Needing to tell the story — #IHeartSapphFic interviews me about Loving Artemis #LGBT #LesFic #Amreading

I wanted to share this interview with you which was recently posted by IHeartSapphFiction. You can link to the site

Author Interview: Janet Mason Chats about Loving Artemis

Apr 11, 2024 | AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Get ready to learn more about the book Loving Artemis in this discussion with sapphic author Janet Mason.

Join us for an exclusive peek behind the scenes as we quiz Janet Mason about Loving Artemis, writing, reading, and more.

This book is part of the Addiction category in the 2024 IHS Reading Challenge.

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Why did you write Loving Artemis?

I wrote this novel to tell some of the untold stories from my youth. I grew up in a rough-and-tumble working-class tract house area, so there were quite a few stories there. I worked on the novel for a long time, and the story evolved to the theme of marriage equality and the historical events that happened in the backdrop of the teenage girls came together with the future passage of marriage equality. In that way the story is autobiographical, and the history is accurate. So, the timing happened to coincide with the legalization of marriage equality nationwide.

Who is your favorite character in the book?

My favorite character is the lead character Artemis. The events in Artemis’s life (including her brother and her love for motorcycles as well as her girlfriend Linda) turn her into a drug dealer and she gets caught goes to jail, gets released several years later, reunites with the love of her life, Linda, and in another couple of decades marries her legally (this was something she wished for when she was an adolescent). She gets caught and goes to jail which is different from my experience and from the other narrator, Grace, who is more academically oriented and is more like me.

What inspired the idea for Loving Artemis?

The inspiration came from my youth and my need to tell the stories.

What was the biggest challenge writing this book?

My biggest challenge in writing this came naturally–that was lesbianizing my youth. As I was telling a friend, I probably gave the girls (who were based on actual persons) that I probably gave my characters happier endings than they actually had! If you add the march of history, there are three happy endings at the close of Loving Artemis.

What part of Loving Artemis was the most fun to write?

The details of place from my youth were identical, including the motorcycle shop and the gold dome of the Greek Orthodox church in the writing — giving the work a strong sense of place.

How did you come up with the title for your book?

The book’s original title was Art which was short for Artemis. When I found a publisher, she wanted to title the book Loving Artemis. We had just buried a friend’s cat, named Artemis, in our backyard and I thought Artemis had brought me luck in finding the publisher, so the name change was fine with me.

How much research did you need to do for Loving Artemis?

I did a fair amount of research on the historic events–Shirley Chisholm running for President in 1972 being one of the events–that happened when the girls were teens. Some of the events were mentioned in a paper that Grace (one of the narrators) writes for her high school English class.

What is your favorite line from your book?

“Art fell into the universe that she and Linda made together.”

What is your writing process like?

The novel welled up in me and I wrote it. Basically, I had to. I let my characters tell me what they wanted to do.

Where do you usually write, and what do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?

I write on my computer. As I recall, I wrote much of this novel on my laptop, when I was holed up in my bedroom and at the kitchen table in my yoga teacher’s house. When I’m working on something, I tend to be thinking about it most of the time. I wrote and rewrote this book for about seven years.

If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose?

I think I would pick Sappho or Emily Dickinson.

What’s your favorite writing snack or drink?

I love coffee–now with oat milk. Green tea works just as well. I think it’s the caffeine.

How do you celebrate when you finish your book?

I go for a walk and am extra happy!

Do you have a pet who helps/hinders your typing?

I usually have a cat. While I was working on this, I had a cat named Princess Sappho who used to sit on my lap. When she died and then her brother died, it was very sad but then our new cat, Peanut, came to us when she was about a year old, and we are head over heels about her. She’s usually in the window in my home office. I always imagine that I write better with a cat.

What animal or object best represents you as an author or your writing style?

I love Rilke’s Panther pacing around in his cage. I guess my head is the cage and the novel ideas are the panther.

What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing, and by whom?

