Beck's Cafe » 2008 » April

Q&A with Dr. Norman Spack

beckscafe — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:12:55 +0000

I met Dr. Spack at a party held by my friend Laura when she lived in Boston. I remember the night well as it was a typical Laura mash-up of transgender people, kids, college students, genetic people, authors, Drs. and the odd stray who happened to smell free food. In short, fun and always interesting.

Dr. Spack was about the coolest guy at the party. He listened, spoke with passion about the transgender community, and, was from Harvard University. From my brief meeting with him I started to understand that people alot smarter than me were seeing this whole GID thing, weighing the facts and taking it seriously. He helped me to see I wasn’t necessarily crazy. We’ve actually done an article here at Beck’s Cafe on Dr. Spack. You can read that article about a paper he presented at Lahey Clinic at Beck’s Cafe by clicking HERE.

So it was nice to see at Boston.com a Q&A interview with Dr. Spack. It’s a terrific piece and one I thought all our happy coffee swillers would enjoy reading. Some highlights:

Dr. Norman Spack, 64, argues that transgender kids tend to be much happier – and less likely to harm themselves – when they’re able to live in their preferred gender role.
Dr. Spack on trans-kids and suicide, “Transgendered kids have a high level of suicide attempts. Of the patients who have fled England to see me, three out of the four have made very serious suicide attempts. And I’ve never seen any patient make [an attempt] after they’ve started hormonal treatment.”
Dr. Spack on being transgender and religion: “My own rabbi said it best: The transgendered are also created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.”

You can trott over to Boston.com to read the full article by clicking to boston.com at this link here.

Update: Gender Therapists: How do you choose?

beckscafe — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:09:26 +0000

We’ve updated the article here at Beck’s Cafe, “Gender Therapists: How do you choose” with a wonderful article on helping teens choose a therapist. It’s a link at the end of the article.

Happy Re-Reading

WOW – How I love A Small Orange

beckscafe — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:47:28 +0000

I love A Small Orange web hosting! Beck’s Cafe was down and, with one email, the A Small Orange team had it back up and perking!!

WordPress.Com is a wonderful solution but if you are hosting your own version of WordPress I’d suggest you consider A Small Orange, they are juicy!!

So blogging at Beck’s Cafe is back on

Becks Cafe at beckscafe.com down

beckscafe — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:26:41 +0000

I have no idea what the deal is but Beck’s Cafe at http://www.beckscafe.com is down. The error message when I try to reach the Cafe is:

Can’t select database

We were able to connect to the database server (which means your username and password is okay) but not able to select the becki_wordpress database.

Are you sure it exists?
On some systems the name of your database is prefixed with your username, so it would be like username_wordpress. Could that be the problem?

If you don’t know how to setup a database you should contact your host. If all else fails you may find help at the WordPress Support Forums.

That’s the same message whether I try to get there through the WP Dashboard or just get to the site. It’s not dead as I can reach the site via cPanel and ftp. I’ve checked MySQL for Beck’s Cafe and I can’t see what’s wrong…at least it’s not obvious to me anyway.

I’ll be asking the team at A Small Orange what I can do here….stay tuned

No, this blog isn’t dead…it’s a sign post

beckscafe — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:31:27 +0000

Hi there, if you’ve come to this Beck’s Cafe it’s run by the same woman that runs that other Beck’s Cafe. This one was set up to get that rockin’ awesome key so we could implement Akismet to eat the spam mice that come for the crumbs at Beck’s Cafe.

SO, this blog gets posted to very rarely….so come for the fresh brew over at my site, Beck’s Cafe (also proudly powered by WordPress).