Walnut Hills High Class of '89

My daughter Iyende found an old commencement program from my high school graduation the other day. Looking through it brought back a lot of memories. There are so many things about high school I don't remember, because I mentally checked out for much of it, but I did have good friends and good times there.

I googled a bunch of people, names I remembered and some I didn't. Walnut Hills was/is a big deal public school you have to take a test to get into, it's very academic. Truly, I graduated by the skin of my teeth because I did the minimum possible to pass each class, I was just so out of it. But I do believe the academic atmosphere and encouragement from teachers rubbed off on me. Going to that school helped me to believe and understand that I am 'all that' and can do whatever I want to do, including write books and have my own business.

I think the influence of this school this shows in what many of my classmates are doing: Erika Whitney, I used to hang out with her, she's now a research scientist and college professor. This guy, Dan Friedman, I went to elementary school as well as high school with; he's a buddy of mine from way back. He's now a comedian and has a very funny CD out. I wasn't friends with Furaha Norton but I remember her because I have a cousin with the same first name. I recall her as being a very intense girl back in high school. She now has a doctorate in English and did her thesis on the works of Toni Morrison, who is one of my favorite writers. I also didn't know Mecerdes Falciglia very well but I remember her because she was the first person I ever knew named Mercedes. She's now a doctor and professor of medicine.

I couldn't find some people and others I wasn't sure if it was them by their picture. It's been 15 years, people can change a lot. Looking for Pippa Whitehead, though I didn't find anything on her I came across this funny blog: Pippa Said.

Naked Group Photo by Spencer Tunick

Is nudity a cause? Sometimes I think so. I am a nudist at heart, but because of how repressive this culture is about nudity I don't live a nudist's lifestyle. Most people have such wacky ideas about body parts and what-not. I didn't even feel comfortable breastfeeding in front of anyone but my husband, kids, and my family. People get so freaked out when they see you breastfeeding, and act all crazy if they catch a sight of your boob let alone a dripping nipple.

Spencer Tunick was in town yesterday to do one of his world-famous group naked shoots. I really wanted to be a part of it, I've seen his work before and thought it was really cool. You had to sign up online to get where the location was. I was going to do it, I swear, Brian was kind of being wishy-washy about going and the kids thought it was the grossest idea ever and I couldn't get not one friend to do it with me, but I was gonna do it! What stopped me?

Eh, I don't know, inertia, maybe. You had to get to the secret photo shoot location like at 4 in the morning, which really isn't a problem for me because I'm rarely asleep at that hour anyway. But it's still kind of cold here, especially at night and in the early morning, so I knew I'd be all grumpy at being chilled. And I got turned off at his site: why is the skin color listed in shade with the lightest color being #1? Why is white always the starting point or whatever? It gets on my nerves. I do still think his work is cool and I hope the shoot was successful.

Allied Media Conference: 6.23.04

The Allied Media Conference was great! I had some drama getting there, but since I missed LadyFest because of my dental drama I was determined to get to this event. Our car decided to act raggedy on Friday, we had to take it to the shop. Turns out it had a broken tailpipe and some other stuff. They said initially it would be ready by late Friday afternoon. I had to be at the conference then, so I was going to rent a car. I ended up just waiting on our car to be ready, which wasn't until Saturday afternoon. I went to pick up my brother John, then we drove to Bowling Green, where the conference was at. Got there in time for the party, though I missed a day of vending and workshops. We met a lot of cool people!

John is very social so we mingled well, played some pool, danced a little. There were some really cool bands, like The Urban Folk Collective and This Moment In Black History. Good music, both bands have a good sound. I got their Cds and have been listening to them since the conference.

Sunday was cool, I went to a couple of workshops in the afternoon. One was The Underground Railroad: Out of the Underground and Into the Light of Creative and Financial Independence. It was presented by Hotep of Skinny Men Productions. It was very informative, and he is a cool, stand-up guy. I also got to meet his wife and she is very sweet!
Saturday the first people we met were Jacinta and Julie who do the Girls Are Not Chicks coloring book, and Sunday hung out with them a little more. I also met Christa who does LadyFriend, and
folks from Internationalist Books, all really cool. I hate to not list anybody but I met so
many people! It was awesome. I will definitely go next year.

I Love to Sing

I love to sing Karoke! I love to sing, period, even though I can't sing very well. I'm very off-key unless I really concentrate. One of my favorite things when I'm driving is to put on a CD I like a lot and just blast it, sing along at the top of my lungs. Good times!

