Category Archives for art

women

women

yesterday, leanne and i went to the mayor’s summit for women at the moscone center and heard an impressive lineup of women speak. very little said directly about breast cancer, though molly ivins herself is a survivor. health care and child care, confusion about hormones, being a leader and being a mother, and running for office were all emphasized. the war continues to disrupt the world, and most made passing but not pointed reference to it – except for maxine waters. i like leanne’s post to noend about it so much that i’m just going to reproduce it here:


yesterday i went to moscone with my gf moya for the mayor's summit for women and felt overwhelmingly humanized.

not being a very big fan of willie, myself, i was impressed that all these kickass speakers consider him to be one of their good friends -- ann richards, molly ivins, marian wright edelman, jocelyn elders, patricia ireland, oral lee brown, maxine waters, and others gave fiery impassioned speeches and sometimes modest accounts of some of the really inspiring things they've done (oral lee brown adopted a class in a poor school in oakland and has helped them all graduate from high school and college and some have gone on to grad school)

maxine waters talked (that seems like too soft of a word -- she was ablaze) about what a warhog george bush is and how the new tax cuts he is proposing will kill head start and other programs that help children -- particularly poor children ... and someone else mentioned that dietrich bonhoefer's test of the morality of a society is in how they treat their children and the u.s. fails that test appallingly easily.

several of the speakers mentioned how the u.s. does not provide healthcare or decent education to most poor children but is happy to lock them up in jail (where they can get healthcare) when they become an errant teenager.

marian wright edelman (founder of children's defense fund and author of a few books) was particularly smart and passionate while she sailed and pounded through statistics about poverty and children and the devastating effects on children and adults and our society. i wish i could invite her to dinner.

about 4000 women were there. the food was just awful. the demographics were refreshingly different from most (tech) conferences that i go to. yesterday there were mostly women -- and a pretty equal mix of black, asian, white, hispanic, latino ...

there was a most excellent war protest out front in the morning and then a 'save our neighborhood schools -- don't ship our children out of the neighborhood' coalition in the late afternoon.

ann richards rocks. she told stories and jokes and gave health advice and political advice and bemoaned the current state of the u.s.

molly ivins surprised me by spending her entire speech encouraging women to run for public office and get involved in politics and pass campaign finance reforms (i thought she'd tell funny stories and jokes about bush). she seemed a bit weary and tired of the current state of the u.s. and the world.

i was surprised that catholic healthcare -- who i've heard doesn't allow abortions and takes over hmo's and limits access to birth control -- was a major sponsor when most of the speakers were pro-choice.

dr. jocelyn elders made me feel so good that my hands hurt from clapping. i wish she was surgeon general instead of the doofus we currently have.

then i walked to work this morning to the peaceful rumble of my neighborhood without the roar of the fell street exit. i know it's causing traffic hell for a lot of people, but, for me, it's bringing me closer to my community and neighborhood.

now i've gotta go home for the day .... here's to meeting and mingling with people we don't usually see in our daily lives. i feel completely inspired.

leanne - skipping - to - from - hayes - valley - lower - haight

blood

blood

two of my scabs fell of in the last few days. does that mean i’m healing or scarring?

blood is an interesting thing. do an idle search on google for “blood, scabbing, and healing” and you’ll find a lot about tattooing, PC game cheats, some about tainted blood and platelets, and less about what a scab might actually be good for. there’s hardly a thing you can look at on the news, or in the ‘real world’, these days that doesn’t have as its basis — and its manifestation — blood or its products, yet i hardly comprehend what it’s actually made of and what it does, much less what to do about scabs and scars. my friend todd and my late friend david were forever changed by bad blood products from bayer, baxter, and alpha pharmaceuticals. deb suffers from an entirely opposite condition of the blood, and many of us rely on products that affect the blood – but ironically might damage it – to keep us alive. two years ago you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about mounds of burning animals, killed in masses because of the ‘mad cow’ disease risk. the phrase of today is once again ‘no blood for oil’.

if scabbing means bleeding has stopped, what does the end of scabbing mean? there is only a tiny scab left on the left corner of my medial incision. i haven’t even been picking at the scabs, because i understand that could make scabbing worse — though i don’t know why. when i lie on my stomach, one of my favorite ways to sleep, my breast hurts; when people hug me these days, i often wince. sometimes, even if it doesn’t hurt or they didn’t hit the sensitive left breast, i shout out ‘ow’, but nobody thinks its funny.

i suspect all the scabbing will be gone soon, and then i’ll see the full potential of the scars — marks of being stabbed, however precisely and on purpose, and then prevented from bleeding. then i just have to figure out how to heal.