“Write the HARD STORIES.” — Dorothy Allison. I found when I took this advice, I wrote the stories that made a difference. Probably, that’s what has kept me writing.

What has helped or hindered you most when writing a book?

I try to block out all outside negative voices. (Why bother writing? It’s so hard to find a publisher, etc) If writers listened to them, we wouldn’t have any books.

When you’re writing an emotional or difficult scene, how do you set the mood?

Sometimes I listen to music from the period that I am writing about.

What do you do to get inside your character’s heads?

I just start writing and then I’m there.

If you could be mentored by a famous author (living or not), who would it be?

Sappho. I love the idea of walking with her on the cliffs of Lesbos. (And I have been there and listened for her in the wind.)

What author in your genre do you most admire, and why?

I think I keep coming back to Sappho because she is known for putting herself in the poem, like Whitman. Also, I started out in my writing life as a poet and I think the rhythm of the language even when it’s in prose is what moves me.

Have you ever cried when writing an emotional scene?

I cry all the time when writing. In particular, I cried toward the end of Loving Artemis when Art is in prison and puts her hand against the glass mirroring Linda’s hand, pressed to the other side of the glass. Then at the end, when Art is in the New York Pride parade riding on her motorcycle and she meets up with Linda who is carrying a “just married” sign, I cried again!

Do you feel bad putting your characters through the wringer?

I did kill off Art’s brother because it fit the storyline and maybe because he was such a bad influence on her, I didn’t feel bad at all. I also didn’t get a thrill from it consciously at least. I just kept writing.

Have you ever hated one of your characters?

I’ve heard it said that a writer must love all her characters. I would say this is true, at least for the main characters.

Have you ever fallen in love with one of your characters?

Not consciously. But considering the amount of time a writer has to spend with her characters, maybe I have been in love with all of the main characters and just didn’t think about it.

What type of books do you enjoy reading the most?

I review books and tend to be most interested in LGBTQ books.

Are there any books or authors that inspired you to become a writer?

I’m coming back to Sappho again. She had the courage to be herself. That’s what writing does for me.

What books did you grow up reading?

I read, read, read. I read all of the books in the elementary school library. And the teachers were concerned about me. Seriously.

What books have you read more than once in your life?

I love mythology and reread things like Ovid and Homer. Also, Dante. I think I come back because I want to revisit where the story lives in my imagination.

What book do you wish you had written?

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book and wished I’d written it. I think I do the opposite. I write the books that need to be written.

Describe your favorite reading spot.

Often, I read in the car, while my partner goes shopping.

Do you only read books in one genre or do you genre hop?

I tend to find a story that grabs me, and don’t pay attention to the genre.

Have you ever thought you’d hate a book, but ended up loving it?

I don’t review books that I don’t like. And in the many years, I’ve been reviewing, there have only been a handful of books I couldn’t finish. Actually, come to think of it, when drugs and alcohol are obviously addictions and are portrayed favorably, it turns me off.

An Interview with sapphic author NAME | Find Your Next Sapphic Fiction Read (iheartsapphfic.com)

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

To read an excerpt from Loving Artemis, click here.

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We can be in control of our lives: #Booktube #PlantPositivejournal in review #amreading

I am posting a review of the journal Plant Positive created and written by Kate Galli. The review that I recorded for Book Tube is below and the written review is below that. I was thinking that this is good to post for the holidays given the toxic food culture, but really it is good to read about Plant Positive at all times. The journal is a reminder that we are in control of our food, what we do and do not eat, and ultimately we have more power over our lives than we think we do.

When I saw Kate Galli interviewed on Rip Esseltyn’s PLANTSTRONG Podcast, I was intrigued. I immediately ordered her recently released Plant Positive Journal.

I got it as a gift for my partner but decided to read through it before she started writing in it. It is a year-long daily journal, broken down into months, weeks, and days, with the intention of helping people change their thinking, habits, and ways. I got the impression that the journal is designed primarily for people who are new to the vegan lifestyle. However, my partner and I have been vegan for four years now and the Journal was still extremely helpful.