My kids like it when I make up little songs to sing for them. I'd really like to put out a CD of the songs I've made up for my children...it's a project I've had to push to the back burner simply because of time constraints.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my Father, who was and is the best dad I could have wished for. I love you, daddy!

Happy Father's Day to my Husband, who is a devoted, loyal, loving, and encouraging father. I love you, sweetie!

The Summer Me

I always feel reborn in the summer. I feel so different! the sun shines on me and I stretch like a cat, and shake like a bird. If I had wings they would ruffle. Ohio is so pretty in the summer. It smells good where we are. This morning I sat on the balcony and watched 2 deer chewing around in my garden. There's that, oh well, I guess they need it. They looked right at me; they knew I was there. I stood up to go to the can and they (oxymoron alert) slowly bolted, it was the most amazing thing. It was like watching them run in slow motion or something. I hope they didn't think I was going to hurt them...but if they ever watched me from the woods throwing things at the gross possums I am sure they think me a villian.

The possums tried to take over our garage this past winter. Once I came home in the early morning and one huge fat one was hanging from the rafters, it was so nasty and creepy. I didn't see it until I got out of the car, then I looked up and saw it staring at me with it's gleaming beady eyes and bloated, blotchy, diseased-looking face. I almost yakked right there, but I was so scared it would drop onto my head I quickly backed out of the garage, I didn't even shut the car door. I tried to get Brian to get up and go chase it away, but he laughed at me and cited my feminism. I wanted to kick him for that. I said please Brian! Go deal with this, it's so ugly and gross. He said well what if I weren't here? What if I were dead? and so on and so forth until I felt like an immature woman for not being strong enough to deal with a monstrous, beady-eyed, stank wild creature. WTF is the point of having a husband if they don't deal with the stank wild creatures?? LOL.

I gathered up my cats to get the creature, but they both took one look at this thing, hissed, and ran away. I threw various things at it, it never once took it's eyes off me. I felt too hypnotized to do more than make half-assed throws at it, not even coming close to hitting it. Finally when I picked up an ice skate it dropped to the floor and gamboled off. It made a wet fart noise when it hit the floor and left a trail of something, some gooey mess, probably poop. It smelled like rotting meat. I wouldn't have really thrown the ice skate at it because the sharp edge might have hit it, cut it open, then I would have been scarred for life being sprayed with possum blood and intestinal matter, or those little eyes popping and hitting my face. I was so nervous and jittery from the whole thing I had to go running for an hour and then soaked in the tub for an hour. My kids made me retell the story over and over again, my boys making gross jokes like they would have stuck it on a stick and left it in the yard as a warning to other possums. Yuck!

Loving Day

Well I feel like a big dork. HOW could I have missed this? Loving Day

From the site: On June 12th, 1967, interracial couples became legal thanks to the Supreme Court decision entitled Loving v. Virginia. Before that date, states had the right to separate and punish interracial couples. These punishments included imprisonment of up to ten years. Violations included marriage, sex, and living together. This issue is a part of the civil rights movement that is too often forgotten. On June 12th of every year, take a moment and reflect on your legal right to love a person of any race.

Mr. & Mrs. Loving were a couple like me and Brian, white man/black woman.

From the court document regarding their case, found on lovingday.org: In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court [388 U.S. 1, 3] of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court.
The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the antimiscegenation statutes and, after [388 U.S. 1, 4] modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. 2 The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966, 385 U.S. 986.

Read More

Thank the Lovings Brian and I didn't have to put up with such nonsense. My goodness. Not to say we haven't experienced outright hostility and prejudice, because we have...but sheesh, when we filled out our
marriage license nobody even blinked an eye, when we got married the judge didn't seem fazed. We were treated like any other couple getting married. I am so glad and thankful I didn't have to go through this! I don't understand
people so mean-spirited they would deny people who love each other the right to love and be together. Thanks to Aaron for the link.

Submit Your Site

Writer's Digest Magazine is looking for the writer with the best personal website, one that was created and is maintained without outside design help. Sites will be judged on presentation, ease of use, and marketing effectiveness. Send your nominations (it's fine to nominate your own site) to writersdig@fwpubs.com with "Writer's Site" as the subject line. The deadline for nominations is June 14!
Sites will be judged by the editors of Writer's Digest and last year's winner, Scott Johnston (scottjohnston.com). The top 10 sites will be listed in the october issue as well as in the e-newsletter and on writersdigest.com. The winner with the best site will receive up to $250 in software; the other 9 runners-up will receive one-year subscriptions to 2005 Writer's Market Online.

