lgbt

Goings On

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I logged into this blog in the last week and found out I had written posts 82 days in a row before completely falling off the face of the earth. Not too shabby. A lot has happened since the last post.

In August we took a whirlwind trip to St. George to attend the last Utah Symphony Concert in which my brother-in-law would be performing for a while. He’s been a substitute percussionist for them for years now, but he went to the University of Michigan this fall to pursue super-advanced degrees in music things.

In August we also took a quick trip to Park City to explore and celebrate my husband’s birthday. It was also nice to let our daughter swim in the hotel pool as much as she wanted.

We spent the month of July building bookshelves, another birthday present for Reilly. It’s nice to have a place to put a lot of our books.

The beginning of school happened for Reilly and Z in the middle of August. Z brought home a cold at the end of August, and we all felt so crappy that Z and I got covid tests. Z never got her results back, but I tested negative. Being sick is so scary in these weird times.

Speaking of, a friend of my brother passed away from covid this week. Truly horrible.

More horribleness: In the last month a church leader gave a speech to some university faculty about taking up muskets against the evils of homosexuality. All of my LGBTQ+ friends were gutted, once again, by the hate the church spews. I don’t know how much longer I can try to reconcile this religion and their dangerous rhetoric with my staying in the church.

Last week I saw Hilary Hahn twice. The first time she performed at a nature center, just before a group of musicians from underserved communities. It was cool seeing her in a really intimate setting by the river with fewer than 100 people. She performed solo Bach. The second time was on a date with my husband at the Noorda Center for the Performing Arts at Utah Valley University. That night she performed the Brahms Violin Concerto. Every note was glorious. It was great seeing her play live again, with the last time being November 2012.

Oh, I cooked pork chops tonight. Started them on the stove in a cast iron pan, then threw them into the oven. They were amazing. But whenever I do a fluky awesome job cooking, I always wonder if it’ll be just as good the next time. I suppose that’s the fun of it.

Autumn has made its presence known. The morning chill, the leaves turning in the mountains. Autumn’s nice, but winter: can stay the hell away.

I may write more later on these individual subjects later. I might not.

More Quotes from Hood Feminism

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Some powerful thoughts:

1. Feminism that encompasses all the issues that impact women, from poverty to criminal justice reform to living wages to better protections for immigrants to LGBTQIA issues, is feminism that ensures voting rights for all as a foundational issue.

2. For marginalized people, feminism is failing them by being so focused on whether middle-class white women have what they need and want, but not on protecting voting rights for everyone else.

3. Because institutions are not designed to help parents raise high-needs children, it becomes much easier to argue that children with disabilities are a burden to be avoided instead of addressing the paucity of resources.

4. Anger can be cathartic, motivating, and above all else an expression of the innate humanity of any community. Demands that the oppressed be calm and polite and that forgiveness come before all else are fundamentally dehumanizing.

Please read Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, by Mikki Kendall. Straightforward, practical; applies ideas to real actions for including everyone in building feminist momentum for all marginalized communities.

Pride Flag

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We have a small Pride flag hanging from one of our windows. It’s been up a year. At the time I bought that flag I also bought a larger flag, which I haven’t hung but stored away for the past year.

The other day I saw a Pride flag hanging on the front porch of a neighbor’s home. That made me smile. So today I decided to hang our large flag on the front of our house. It’s actually hanging vertically with the red stripe on the left, but I modified the video because the camera only shot landscape. and I layered a photo beneath a video of the flag waving in the breeze. I don’t know why I did this. Just experimenting, I guess. Anyway, it looks way better than I captured it here.

I hope we all accept and support the LGBTQIA+ community. It blows my mind that some people are still extremely close-minded. It does seem more of us are doing everything we can, though. That’s encouraging.

I love all my friends, and I’ve told them our home is a safe space whenever they need one. I’m excited to hear stories of their family members coming around to acceptance and understanding. I hope this keeps going.