Three cheers for three candidates in Milwaukee's 3rd District!

Don't forget to say 'thanks' to your neighborhood politician!  In the historic election for the open 3rd Alder district seat, we saw Nik Kovac's integrity in action when he built a coalition of hard working good people to win the seat.  Two other candidates also created crucial milestones in Milwaukee LGBT politics.  In Sura Faraj, we had a courageous queer community member who stood up early on in what was an unknown election climate to define the issues, suggest solutions, and act as heart, soul, and conscience.  In Patrick Flaherty's solid primary and general election showings, our district and city nearly achieved an historic first, an openly gay Alderman whose years of service to the community could have made him an effective political broker.  

They came to our doors through ice and snow during a brutal, lingering winter and patiently listened to our concerns. When we asked hard questions, they had good answers.  Each of them took time out of their lives, left their livelihoods, and plunged into the whirlwind exposure of being a public figure.  They all sacrificed pieces of their private lives, put themselves on the line and let us scrutinize them.

Three cheers for the three candidates from the 3rd district who made history and have raised the bar for future candidates, campaigns and elections!  I look forward to seeing Nik, Sura and Patrick all working together to build community and improve our neighborhood.

Hey Hey Hey Snowflake

wow. i haven't blogged here since last year (technically). thought i'd check in, as i need a break from the head-spinning, headache inducing workday i have before me.

what's up? lots of snow shoveling. e-mails from californians asking if this wayward californian survived the (insert random inches number here) of snow. for the record, it was probably about 10" over two days, or 12" if you factor in the crap that hit the ground and melted instantly. M*kitty reminds me that a Native northern culture has dozens of words, not just one, for snow. and this weekend proved that. the first round of shoveling was the 6" light power variety. i powered through both houses and sidewalks without issue. the second round of shoveling, though, it was lucky that our neighbor was out to lend a hand and she fantastically shoveled what i've called "god's own slushy" type snow. this was about 4" of the most densely packed watery crap that passes for snow i've seen in the four years i've lived here in MKE.

i'm also trying to keep on top of QZAP stuff. still no progress filing away the piles of zines on the QZAP desk (oh, there's a desk under that pile of zines in the corner?!?!), instead working on far more fun things like a survey where i (on behalf of the collective) nominated 5 influential female zinesters. well, it's me. i can't stop at just 5, especially because someone forgot to switch of my verbose command at birth. it was a big chore, actually, to come up with the list. i spent probably around 6 hours or more in crafting my response, aiming to nominate women who i thought would represent diverse aspects of the zine community as a whole. there were a few weird requirements (like one that stated the zinester must have started her zine before age 22 ... WTF?!? like i know or care how old someone is!!! I *did* raise that as a concern in my reply, just as I had to stick up for those who identify as female, but may not have been biologically born that way. but that's me ... always causing trouble!! :)

QZAP is also awaiting word on whether we've been assigned an Extern from the Grinnell College program for students who want "real world" experience over Grinnell's spring break at the end of March. For those who may not know, as I no longer wear it on my sleeve the way i once did, I went to college in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa back in the Dark Ages of the Reagan Era. While being at Grinnell changed the direction in my life to an overwhelmingly positive one, and I still have an amazing circle of friends from there, the luster wore off over the years as i got into scrapes with the College about classist issues. i was a scholarship kid, and one of only about half a dozen kids whose families were on welfare at the time (I was living with me mum and step-dad, mum was semi-retired due to health issues, my step-dad ... well, he just made stubbornly poor career and life choices...*ahem*). i was surrounded by trustafarian types, but also many middle class kids who were simply cool about it and not judgmental. the College, however, had some pretty fucked up attitudes about how alumni contributions should be sought and acknowledged, and that's where my falling out began. It exploded when I discovered they were hitting up my deceased mother for contributions, and a then elderly step-dad was super-confused as to why they were asking for money. in order to stop the insanity, i angrily cut all ties with the College and never looked back.