Michael Green Wins Lawsuit

You might have heard about this: Michael Green is a man who was wrongly convicted of rape and served 13 years in prison. He was exonerated by DNA evidence in 2001.
He sued the city of Cleveland and won $1.6 million dollars! Yay! It's still much less than the $10 million he asked for because the city also agreed to
open up other cases for investigation. Turns out the forensics lab guy lied through his teeth at the trial, dude knew from jump that Mr. Green was innocent. For shame. The woman who was raped died in 1989, and the man who actually raped her came forward after reading
about Michael Green's story in 2001. He couldn't live with the shame and the guilt. He's now serving a 5-year sentence. (Why only 5 years for the man who actually raped this woman and over 13 for the innocent man? I don't know, it makes no sense.)

Reading stuff like this, I feel so helpless...what could I possibly do to make the legal system fair?? Here's some interesting ways I found:

Legal Reform Now


Prison Reform

Amnesty International USA

The Wild Boys

I don't care what anybody says: boys ARE different from girls. I know a lot of the differences in behavior are the result of environment. But I suspect that the bulk of the difference is innate. Boys are different than girls. Not better or worse than, just different. They act different. They smell different. I walk into my boys' room and it has that boy smell. It reminds me of how my brothers' rooms used to smell back when I was a kid.

Since school has been out my two sons engage in typical boyhood summer behavior. They get up early and make themselves something to eat. I do not know why they get up so early! Even Todd gets up before 8am and he was notoriously hard to get up throughout the school year. They make huge bowls of cereal and eat them on the porch. After breakfast they watch a show. Then I make them do one chore each, after that they are free to do whatever they please for the rest of the day, since we're not starting summer studies until the 15th. They usually go outside and play, play, play. They play war games and with their Bionicals, and they run around with sticks. We have a log attached to a rope and they like to frequently swing on that.

Brian got this walkie-talkie set with 4 receivers, sometimes we let them go back into the woods and talk to them often on the set. When they burst from the woods with their dirt-smudged faces carrying large sticks and yelling, I think of them as the wild boys. They remind me of the boys in Peter Pan.

Do Not Wake Me Up

One of the things that Brian does that grates on my nerves is he likes to wake me up in the morning when he's feeling amorous. This really, really bothers me. I have chronic insomnia. I do not sleep well. Once asleep, it's touch and go if I stay asleep for more than 4 hours at a stretch. Once asleep, please let me sleep.

Especially since we fooled around twice the night before! See, I love fooling around just as much as Brian does. I'm a sex-positive woman. I'm young and healthy, everything works. My husband is not starved for physical attention; I do not ration it out or dole it out as a favor or withold sex to punish him. Whenever he hears about the frequency of the 'average' married couple he laughs, because we are way above average. So I don't understand why this man feels compelled to wake me up for romping around and then acts as if he's being deprived when I am justifiably offended at being woken up. I told him this morning that one of these days he's going to wake me up and I'm going to stab him in the neck with a pen. I was only half-joking.

I cannot describe to you the rage I felt this morning. How dare he wake me up!! If there is one person on this earth who knows my struggles with sleep, it's Brian. He's been there through years of my tossing and turning. He's seen the effects of lack of sleep on my personality. He's tried to help me, he's made me countless cups of herbal tea, he's sang me quiet songs, he's rubbed my back. He's cradled me in his arms and stroked my face as if I were a baby. He knows, he knows how hard it is for me to fall asleep. He's willingly adjusted his own sleeping habits to help me, from closing the window to turning off the radio to sleeping under mounds of covers. He's seen me diligently try to develop better sleeping habits. I've been trying very hard to sleep at least 6 hours a day and some nights I've been successful at falling back asleep after my four hour wake-up.

Now I do empathize with my husband's plight. I am very cute and alluring and I have a curvy body. I use scrubby gloves when I wash and I lotion my body from head to foot every day so I have soft, soft skin. I have long curly eyelashes that appear to rest on my cheekbones when I sleep, and my full lips naturally curve into a come-hither pout. Some mornings I look crunchy but most of the time I am a vision of loveliness and delectable to the touch. I can see how anybody sleeping next to me would be overcome with passion, I really do. But when I'm sleeping, you keep your passion to yourself! Because I need all the sleep I can get.

After Brian got up and got dressed I explained to him how I felt. To my credit I did not shout or use harsh language or call him names, something I might have done in the past. I calmly asked him not wake me up and explained how hurt and angry it made me feel; how insulted I felt that he was acting as if his being aroused was more important than my getting the sleep I need. He said ok. That's it! Ok. No apology, no seeming like he was even listening. We'll see tomorrow morning if he was listening, all right. I've got my pen.

