The Underground

 
When the northern states abolished slavery forever, they became revolutionary for a second time since the original thirteen colonies war for independence with Britain, except this was much more personal. It split a new nation in half along the Mason-Dixon line, between a falsely sharp black-and-white divide, punctuated by the shocking bloodshed of The Civil War.

Of course, the reality of American life is that European colonization and its economy based on imported African slave labor created a corrupt dynamic on top of a native culture that had already bartered, traded, and mated with newly-arrived locals, to create the first mixed ethnicity outside of plantation boundaries. In opposition to the insanely cruel inhumanity that drove the southern slave trade, an underground railroad was designed to free people from their captivity through a secret network of waterways, safe houses, and territories, up to the free states of the north.

New York was essential to the resettlement of freed slaves via its connected waterways of rivers, streams, and brooks. Not far from where I am now is a historic town on the Hudson River called "Nyack", that has a few old underground stops made for a people who yearned to be free. From here, they could escape to the colder north of our upstate wilderness, impenetrable in the wintertime to a slaving people used to the much warmer weather of the American south. Even further north are the prominent river and bay area conduits to Canada, to the always-free provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

We still have rebellious warrior genes in our blood, represented in the eye-patch logo for the Pearl River Pirates high school football team, or the horned helmet for the team from my high school alma mater, the Clarkstown South Vikings of West Nyack. Here, there is same blended ethnicity as Solomon Northup, the famously kidnapped and freed New Yorker from "12 Years A Slave": Indian, African, European, even Asian blood running hotly through our veins. If you ever need to escape tyranny, I knew a few buccaneers who'll help. Welcome to the underground, my friends. You've reached terminus, the end. 
Finally, free at last.

In Vitro

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilisation# 

Native New Yorkers can be wildly out-of-touch with typical American norms, as evidenced by our sophisticated tastes that fit "hand-in-glove" with our thriving street culture. It's both baffling worldly and crazily down-to-earth, as a mixture that both stumps and stupefies the provincials who reach our shores. What to do? Where to go? "Melting pots" stumble those who are new to its exciting mix that we thrive on daily. There's tons of flashing lights, and lots of colors, and movement, and sounds, like a toddler-packed "Cats" matinee musical for savvy adults not on Ritalin. That, unfortunately, was me. Sigh...what I won't do for family.

As it turns out, the same sentiment was shared by my co-workers at my very first publishing job in the historic Flatiron building, located in Manhattan. Your tourist photo op was my first office space, as it still is for the people working the house. While many of you struggled to adapt socially to a rather feminine young man, I was having interesting hallway chats with a very nice production editor proudly sporting a prominent "pink triangle" button to work, as he talked to me about being a Harvard grad and a gay grandfather who came out after marriage and kids. With a woman.

My first meetings in a professional setting were the production meetings we have in publishing. They are weekly check-ins with every branch of the house that works directly with the manufacture of books. There was so much for me to learn as an apprentice that I often didn't know what to ask, so I just listened and wrote stuff down, or scribbled doodles on my big lined notepad. Yay! Office supplies! I was really young. And the managing editor who ran (runs) those meetings was (is) an openly gay women who staged a sit-in at the administration offices while attending Oneonta, which meant we shared the same counter-cultural vibe. She's also from Rockland, and I think Metis.

Needless, I hit it off with that first group of people really well, which made the technical complexity of the work the bulk of my day, over in-house squabbles and political double-timing. I didn't have the power to do anything about it, anyway. But, my higher-ups were tackling the deepest societal issues you can imagine, and they did it while "on the clock" in a fast-moving office that keeps and prints every mistake we make as the core model of our business. 

The managing editor running our weekly meetings had a second-in-command who's also an "out" gay woman, along with my bisexual friend MaryLouise the production editor (her former assistant), plus the gay granddad who also worked in production editorial, and the girl who publicly hooked up with the butch design director at a company Christmas party one year, in what was once known as "the toy building". She was teased for years for sitting on her lap and making out in front of her co-workers. Yeah...that's how we rolled.

I noticed a pregnant woman at one of my first production meetings, and my boss (the senior production manager) chose it as a "teaching moment" that outed her in the process, too. You see, the pre-meeting discussion at the table (before the meeting minutes officially began) centered around Lisa's pregnancy and how her maternity leave would effect the titles in the schedule she was working on. A big part of production is re-assigning work depending on situations just like this one, because life happens all the time. 

She told me a bit about the company's policy on maternity leave, as well as some of the costs related to it that our health insurance covered, which left Lisa the production editor to fight some serious battles with her supervisor's help. And help she got. Not only is Lisa gay like her two direct bosses and other production editorial co-workers, but she was the first woman I ever knew who had an openly in-vitro fertilization process with her also-out female partner through a sperm donor. And that was called "Tuesday morning" at our house, in the autumn of 1993. What does your house talk about?

All That Jazz!

