In October, 2007, I moved to San Francisco and discovered, in my neighborhood, a local literary festival called Litquake.  The event I stumbled on was the litcrawl where, in over two dozen venues along Valencia, Guerrero in the mission, poets, memoirists, playwrig/… Read full post »

 

 

 

I found the above song on YouTube, a song written by Joe Hill for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. I remember reading that Hillary Clinton when she was feeling frustrated and stunted by her role as first lady in the 1990’s would have conversations with… Read full post »

 

  

you start small

chipping away at civic pride

cutting into budgets to schools, to children and teachers;

erecting gaudy monuments to fire fighters who

died September 11

(but forgetting to insure the ones who showed up that day to help

but weren’t offici… Read full post »

(or Obama Remark on Black Scholar’s Arrest Angers Cops)

 

cops were mad when one of their own

a good guy in blue who took the mad professor

down

for yelling when they wanted to

arrest him for breaking into his

own home

and the man who was… Read full post »

July sixth, my birthday, I share with Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and with George W. Bush.

I mention this because on April 16^th of this year, I met the bodhisattva, Josie Ortez, also known as Sepha or dakinidancer. Over drinks I told her that she had been one… Read full post »

 

 

At 13 I became a lesbian. Not by experience or lifestyle, but by reputation.

To give a little background, as a child I tried nearly every kind of school that we could find. My religious parents wanted their kids to go to private, religious schools although… Read full post »

 

In 1997 I visited Burma (now Myanmar) as a backpacker. I had three weeks to travel from Rangoon (now Yangon) to Mandalay and further north. I traveled there because of friend of mine recommended it and he drew me a somewhat off the beaten track map of where to… Read full post »

 

          I learned from my great aunt JoAnn that despite what girls are told, being good and beautiful is not what it takes to win you a spot as the most loved.

Well into her seventies, my great aunt could become teary eyed and bitter over… Read full post »

1. I once lived in a brothel for ten weeks.

 

2. My grandmother once checked herself into a hospital carrying a grocery bag full of clothing. She told the admitting nurse that she was homeless because she hoped to receive free medical treatment.

 

3. My… Read full post »

 

 

I know I’m running a little late on Dorinda’s open call for Open Salon interviews, but I chose to interview William Morley after reading his recent post about how after a difficult breakup, his Facebook status updates became his chief mode of creativity while living and teac/… Read full post »

*spoiler alert*

Every year filmmakers save occasionally their best, but more frequently their most pretentious, most expensive, and occasionally their most tone-deaf films just in time to gather an armload of awards, and this year is no different. But I’m going to have to vote for The Reader as… Read full post »

 

 

 

Her socks didn’t match.

You could tell because she was wearing a skirt; each calf was a different shade of green. And she wasn’t all clean. Not in that punkish way. She didn’t even look like a girl who listened to music, and she looked at you/… Read full post »

My grandparents loved taking cruises. Ironically, my grandfather, a photographer, grew up in a working class family in San Francisco. Touring the world in the mega luxury liners were a crowning symbol of his success and achievement later in life. But when I took a job on a cruise line, in… Read full post »

_{Born in summer. Two}

_{parents, suicidal, find God!}

_{Dad in seminary.}

_{Family drives St. Louis to Seattle in a}

_{Vega. Grandmother drinks wine from}

_{boxes. Many schools...}

_{Little church with organ music.}

_{College in Georgia.}

_{Car accident.}… Read full post »

The buzzword for the new Obama administration is pragmatism. For those who find this word or what it stands for dirty, they should consider the real-life price tag of idealism.

Recently I went into four different bookstores in the Castro and Mission districts of San Francisco searching for… Read full post »

 

There is an irony in complaining of old jobs at the exact moment in history when jobs may become a precious scarcity…yet job stories always get me. More than love stories do, whatever that says about me.

For the record, I regret no job I’ve taken because every one… Read full post »

 

My favorite Thanksgiving meal traveled illegally to a foreign country, packed in dry ice, to be later cooked, sliver by sliver, in a toaster oven.

To know this story, it’s necessary to meet Bridget: short, red-haired, smart, freckled, thirty year old Ivy League graduate, MA, from upst… Read full post »

 

My grandfather was a professional photographer. We had little choice, growing up, but to let him capture us in rolls and rolls of film. I hated it, and sympathized with people of other cultures who believe their soul is being stolen with each shutter click.… Read full post »

Two and a half years ago when Obama was just a senator with a semi-decent shot of being a vice president to Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, I started reading Dreams from my father.

I had already read Living History and thought it was decent and good, if a… Read full post »

 

At Four Barrel Coffee Shop on Valencia Street, I order a tall liberal soy latte before getting to work calling voters across Colorado, Florida and Wisconsin. It’s raining outside, an ugly grey day. Inside, I’m sitting beside Kat, with long blond hair wearing… Read full post »

This election is in many ways—I was going to say an exercise in Chinese water torture, but maybe the updated version of that is a Bush style waterboarding. Obama is ahead in the polls, but no one can get complacent because no matter what the polls say, supposedly undecided white voters… Read full post »

Why are liberals and socialists so hard-hearted when it comes to the rich? I was just thinking that although many of the poor might have lost the roofs over their heads in this mortgage crisis, this was only because many of them were greedy enough to try to buy homes when… Read full post »

if so, what’s he been smokin’?

I’m not entirely sure why I’m on John McCain’s mailing list (I blame mischievous friends). But I do enjoy reading sometimes about the way the other side looks at things. His letter is surprisingly cordial with note about the Oba… Read full post »

We Here Too, in states Blue that Are, do love that Country of where we were richly blessed to praise it. You know I think pallin' around can too be was George Bush's friends called might be of the Six Hundred Thousand Dead Iraqis called after Dishonesty of the Reasons… Read full post »