being laughed at, never give them attitude or make them mad. And then, supposedly, they’ll be safe.

Of course, the abuser is not actually owed any of those things in the first place. And in any case, it’s always a lie. It’s a losing game. The abuse will continue, because periodic reminders of control are necessary and because the abuser will keep finding new things to add to the reasons they were “forced” to administer a beating.

This was one of the first things I thought of when I heard the details of the police portion of a recent “workshop” on police encounters that Albany youth were forced to attend as part of the city’s summer employment program.

Homeless Program Opponents Refreshingly (If Terrifyingly) Honest About Their Motivations

They are at it again. The same folks in the wealthier part of Western Albany who don’t want to provide a decent building to educate our children in also don’t like that a church in their neighborhood was participating in a regional effort to help families without homes via a day time outreach program hosted in a church parsonage. Neighborhood ne’er do well and perennial candidate Joe Sullivan, pursuing his vision of segregation and protection from scary people down on their luck, managed to luck into a judge who decided to overturn the zoning decision based on a technicality about whether a parsonage is actually a house of worship. Chris Churchill at the Times Union is right that this was a bad decision; I hope Family Promise and Bethany Reformed Church do appeal.

Wow, You Said That Out Loud

But the controversy also provided a disturbing look at how many residents of wealthier, whiter, single-family-home neighborhoods seem to feel that they deserve the right to decide who can enter those neighborhoods just by virtue of owning homes there. (Yes, I read the comments, so help me God.) They are startlingly direct about it: They feel that anything serving people poorer than they are should be considered a noxious use for the purposes of zoning and banned from their “nice” neighborhood. 

10 Tips for Contra Dancing With Kids

We just got back from another lovely weekend at the Dance Flurry Festival in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.  My 9 year old has been dancing for several years and is an accomplished contra dancer who can dance both roles and hold their own through most complex figures. Their 5-year-old younger sibling has just started dancing full contras this year and is still a beginner.

For the most part, the contra dance community is wonderfully warm and welcoming to its youngest members, appreciating their delight and cheerfully helping them out when needed. However, we have noticed a few counter-productive tendencies that many dancers have when they encounter kid dancers, and so we wanted to offer you this set of tips to help us all bring up the next generation:

Ridiculous Opinion Column Proves Need for Movement

Charlie Kraebel, managing editor of the Troy Record and the Saratogian had a little “showing his true colors” accident in an opinion column this weekend, in which he was mighty distressed at the launching of the Upstate NY Black Lives Matter chapter. Before you read it, I recommend having a cushion nearby for when you feel the desire to bang your head on something hard.

He has basically three main arguments: First, that black people can’t demand that cops stop killing them for no reason until crime committed by black people against other black people is eradicated. Second, that Black Lives Matter activists don’t really care about Dontay Ivy’s family, just their dastardly agenda. And third, that the Black Lives Matter movement nationally has been all about causing riots and defending “thugs.”

Let’s take these one at a time.