The Mother-In-Law Pledge

I was reading over at Hip Mama about a poster having trouble with her husband's mother. Just after I finished writing my two cents on the subject, my friend Amy called to bitch about her mother-in-law. Then I called my friend Diane E. to see if she can come to my graduation party, and she starts going off about her mother-in-law. Is there something in the water? What's the deal?

I kinda had to laugh at Amy because she was one of my friends who acted like I was completely stupid for moving around the corner from Brian's mom. But then what does she do? Last year before Christmas they moved, you guessed it, a block away from her in-laws. I was actually expecting the shit to hit the fan much earlier. I have to give Amy a lot of props for holding it down for so long.

Things are a lot better between me and Brian since we almost divorced in 2002. Because I chose to stay married to him and because she is a good grandmother who loves my children, I am trying to be a good person and forgive and forget how mean his mother was to me but it is very hard. I am not a good person, I guess. This is a woman who is the primary reason why my husband refused to move to San Diego, our intended city of choice, after promising me for years and years. This is a woman who pitched a fit after I asked her not to buy or give my children toy guns. This is a woman who told Brian I was lazy!! after I had to quit a job even though the doctor ordered me to and I was very close to being hospitalized. I could go on.

Instead of focusing on the negative I'm going to use my experiences and those of my friends as daughters-in-law to develop The Mother-In-Law Pledge. I will use this pledge in the future for when my children are married. Keep in mind this is a rough draft (still respect my copyright), I will refine and amend this ASAP. Ok, here goes:

1. I will understand my child is grown. I cannot do the job of raising him or her anymore. I will understand that now is the time for my child to be united with his or her partner, not with me. I will not feel jealousy or feel slighted now that I am no longer the most important person in my child's life. Instead, I will understand that I did an excellent job in raising a person who is willing to undertake the difficult joy of partnering with another human being.

2. I will respect my child's partner. This may not be the person I would have chosen or envisioned for my child. I will understand, however, that this is the person my child has chosen to partner with in this life.

3. I will stay out of my child's relationship. I will understand that the only people who really know everything that goes on in a marriage are the 2 people involved in it. I will respect my child's feelings of hurt, anger, or sadness during times of stress in his or her marriage and I will comfort my child, but I will not call his or her spouse names or in other ways disparage their character, nor will I suggest that they separate or divorce (unless violence is involved). I will understand that my child is not perfect and has probably done an equal share of contributing to problems in his or her marriage.

4. I will do my best to make my child's partner feel welcome and included into our family. I will invite him or her to all family events and I will include him or her in the conversations. I will not seat my son or daughter-in-law separate from the rest of the family, and I will not insist that my child sit with me.

5. I will give gifts to my child and his or her partner and their children with an open heart. I will not ever use gift-giving against them or fling it back in their faces how much I have given them. I will understand my child and son or daughter-in-law owe me nothing for anything material I have given them, and that my gifts do not give me any right to meddle in their parenting or marital business.

6. I will understand that my time of parenting is over. I will not go against my child or his or her partner's parenting decisions regarding my grandchildren. If I truly feel the need to parent again, I will adopt or foster a child.

7. I will befriend my child's partner; I will call just to speak to him or her. I will acknowledge his or her birthday. I will try to get to know him or her as a separate person apart from being married to my child.

8. I will respect the space and privacy of my child and his or her partner. I will not go to their home un-invited. I will not open their mail, I will not move their furniture about, I will not cook their food, etc. I will not even do a bit of tidying up, because my son or daughter-in-law may take this as a reflection on their housekeeping skills. If I feel compelled to comment on the state of their house, I will remember what it's like to have children in a household and how hard it is to keep a house perfectly clean with children around. I will remember that I did not always keep a clean and tidy home then.

9. I will not make plans for, with, or about my grandchildren without first consulting both my child and his or her partner. I will not make promises to my grandchildren about places I will take them or things I will buy them without first talking it over with my child and his or her partner. I will understand that not doing so only causes resentment and anger from my child and son or daughter-in-law and grief and confusion for my grandchild if it turns out they cannot go.

10. I will remember my own experiences as a daughter-in-law and never, ever, ever make any future daughter or son-in-law of mine feel slighted, embarrassed, ashamed, or hurt. I will treat my son or daughter-in-law exactly how I want my child treated by his or her in-laws.

Called up both Amy and Diane to read this to them. They said they wanted copies; one for themselves and one for their mothers-in-law.