These days, I'm less (much less) of an 'angry young man' and in my genial rise to middle age decided to give the jerks another go. I had been active in the past with the Career Development office, and since the Externship proposal was coming from them, I thought it would be high time to reconnect, at least on that level. I also had an interesting encounter with a newly minted Grinnell grad last summer during Critical Mass here in MKE, and she blew my mind with the fact that a party I'd been a very minor underling to put on had turned into an annual tradition (the dorm Mary B James Hall put on the "Mary Be James / James Be Mary" crossdressing ball). For the little college where the "Gay and Lesbian" Resource Center was forbidden to use "Gay and Lesbian" in the title (oh yeah, bisexuals didn't exist ... and if you were one, well, you weren't anyone... and the alphabet soup of queer allies was still on the distant horizon to come), they'd come a long way, baby. Yet another reason to let go of my shunning the College.

We find out this week if, indeed, any of the hippy-dippy lefty liberal arts kidz gets to spend part of spring break in Zineland with us!!

I'm also getting back into some of my art projects. The above pic is a still from some old 8mm home movies i had transfered to DV a few years ago. My sister L sent me some weird pix several weeks ago that turned out to be scans of slides that a cousin of my mom's took back in the early '60s (before i was born) - she seemed genuinely moved by that gesture, so i floated out the fact that somehow the goddess had blessed me with half a dozen of the three or four dozen home movies my family took in the '60s and '70s (my other sister stole them when she was kicked out of our house, and showed them to me around 1989 and i didn't have the guts to steal them back, so now they are lost to the ages as is my sister...). L had no idea these movies existed, despite the fact I'd put the ones with her in them on a videotape for her a couple of years ago. So I am now in the process of taking the six or so short films and making them watchable for her on DVD. I am planning on adding subtle soundtracks to them, as I find that without the whirring noise of the belts and gears of the projector, they become creepy and disembodied. Pic above is me, age 6. Still with baby teeth!! The dog is Joey, the snappy, high strung terrier mix who managed to live to about age 12 or 13, I think...

My other art project is getting my ProTools and audio equipment set up to rip vinyl, cassettes, etc. One recent QZAP donation from Juha of a back issue of DPN had a flexi-disk in it, so I'll rip that, along with a single of my old friends' punk band Scooby Don't (with a rocking version of the song "Simon" from the Captain Kangaroo cartoon). My first attempt was to rip Scooby Don't, but I fucked up the EQ (ironic for a punk band ...) so i have to redo my work. d'oh! Then on to the audio cassette tour of the first Macintosh! I'll finally figure out what a mouse is used for heh heh.

ok, hope this makes up for an utter lack of blogging on my part. march looks interesting, as i go to Denver for the Zine Fest, and am trying to get a place to stay for one or more weeks in SF so that I can attend to my tech client needs there. I have an offer to stay at a place in the Monterey Bay area, but i fear traveling up and back a few times would be awful. I did the CalTrain trek once, getting dumped off in Gilroy in the middle of nowhere as dusk settled and my ride nowhere in sight. But i simply wasn't patient, and she eventually arrived only a few minutes late.

to sufferers of the winter blahs... hang in there, spring will be here soon!!! :)

Dykes on Mykes

An awesome experience on the show tonight. It had started raining, and while some people find rain annoying, i often see it as a sign of good things to come, and tonight was no exception. I headed down early, turns out I was right behind the hosts as i entered the building where the station is housed. Got to meet the other guests, who were super cool and I was lucky to be on with such interesting women. We all did a pre-show chat just outside the studio and it turns out we were all people with previous radio experience. Always a good sign! It was interesting to be in the studio all at once and sitting quietly as each guest had their turn. i was last, but introduced with the woman from Lickety Split zine, so there was a little bit of overlap, very cool as I'd been trying to find Lickety Split at Expozine but failed to do so (and I figured out why, as they were tabling in an area I didn't explore carefully).

The questions were great, and I only choked on one (Joomla! is the answer to the question "what is the open source content manager you use?") and in "radio time" we covered a lot of ground in a short period of time, yet there were many basic things I didn't get to touch upon. I did, however, feel that the interview perfectly segued into tomorrow night's discussion.

