July 2008

I’m just sitting here at the Cafe. It’s about noon-ish. Morning coffee crowd has left and I’m just having a last cup before I clean up a bit. I’m sitting in my favorite black broom skirt, I love this skirt, as my friends Jenna, June and Sharon know.

I’m tearing up as I think about my Grandmother and reflecting on her life.

It’s sunset for her I’m realizing.

As some of you know my home is empty of some family members for whom the sun is rising, my daughters, and now my home is full of family members for whom the sun is setting, my Grandmother, recovering from her two heart attacks at age 91. It’s a bittersweet time of releasing. Releasing some for new life and others for death. It’s that simple

It didn’t really dawn on me where my Grandmother was in life until I saw her today in our kitchn. She was older and told me she wanted to go home. Of course, being the dutiful grand-daughter, I dropped everything and brought her home where she has lived for 70 years. The home her husband built for her, by hand, when he only had a single arm and they were in their early 20’s.

As I drove up to her home to drop her off I was finally able to understand better how her life must feel for her now. She has a few years, maybe, to live. There will only be so many days of tending her garden. So many days to say hi to her neighbors. Only so many days left to feel the soft grass under her feet or see the deer that compete with her for the earth’s produce.

She must be thinking of her little home, her brook, and her passed away husband I thought. She was smiling as I brought her home and she walked in. I was touched deeply realizing she was happy to be back in her home by her brook. She can’t stay there permanently. She is in some sense a visitor to her own place in our world. And, she still needs my help for life tasks for sure, but, for her, life is content in her home. I was jealous at some level frankly.

My Grandmother’s life in my home has been both blessing and frustration. We are blessed to help her and we are frustrated. Frustrated she will not take her meds on time, exercise or eat right. I find my heart torn between loving her and screaming she has to take care of herself or…sunset comes earlier than we all want.

Then I remember the word “dignity”…and I take a breath, smile my best Becki smile and hear her requests and supress my need to care for her. Her need to be her own person more important now. Even for a 91 year old woman, dignity is important.

I feel the warm summer breeze on my face and I take a breath realizing I’m not paying attention to a visitor who has stopped in to say “hi” this morning. I’ve been deep in my heart and writing. I smile, apologize, and say “Hi” and welcome her in. Good thing the coffee is extra good this morning

(Sunset Photo courtesy of MuffinMan photos, used under Creative Commons license)

Just a couple of things to point out in our sidebar in case you hadn’t perused down that way in a while to investigate our links.

First, you’ll see a fun Daily Cartoon about 1/4 of the way down the sidebar. Our cartoon, courtesy of Andertoons, changes daily and, almost without exception, is always good for a little chuckle.

Second, scrolling to the bottom of our sidebar you’ll see our daily quote courtesy of The Foundation for a Better Life. Their billboards have always inspired me (and almost caused me to lose control of my car) and having them join us at Beck’s Cafe is a nice treat, I feel, for all our readers

Enjoy!

(widget photo - yes that is what a widget is! - from our friends at Wouf_is_Wouf’s Photostream, used with permission under Creative Commons license).

7-14-2008 Update
Replaced “Foundation for a Better Life” quote of the day with “Quotes Collection” plug-in/widget under the side bar feature, “Inspiration and Thoughts”. Foundation for a Better Life was not responding to some tech questions and Quotes Collection gives us a wider library (a less spiffy look though).

It’s true, many of you who visit Beck’s Cafe really do read the articles and for that I am most flattered! Thank you all so much. It’s a joy to write and a joy to be read. So what are you all reading? Well, here here are the top five most read articles of the past three months at Beck’s Cafe. I hope you take a moment to take a visit….and thank you all for having done so already.

1. Thailand: Some Transgender Views: How do those in Thailand view being transgender? Read this article to see the views of Thailand.
2. Gender Therapists, how do you chose? An article on how to chose a gender therapist and some links to some excellent helps, including guidance for teens.
3. Wedding Bell Blues: Who would know that my friends wedding would be the occassion for my first drink bought for me from a guy or learning that NJ really isn’t 8 hours away.
4. Simply Hired and Transgender Friendly Too: This article talks about the new search engine, Simply Hired, and how they can help you find a job.
5. CSI: Sarah’s Goodbye Letter: Perhaps the most sadly romantic moment in TV History. I cry buckets every time I see it.

Thanks to all our happy coffee, tea and cocoa sippers and swillers who spent the time to read

(Photo courtesy of Rachel Sian’s Photos, used under Creative Commons license)

The Human Rights Campaign has released it’s second edition booklet, “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace“. Authored by Samir Luther, the volume’s objectives are:

“Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace” provides human resource and other employment professionals with best practices for transgender workplace inclusion—from discrimination and benefits policies to internal practices that reflect how gender is expressed and integrated in the workplace—as well as the state of legal issues encompassing gender identity in employment situations. The guide also covers topics such as appropriate terminology with which to discuss gender identity and expression, the creation of policies that protect transgender workers from discrimination, and the expansion of diversity programs to include gender identity and expression.”

