Archive for the 'Bay Area' Category

The San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair

Published on March 16, 2010 in Bay Area, Books & News, Social Issues and writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

On Saturday, I had a table at San Francisco’s Anarchist Book Fair. I split the table with Corbin Lewars, whose new book, Creating a Life: The Memoir of a Mom and Writer in the Making, just came out with Catalyst Book Press (my small press).

We’d gone to an anarchist parents gathering on Thursday, where Corbin read from both the book and her zine, Reality Mom.  One person had bought a copy of her zine, and several other copies had disappeared without being paid for.  So I expected the day to be a wash. I figured the books would be too expensive and on topics that wouldn’t interest anybody. Besides, anarchists don’t have money, I told Corbin. They live in squats and pass out flyers that say things like, “If you’re not stealing from your boss, you’re letting your boss steal from you.”

But I was surprised. I sold out of all the copies of The Confessional that I had brought. “I think you found your audience,” Corbin told me as copy after copy disappeared from my table.

This has really never happened before, except when the book first came out and I had a book signing in my home town.  

And we sold quite a few copies of both Creating a Life and Labor Pains and Birth Stories. There are a lot of midwives and doulas who are either anarchists or sympathetic, apparently.

What I find interesting about anarchists is how their philosophy of rugged individualism clashes with the very clear “code” dress that they all wear. Lots of black, lots of chains, lots of partially shaved heads, lots of tattoos, and, of course, the ubiquitous political statements that almost always included the word “fuck” somewhere on their clothes…..For example, I saw several people wearing a small pin that read, “Fuck hate.”

I spoke briefly with an anarchist parent who said that her daughter’s struggle is so different than hers. “I was always trying to stand out, to be an individual,” she said. “But X is always trying to fit in.”

I didn’t say it, but surrounded by anarchists, nobody stood out. It’s not being an individual if you’re adhering to some code….even an anarchist code.

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Home and Community

Published on July 25, 2009 in Bay Area, Cultural categories, El Paso and South Africa. 0 Comments

What does it mean to have a home? Is it a place or the people in a place that make something “home”? I happen to think it’s both. Our attachment begins to the people in a place, but every place’s unique history produces a particular emotional and cultural aura.

El_Paso_Skyline2For years, I’ve considered El Paso home. What I love about El Paso: my family, my two best friends and their families, my husband’s family, the gang at Cinco Puntos Press,  the latino culture, the interesting and complex history of the Border region that is like no place else in the United States, the immigrant sensibility of “work hard and don’t blame anybody but yourself if you don’t succeed,” the Mexican food (!), J-Town, the mixture of Spanish and English, and the glorioius desert landscape of mountain and plain.  

Lately, the idea of El Paso as “home” has been changing to “El Paso is my hometown.” Continue reading ‘Home and Community’

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Eek-A-Mouse and the thugs in San Jose

Published on July 10, 2009 in Bay Area, Iraq, Iraq war, Music, Uncategorized, latino/a, pacifism, peace, poverty, power, race and violence. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

We went to see Eek-A-Mouse last night at a free concert in San Jose’s downtown park. This is our fourth time to see Eek-a-Mouse and it doesn’t get much better than free concert, outdoors, summer nights, fairly cheap beer, surrounded by a bunch of thugs, all chilled out because it is, after all, a reggae concert in northern California.

Eek-a-MouseI’ve lived in the Bay Area for four years now but usually we go to outdoor concerts in San Francisco. With our move to Livermore, San Jose is closer so it may become our port of call. Anyway, right away, as we walked to the park, I was surprised by three things: how everybody was dressed in black, how many dudes there had gold teeth (can I just say, ew), and completely beside the gold teeth, how many tough guys were hanging around. What I mean to say is, every other person looked like a gangsta.

Maybe to outsiders, the Bay Area is lumped together as one big cauldron of weird-ass rainbow-wearin’ gay lovin’ hippiefied liberals. But for the record, Continue reading ‘Eek-A-Mouse and the thugs in San Jose’

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Livin’ in Livermore

Published on June 30, 2009 in America, Bay Area, Cultural categories and homeless. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Right before I left for my research in South Africa, Chris and I bought a house in Livermore, California. Livermore is the farthest east community in the Bay Area–almost “country,” no longer completely urban the way San Bruno is. It’s the land of big trucks, big backyards, two and three car garages, boats, friendly neighbors, safe neighborhoods, and, sadly, people who voted “Yes” on Prop 8. (We’ll reverse it one of these days, hopefully soon.)