Speaking of that discussion, it sounds like it will be a blast, and I also was invited to what i think is <<cinq à sept>> or in crude english, a happy hour type event prior to the queer zine talk. so i'm going there, as there is promise of good food and an awesome DJ. Plus, i had such a great time meeting the hosts of the show, i'd love to have more time to chat with them some more.

Best thing ... i wasn't nervous for the most part! I'd been more concerned that I wouldn't be speaking English well, since i've had to sort of radically alter my speaking patterns since arriving here. However, the preshow chat got me warmed up enough so I didn't have any problems.

After the show, met up with Dean, a Milwaukee friend of Milo's and mine and QZAP'S French translator who now lives here in MTL. Had awesome veggie chili at his house, met his housemate Patricia and one of the dogs they were caring for (they are a home for wayward/transiant dogs who need a temporary home) and then Dean and I went off to a bar on Ste. Catherine where the hottest of MTLs bike messengers hang out ... but alas, they must have better things to do on Monday night. There were a couple of punk hotties who might have been queer, but very hard to tell in a cosmopolitan Cité.

So tomorrow is my last full day here, should be very exciting and eventful! Probably won't blog until after I return to the States, though, since I leave out late morning on Wednesday for the trip back. It sounds like I'll return here at a future point, as another CKUT radio show wants to have me on as a guest ... plus, despite all my language anxieties, this is a fun, trés cool Cité!

fermé lundi

My adventures during the day today in Montréal all dictated by a single fact.

Last night, in preparation for the other segment of my reason for coming here, that is to do research on my Canadian heritage (part Canadian eh!) at the National Archives, since attempting to find anything on line related to the Scottish or Irish immigrants to Canada pre-Confederation is doable if they relatively simple to find (my Irish ancestry gave themselves up pretty easily ... my ancestor was a schoolmaster in a town in the Eastern Townships of Quebec).

I'd booked my hotel partly due to its location. I'm literally a minute away from the Grande Bibliothèque! In doing some last minute checking Sunday night, I came to the nasty realization that i'd actually never checked the days and hours it is open. D'oh! The scant English section of the Archives' website gave me precious little to go on, other than it appeared they were open every other day of the week except Monday. Thinking I'd be clever, I searched around on the web and found a page that indicated there were other libraries in Montréal that might have at least some of the same basic resources I needed. Swell! The City of Montréal library isn't too far away. I get down there, and was half flush with excitement, and half sensing impending doom. Why did the place look dark and the main doors shut? Sure enough, the doors were locked and a rather worn looking sign indicated to me that this library wasn't a library anymore. I understood all but the two key words in the sign, yet things started coming into focus ... there had been a consolidation of the major libraries and archives in Montréal (gee, wouldn't "Grande" given me any clue?!?!?). So, back I went from whence I came, with a little detour down Rue Amherst, which appears to be Mtl's ghetto for mid 20th Century furnishings ... par example "Sputnik" was the name of one such boutique! Rue Amherst is also the location of Révolution Montreal, the dyke run bicycle repair shop and hair cut shop. Cool bikes in the window, but I didn't go in.

For Canadians, the next part may sound entirely stupid and gross. I had coffee and donuts at Tim Hortons. For non-Canadians, Tim Hortons is a national chain of donut shops not too dissimilar to Dunkin Donuts and that ilk. This was the "gay" Tim Hortons, however, if the rainbow triangles in the window weren't enough of a clue!

Back at the Grande Bibliothèque, I got the sinking feeling that despite being a library, this wasn't going to be a great place to be speaking da English eh. I muddled through an on-line database that is only accessible from inside the building (I can see links to it on the web, but can't access to search it). Well, being in the building only got me one step closer. I could get to the search page, but then an error page entirely in French popped up no matter what I searched on. My rue-de-mentary knowledge suggested it might have been a connection error. Who knows?!?!

I'm loathe to ask for help, and this time was no exception. I did manage to get the damn computer to print out the call number of a book I need to consult. Couldn't find it in the stacks, despite tomes in the same area of the Dewey Decimal system being on the shelf. So I went to the information desk, and of course, picked the two out of three people whose eyes glazed over at the thought of trying to answer me in English. But we did, however, get down to universals that confirmed my suspicion ... the lovely long set of stairs behind them led me to where the book, and all the other records I needed were located. And it was open every other day of the week ... except Monday!

