Middle Schoolers Coming Out

The NY Times has a pretty long article about coming out in middle school, including some interviews with kids in Maine.

I was guilty of my share of [disbelief], too, the first time I met Kera — then a 12-year-old seventh grader — and her 13-year-old best friend, Justin, last spring in a city in New England. Kera had small, delicate features. Justin had freckles and braces. They seemed like kids. Yet there they were at a bookstore coffee shop after school, talking nonchalantly — when they weren’t giggling uncontrollably about one of their many inside jokes, that is — about their sexual identities. Kera said she was bisexual. Justin said he was gay. The effect was initially surreal to me, and before long I heard myself blurt out, “But you’re so young!”

It's a thoughtful article, and the author acknowledges his own prejudices; the basic message is that the world isn't quite ready for these kids, but it can't stop them. I like that.

Baby pears

No, really. Baby pears.

I don't usually link to kottke articles but I couldn't resist.

Baby pears! Baby pears!

Milestones

I need to mention that at some point this month, this blog passed the 10,000 views level. I don't know what I think about that, but there it is.

Also, I think I've passed my four-year blog anniversary, even though the site only seems to be archived to early 2006. I distinctly remember blogging about Meg Perry's death, which happened in December 2005... so there's that.

It's an exciting time here in jennyjeezland. Keep on keeping on.

Med management

So a friend asked me recently about my experience with medication, based on what I have written, and I thought it might be helpful to share my response to them here. There may be other folks wondering the same thing and not wanting to ask outright... and also I want to talk about this stuff, publicly.

Because of what I wrote before, I've actually had several people share their own experience with depression and medication, and that's been great. I think that talking is a big part of eliminating the shame around depression and anxiety... and for me, talking has helped ease some of my own disappointment that this is not something that I can treat without medication. There is such a thing as a chemical imbalance. I don't like taking a pill every day, but I can't deny that doing so makes me feel like I can exist--unlike my own untreated feelings, which sometimes make me feel like I can't exist.

I don't think that medication is a permanent solution for me, but it's a tool that I'm using (along with really active therapy, exercise, and better communications in my personal relationships) to reroute the old thought patterns that got me into trouble.

So anyway, here's what I wrote to someone asking more specifically about my experience with meds. I edited the name of the medication out because I am uncomfortable sharing my current prescriptions publicly, but if you want to know leave I'll leave my email in the comments so you can contact me and I'll tell you:

The medication I take (an SSRI) was prescribed primarily for anxiety, with the added benefit of treating my depression. I'm not sure I made that clear in the blog post... But I think that my out of control anxiety made me depressed, so treating one actually was treating the other. And for some reason it's harder to talk about anxiety than depression.

What the medication did was kind of narrow the range of my mood, but not in a bad way. So I still get anxious or depressed sometimes, as people do, but it's like the volume got turned down and the feelings/moods are manageable. The other thing that I think the medication did is to make therapy more helpful, because once the volume was down on the feelings--once I wasn't in crisis all the time any more--I was able to talk about some of the things which *cause* the feelings, and that reduced the anxiety & depression even more.

I started with ****, which is almost exactly the same thing as the thing I'm currently taking (and a lot cheaper), but the pills have lactose in them, and apparently I am extremely sensitive to it.

I have taken other medications in the past (Paxil, Wellbutrin, and imipramine), but those were only for depression, and they didn't work well enough to endure the side effects--things like difficulty being creative, sexual dysfunction, weird body sensations, and increased anxiety. I also wasn't in good therapy while I was taking them, so that makes a big difference. I don't personally believe in medication without therapy.

But while there I have had some side effects (a bit of weight gain, some forgetfulness, a change in the way my body reacts to alcohol, and some stomach sensitivity to coffee), the benefits FAR FAR outweigh them.

So, basically, it's unfortunately a bit of trial and error with medications to see what you'll tolerate best. But I would recommend talking to the doc or psychiatrist who you want to go to about what side effects you're worried about and choosing one that doesn't have many of those. I like the site at drugs.com, where you can look up medications and basically get the same info they give you in those printout things you get in the prescription bag at the drug store.

Obama to Letterman: I Was Black Before the Election

I sometimes don't think it's possible for me to love the president more than I do, and then something like this happens:

Dan Savage (whose voice is the voice of my conscience, btw) says this about the above video

... just because Obama was black before the election and still managed to get elected doesn't mean that racism isn't a problem and that racists don't exist. Remember Obama Waffles? But politically Obama has to avoid the angry-black-man label—which is why he's being baited with racist images and slurs and will go on being baited until sometime after 2012—because it would hurt him with middle-of-the-road white independents who don't want to believe that America has a race problem still.

So our first black president can't call clearly racist insults or acts or motives racist. He needs a crazy ol' cracker like Jimmy Carter to do that for him—and then he needs to go on TV and dismiss and downplay Carter's comments. And Americans are simultaneously upset with Carter because he's right and grateful to the president for letting them—and the country—off the hook.