America, meet the Jennings: http://r29.co/1I8ZU1Q

I've been fascinated with the recent heightened awareness about the transgender community for awhile now, because I see them as cultural "outsiders" like me, but not for something of our particular creation. How can this be true? A gay man does not choose to have a brain shape that more closely resembles the brain of a heterosexual woman, a change that occurs during the earliest phases of fetal gestation, which makes it almost impossible for a mother to have any control over it, although photographic imaging technology improves our ability to see almost daily. 

It's given us the necessary scientific evidence we need to help treat our populations who have long suffered from false accusations of choice. How the heck does a small embryo "choose" his or her brain shape? Through sheer willpower?! It sounds absurd to us now that we know better, and yet during the Salem witch hunt days, Puritans wrongly believed women with moles were witches and burned them to death by tying them to a stake, albeit with the "holiest" of motives. Where was the compassion for a common skin feature then? 

What has always been taboo to the typically European "white man" has, in fact, always been accepted (not perfectly, but much better) by native First Nations of America** as a human part of tribal life. In fact, many societies accept the third gender as a natural part of life, the way a mother accepts her child's Albinism; it's a rare but beautiful thing.

Enter into the scene my favorite kiddie New Yorker, beautiful baby Jazz, a wunderkind dynamo if ever there was. From the age of two or three, Jazz told her parents she was a girl, because she is a girl. Not in all facets, yet (because she's still a teenager), but internally, deep in her brain, where we've yet to go where with our still-limited technical abilities, although I feel more confident than ever that we will get the correct results, because this mama ain't ever wrong about what she knows to be true. And so were Jazz's really "New Yawk" parents sure, too; two very normal Longyland people from totally normal backgrounds, who had no idea what "trans" was, let alone suggest it to their baby in utero. 

But what they did have (and still do) was the love, compassion, intelligence, and faith to understand that they did not raise a liar, or a cheat, or a sneak, certainly not as a cute lil' toddler. They choose to love, accept, support, and take care of their special little girl; not because you like it, but because they have G-d's absolute empathy and understanding, just like do you.

Oh, I know all about the wackos who can easily throw up Bible scripture like they wrote it yesterday and understand it perfectly, but as someone who has seen firsthand many people with learning disorders and mentally disabilities struggle to read one perfect, easy book (think of "Bible Study" as Special Ed for the spiritually inept), you know what I'm up against here. All I ask is that you let me tend to my own kind while I get you the information you need, in a way that you can understand. That's it. You don't have to do a thing. I got this one.

Special "shout-outs" to the wonderfully smart Dr. Marci*** for leading the way by honoring her Hippocratic Oath, and actively using her experienced background as a transgender healer to make a difference by saving lives one person at a time, and my man Chaz Bono for staying strong and true. It ain't easy being real in a world that can seem so fake at times, but that's exactly where all the gloriously good stuff is. Thanks for leading the way.


*      http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/06/17/gayness_linked_to_brain.html

**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit

***  http://marcibowers.com/

Green Day (April 2015)

Join us.

http://www.keeprocklandbeautiful.org/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/40602834114953843/

Strip Mall Cemetery

A liquor store parking lot, and a journey back through time.

I've noticed this lot ever since I moved back up to Rockland County, after many years away. Last winter, I began walking to town, first from my mother's place, then closer to town on my own. It's a little cemetery squeezed in between two shopping lots, a place of history that pops out in contrast to the bland surroundings. But the headstones weren't the only thing that attracted my notice. A lot of loud-mouthed, raucous crows squawked at me whenever I walked to the grocery store, cutting across one parking lot to the next.

Who are they?

I'm no stranger to the bird of my Corvus line, an ancestry of Norman, French Swiss, and Irish, who take their heraldic symbol from the large black crow. Whenever I cawed back at them, they answered me every single time, being the excellent and highly intelligent mimics that they are. The names on the stones read Bogert (http://books.google.com/books?id=WdwNExWb7_QC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=Jan+Bogert+New+York&source=bl&ots=aNFCMqTdtM&sig=5YRC7DNAO9ON14cu-meztwUv8nw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6FNBVMi-LajlsATNs4Eo&ved=0CEYQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Jan%20Bogert%20New%20York&f=fals), a family that I thought could be remnants of the old French Huguenots who sailed down the Hudson from Canada, looking for lumber and good farming, which is something this river valley has always had in abundance.

A historical marker: hidden, but also in plain sight.

Since then, I've read excerpts about the Bogerts (www.mytrees.com/ancestry/New-York/Died-1707/Bo/Bogert-family/Jan-Bogert-an001161-302.html), a prominent New York Dutch family who changed their name immediately upon arrival in New Amsterdam, when they began buying land in large parcels. 

A noisy family of crows circled overhead, whenever I came near.

And just like so much in my life, a seemingly random gaggle of circling, noisy black birds led me back in time to a place of big mythological significance to me, because not only am I heir to the oldest Métis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis) and Acadian roots of this New World, but I am also a descendant of the very first Dutch and British families, too.

Cemetery in wintertime.

Such is the nature of inheritance, in this Autumn time when the old spirits and the new mingle in the air over cemeteries from times long past, beckoning to me again and again, by no mere accident or quirk of chance. That's the power of fate.

Ah, yes. This is no accident or random event.