Now remember, this is the same HRC that supported a transgender inclusive ENDA but then chose to remove that support at the last minute - you can read the history and see lins from our coverage at Beck’s Cafe at these links here: ENDA Fallout restricts Title VII Claims; Baldwin Amendment & ENDA; Representative Tammy Baldwin speaks out on ENDA; ENDA: Barney Frank backs down, HRC commits, time bought; ENDA time to make some phone calls; Continued Coverage of ENDA: Sean Hannity, ADA and James Bird; Continued Coverage on ENDA: Robyn’s Story; Petition Drive to support complete ENDA; Transgender Rights Hailstorm

And this is also the same HRC who has become a big supporter of the The Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalitions (MTPC) work in helping us all to get Massachusetts HB1722, MA Transgender Civil Rights Legislation, approved. You can read about MTPC gaining HRC support at Bay Windows here.

You can download the booklet from the HRC site at our link here.

For some excellent analysis of the HRC “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace” booklet, we’d suggest strolling over to Dr. Jilliam Todd Weiss’s blog, “Transgender Workplace Diversity” for her review of the HRC booklet. You can reach her review at her blog at this link here.

I know fair number of transgender women and one thing I can almost universally say about 95% of them is they…

do not sleep … hardly at all

It’s truly baffling to all of us. But now I might have some ideas on what’s making us become such zombies…damn good lookin’ ones but zombies none-the-less (thank GOD for under eye makeup cover).

In an article titled, “Why We Can’t Sleep?“, Gayle Greene, Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies at Scripps College, teases out some interesting points in her Ms. Magazine article:

• A 2007 poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that 67 percent of women frequently experience sleep problems

• 29 percent of women use some type of sleep aid at least a few nights a week

• 75 percent of sleep research has been done on men, and until recently the researchers have been primarily men. The major texts for sleep studies have had, until recently, little to say about women’s sleep

• There’s a tendency to assume that the problem is psychological. When 501 physicians were interviewed about how they treated insomnia, they revealed that they asked an average of just two and a half questions, mostly about psychological problems. And since doctors believe it’s all in the head, there’s little impetus to research insomnia. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health spent less than $20 million on the condition, although it affects as many as a third of the U.S. adult population. Most of those funds were directed toward treating and managing the problem, while less than $4 million went to investigations of neurophysiological and neuroendocrinal mechanisms — the kind of basic research that might lead to an understanding of cause. (barista note: this whole approach kinda reminds me of how those of us who have GID are treated…we have to be crazy in the head not really being driven by some internal intersex issue none of us can identify but many of us know in our hearts).

The article is very eye opening about how the medical community may be hiding it’s head under the pillow on a cause and help on a real issue in this country. It’s enough to make you stay up late to read! You can read the full article at Ms. Magazine at their link here.

(Photo courtesy of LunaDiRimmel, used under Creative Commons license)

Well, well looks like we are back online with our main url, http://www.beckscafe.com Nothing like duct tape to get ya goin’. For our next repair we’ll have to get some chewing gum.

Turns out the new options in Wordpress 2.5.1 required our barista’s to scarf down more espresso than normal to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. But fixed it ’tis so here we are now

Happy Reading everyone!

(photo courtesy of kylos and used with Creative Commons license)

There may be nothing more boring in blogging than posting about all the “issues” and “delays” one is having in trying to blog or get one’s blog re-started or in anything related to the underpinnings of a blog.

Let’s face it no one cares…they just want you to write again ’cause they enjoyed your writing.

So, I won’t bore you all ‘cept to say were are swilling some java, munching on chocolate and moving things around here. First, you’ll see we have a new Wordpress theme. This might not be the final but, we like it so far though we have some work to do hacking the code a bit. It’s called Tarski and is nicely done and, as importantly, nicely maintained. Nothing like getting a theme you like and having the developer abandon it as Wordpress chugs along.

What happened to the cute past theme with the mugs? Well, we couldn’t get it to work right. The header started to come into shape nicely thanks to two of our readers Mandy and Sonia, but then we couldn’t move things around and, though the underlying structure of the theme, Sandbox, was muy macho we were a little over our heads frankly. A little code we can hack, alotta code and, frankly, we’d rather spend the time writing. A BIG THANK YOU goes out to our loyal readers Mandy and Sonia for helping us get the mug header down. Thank you both very, very much for going out of your way to help

So thank you to everyone for hanging in there with us! We’re slowly getting things back to normal so we can brew up the content piping hot….as you’d expect

(many thanks to Vrogy for letting us use the cute crayon pic for this post per his Creative Commons license)

So, we decided to do a little upgrade prior to writing on some new topics and, well, we have a little issue. Bizarrely, after uploadining WP 2.5.1 our URL, http://www.beckscafe.com isn’t usable! Yes we paid our bill to Go Daddy!

This is a puzzler for sure. Stay tuned, I think we’ll be needing alot of coffee to solve this one.

So to reach us, at last for now, the underlying URL has to be used, http://susan.asmallorange.com/~becki/