Tag Archives: GEN-Neutral

I Always Have a Friend

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The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend. ~Cali Rae Turner

I don’t know who Cali Rae Turner is but Turner once said “The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend.” I have three sisters and from my experience that is not completely true. But it’s true enough. I certainly know that one of my best friends in life has always been my middle sister. Her children are my age, but it doesn’t matter. She and I are the ones who are close and always have been.

My earliest memory is of her. I know it is my memory and not a family story because nobody else remembered it, even my sister, until I reminded her. I was 18 months old, had just had my tonsils removed (They grew back!) and was in the hospital in a crib. A nurse came to give me a shot and I kept running away from her, going from one end of the crib to the other. So the nurse had her grab me and hold me still. Betrayal!!! Obviously, I have forgiven her. Since our parents died, she has been my linchpin.

She was sick last year, a tortuous battle with breast cancer and brain tumors, but she got through it and has been back at work full-time for about two months. She just found out on the 8th that she has lung cancer. Don’t worry. She caught it early at Stage 1 and she should be fine, but it threw me for a loop. A bigger one than last year because I thought we were done with all that. It feels so much like being back at Square One. It is not, we know now that she cannot tolerate Doxorubicin and they won’t use it. This means she won’t have to go through the hell of neutropenia for months on end. So she’s ahead of the game. She is strong, a tough, stoic survivor who will do well.  But I am still off balance, angry because this is so not fair–as if there is anything fair about cancer–and wishing that she could at least had a few more months before cancer took another run at her.

The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend. ~Cali Rae Turner

It’s a beautiful day at Nightfall.

She joined Second Life® about a month or so after I did. I walked her through it. She’s on my friend’s list–Marit Lilliehook, though she has not logged in since 2007. We were going to have adventures in SL together, but she’s one of those computer users who accidentally unfriends her children and has to call my nephew to come over to her house to restore her browsers file menu when she makes it disappear. Second Life just overwhelmed her. She’s been using browsers on the internet for 15 years and I still have to remind her how to do a bookmark, so this time it’s not SL’s fault for being too hard. On the other hand, she has crushed the competition in Candy Crush.

She will be okay, I would bet on it. But I am a bit wobbly and may be a bit more erratic than usual with my blogging. However, it will be all okay in the end. I know my sister and if anyone can beat cancer twice, she can.
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I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

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“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

Charlotte Bronte, who wrote Jane Eyre, the unforgettable heroine who said those strong, independent and feminist words, was not the first feminist. However, I don’t think it is an accident that the word feminist was coined within five years of her classic novel. I have been thinking about feminism and Jane Eyre lately, and most particularly this, “I am a free human being with an independent will.” The other day, a Washington Post opinion piece focused on how women are expected to surround their ideas and opinions with weak, soothing qualifiers to protect the tender male ego. It imagined famous quotes as said by women complying with the cultural demand that they efface their ideas. It’s funny and painful because it is so true. It is sad that more than 150 years later, a woman saying “I am a free human being with an independent will,” is still revolutionary.
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Lybra at GEN-Neutral

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Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage

GEN-Neutral is open again with several great creations. The remit for GEN-Neutral designs is to produce gender neutral designs. Things that appeal to both men and women, that can be worn by both men and women. How that is being interpreted varies. There’s a fair number of unisex items such a jeans and tee shirts. There are also several poses, decor and furnishing. All of which tells me that there is a struggle recruiting clothing designers who can get a handle on the idea of multi-gender design over unisex design.One artist who did not struggle, though, was Lybra Rage. She produced leggings and tops that men and women can proudly and beautifully wear.
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The Scents of Autumn

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bags full of leaves are light as balloonsFirst things first, Strawberry Singh wrote an important post about an ongoing fraud happening in SL right now. You should read it to best protect your own account. Of course, a good rule of thumb is not to execute or agree to anything from objects given to you by strangers. While it’s not true that you can never cheat an honest person, it is true that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
bags full of leaves are light as balloons
So autumn is here. Here in Oregon, it’s raining, bringing sweet relief from the heat and let us hope, from the fires that are destroying so much habitat in the Pacific Northwest and California. Here in SL, though, there are no fires and the rain is holding off for another day. However, the state fairs are all over and all the 4Hers have their ribbons and are back in school. Fruits are being harvested and canneries are running around the clock. For me, though, lounging by the barn is a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Schadenfreude’s black squirrel is much more industrious, picking up a small pumpkin to store away.
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The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train

I went to Misfit Ghetto last night and saw this sign. It comes from Robert Lowell who said “The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.” Robert Lowell has been a favorite since I first discovered him in 7th grade. I was shy, a mumbler, constantly admonished to speak louder and my mother made me join the speech team. She believed in meeting challenges head on. I chose Extemporaneous Poetry as my specialty since I loved poetry and my mom made me memorize a poem a week. I figured I could get two for one out of the way.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train

For my first competition I drew “For the Union Dead” by Robert Lowell. The imagery bowled me over and I fell in love with his way of writing, though the poem was not without its problems for my 7th grade self. It used the n-word once, in quotes to indicate that was not a word Lowell would have used. It was a word I had never used and was certainly not acceptable. I had thirty minutes to prepare an introduction and decide how to address this dilemma. I punted and inserted the word soldiers instead. You know, as an adult, I think the person who picked the poems that day probably had not read them.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Is a Train

But also, from hindsight, I don’t mind, because that poem was thrilling to me. If you have seen the film Glory, you know the story memorialized in the statue he describes. But it was not the story, it was the images from phrases like his nose crawling like a snail on the aquarium glass and the yellow dinosaur steamshovels grunting as they work. Most of the poetry I had read (or my mom had chosen for me) had been prettier. She was a big Longfellow, Shelley and Shakespeare fan. Lowell was my introduction to a more robust kind of poetry. He felt rebellious and fierce and I gobbled him up. And yes, he was also bleak and grim and depressive – perfect for adolescence.
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