From there, I attempted to find what I believed to be the National Archives, as it was that address that inspired me to book my hotel room, and not the much closer Grande Biblio. A walk down Rue Ontario suggested that the National Archives was actually a pizza joint or possibly a parking lot. I decided to keep heading West because I knew the Contemporary Art Museum was off in that direction. Got there, but finding the entrance in such an ... artsy ... building was impossible. Finally found a door, went in and was greeted warmly by the doorman. Wandered in and it seemed unlikely to be the entrance to a museum. No, it was some swanky-ass restaurant (resto) instead! I figured this was a safe place to whip out my laptop and check Google Earth to see where on the planet I was and since the museum was closed (as I sat down to fire up the laptop, i saw a gate across the way to the museum ... i have a great picture of the only thing I could see, which was a sign saying "you are now leaving the american sector" ... how true...).

I thought down the list of museum-esque options and thought "planetarium!" I like planets and space! So back to the Métro, and hop two trains to get over there. I exit in this place called the Bonneventure, and it certainly *wasn't* a bon adventure. A desolate, empty, cavernous underground place across from the train station. I finally found the sortie, and was out on the street. I was much closer to the river, so it was much colder and windier (I'd managed not to get rained on, since it had rained in the morning before i started out), so since i didn't see anything resembling a planetarium, i went back inside. Sat down to look at Google Earth, nothing looked like a planetarium, and no wireless access so i couldn't search. While attempting my way back to the Métro, thinking I'd head to the far northern end of the Mile End area, I walked past a map of the neighbourhood, and found the Planetarium. If you've been following my adventures ... you guessed it! Earlier when I'd exited the building, I'd only been two blocks from it before giving up. I thought "what the fuck" and went off to find it. As soon as i saw it, i'd remembered I'd seen it from the bus on the way into town from the airport. Gosh, it seemed awfully dark and with no cars anywhere around it like i'd seen that day. Oh yes, it was fermé!

Back on the Métro, I thought I'd go off in search of Cafe Toutski, that I'd read about in the Queereaction event description (it happened a few weeks ago). It also gave me a chance to go way to the eastern edge past the northern end of the gay village and work my way back to the hotel so i could freshen up before the radio show tonight. Found the cafe with ease, very friendly staff who did not hesitate to speak English, and I got a "long" espresso. Sat down to jot notes to myself in order to write this lovely missive, and thought "Gee, if I'm in a cafe, I might as well order food!" Finally got up the courage to ask for a menu, and the dude said "Oh! Ordinarily yes, but on Mondays we close at 4pm" Guess what time it was? Twenty minutes to 4pm, so the kitchen was closed by then. D'oh!

I can't say I'm the best at managing anxiety, and espresso didn't help much because now I was sort of shaking. I became obsessed with the notion of where I could eat with a minimum of fuss about communicating across the language barrier (yesterday when i ordered a soda with my meal, it never came and I have no idea why because despite speaking English when I ordered, she ran by me saying something in French that had the word "Pepsi" in it ... perhaps it was to say i wasn't getting one? who knows!!). I kept getting more and more agitated as I headed West.

But then, at the corner of Rue Ste. Hubert just two blocks north of where my hotel is, I came across a decent looking corner grocery store. they had all sorts of decent produce, and veggie/soy stuff. I thought if I'm going to have to make an effort, might as well stock up on food so I don't have to feel this bad again about not finding food right away. The transaction went off without a hitch, I was able to even count my pennies, and I actually understood what the clerk said to me at the end of the sale. w00t!!

So I'm at the hotel now, resting up before I leave in less than an hour for the Dykes on Mykes interview. It's going to be weird, as I have barely spoken all day, and even then about half in French and half in stilted English (or with a tip of the hat to Marianne Faithfull, "broken english" ?!?!). Since the dude at Cafe Toutski wished me that my day would get better (i let him know my tale of <<fermé lundi>>), and I answered him that it definitely *would* be better ... it's time to get ready!