The more I live here, the more I like it. It takes ten minutes to walk to the inviting downtown, with its fountains, benches, cafes, bars, and donut shops. It’s another ten minute walk to make copies, send faxes, or mail books. Ten minutes to the downtown Catholic church, if I ever decide to go, and two minutes to an Episcopalian church, if I ever decide to go. We’ve got a Montesorri school half a mile away and the public school system here is at least acceptable. It’s a leeetle white bread for me, but that again depends on the neighborhood. Thankfully, Chris and I have plenty of Spanish speaking neighbors.

Chris has something of a commute from here, and he doesn’t like the traffic that starts at 6 a.m., so he’s started going to the gym at about 3 in the morning and leaving here by 5. This morning, he came back into the bedroom and woke me up.

“There’s some homeless dude sleeping on the sidewalk in front of our house.” Continue reading ‘Livin’ in Livermore’

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Another Homeless Kid

Published on June 26, 2009 in Bay Area, Cultural categories, Social Issues, Young Adult, homeless, pacifism, sex and teenagers. 0 Comments

This afternoon, I was doing my usual Friday afternoon volunteering with homeless teenagers in the Haight-Ashbury district, San Francisco. A really nice kid I’d never seen before walked in, shook my hand as he introduced himself, was clean and neat, his hair cut nicely, his clothes freshly washed. Maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. Twenty at most. He ate quietly and politely and kept smiling at me. He just seemed like a really good kid. I like all the kids at Haight Street, with the exception of a few psychos I’ve met, but this kid seemed like an ultra wonderful kid, the kind you don’t meet very often on the streets. No hint of a mental illness. No hint that he came from a broken family, been thrown around in foster care homes, been broken by the system.

So maybe I’d already guessed his story when he told me he was gay.

“When was the last time you saw your parents?” I asked.

“Four years,” he said. ”They don’t, you know, approve. I’ve made myself scarce.” Continue reading ‘Another Homeless Kid’

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More Reviews–Labor Pains and Birth Stories

Published on April 15, 2009 in Bay Area, Books & News, Catalyst Book Press, Social Issues, birth stories, book review, feminism, fertility, infertility, literature, sex, western medicine, women and writing. 0 Comments Tags: .

From Midwest Book Review: “Maternity is more than putting on a little weight and having a baby show up nine months later. “Labor Pains and Birth Stories” is a collection of anecdotes covering the adventure and misadventure that is oncoming motherhood – as well as oncoming fatherhood. Maternity is a nine month span of joy and worry; joy because of the arrival of a new soul to the world, and worry that every little thing you do during this time could screw them up for life. “Labor Pains and Birth Stories” is a fine choice for future mothers, and should not be ignored by future fathers either. ”

From Ralph Magazine: Kind of an odd review, and thoroughly disagree that the best writing is at the front of the book, but here’s one quote: “We are reminded in a couple of these stories that — in a single twenty-four hour period — there are 300,000 children being born into the world. If there are two words to describe the truth of becoming a mother, one is pain; the other is waiting.”

Check out Bookslut’s provocative discussion of childbirth after reading Labor Pains and Birth Stories. A thoughtful review, not necessarily positive, and I’m certainly appreciative of the time and effort put into this one, though I disagree with the assumption that I had a political agenda and was pushing midwifery/home birth/ natural births and am opposed to cesarean sections, since well ovver half of the contributors (almost 2/3) had hospital births. But it’s true, I didn’t include a cesarean section story–nobody contributed a cesarean section story, so I had none to offer.

And here’s one from MetroActive, one of the Bay Area’s many small newspapers. (Thank you, Tania, for securing this one!) “My hope is that our child’s birth will be simple and smooth. Labor Pains and Birth Stories assures me that this is a delusional fantasy. Labor Pains and Birth Stories reminds me about pelvic exams and pitocin and epidurals and slowed heart rates and complications and death and arrrggghhh. Elisabeth Aron turns in a tear-jerking story of a stillbirth; Ann Angel writes about her teenage daughter giving a child up for adoption; and Sebastopol author Tania Pryputniewicz shows that no matter how carefully one plans for a natural, simple birth, there’s always the possibility of the dreadfully unexpected. Can’t it just be easy? Please?”