Savage is exactly right. I've been reading Obama's writing, and it's given me a little understanding of where he's going. He's opposed to the radicalization and separation that is happening with our political parties; he's a community organizer through and through. And I have a great appreciation for his understanding of race politics, and his bravery and willingness to be the trailbreaker.

Also, he's hot. And I don't even swing that way.

Become pencils after you pass away...

Become pencils after you pass away...: "

Nadine Jarvis's 'Carbon copies'... A little morbid, but a clever idea

Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind. Each pencil is foil stamped with the name of the person. Only one pencil can be removed at a time, it is then sharpened back into the box causing the sharpenings to occupy the space of the used pencils. Over time the pencil box fills with sharpenings - a new ash, transforming it into an urn. The window acts as a timeline, showing you the amount of pencils left as time goes by.

I don't think it's morbid. I think it's lovely. Write about me with me after I'm dead. via

Happiness Survey

A little while ago I agreed to participate in a study that uses my iphone (have I mentioned I got an iphone? iphone iphone iphone) to track my happiness. I responded to short surveys about 80 times over a period of several weeks about what I was doing and how happy I was.

I just got my first report back, and the results are interesting. And, they come in the form of charts, which you know I love.

Though I often feel lonely, I am apparently only slightly happier with others than I am alone:

Alone?

% Happy

It's no surprise to me that I like small groups bigger than large groups:


# of people interacting with?

% Happy

What is surprising is that the amount of sleep I get has almost nothing to do with my happiness:

%Happy

Hours of sleep

Have an iphone? Sign up for the survey here. Don't yet have an iphone? Writhe in jealousy, my friend.

I am now an adult... but it still strikes me at odd times. Like last night, when I realized that what I was most looking forward to was finishing the dishes and having a cup of tea in the backyard. Not that household cleanliness and hot drinks are bad, necessarily. But having that be the great joy of my evening--instead of, say, staying up till 1 around a campfire, or being kept awake by the torments of loooooove, or writing bad poetry about either of these two other things--felt suddenly very Grown Up. I immediately felt the need to go get a tattoo AND shave my head.

Except, you know, my job. And stuff.

A few weeks ago I had a long discussion with a friend about the difference between being a grownup and being an adult. Grownups have dead souls, was the implication. Grownups are done growing, and done changing. Grownups in the Little Prince grande personne sense. Which doesn't feel like what I am, but maybe I'm deluding myself? I do feel more stable, less volatile, more certain of myself and of the world. I am calmer and more likely to take pleasures from the contrast between hot tea and cool evening air than from uprooting my life on a whim. Maybe that looks like soul-death from the outside.

And then Jenny Holzer, as part of her work Truisms posted this message on Twitter the other day:



While I've accepted most of her other truisms as, well, true, this one stuck in my gullet. Which I says more about me remaining partially adolescent than it does about the truthfulness of the statement.

I want to end with a conclusion that starts, "But then I..." Unfortunately, there is no conclusion. My self is in tension with myself. Is becoming an adult like selling out? Did all of the adults I knew as a young person--people who seemed so together and responsible and boring--all feel like this? Yes, and yes. Looking forward to more of this.

Smoke and ashes

I love watching Mad Men, but it makes me want to smoke and drink like crazy. Everyone smokes. Everyone drinks. All the time. I remember ashtrays in movie theaters and hospital waiting rooms, but it seems like a dream of the Dark Ages. Was life really like this? It doesn't seem possible.

My grandmother used to tell the story of how her doctor thought she was gaining too much weight during her pregnancy, and encouraged her to start smoking to help her not eat so much.

I think that was an entirely different world, an alternate history. How could we have been there and ended up here?




via

The Daily Death: When A Celebrity Dies Every 15 Minutes

The Daily Death: When A Celebrity Dies Every 15 Minutes: "

In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes. Already it’s happening. The ascent of the microcelebrities, the 24 hour news cycle, citizen journalism, and our darkest fantasies all collide on Twitter now. The website’s rhetorical question “What are you doing?” sometimes feels more like “Who died today?”

Every day on Twitter, news of another death. Les Paul, John Hughes, Farrah Fawcett, those big names, but also the editor at this publication, the founder of this startup, the people who we might not all know, but someone you know knew them and they are using the space to remember them.

Sure, Maria Shriver’s euology made me sit up straighter and think I want to be like that. But, I mean, was I supposed to be shocked that Eunice Kennedy passed on? I guess it’s small talk of a darker sort. You could talk about the weather or whose heart stopped.

Fall Plans

Mmmm.... Venison.... Hopefully coming to a freezer near you. I'll keep you posted as plans progress.

Bwahahaha!

Michael Heath can always be counted on for some rainy summer entertainment. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. And keep on keeping on, my queer friends: I'm not such a fan of the hot weather anyway.