Plant Positive Journal is beautifully done with exquisitely wrought drawings and well-placed inspirational quotes that alone are worth the price of the journal and the postage from Australia to the United States.  Kate Galli, who created the journal, is a vegan bodybuilder and health coach based in Sydney, Australia. Her podcast, about all things plant-based, is called “Healthification” and can be found wherever people get their podcasts.

As my partner said when I gave her the journal (for our fortieth anniversary), “It is the best present I ever got!”

Being vegan together—which we first did for health reasons and then went through a consciousness-raising about the animals and the environment—has been pretty amazing also.

Kate writes, “This journal covers the habits and thought patterns that help me manage my time and more importantly, my MIND.”

One of the suggestions from the Journal was to “piggyback” good habits onto each other. Kate mentions ten-minute meditation practices in the book, and I ended up “piggybacking” a ten-minute meditation onto the end of my regular yoga practice. I was meditating regularly but fell out of practice. I found this technique of “Piggybacking” my habits to be quite effective. The meditation time that I added has been life-altering and I often find myself looking forward to it!

One of the nuggets of information in the Journal was that both the American Dietetic and the British Dietetic Associations have stated that “A vegan, plant-based diet is nutritionally adequate, healthy, and safe at all stages of life, including pregnancy.”

As Kate writes, “Animals taste great. I will admit it. Most vegans will. We don’t become vegan because we hate the way animals taste. We become vegan because we discover we have been LIED TO.

We have been told our ENTIRE LIVES that some animals are ‘products.’ That it’s ok to eat some animals. Not all of them. That’d be bad!”

Plant Positive Journal created by Kate Galli reminded me of how much hope—for people and their health, for the animals, and the planet—that being plant-based also inspires in me. I found it practical, beautiful, inspirational, and very well-written.

This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube and Spotify.

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

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What’s in a name? — a #UU reflection #secularhumanist #amreading

Recently, I participated in a service on the topic of secular humanism at the Unitarian Universalists of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia. The YouTube video of my part of the service is immediately below and the text is under that.

Since becoming a Unitarian Universalist, I’ve learned there is a theological name for what I am: a secular humanist. But in my book, this doesn’t mean there is no mystery in my life. In fact, I live in the mystery.

As a writer, I live in a world where people become other people in my mind. I call them characters. History often comes alive. And increasingly, especially since I’ve become vegan, talking animals come to me and tell me their stories. I live in a world where stories take on life and often become puzzles. For every beginning, there is an ending, and I usually don’t know that ending until I get there.

I did this with my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders when I was in a group here called “The New UU” some years back when I first joined. Since I was raised secular, I wasn’t only new to being a Unitarian Universalist, but to religion in general. I decided to read the Bible, which wasn’t required, but I wanted to be thorough. Besides, I had always wanted to read the Bible since the tenth grade when my English teacher described it as the best work of fiction ever written.

When I began reading the Bible, I started wondering what if? I wondered what if there were strong women? And what if some of those women loved other women? What about gay men? What if there were transgendered people? How did they survive? What if some people did not fit the binary? What if some people were gender-fluid? How did they manage to survive in the harsh desert culture?

So, in some ways, I am a believer. I’m a believer in stories and I’m a believer in re-inventing those stories. Like many writers, I’m a believer in myth and in inhabiting that myth and rewriting it until it suits me. Often that is my entry point to myth. I read the reinterpretation and then I read the myth it is based on.

I’m a believer in change and knowing why that change is necessary.

And I believe in the inquisitive mind, including my own. Maybe it took a long time for me to believe in myself. Sometimes it feels that way and sometimes it doesn’t. But I did have to invent myself, in a culture where I am different in many ways. And I am proud of that difference.

I am a deeply intuitive person, so I don’t always know how things happen. But I know that they do happen. And I know that being part of this congregation has deepened my belief, particularly my belief in myself. So, I profoundly appreciate being here with you, as we invent our moment.