When our local historian, who is also one of our librarians, told me that the old Bogert farm was near a large well and the encampments of two Indian tribes, I had to smile because deep down, I already knew it. I felt it in my bones, just as the crows called it out to me showily, heralding aloud that I had arrived safely home, from travels near and far, surviving adventures both small and frightful, big and powerful, dangerous and heady, just like my ancestors had.  I'm back, and I'm ready to share my story with all of you. 

Marker I.

Marker II.

The Peregrine Falcon

A predator sits in the playground.

Yesterday, on my way to the library, I noticed a man standing in the street next to his red car. He stood out further by turning his head and pointing towards the playground, and there it was perched atop the swing-set: this stunning and very large bird of prey. I immediately crossed the street to get a better look at it, and another woman was taking pictures on the sidewalk with her handicapped son. I said out loud that I thought it was a Peregrine Falcon as I walked towards it, and today's quick research on the Internet proved me correct. I took a few photos of it through the chain link fence, being careful not to disturb it with any sudden movements, or act aggressive towards it in any way, when it opened it's huge wingspan and flew across the street, right in front of me. I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen, as I cheered aloud for it! YEAH!! 

The hunter in its' perch across the street.

The large hunter looked at me from it's new heights in the tall tree, which is a very smart, safe thing for a falcon to do, when humans have clustered around it pointing objects. It looked right at me, and squatted. I thought it was poised for another take off, but it lowered its' head into it's chest while staring at me with its' large eyes, lifted its' tail, and poured out a thick stream of watery white excrement to ward me off from getting any closer. Message received and understood. 
I have the utmost respect for beautiful predators, because they live hard, brutal lives, but this one even more so than usual, because we almost lost it several years back. The return of the Peregrine Falcon is a major victory for us as a people. It was almost extinct along the eastern seaboard, and its' return is a major event for us all. 

Welcome back to your territory, Brother Bird.

May the hunting here be to your liking.

http://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/article_b41d2f22-c61f-57a8-9c39-d1211017a3dd.html

Predator vs. Predator

Aha, Corvus! I see you, crow.

We've had a series of absolutely beautiful mornings with bright, warm sun, cooled by light breezes. Sometimes it's the perfect way to drink coffee and take a good look around, which was exactly what I did. 
I was not disappointed by my porch musings. Across the street, a dead pine among a stand of healthy trees serves as a watchtower for most of the birds that live nearby, the short list that I observed being this: cardinals, sparrows, mourning doves, blue jays, and a few powerful predators perched at the top. At first, a duo of large crows cawed and searched for food, while a few smaller birds clustered on the branches beneath them. But a feather I found a few days earlier was the harbinger of something new to the neighborhood.

New to the neighborhood.

To my surprise, the next morning when I opened the door, I was rewarded with the sight of a small red-tailed hawk at the top spot. 
I sat down to watch him engage his environment, and he was ruling well. A dove landed then quickly took off, then the crows circled nearby from atop a healthy pine, one braving the hawk's watchful gaze to land on a lower branch, only to take off quickly to report back to its' mate. 
I could tell the hawk was extremely aware of its' surroundings. 
Every time it swivelled its' head, the patch of feathers switched from white to brown, the color of the head feathers on the side. It's young and growing fast. I spotted a feather that still had some white downy chick feathers on it after I found a larger, more adult one. 

The last morning I saw it on top of the dead pine tree, I conspicuously took out my dark smart phone camera, pointed it right at the tree from a standing position and snapped a few pics, which sealed the deal that I already knew existed between us, about who was the bigger, smarter predator in the neighborhood. I haven't seen it since.

Bart Discovers MMA

Forgotten at school, again.

"Where's your brother?"

Uh oh. Police Mom Marge is here.

Bart's caught fighting in the playground...

...with Homer's support. Ooops.

So Marge takes on the head of a fight league in order to protest violence, and its effect on kids...

...and kicks his ass. Margie likey!

But, what effect does it have on little Lisa and her brother Bart?

A new generation of fighters! Tune in to the very end to see who wins.

Dedicated to me and my bro Bernie, fighting since we were babies in the late 60s, now celebrating a great sport that finally matches the dreams (and scuffles) of our youth. Special "shout out" to all you "crazy" kids and silly, little dreamers. Here. We. Go.

Wild Calico Kitty

At the beginning of the summer, I saw two little kitties wandering around the basement of a white house, on a street I always walk down. One was black and white, and the other calico. I still see them occasionally during the daytime, but they're a lot better at hiding from prying human eyes, which makes them really hard to spot. 

Sometimes I wonder if they live in one of the big, old houses on the block, so they can be tended to by one of the kindly retirees who like to garden, maybe leaving them saucers of milk outside by the back door, but I also like the idea of them running around town as a kitty dynamic duo, killing small birds, chipmunks, and other small animals that burrow in among the wood piles.  Fare thee well, hunter.

Sweet Cherries

My life, in a bag of cherries: 
bilingual, Oneontan, sweet, and always in season.

Religious Signs, and Other $ Matters

Jesus and Mary, Co-Pilots in Suburbia.

Oh. This Acadian will keep her money, then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadians