Truth be told, Susanne and I were looking for more than writing sanctuary in our temporary move to Seattle last fall. We were also hoping to make progress on the baby front. And by “progress,” I mean that we’d crossed our fingers that with the help of some expert fertility staff, we would conceive.
There were more than a few errors in our presumption-making, however. Read More…
…and at a writer’s open mic near you. I’m risking my own karma for writing this post, I’m sure, but there are some things that need to be said, first and foremost out loud to myself, but secondly communicated to other writers and authors who would venture to an open mic, and lastly, to the innocent public.
The poet Michelle Tea got started by attending with great intensity and frequency the open mics of San Francisco, which, to be sure, are aplenty in that market. So she has become, for me at least, the exception that proves the rule—if you read in public often enough, you will become super famous. So don’t pipe up right now and tell me you’ve never heard of Michelle Tea. Read More…
We’ve explored a respectable swath of the eateries in Seattle these past six months, everything from food truck vendors to lunch counters, bakers, a chocolate factory, and German tavern fare. We’ve also pursued ethnic food from local Indian buffets to authentic Chinese food and Ethiopian shared plates (injera, mmm). So we jumped at the chance to have dinner at an upscale classic French restaurant, Le Gourmand in Ballard. Susanne made our reservation, since attempting to dine there as a walk-in is a long shot at best, and we drove over on a typically cold, rainy early winter Seattle evening. Read More…
In 1636, a ship of intrepid English women and men arrived to the new colony in America and the first thought that coursed through their brains was wow, it smells a lot better out here. Those were some of my ancestors, and thinking about it now, I can see why my lot are stubborn and make foolish decisions. At least from that side of the family.
Two years after setting foot on a new continent, as autumn sounded its last gasps and the days shortened to a quick, the moon went away. Who knows how this was explained among them? Gallileo sat back in Europe, under arrest. Yes, that Gallileo. A modern millennium eventually rolled around, and the eclipse/solstice collision was reenacted for another generation, one raised on fearmongering in the news and among their political appointees. Read More…
Many of us who had the fortune to attend college, or who lived in a tight-knit community can relate to the concept of venturing out around campus and its nearby neighborhoods and running into lots of people they knew. In Syracuse, an acknowledgment or short conversation seemed to happen every 6.3 yards. With my move to Washington, DC, after nine years in snowy Central New York, I was suddenly anonymous. And in that urban landscape, hardly anybody cared if they saw a masculine woman in a tweed jacket, so I was initially pleased that I’d gotten some degree of quiet in my subway/walking commute to work. But quickly, I realized that I missed the little, often pithy small talk from New York. What I missed was that degree of community. Read More…
Last night, upon our return home from wherever we’d been (writing until a local coffee house closed), we spied a short stack of postcards over by the row of mailboxes. “Urban Craft Uprising,” they read, and as they’d caught our collective, proverbial eye, we picked one up. It just so happens that Susanne and I have been on the lookout for alternative presents to give to the little ones in our life, rather than the uninspiring Gap or Toys R Us gift certificate. This was just what we had in mind, so we decided to head over to the Space Needle neighborhood for some craft show attendance. Read More…
Our cautious approach to ambulation worked for my friend and I yesterday, even if we did look like a couple of chubby zombies headed for the center of Seattle. Baby steps, as a course of action across Denny, was the right way to go.
We purchased our “night and day” passes for the Space Needle so that we could see everything later, after dusk. With our ride up the escalator, we were treated to a 41-second tour of the facility and surrounding area. There is a lot one can articulate in 41 seconds, I learned. We looked out at Elliot Bay and walked around the observation deck, two-thirds of which was enjoyable, and one-third of which chilled me right down to my DNA strands. Read More…
One must admire a city like Seattle for its principles. It still allows those awful plastic grocery bags as legal carrying devices, not yet having taken up the mantle of Earth-savingness like its nearish cousin, San Francisco. And it does continue to serve soft drinks and fizzy pop from automatic vending machines, a no-no in ‘Frisco as well these days. But the powers that be have put their collective feet down when it comes to salting the roads when it snows, given the proximity to the Puget Sound and accompanying Entire Pacific Ocean.
If only Seattle weren’t on a series of steep hills. Read More…
I’d heard, along with the other people who live in the U.S., about the influx of whole-body scanners to our airports. More than one’s average bear, those of transgender heritage disdain these things because well, it goes against our whole mantra of “I’m not just what I am in my pants/skirt.” In this narrow chamber, we are. Thinking about these things abstractly and then coming face to face with one, as I did last Wednesday, I discovered, are two different animals. The disgust after reading a newspaper article pales in comparison to stepping into one of these scanners. Read More…
Here I am, pushing my way into a new novel, and like all project beginnings it takes quite a degree of commitment to stay focused, when there is a lot of white space on the screen and not nearly enough little black letters. In my writing, there is strength in numbers, as I tend to write more than I need and then winnow it down in the rewriting process. I also didn’t like being at school when there weren’t enough people around, like in the afternoon when most folks had left, so maybe I just feel more comfortable in crowds than the average person.
And even so, I have my limits. Some things, like the persistent plucking of an errant guitar string, will get on my nerves after not too long a time. Too bad the inept musician lives right upstairs. Read More…
Trans/plant/portation 