one picture is worth a thousand words

My god daughter L. loves to ride, as you found out yesterday. I have been wanting to learn so that when she is big enough, I can take her riding on the weekends. I have been threatening to take lessons to catch up with her, but she tells me, "You'll never catch up."

So today I went to Friendly Acres for a two-hour ride. Given that I haven't been on a horse in 20 years, it went better than I expected. I even managed to take some pictures and a short video clip. I tried to upload the video clip, but I need some technical assistance. Here are the photos.

The minimum age to rent a horse is five, so I left a message for Molly to see if it's OK to take L. there with me. There was a man there with his six year old daughter, and everything looked under control.

What a beautiful day. Riding a horse along the ocean and actually going down onto the beach. I recommend it.

off we go to the rodeo

Today I found myself somewhere where I NEVER thought I would be. The rodeo. Not the Junior Rodeo, where seven year-olds ride 25 year-old horses around barrels. I mean the real rodeo, with bucking broncos and steer wrestling. Real cowboys from Utah and Arizona. And Castro Valley, that little bible belt of Alameda County. And let’s not forget that confederate flag on one of the trucks in the parking lot.

My god daughter rides horses. She is six. Two years ago I spent countless hours on the internet and telephone finding a riding teacher that would take her at four. I found Molly.

Molly said that she can teach “the little ones” if they have good balance and are obsessed with horses. My god daughter qualified. So once a week, she goes to Castro Valley for her horseback riding lesson. And after two years of lessons (probably way before, but Wednesday at 2 PM is hard to get to for this nine-to-fiver), she can ride that horse.

Molly is involved with the rodeo. So anywhere that Molly and horses are, my god daughter wants to go. So we went. Somehow I was under the naïve impression that we were going to the Junior Rodeo, but I wasn’t so lucky. I knew when they started broadcasting John Wayne reciting over some patriotic-sounding music that I was in uncharted territory.

I suspected that the star spangled banner would be involved, and that my usual reluctance to stand up might not be in my best interests today. I was surprised by the racial diversity, and that a Native American man near me seemed to be actually singing the words, but I was indeed the real diversity today, a jewish butch dyke.

Despite the cruelty to animals part (although at times it seemed the animals had it all over the humans) it was actually quite interesting. Cowboys (and girls) pay money to enter rodeos with the hopes of winning prize money. Unfortunately, we both got tired before the cowgirls. But we did get the autograph of the “queen of the rodeo”.

So here come these guys who actually get up on a bucking bronco and try to stay up on it for eight seconds. I truly wish I had seen the women riding bucking bronco, but when it’s time to go…….What I did learn today is that to get these horses to buck, they tie a strap around its belly, back toward the rear legs. They don’t like it, so they buck. Also in the arena are two other people on horses who have to remove the strap from the bucking horse as soon as the rider falls off. Now there’s a niche job.

Then came the steer wrestlers. Two men on horses chase a steer out of the chute. One of the men actually slides off his horse, aims for the running steer, and tries to grab the steer’s horns and wrestle it to the ground. Testosterone makes people do funny things.

Luckily, after a few rounds of that, my six year old god daughter commented that there might be a lot of traffic on the way home, so I took that as a clue to get the hell out of there.

Then I went to La Pena to see the Lesbian Hip Hop group from Havana, Cuba. WOW. We live in interesting times.

the spirits like mid-century moderne

I am a third generation junker. My grandfather would go to church bazaars and buy up everything that was left over at the end. Boxes of bright red nail polish and dozens of short sleeved men’s shirts with those weird little diamond patterns. Today they would be sold on Valencia Street in a vintage store, but in 1966, we thought they were the squarest thing going.

One time he came home with two four-foot tall carved wooden African statues. We laughed about those things for years. After my father died two years ago and we were clearing out the house, I thought about those statues and how much they must be worth now. My cousin Robert still has them in his basement, and he said I could have them. Getting them out to California would be a challenge, but maybe the next time Antiques Road Show comes to town………

My girlfriend, on the other hand, is a first generation junker. She was teased by her family about going to flea markets and wearing “old clothes”. But she has a passion for junking that is hard to believe is not inherited. Imagine our delight at finding collectible ceramic candlesticks for 99 cents each.

In the past year, we have gone to Philly, my home town, twice. We discovered an antique store in the Italian Market area of South Philly, one block from the best cannoli in the world. The guy that owns it grew up “in the neighborhood” and sold fish out of that store for thirty years. Now he’s into “junque”. He talks loud and fast and loves a bargain.

Last week, when we were there, we found some pink Mikassa plates with a small peace sign on the bottom from the 60s. D loved them, and I teased her about being converted to my love for “mid-century”. She usually finds the straight lines of the mid-century moderne too cold and sterile compared to the lush, sensual décor of her house.

She bought the plates and I schlepped them home on the plane. The other day, I noticed two of them under plants on her altar. I screamed, “That’s not what those plates are for”, and she said it's OK, they could always be washed.

Last night we heard a crash, and one of the plants on a pink plate was on the floor. Today I told her that the spirits didn’t think the pink plates should be used for that either. She laughed. A little while ago, the other plant on a pink plate crashed to the floor as well. “I guess you’re right”, she said. “The spirits like those pink plates and don’t think they should be used for planters”. You know you’re right when the spirits throw their vote with yours.

casper, the friendly ghost

Do you believe in ghosts? I mean really believe in your head and in your gut that ghosts exist. Well, I am on the verge of having to say yes.

Of course, like every california baby boomer, I observed the various "spiritual movements", and would describe myself as being spiritually conscious. I believe in "higher power", and know that it comes in many forms, from the traditional GOD to an ancestor we talk to. I have even seen pictures of ghosts and basically believe it to be so. But REALLY believe? That's a leap of faith I have managed to resist until now.

My girlfriend is a witch, and her 100 year-old house is filled with "spirits"….the dead. We talk about them all the time, but in 12 years, she had never seen one. Her son started seeing them when he was practically a toddler.

I have lived places before that I "felt" were haunted, but I never saw anything. When I lived in Puerto Rico, I stayed in a rooming house, and I had the sensation that the room was haunted. A Cuban friend came over, and after I said that I thought the room was haunted, she said she had seen an old man sitting in the chair. The landlady confirmed that an old man had died in that room.

But actually SEE one!

Last summer, I helped d. clean her studio in the attic, where the spirits like to hang out. We worked for hours and threw away boxes and boxes of stuff. We scrubbed the table tops with chisels. We cleaned. At one point, we were near the closet, and we heard banging to a quite irregular beat. We looked at each other, and both knew what it was. There was just no other explanation.

Occasionally, this one friend of d's comes over and talks about which spirits she is seeing. I usually leave the room during this line of discussion, and my level of nervousness about getting up in the nite increases dramatically.

The other nite, d. came in and said she had just seen a ghost. I said, "Don't tell me about it", and she said she had to share what she had seen. She said it was like a white wisp that floated by into the front room. She said "it was like…it was like" and I said "like Casper". We laughed.

As they say, all stereotypes come from somewhere.

To be continued…………..

why blog

A good friend of mine asked me why I have a blog, and I answered, "blogging is all the rage right now." "But why do you have one", she asked. I thought for a I minute, and the first thing I thought of is …external validation. Having been a performing musician off and on for the past 30 years, I know all about external validation. But more about that later.

Back to the primary existential question…If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If we are sitting alone in our room, do we exist? If we write in our journals, is it for us alone or for that amorphous witness out there?

My girlfriend is a pagan blogger, and she is part of a world-wide network of pagan bloggers. Communities are formed and kept alive through blogging. Is it about mirroring ourselves through other people's stories?

I just left a band that I have been in for over a year. There were a lot of reasons why, but primarily I just realized that I would rather be doing other things on Sunday and Monday nites. I used to get so mad at a friend of mine who thought that everything boiled down to "do the positives out-weigh the negatives"? How simplistic can you be?

