…and the rest of us, let’s not rest until we finish the job in her name.

Del Martin, lesbian civil rights pioneer, died in San Francisco today at the age of 87. She is survived by her partner of 55 years, and legal spouse of 71 days, Phyllis Lyon.

I hope you will read many tributes to her. You might start with this one, from Kate Kendall, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.  She includes a link to Del’s obituary here.

I know for a fact that I have been able to become as fully myself as I am, thanks to the work she either did, or inspired, or cleared the way for.  And that goes for all of you lesbian women out there.  Hell, since none of us are free ’til all of us are free, I’m going to say that, by making more space for LGBT people, she has made more space for our hetero friends and family to be truly themselves as well.  Which winds up meaning: she has touched all of us.

• •  National Gay and Lesbian Task Force press release mourning her death
• •  Pam’s House Blend post: LGBT rights pioneer Del Martin passes away

Her wishes were that in lieu of flowers, gifts can be made to the  No On 8 campaign, to honor Del’s life and commitment and to defeat the California  marriage ban.

Apropos of nothing in particular about lesbian parenting, and everything in general about the world I hope my kids will grow up into, Michelle Obama’s speech from Monday:

• Michelle Obama’s Speech at the Democratic National Convention

and this herstoric speech, from the Contender, last night:

• Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Speech at the Democratic National Convention

both courtesy The New York Times.

The great benefit of the Times version is that it has a running transcript next to it.

Watched both with the kids on the lap this morning. They applauded whenever the crowd did, which was a lot. Little guy for the fun of it. I think his older sister, too.

When she asked who they were, I said, “Really smart women who may be President one day. Like you.”

This week, the lil’ monkey’s preschool is on vacation. As evidenced by the yawning gaps between posts, I find myself with a bit more childcare on my hands. In between our many trips to the zoo, the arboretum, the natural history museum, the botanical garden, the planetarium, and the Museum of Modern Art, our guided tours of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, the Google campus, and rehearsals of The Bonesetter’s Daughter at the San Francisco Opera house, our expeditions on a shrimp fishing boat and a local archeological dig, and finally our attendance at talks at the Commonwealth Club, I have occasionally tried to engage them at home so’s to snatch a little time to work.  

(I’d say I was snatching time to watch the Democratic National Convention on CNN, but remember? No live TV! So I’ll have to catch Michelle Obama’s speech on YouTube.) [Later note: who needs YouTube? How 'bout team Obama?]

Fortunately for me, one promising development has been that the girlchild has taken to offering up renditions of her favorite “Beatrix Pottery” volumes to the boychild.  Bless his soul, he’s taking a shine to it.

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin begins, “This is a tale about a tail — a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin.” Nutkin basically demonstrates himself to be a royal pain in the arse of Old Brown, a dour owl on whose island Nutkin and his numerous cousins are gathering nuts. Without giving away the whole plot, I’ll just say that Nutkin eventually gets his comeuppance, narrowly averting becoming a handbag, or more to the point, Old Brown’s appetizer. [Spoiler alert! He loses the better part of his tail as he makes his escape -- thus "the tale about a tail."]

Of course I use the term “renditions” for a reason. The lil’ monkey isn’t reading in the conventional sense, but rather free-associating the plot-line, based on a combination of her memory and a fairly creative interpretation of the illustrations.

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 I can’t recall what she did with the above illustration. Maybe, “When Squirrel Nutkin ignores his Baba, his Baba sets the nasty owl on him to threaten to break his little squirrel knees.”

Oh, every now and then, she loses her audience.

Baba’s pretty used to that too. Looks like she’s taking it pretty well. What’s most important is that she’s having a lasting impact, as a role model.

And that’s just the beginning of the story.

Saturday pancake, Berkeley, CA.

Acclaimed playwright Terry Baum has revived her one-woman play, Immediate Family, and will be performing it through this fall as a fundraiser for the No on Proposition 8 (the CA marriage ban) campaign. She’ll be performing it this Sunday, August 24 at 2pm, at her San Francisco home. Find out where by sending an RSVP to her directly.