So despite a bizarre day, I'm happy and excited. I'll write about the interview in an upcoming blog. Stay tuned!!

Bon Voyage - Montréal

Bon jour hello from Montréal!

I had a super smooth trip here, utterly no problems other than minor seat mixups. But leave it to me to travel 1000 miles and then freak out two blocks from where i'm supposed to be going ... stupidly, i'd forgotten to do one last address check, or rather, since I often use commonalities to remember names a Français, I thought i was looking for *my* Rue ... Ste. Christophe, but instead should have been looking for my *brother's* Rue Ste. Dominique! D'oh! Poor Milo got a minorly frantic e-mail from me as I was trying to wrap my head around French, English, and the fact that my bloody cell phone doesn't work here except on the mondo expense "roaming" setting (after consulting Sprint's website, I'm now also scared that I'm being charged for every KB of text messages I send from here too ... and considering Milo gets 3 texts for every 1 I send him... yikes!).

So, yes, I DID finally arrive at what appeared to be a church and there were masses of bicycles out front, and the usual hippie/punk skew of loiterers outside. After walking through an afterthought of a maze that was the entrance, it opened up onto perhaps the church basement, cafeteria or theater and instantly the heat of 300+ people crammed into this tiny room came over me like wave. Plus the usual garlic-y sage-y tobacco-y smell of the hippie/punk skew was rather evident as well. The space was soooo small that one couldn't move through the crowd at one's own pace. It literally took me two hours, sometime transversing the same row three times just to actually get a look at everything. And I picked up some *amazing* queer zines for the collection, mostly queer teen health zines that were written by a local nurse here in Montréal. Also picked up a vaguely Gay Shame affiliated essay zine by a gay black male who does NOT support "gay marriage" and laid out the arguments and logic that I've heard in conversations I've had with other allies to the queer African American community ... namely, that white gay male pukes (this means YOU, HRC!) co-opted and misappropriated so much from the Civil Rights Movement that the author posits this is part of why a high percentage of straight African Americans are against so called "gay marriage." He went on to really lay it on the line ... what the fuck good does "marriage benefits" do where there is no economic equality? Benefits that don't exist can't get magically transferred to a queer spouse!!! I am going to review it for one of my up coming QZines articles, it's a voice that I want more people to hear.

I'm lost here in Montréal between worlds and languages. I really don't think people suspect I'm ... an American (aaaaargh!!! the horror!!!) but yet sometimes i feel i have horns coming out of my head the way people look at me. I'm always slow to adjust to eye contact when I'm in a new culture and this time I'm low-level freaked out by people noticing me as I observe them in an attempt to adjust myself to fitting in. I'm also mostly at a loss over language. If you know me personally, you know the story of how I got to this point ... my older brother, fluent in French, taught me at age 4 or 5 the fundamentals of French pronunciation. So when I speak piss poor French, it actually sounds like I'm just being a jerk about not knowing the language. I have utterly no vocabulary to follow up from my simple communication. I only had one moment of true panic, when I went to buy my three-day (trois jour!) Métro pass, but she and i did a lot of universals and the light bulb clicked over both of our heads!

I'm loving how cosmopolitan it is here! I haven't felt this comfortable with a mixture of cultures since SF, and I've heard Japanese and Spanish and probably a few other languages as well (had to laugh when I heard a total white boy speaking Japanese to this Japanese guy at the ExpoZine event ... I rarely hear white folks even attempt to speak Japanese!!) and it made me smile.

I'm also constantly having to wipe the drool from the corners of my mouth. Hotties aren't the half of it. A lot of people here are super sexy. I thought maybe this guy was going to try to pick me up at Esperanza tonight, but he simply smiled a lot and it was weird because i was hangin' there for about two hours and as soon as I left, so did he. I guess he didn't realize how utterly easy it is to take me home heh heh.

So Sunday I have a day of no plans. I'll probably do more walking around, as I probably got a kilometer or two under my belt today, walking around from 8pm to about 10pm in the neighborhoods near the ExpoZine event (they weren't that thrilling, but I needed just to get out and wrap my head around this amazing city).