But over the years, I have come to realize that it just may sometimes be true. I have stayed in bands I really wanted to leave because I needed the external validation. I guess I really have grown up, because having Sunday dinner with my girlfriend, her son, and any number of wild and wonderful friends is really more fulfilling. There will be more bands in my future, but a son is only 15 once.

go bears

A few weeks ago, I went to a Cal women’s basketball game. I never knew there were so many 6’2” and 6’3” women. The women who were a mere 5’10” appeared downright diminutive by comparison.

As it happens, this year is the 35^th anniversary of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination against students and employees of educational institutions. What this meant was that schools and colleges had to provide equal funding for men’s and women’s sports. You can imagine the uproar that caused.

As a result of this law, the percentage of female high school varsity athletes increased from 7% in 1972 to 41% in 2007. This also means that the number of women who have received basketball scholarships to college has increased respectively. Imagine the opportunity that this has given to thousands of women to not only go to college, but to travel the country for the games.

As a matter of fact, sitting right in front of us at the game were two scouts from the WNBA. Now there’s something that didn’t exist in 1972.

My 15 year old nephew, who is a high-school basketball player himself, didn’t want to go to the game with me because “girls are too slow, and the game will be too slow”. I have nothing to compare it to, because the only men’s basketball game I ever attended was during a work-related function in a luxury suite at the Staples Center in LA, and the focus was not exactly on the game. “Girls” may be slower, but there sure were a lot of three-pointers thrown at Cal that day.

I remember once at the airport, while I was waiting at the carrousel for my luggage, I noticed a young woman standing nearby. She exuded so much poise and confidence for a woman her age. I thought to myself, “She’s an athlete”. How lucky for her.

I think about all of the things that have changed for women and girls since 1972, and am proud for the small part that I have played in bringing some of them about. I know that sexism and homophobia still exist in the sports world, but I look at those strong young women on that basketball court and know that they are yet paving the way for the young girls who are following in their footsteps. Go bears.

dyke march

Well, it’s that time of year again. The dyke march committee is revving up to put on the largest annual women’s gathering in the world. It’s a lot of work, especially raising the money. It costs about $25,000 to put on the dyke march and rally, and it always amazes me when women say, after arriving at the park complete with stage, sound system, trolley car for disabled and old women, and a sound truck, “What does the dyke march need money for?”

But the day of the march of the march is nothing short of exhilarating! When I look at the pictures from dyke march 2006, I get shivers down my spine. The sheer number of women, and the diversity of race, age, size and physical abilities is astounding.

When the current dyke march committee formed three years ago, we made a commitment that the dyke march committee, as well as the talent on the stage, would be at least 50% women of color. In order to achieve parity on the committee, after the 2004 march we decided that new members would be women of color only.

Why is it so important to have parity? If we look around, there are not that many organizations that are truly racially diverse. Is it just because “we just gravitate towards people who are like us”, or is racism so prevalent in our society that we, in our little subcultures, cannot see how it divides us?

When I posted on craigslist that the dyke march was looking for women of color to join the committee, I stated that this was not an attempt to exclude white women, but an attempt to achieve racial parity on the committee. I was ecstatically relived that there were no angry calls of “reverse racism”(something that I don’t believe exists) from white women.

In another organization I was in, parity was achieved by women joining in pairs, and if you were white, your partner had to be a woman of color. It may seem that these are artificial or contrived methods of creating a multi-racial organization. But in this society, and yes, even within the lesbian community, we are still divided across racial lines, and seemingly contrived measures are sometimes needed to bridge the divide.

At the dyke march meeting yesterday, there were more women of color than white women. That doesn’t mean that we are finished, that we don’t have struggles about a variety if issues, including class and race, but if we aren’t all at the same table, the dialogue will not even occur. And on the day of the dyke march, watching the talent on the stage that represents lesbians of all colors, I see the organic results of our work.