A ‘cloud of error’ hides the ‘light of reason’:

"Our crops are faring like our moods. The potato crop is blighted, and corn and fruit fields wither. In one historic building in Augusta, rain flooded the basement, as water from another source poured down through the ceiling and extinguished a century-old chandelier.

Few people would be bold enough to suggest the cause of the endless rain and gloom, that the moral climate in Maine has caused the sun to hide its face in shame.

Worse than the rain is the fact that Maine voted in homosexual “marriage.”

In May, our elected officials overturned a law of nature, and in its place paid honor to evil and unnatural practices. Our leaders allowed a cloud of error to hide the light of reason, and then the rain began. How fitting that this eclipse of human reason is mirrored by the disappearance of the sun!"

Agri-Intellectuals

It's nice to see a logical, well-written reply to the locavore/small farm/slow food movement. But I still think this writer is wrong

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals — The American, A Magazine of Ideas:

"On the desk in front of me are a dozen books, all hugely critical of present-day farming. Farmers are often given a pass in these books, painted as either naïve tools of corporate greed, or economic nullities forced into their present circumstances by the unrelenting forces of the twin grindstones of corporate greed and unfeeling markets. To the farmer on the ground, though, a farmer blessed with free choice and hard won experience, the moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river. "

Kind of wish I was there

OK, Go

Summer has now, finally, officially, begun in the jennyjeez household. Last night I went swimming at the Kiwanis Pool, ate a soggy italian sandwich, got an ice cream cone (well, a sorbet cone), and played my guitar.

Too bad it's already August. I'm going to have to work hard to fit a whole summer into this month.

Independence Day

What goes into fireworks (via chart porn)

Toot, toot

Internet heroez:

Click To Play

Public Privacy

I really like social media. Given the limitations on my social life that are inherent in single mom-hood (i.e. most evening-type hanging out has to be done at my house), sometimes online is the best way to get any friend-time in.

Is it sometimes shallow? Sure. But so are the non-online conversations I have with friends, too. I mean, IRL I like talking philosophy and literary theory and queer politics and everything, but I also like talking about how much I don't get the show Wipeout or what color socks I wear.

The bad thing about social media, as far as I can tell, is that everything is documented, and things that would be past and gone in a conversation are visible for potentially ever. And, unfortunately, people act as if their online interactions are private conversations--responding without thinking--when it's actually more like shouting in a really big room full of people.

Case in point: Alice Hoffman, a well-known writer, went kind of nuts on Twitter when she got a bad review. All of the things she's saying are perfectly reasonable things to think and feel and talk about with friends, but it's like she's forgotten that she's saying them in public. Or, if she hasn't, this way of addressing of the issues strikes me as kind of passive aggressive. Why not write an op ed? Or issue a statement through her publicist? Or write an open letter to the reviewer?

As it is, she comes off as petty and nasty and unprofessional, because what she's having trouble with is a *professional* relationship: she writes books and people read and review them. She might as well be angry with the mail carrier for bringing the mail.

Uncool

Proving that I am once again the least cool person ever (just ask my tween, she'll confirm for you), I am now going to complain about the weather.

Gripe, gripe, whine, moan (pause to scrape off mildew, repeat)...










Did I mention that this is my vacation week? It is. The good news is that I've finished a lot of house projects, but I was hoping to get at least a LITTLE Vitamin D on this vacation. Not a lot, just SOME. Instead I'm growing vestigial gills.

Haunted

I like to listen to podcasts when I'm doing unpleasant things, like the dishes, or working out. Some people like music for this purpose. I generally don't; music doesn't have enough words to distract my busy busy mind.

So this weekend I was catching up on some old This American Life episodes while cleaning up, and heard this story of haunting, explained here:

Some nights after I have been in bed for a while, I have felt as if the bed clothes were jerked off me, and I have also felt as if I had been struck on the shoulder. One night I woke up and saw sitting on the foot of my bed a man and a woman. The woman was young, dark and slight, and wore a large picture hat. The man was older, smooth shaven and a little bald. I was paralyzed and could not move, when suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and I was able to sit up, and the man and the woman faded away. Sometimes, after I have gone to bed, the noises from the storeroom are tremendous. It does not happen every night; perhaps a week or ten days will pass, and then again it may be several nights in succession. Sometimes it sounds as if furniture was being piled against the door, as if china was being moved about, and occasionally a long and fearful sigh or wail.

It turns out that they were being poisoned. They called a doctor:

He examined the house thoroughly from top to bottom and interviewed the servants. He found the furnace in a very bad condition, the combustion being imperfect, the fumes, instead of going up the chimney, were pouring gases of carbon monoxide into our rooms. He advised us not to let the children sleep in the house another night. If they did, he said we might find in the morning that some one of them would never wake again.

It makes me wonder about "ghostly" experiences of my own. Were they just bad air? Will anyone ever explain alien sightings this way, or just ghosts? How about unicorns? Are all the ramblings of the mind preventable?







images from http://www.ghoststoriesandpictures.com/