That's it for my first doozy of a half day here in Montréal ... I'll try to post more over the next few days. The Tuesday night event is shaping up to be really, really big ... i guess there will be DJs after we panelists talk, and I've even been offered a slot to spin ... I hope that works out, as when i was hanging out up there at Esperanza tonight, i think i can hit them with a little of the ol' skool Rebel Grrrl style that M and I perfected in our tenure at (f)ArtBar.

Bon Soir!

To Canada with Love, eh!

it's crazy, I tell you! my forthcoming trip to Montreal just knocked up several notches (BAM!). In addition to the interview on Dykes on Mykes, it appears there's going to be another public event where I get to talk about QZAP, queer zines, etc. And get this ... unbeknownst to me, the Montreal expoZine event happens the day I arrive. I sort of wish I'd known before i booked the tix, because I probably would have taken the 6am flight out of here (oh, who am i kidding? like i'd wake up that early... heh heh) so I would have more time and possibly table. So keep fingers crossed that my flights are on time and I get to Montreal on schedule. I fortuitously booked a hotel room about a block from the major transportation hub in downtown, so zing-boom-bip from airport-hotel-zine event can happen in rapid succession.

plus, in the middle of it all, i have the latest QZines article due today (actually, just e-mailed off ... ) and a CD review by week's end for Nerve House. Oh yeah, isn't there that HOLIDAY this week, too? Complete with food and hosting out of town guests?!?!

My sister told me a few months ago that our family motto is: there's time for sleep when you're dead. this week proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt!!!!

i perpetuate democracy and all i got was this lousy sticker!

hey there,

just got back from my polling place and it was hopping! somewhat chaotic scene, with lines criss-crossing everywhere and no one person actually directing traffic. an awful lot of people doing same-day registration, that in and of itself is awesome!

so i kept one of my usual traditions, of adding a write-in. but this time, it was a real live person, not "Shakespeare for Library Board" like i normally would ... no, i wrote in the name of the sheriff candidate i voted for but who lost in the primary. i can't, and won't, support the dorkwad who'll be reelected anyway. And I also gave a nod to my Green leanings by voting for the Green candidate for Senate (our Senator, Herb Kohl, will easily be reelected by a huge margin anyway, so why not?!?!).

it was also nice to finally be able to say NO to the stupid Marriage Amendment travesty and also to this ridiculous "should we bring back the death penalty" question (just a question, mind you, not an actual amendment, law, or anything binding). This state has been, at least as far as the death penalty is concerned, enlightened since the mid 19th Century (for the record, my stance on the death penalty is pretty much in line with the EU stance ... that is, no death penalty, period).

what do i see for the future from this election? Dems in the House, for sure. I truly wish they'd get the Senate, but they just didn't have their shit together to reach for the lofty goal, even with Repubs and Fundis hanging themselves every day through scandal after scandal and body count after body count. Even though I think the Dems will take the House, I predict they will simply squander their political capital and really end up doing nothing. Nancy Pelosi bothers the hell out of me, even though I probably voted her into office when I lived in CA. Will she make a good Speaker? Probably not. I fear she'll be "Hilary'd" and rendered ineffectual by shrill Repub dissent and sniping.

i'm also hopeful and frankly will jump up and down with glee when Senator Frothy Mixture of Lube and Shit gets shown the door, and i'm sure there are other candidates for whom I will be equally happy they are on their way out of office.

So that's it ... get out and vote, and let others know your experience at the polls!

Trippy

looks as though i finally resolved one of my long-standing ohrwurms**... apparently Grace Slick did some music for Sesame Street during my childhood!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...ame_Street

she performed what was dubbed "Jazzy Spies" - dig around, there are You Tube vids out there! When you listen to it, it's the rapid counting style she does in the last count, with strange inflection on "nine ... ten" supercoolio.

**ohrwurm - an easy term to translate from German "ear worm" or the song/music that gets stuck in your head, in my case sometimes for years before reidentifying it!