Here’s a synopsis:

Virginia, a middle-aged postal worker, visits her comatose lover, Rose, in the hospital.  The tender and often hilarious one-sided conversation reveals the women’s long-term intimacy, their lives outside “normal” society, and the legal barriers which deny Virginia status as a member of Rose’s “immediate family.”  

Immediate Family opened in 1983 to critical acclaim at the National Women’s Theater Festival, and has since been performed in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Israel,  Australia, and New Zealand. It has been translated into French, Dutch, and Hebrew.

Immediate Family may remind some ol’ timers of the case of Sharon Kowalski. I sure as hell will never forget it: just as I was coming out, Sharon Kowalski’s case introduced me to the sobering fact that homophobic laws, in the hands of homophobic people, were the very worst threat to me as a lesbian.  (Remember what I said, a coupla months back, about how hard it was to consider that the law might actually protect us, rather than keep us from each other?  This is what I’m talking about.)  Sharon and her partner Karen Thompson had exchanged commitment rings and named one another as insurance policy beneficiaries (about the most you could do back in the early ’80s.)  In November of 1983, Sharon’s car was hit by a drunk driver; she suffered severe brain injuries and her niece, who was in the car with her, was killed.  But when Sharon’s family learned of their relationship, they cut off Karen’s visitation access to Sharon, thus launching Karen’s eight year-long battle to win first visitation rights, and ultimately custody. The words “Bring Sharon home” mean something to a lot of us still.

Continue reading ‘Immediate Family’

Who’s having more fun: kid, or babysitter? You be the judge.

One of the lil’ monkey’s two childcare-for-voice lessons caregivers cared for her for the last time today. Most likely. She’s a recently graduated high school senior, virtually matriculated college freshman. She’s off to Boston any day now.

They had spent the morning together at a nearby tot lot, playing imaginative games as they often had. The younger brother was along for the ride, having become old enough to be manageable. The three came back to the house, the kids smudge-filled and all smiles. The lil’ peanut went down for a nap, and the two gals, one little and one big, read fairy tales on our couch for a good long while, as they often had. Then it was time for our daughter’s “biggirl” friend to go.

I came out from where I had been working, and asked to take a photograph of the two of them. The lil’ monkey said Nooooooooo. For which reason I don’t know: arbitrary assertion of a right, just to remember that it’s there? Or instinctive concern that the moment would tap into a well of sadness about the fact that her biggirl friend was about leave? I respect both, and didn’t press the matter.

Continue reading ‘Just a moment or two’

I don’t even watch television, but a friend has been saying for months, “Don’t you know about Rachel Maddow?!  You have to!  Brilliant!  Progressive!  Out dyke!  From your home town fer Chrissakes!  On television! Go watch her right this very instant and then report back.”

Sadly, the years of Rachel Maddow’s ascension in broadcasting have more or less paralleled my years either in family crisis or early parenthood or both.  So I’d been a bit tuned out.  Also, we moved the TV from one room to another about a year or two ago, and managed never to really plug it back in again, beyond hooking up the DVD player.  We can’t have the child watching Dottie’s Magic Pockets on my computer here, now can we?

But I succumbed to the peer pressure, checked out Rachel Maddow (pictured at right — see? you think I’m kidding? she’s like, like, like US!), and hot darn was I not disappointed.  She reminded me of my smartest chums, laying into [name the topic] with gusto and good humor and insight and research to back it all up.  Ah, my peeps.

Continue reading ‘We interrupt this parenting blog to crow about a well-placed lesbian television and radio commentator’

This evening the lil’ monkey took umbrage at being interrupted to come to dinner.  She had been spelling her name out over and over, along with sundry other words and non-words.

Baba: Why in the Sam Hill did you just whack Mama?!

Lil’ Monkey: Because I wanted to find some harassing way to get her to let me write some more.

[Note to self: It didn't work when the little girl did it, so it is likely not to work if I do it.  Even if I have the good sense to whack Mama on the hiney instead.]