Category: editorials

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Extra Clothespins: A New Podcast

extra clothespins podcast icons

I’m getting really tired of not having all the Congressional news in one place, y’all. So I’m taking it upon myself to do my best and bring that to you.

Introducing Extra Clothespins – the short-form podcast about news that ACTUALLY matters.

This podcast aims to bring attention to what bills Congress is talking about, protests that are organizing and happening, and how you can contact your Representatives and Senators about the relevant issues of the day.

All of this is available to listen to, for free, at the Extra Clothespins blog.

(It’s called Extra Clothespins because I’m starting another podcast with my buddy Sean, called Clothespins & Hand Grenades – it’s a punk radio show podcast that also features rant segments, congressional news segments, and LOTS of punk, old and new. Mostly old. It’s not live yet, but when it is, I’ll feature it in a separate post).

Check out the Extra Clothespins show, and if you like it, share it!

Thank you for reading and listening.

You. Are. Awesome.

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Bringing Review Day Tuesdays Back!

knights without armor book about masculinity
I will be reading this soon!

It’s been a while since I’ve done Review Day Tuesdays, my YouTube video series where I review new comics, books, and other works. I had put it on hiatus back in the tail end of June this year, because my schedule was getting too bananas to update it weekly.

Now I’m getting to a point where I can revive the series, but there will be one big change.

After I get done with a few more videos for the Poetry for Troubled Times series, I’ll be bringing back Review Day Tuesdays, to update every other week.

Why?

Not only have I been reading new comics lately, but I’ve also taken up the job of being head librarian at my local Universalist Unitarian Church. The library at the church has a lot of books dealing with LGBT issues, sociology, gender, and world religions, and that’s not even touching on the biography section or the multiple shelves of poetry.

One book in particular is one I want to discuss – the book pictured at the top of this post.

I’m looking forward to this one especially because of some reasons pointed out in this Hannah Wilton video about feminism and masculinity. The biggest reason is that while feminism has made great strides for women’s rights and roles, the roles of men haven’t been discussed much, and for feminism to be effective for everyone, that MUST be discussed.

Also! There’s one book I found in the library collection, called “Against the Tide.” It’s a book about men in the feminist movement. That book has a chapter talking about how the Equal Rights Act can benefit men as well as women, and I will actually read that chapter for YouTube at some point in the next few months, because it has portions in it that few people discuss even today.

I can’t wait to share these books with you, and the new comics I’ve come across, including Tank Girl’s newest run, “GOLD,” and “Once Our Land,” an 1830s post-apocalyptic comic that takes place in Germany.

Books, and the discussions of their ideas, are more important now than ever, and I hope you’ll join me when the series gets fully revived. I’ll announce a more specific date on my email newsletter.

Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

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The Ball Will Return: Thoughts on Creative Work

"the original" painting

There was a post I wrote on this blog years ago. It’s so old I had written it back when this blog was hosted on Blogger (jeez, remember that?). It was about the concept Neil Gaiman mentioned in a commencement speech in 2012: the concept of throwing your work out to the world like messages in a bottle, and hoping that the bottles wash back to you.

At the time I wrote my blog post, I didn’t mention it, but I had a kind of fatalistic view of the bottles – I thought that when I threw bottles out into the sea, they would never come back. I would post work, work, and more work, and get no return out of it.

It wasn’t until I came across Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert that I revisited this idea of throwing bottles/work out to the world. Continue reading “The Ball Will Return: Thoughts on Creative Work”

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Thoughts on “Transgender Warriors” and Leslie Friedman

I’m currently reading a fascinating book called Transgender Warriors by Leslie Friedman. It makes me think of The Yellow Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee in that both books are part memoir, part history books. The Yellow Lighted Bookshop is about the history of books as much as it’s the tale of the author growing into a mature librarian. Transgender Warriors is as much about Friedman as it is about trans people in history.

I recognized quite a few names of warriors in the first few chapters, as those people of history also appear in David E. Jones’s Women Warriors: A History. Women Warriors acknowledges that many of the women cross-dressed or exhibited more masculine qualities (like King Nzinga) but still has that gender binary. You have to infer that some women in that book were, in fact, non-binary. Maybe not “trans,” but definitely falling outside of man/woman dichotomies.

With that said, Friedman’s personal history is profoundly biased in one way: s/he was an active member, for many years, of the World Workers Party, a communist organization that was an offshoot of the Socialist Party in the USA. For all I know, s/he may still be a member.

So, there are many, many, many, MANY moments in the book that are cringe/noteworthy. To say s/he is NOT a fan of capitalism is an understatement on par with “I think North Korea may have a humanitarian problem.” Continue reading “Thoughts on “Transgender Warriors” and Leslie Friedman”