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My Brother was Homeless…and other stories

Published on February 2, 2009 in America, Bay Area, Social Issues, Young Adult, drugs, homeless, poverty and teenagers. 3 Comments

Seven or eight years ago, I was walking in the University District in Seattle, and there he was, huddled in the doorway, his hair matted, toenails black.

My brother Matt. Continue reading ‘My Brother was Homeless…and other stories’

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Scary picture

Published on November 11, 2008 in Bay Area, Cultural categories, Photos, Social Issues, feminism, free speech, marriage, politics, polygamy, race, religion, sex and women. 3 Comments

mormon-picture.jpgThis picture was taken in Sacramento near the capitol steps prior to voting on Proposition 8, the proposition that banned gay marriage in California. While I find this man’s views appalling, I think he has a right to express them. And although I find his views abhorrent, I prefer someone who is clear on what they think about these issues, who at least is honest about what he thinks, who doesn’t provide mealy-mouthed, watered-down versions of his truth. But I wonder how many Mormons would be as honest as this one? Or how many Mormons would agree with what this man is proclaiming for Mormonism?

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AWOL and PTSD

Published on April 29, 2008 in America, Bay Area, Golden Gate Park, Iraq, Iraq war, Social Issues, homeless, politics, violence and war. 2 Comments

Yesterday was my day to work with homeless youth in San Francisco. Over the past year since I’ve been working for them, I’ve been struck each time a former soldier comes through. I’m talking about young men who are 19 or 20 or 21 and have returned from Iraq with Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, and now they are homeless. I notice them because they always have service dogs to help them with their panic attacks and other aspects of PTSD. I notice them, of course, because I’m a pacifist and, well, it doesn’t surprise me one little bit that war has damaged them. Many people, not just pacifists, argue that war damages everybody it touches, to lesser and greater extents, no matter if you believe or know you’re fighting on the “right” side. And these young men don’t seem to carry that assurance, even if they one time did.

Yesterday, I met a young man who has gone AWOL. I didn’t catch his entire story, though I wanted to hear more about it. It sounded like he had been to either Iraq or Afghanistan but that was the part I missed. I did hear that his brother was killed and two friends were killed in Iraq, and he was unwilling to be shipped back. So he deserted and he was on his way to Canada. It saddens me to no end to see a young man’s life end this way: hunted by the military now, but scared so shitless that being hunted by the army and living illegally in Canada is better than going back to Iraq. I saw one of those young men in Vancouver last Christmas–an Iraq war veteran, begging for money on the street. I know people have knee-jerk reactions to this subject and I’m not actually trying to force a particular opinion about the war here when I say it’s sad. A young person’s destroyed life–destoyed hopes, destroyed dreams–a young person who lives with this kind of fear every day: this is something that should be sad to anybody, no matter their position on the war.  

I’ve been unable to post as regularly as I’d like to lately. While I’m taking classes at Stanford this quarter, it’s kept me busier than I like, and it’s not possible to post regularly. But the end is in sight–only five weeks away. In the meantime, I’ve also posted another couple of blogs at Catalyst’s blog.

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Hatin’ on Texas

Published on December 17, 2007 in Bay Area, El Paso, Social Issues, U.S.-Mexico Border, Uncategorized and politics. 5 Comments

Anybody who’s from Texas and travels outside the state knows what I’m talking about. You meet someone, you get to talking, you say you’re from El Paso, and their nose wrinkles up as they ask, “Texas?” like a bad smell just invaded the room. On Friday, I met a man who says he refuses to even fly over the state. How do you refuse to fly over a state? And why would you even bother? Sure, he was making a joke, sort of. But still.

I’ve tried to figure this latent and sometimes not-so-latent hostility out.  What I’ve come to realize is that these people who wrinkle their noses when you say you’re from Texas are almost invariably liberal and their hatin’ on Texas is a political statement: George W. is from Texas and Texas is a Republican state; ergo, Texas is bad. (By the way, I’ve heard conservatives make similar statements about places like Boulder or Berkeley or San Francisco.)

Whatever. I don’t like Dallas myself but why not? Because of some stereotype? Besides El Paso, I actually really like some other places in Texas–Austin and San Antonio, for example. I do feel frustration that the Texas-Mexico border region is so frequently ignored by the rest of the state, except when the state wants to turn its eagle eye onto the “problems” of immigration or transnational crime. But the truth is, Texas is full of good people, some okay people, and some people who aren’t so hot and might even be downright evil–just like any place. The partisan politics that cause people to dislike an entire region are pretty damn silly, when you think about it. So why is it so socially acceptable?

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