Home Alive did important work for 17 years. Unfortunately, the organization is no longer active. I think Home Alive changed many lives and changed attitudes about the importance of self defense as a tool for fighting back. The mission statement and the success of the group inspired many other groups… Read full post »

It was really just a regular night at the bar. The Comet Tavern in Seattle – aka “fort living room”. It was just the place where we always gathered. The Comet has no pretension at all – you sit and drink at large picnic type tables with everyone else. At the… Read full post »

Only the little slice of night between turning

out the light and actual sleep grant some

sense of the reality of your death.

In the Christian world view I am to

celebrate the triumph of your march

from life support to respiratory arrest.

I cut… Read full post »

My brother was ordained into the Episcopalian Deaconate yesterday. He is an amazing and talented man, and his path to this place in the Episcopalian Church has been a long time coming. I could tell you all about him, and there is much to say. But let’s just selfishly concentrate on… Read full post »

I could tell many an embarrassing tale involving any number of bodily fluids, or tell you about how the first time I met someone with Tourette’s  I had just taken a pure dose of the hallucinogen Ibogaine. In fact, I could have a separate blog devoted to embarrassing events in my… Read full post »

I just tried to blog and got the message that I can't post unless i'm logged in - but how the hell could I be creating a post within my account unless i was logged in?

This annoys me - there is no spam filter, but somehow there is a filter… Read full post »

I was five when my father took me to  a sunrise service, two dozen people and the countless dead in the cemetery for the news of the resurrection, my father the pastor claiming that rebirth is possible. I did not see any souls rising, although today the fog is like a… Read full post »

My back porch is like a temple to nesting birds. I live in a flat roofed tenement building. This long winter stole my soul, and now I see the bonnie birds. The building is a hive for nests. At my mother’s house, birds would nest in a wreath she had hung… Read full post »

My best friend has been in jail since Feb. 5^th. Soon, she will be transferred to prison. She knows what she did, and knows she got a pretty light sentence. I don’t defend what she did – although I will say it was a non-violent crime and…I support the legalization of… Read full post »

You are all so petty and the infighting drives me crazy, even when I participate. I hate when people post nice pictures because I hate nice nice pictures. I don't like all the love love love hug hug either, so I am out of here. 

I am being driven away by… Read full post »

Could we just get rid of the term MILF already? How many movies feature teenage boys vaguely (or not vaguely) masturbating behind a bush while their best friend or (yuck!) girlfriends mother goes out to the pool and slathers sunscreen all over her body. REALLY SLOWLY. That's the genesis of MILF.… Read full post »

 Jodi Bailey is my amazing friend who completed the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod back to back, which means she mushed thousands of miles across a landscape most of us will never see. I have persuaded her to join me in a little Q and A because I have very… Read full post »

When I was cleaning out my mother’s house I found a painting of my father’s church. I mean, a painting of the church where my father was the minister. He was forced to resign from this church and they divorced four years later, so why in the name of God or… Read full post »

I went to a funeral on Saturday and it was great! I mean, as great as anything that involves a corpse can be. Maybe I get a little bit anthropological about these experiences. I was concerned, due to the Irish Catholic nature of the event, that things might get lugubrious. I… Read full post »

 Just to remind all you bossy types who are blathering on about who's a good writer and how Open Salon should be run and Happy Birthday and I'm depressed and I really miss aim (ok, that last one has not yet happened.) AHEM!

May I remind you that only I have… Read full post »

Last Sunday I found out that one of my best friends is going to prison. She’s going to prison because she broke more than a few laws. However, I was not really ready for this news. She’s in jail just now, and has already made a plea agreement, or so I… Read full post »

Mountain Park was one of those aging amusement parks that horror films use as a trope. By the time I was a regular attendee it was well past its heyday. Back then we accepted a certain sleaze factor with our childhood ideas of “scary”. What was happening at home… Read full post »

Today I think I’ll take a shower, fix my hair and go get an abortion, just because I can. I might get knee replacement surgery tomorrow. Maybe Thursday is a good day for a mammogram. Followed by a trip to the dentist.

I’m reading posts about how people feel about… Read full post »

Of all the things to leave in my mother’s house, her wedding dress seems the most odd. I never married, but I remember finding it in attics and wanting to wear it. Every time I go there I touch it, but I still haven’t carried it, on the hanger, to my… Read full post »

I work with and for survivors of rape. I am a survivor of rape. I have had abortions. Call me a statistic.

The thought of limiting access to abortion unless under circumstances of rape is politically and morally reprehensible to me. But that's not the point. 

The legislastion puts the onus… Read full post »

My friend Keith Kurman wrote this, on his wordpress blog. I feel like he says so much that should be heard. You can respond to him here of course, and I'll get a link for his wordpress blog as well: 

**As most of you know, I have spent a fair amount… Read full post »

I look out in stark silence at a magnificent tree that has lived longer than me. It's a weird thing, this thought of nature and grief and what is the meaning or means of happiness. 

Everyone likes to talk about the weather, but nobody seems to do anything about it.… Read full post »

I don’t like snakes or swamps, I am unnerved by other countries. I find myself alarmed by my tendency to assume that all Asian people are smart. All dangerous things are sort of from Asia and that dastardly South America. Shudder! I have my weapon of Democracy at hand if they… Read full post »