Flipping over shame and finding joy: #govegan #joy #amreading #veganjoy

Recently, I received a comment from someone online who said I should be “ashamed” of myself for promoting veganism. Shame!? I thought. What’s up with that comment? I think the person is probably ashamed of his own behavior in eating animals–other sentient beings. But anyone experiencing shame for consuming animal products doesn’t have to continue to do so. They can change. Since almost everyone consumes some vegetables–I’ve come to consider non vegan people as pre-vegans. That way I don’t have to be down on humanity. After all, I changed also–and unfortunately later in life. As a response to the comment, I thought I would post some pictures and a video from the vegan Thanks Living celebration we just attended. It was a truly joyous celebration.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Reinventing Tradition — #govegan #Thanksgiving #ThanksLiving #vegandoxology #amreading

As Thanksgiving approaches, I want to emphasize the importance of reinventing tradition. This particular tradition is fraught with horrible origins. To read my review of Joy Harjo’s memoir, Poet Warrior, click here.

For the animals, for the planet and for ourselves, my partner and I are planning to go to a local vegan Thanks Living potluck gathering on Thursday.

Barbara who uses the pen name Foxx has written the following little song called

A Vegan Doxology

Praise Mother Earth from whom all blessings flow

Bless the farmers and gardeners and the food they grow

Thanks for corn and squash and beans and oats

Save the turkeys and cows and holy goats

Blessed Be

.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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LOST: reading from a new memoir and reflecting on Buddhist teachings — #UU #amreading #fathers #govegan

This morning I am reposting a section of my memoir LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong which was part of a service on life and death at the Unitarian Universalists of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia. The YouTube video of my part of the service is above and the text is below.

Good morning

     I am going to read the opening two paragraphs of my memoir which is now titled LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong. 

Above the Washington Crossing National Cemetery—its squat white markers on even green grass flanked by low walls that would soon hold my father’s ashes—the blue sky, with white whisps of clouds, was vast. It seemed endless— I would say eternal, but my father was not religious. He was agnostic and along with my atheist mother, had raised me secular. But now I was Unitarian, with Buddhism selected as my root religion because it felt most natural to me.

     Buddhists believe that energy is eternal. The death of a father has been compared to a cloud. The cloud becomes rain and then eventually returns to the sky and so on. The energy of the cloud never dies, and the father’s essence doesn’t die either. It is a comforting theory. But I was too upset that day to be thinking of Buddhist theories. Grief had carved a hole the size of the universe through my chest. I was on automatic pilot. My only thought was to get through the day.

It seems like I have been working on this memoir forever. Maybe I have because it is about my father’s life and my life which adds up to a lot of years. It has been five years since my father died. I was close to sixty when he died, and he was nearly a hundred years old. I have been through a lot a changes since my father died. In many ways, I have become my own parent.

The late Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhất Hạnh was and continues to be an important influence on my revision process. I have been particularly influenced by his teachings about how a parent lives on in the child. He has said that it is hard for a son to be angry at his father because the son is the father—an extension of the father. I would say the same thing goes for daughters. This scientifically accurate statement might explain why so many are at odds with themselves.

Working on this memoir has not been easy. In fact, there have been times when it was physically painful. But working on this memoir has forced me to drill down into the marrow of my bones and uncover the forces that shaped me. And I find a certain satisfaction in self-discovery.  

Recently, I was talking to an old friend about my father living so long. I explained that he had lived twenty years longer than most people. I described him as a tough old bird.  Like me, he was stubborn, strong, and when he still could, did exercises every morning and night and took a walk nearly every day.

A few days after describing my father as a tough old bird to this friend, I realized I had been describing myself.

I am fast becoming a tough, old vegan bird.

–Namaste–

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

To learn more about my latest published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery (also from Adelaide Books) click here:

The Unicorn, The Mystery now available from Adelaide Books — #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT

To read other excerpts of LOST, my memoir in process,

click here

and

here

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Rereading the biography of Alain Locke — #TheHarlemRenaissance #LGBTQ #intersectional #amreading

This week, I decided to post a review of the biography on Alain Locke, a key figure in starting the Harlem Renaissance.

I have long been fascinated by the figure of Alain Locke – who I knew as the first African American Rhodes Scholar (in 1907), the philosopher that the civil rights leader Martin Luther King spoke about, the influential Howard University professor (the historically black university located in Washington D.C.), and perhaps most importantly (to me) as the philosophic architect of the Harlem Renaissance. Locke was known for the fact that he championed such writers as Zora Neale Hurston.

That I had heard he was gay only made him more interesting. Then I learned that the long-awaited biography of Locke was coming out written by Jeffrey C. Stewart titled, The New Negro, The Life of Alain Locke had been published in 2018.  It was published by Oxford University Press and received the 2018 National Book Award for nonfiction.

Then the book arrived.  I have to admit that I was daunted by its 800 pages – 878 to be exact. Also, like many people, if not most, I rarely read biographies.  But once I started reading this one, I found it so fascinating that I could barely put it down – even though it is physically hard to pick up because it is so heavy.  So, even if you rarely read biographies, I would suggest reading this one.  It’s a real page turner and you’ll learn a lot of important historical information.

Locke – as Stewart writes – was “a tiny effeminate gay man – a dandy, really, often seen walking with a cane, discreet, of course, but with just enough hint of a swagger, to announce to those curious that he was queer, in more ways than one, but especially in that one way that disturbed even those who supported Negro liberation.  His sexual orientation made him unwelcome in some communities and feared in others as a kind of pariah.”

Some of the intriguing things that I learned was that Locke was very close to his mother, in fact after her death in 1922, left him bereft, and after a stint in travelling in Europe where he could be more sexually open, and after being fired for a time by Howard University for being too vocal on race relations (although he was later hired back), he poured himself into their shared love for art and commenced on starting the Harlem Renaissance, with the idea that there was liberation in art that was African American identified.

The Harlem Renaissance loomed so large in my mind that even though I already knew that it was basically over by 1929, when the American stock market collapsed, it was rather depressing to read about it again.  Harlem, long the African American section of New York City, was hit very hard by the Great Depression.  The Harlem Renaissance, however, remains an important part of history – and many African American identified visual artists and writers were influenced and inspired by it long after the 1920s, as Stewart writes.

Some of the things that I learned that intrigued me was that Locke was very close to his mother and that after her death, he replicated his relationship with her to some extent with several older women who were important to him.  I also found it fascinating that the campus of University of Oxford (where Locke found himself after he won the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship), was a hotbed of gay male activity – and that this was the same university that the gay legend Oscar Wilde was graduated from in 1878, three decades before Locke arrived.  I also learned that Locke faced less racism in Europe.  However, some of the major racist obstacles that Locke faced at Oxford were created by other American Rhodes Scholars.

Most of what I learned was that Locke, a black, gay man, faced major obstacles in his life because of racism and homophobia. Despite these obstacles he thrived, and he changed the course of history.

His life is inspiring.

Note: This piece originally aired on This Way Out (TWO), the internationally syndicated LGBT radio show.  

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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