Writing Schedule

I've been struggling lately with keeping my schedule for writing together. I've been working so long on the Mama books that I've neglected my other writing projects. I've got a lot of new stuff I've been mulling over in my head.
For years I wrote during the night, but now that I've been working on sleeping more it's cut into my writing time. That sucks. What I really need to do is keep track of my time better. I get a lot done but I am sure there is time I could be using more productively.

Fred Flintsone Leg

I stayed up last night until 5am working on stuff. I worked on my store for this site, I printed up some zines, and I made stabs at getting my downstairs 'office' organized. My legs tend to fall asleep when I sit for long periods so I made sure to get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour. I noticed my feet tingling a little but when I stamped my feet it went away so I didn't pay it too much attention.

When I started to go up to bed, I looked down and noticed that my right ankle had swollen! A lot! I was all, what the hell?! I looked like I had the leg of a caveman, you know, Fred Flintsone Leg.

I looked like I had no ankle at all, just a leg that ended in a stumpy foot. It freaked me out, because the last time my ankles became swollen like this was in 2002 when I got really sick. The last time before that was in 1994 when I was pregnant with Scott and didn't know it. Well, I'm not pregnant now, I know for a fact, and I just saw the doctor 2 weeks ago. I decided to take a bath. After my bath I went to sleep, propping my leg on 3 pillows. I started to wake Brian up to show him how gross my ankle looked but didn't. My digital camera is not working so I started to go wake up Iyende so I could use hers, but then I fell asleep. I wanted a picture! I woke up around 11 and my ankle was less swollen, though still puffy and tender.

Brian got up with the kids and went grocery shopping. As I'm writing this the boys are jumping around laughing at what I'm writing, and Iyende is hovering in the background talking on the phone with a friend. Occasionally she tells me not to close out any of the Linkin Park related windows she has open. I've got out the Icy Pak to put on my ankle and I'm going back to bed.

Other People's Houses

I don't usually like mysteries because in general I find them scary, but this book by Susan Rogers Cooper is not boo! scary! at all. It is frightening in another way, for it tells the story of how identity loss can just break a person down.

A small town sheriff has to solve the mystery of why an entire family died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Horrible as it is to find a family like that, the town is extrememly shocked and puzzled over the nasty condition the house is in. It's just filthy; filled with trash, dirty diapers, rotting food, just gross. I almost put the book down reading this part because I grew up in a very messy home and lived with relatives briefly as an adult who lived nasty; I just can't stand filth and roaches and shit all in the house. Ugh.

After much sleuthing around the sheriff discovers why the family lived this way. It was truly a surprise, but like I said it wasn't scary at all, just sad. She did an excellent job with this book. I liked it a lot.

Todd's Graduation

Todd graduated from kindergarten today! He was so excited. He's usually hard to wake up in the morning, but this morning when I woke him he got right up. He went into the bathroom and looked at the tub and said, "My tub's not full enough" and went back to bed and pulled the covers over his head. I got him up again five minutes later by singing, "It's time for your graduation bath!" He leaped out of bed and jumped in the tub.

The graduation was very nice, it started on time and all the kids were well-behaved. They had caps and gowns. It was too cute. When they were presented with their kindergarten 'diplomas' each child was turned to face the audience so they could get a picture taken by their parents. Brian had to work but his parents were able to come, and I got Scott out of class. Afterwards we went back to Todd's class, and then I got to sign him out for lunch. We went to Burger King and got Veggie Whoppers, french fries, onion rings and lime Icees. Todd was so happy 'cause I rarely buy fast food.

After lunch we walked back to his school and had a nice talk. The balloon he got after the ceremony popped and he cried a bit, but was soon happy because out of nowhere there was a ton of dandelion fluff blowing around. It looked really pretty; for a moment we looked like we were in a snow globe.

My baby has completed kindergarten.

Simplify Your Life

I love this book! It has been so helpful to me. I've had it for a while, read it and re-read it a bunch of times. Simplify Your Life: Get Organized and Stay That Way! by Marcia Ramsland is a cool book that gives you easy-to-apply ways to get yourself organized.

I have wasted so much time just because I wasn't organized. Having to search for stuff, living in chaos, all of that. I don't do well when my living space is junky, so getting my home together was really important to me. This book also helped me because it gave me a system for keeping my business desk and files together. She includes biblical quotes, but they are not offensive or intrusive in any way, which is important if you are not a Christian like me and it always seem like you're being evangelized to. I felt all the quotes fit right into the message of the book.

She also gave working examples for how you can organize mealtimes, laundry and closets, and setting up a cleaning schedule and geting rid of clutter.