October 11 is National Coming Out Day. (We’ve also got World Mental Health Day on October 10 and, on October 14, the forty fifth anniversary of Anita Bryant, singer and notorious homophobe, getting hit in the face with a pie.) National Coming Out Day is sort of contemporary take on second wave feminism’s mantra “the…
Category: Another World Within
Chores (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat: Chores It’s Big Cat’s job to sit on Human-Mom’s head during Zoom meetings. It’s Little-Cat’s job to sit on Human-Mom’s keyboard while she’s trying to write. And it’s Middle Cat’s job to sit on Human-Mom’s lap when she’s trying to get up. The key to running an effective household is that…
Lone-li-ness
寂寞 鄉下小孩子怕寂寞，枕頭邊養一只蟈蟈；長大了在城裡操勞，他買了一個夜明表。 小時候他常常羨豔墓草做蟈蟈的家園；如今他死了三小時，夜明表還不曾休止。 -卞之琳 Lone-li-ness The boy from the countryside dreaded loneliness,So he kept a grasshopper by the pillowcase;He grew up labouring in town,and bought a watch that shines all night long. As a child he’d always envied the grasshopperswho homed in the graveyard grass;Now the old boy is dead for three hours,The second-hand of…
Lizzo Twerked with Madison’s Flute (Caturday)
We actually learned a lot this week. Those of us who didn’t know, found out that Lizzo is actually an excellent flute player. She doesn’t just do it as a gimmick. I’m reminded of the times David Byrne sang an operatic aria or two at his concerts and did just an ear-blisteringly awful job. We…
My First Publication
I came to publication rather late in my writing career. My first publication didn’t come out until a few months ago. (I’m not counting college literary magazines, college newspapers, or the one time I wrote an article for the New York Sun and they put “NYU” in the headline instead of “Columbia University.” The Sun…
Bi+ Visibility is Cause for Celebration
Pride Month in June celebrates the entire LGBTQ+ community including bi+ people. There are some struggles unique to the bi+ community though, and September has been set aside to honor them. The month of September is Bi Visibility Month., which includes Bisexual Awareness Week is celebrated from September 16-23, and concludes with “Celebrate Bisexuality Day” on…
Quiet Quitting and Education: Stay the Course?
If I stop now, I’m a quitter. I started teaching in 2017, right after I graduated college with a degree in something I didn’t know how to apply. I thought moving to a rural area of the country with a handful of other twenty-something-year-olds who all wanted to “make a difference” would be an adventure. …
Lesbian Feta (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Little Cat Good Puns are Harder than you Think Yeah. I saw the “Lesbian feta” meme on Facebook or somewhere like that. Anyway, here goes. The strength of a pun comes from three things: Speed Inventiveness Grace There are a lot of puns on the internet. You have probably made some yourself. The…
Banned Books Week 2022
It’s Banned Books Week again. I wish I could just tell a nice story about how valuable some books that might be controversial were to me when I was growing up. Or even a nice piece about how hard it can be to let go when you’re a parent, to trust your kids and give…
Reality Check: The Afterlives of Indie Musicians
Zane Stroud and I used to be bandmates; we left the band and started new lives, and Zane is now heading in my direction–to become an academic. Zane and his wife Bessie drove Zoe and me to Clearwater Bay to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. We took this double date quite seriously, because it was our first…