–Namaste

For information on my most recently published novel Loving Artemis click here

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#World AIDS Day — Surviving a Plague: When Literature Invokes Life

Note: I am re-blogging this in honor of World Awareness Day which was on December 1st.

Every now and then comes that rare book that brings your life rushing back to you. How To Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (Knopf 2016) is one such book.

The book chronicles the AIDS epidemic from the early 1980s – when the mysterious “gay cancer” started appearing — to 1995 when hard-won advancements in research and pharmaceuticals made AIDS a virus that people lived with rather than a disease that people died from.

It was an epidemic of massive proportions. As France writes:

“When the calendar turned to 1991, 100,000 Americans were dead from AIDS, twice as many as had perished in Vietnam.”

The book chronicles the scientific developments, the entwined politics, and medical breakthroughs in the AIDS epidemic. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a chronic infectious condition that is caused by the underlying human immunodeficiency virus known as HIV. The book also chronicles the human toll which is staggering.I came out in 1981 and while the devastation France writes about was not my world, it was very close to my experience.

In my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (Bella Books, 2012), I write about how volunteering at an AIDS hospice helped me to care for my mother when she became terminally ill:

“The only caregiving I had done at that point was tending to an old cat and reading poetry to the patients at an AIDS hospice, called Betak, that was in our neighborhood. A friend of ours, who was a harpist, had started a volunteer arts program for the patients. She played the harp, [my partner] Barbara came and brought her drum sometimes, and I read poetry. These were poor people—mostly African American men—who were in the advanced stages of AIDS and close to death. The experience let me see how fast the disease could move.”

In those days, the women’s community (what we then called the lesbian and feminist community) was mostly separate from the gay male community. Understandably, gay men and lesbians had our differences. But there was infighting in every group. Rebellion was in the air, and sometimes we took our hostilities out on each other.

Still, gay men and lesbians were also allies and friends (something that is reflected in France’s writing).

I’ll always remember the time my partner and I took a bus to Washington D.C. with the guys from ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, an international activist group that is still in existence) from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. to protest for reproductive rights. The women then went to protest with ACT-UP at AIDS-related protests. Remember the die-ins in the streets?

One thing that lesbians and gay men had in common was that we lived in a world that was hostile to us. At that time, many gay men and lesbians were in the closet because we were vilified by society and in danger of losing our employment, families, housing and, in more than a few instances, our lives.

AIDS activism necessitated coming out of the closet. Hate crimes against us skyrocketed.

There is much in this book that I did not know, even though I lived through the era. In 1986, in protest of the Bowers v. Hardwick ruling of the US Supreme Court (which upheld a Georgia law criminalizing sodomy – a decision that was overturned in 2003), about 1,000 angry people protested in a small park across from the legendary Stonewall Inn in New York City, where the modern gay rights movement was born after a series of riots that started after a routine police raid of the bar.

At that same time, Ronald Reagan (then president) and the President of France François Mitterrand were celebrating the anniversary of the gift of the Statue of Liberty.

“’Did you hear that Lady Liberty has AIDS?” the comedian [Bob Hope] cracked to the three hundred guests. “Nobody knows if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Ferry.’”

“There was a scattering of groans. Mitterand and his wife looked appalled. But not the Reagans. The first lady, a year after the death of her friend Rock Hudson, the brunt of this joke, smiled affectionately. The president threw his head back and roared.”

How to Survive A Plague is told in stories, including the author’s own story. This is apt because the gay rights movement was full of stories and — because of the epidemic — most of those stories were cut short.

Almost every June, my partner and I would be part of the New York Pride Parade and every year we would pause for an official moment to honor our dead. The silence was cavernous.

This silence extended to entire communities. A gay male friend, amazed when his test came back negative, told me that most of his address book was crossed out. He would walk around the “gayborhood” in Center City Philadelphia surrounded by the haunting places where his friends used to live.

And we were all so young then.

When I turned the last page of How To Survive A Plague, I concluded that this is a very well-done book about a history that is important in its own right. The plague years also represent an important part of the American experience. And an understanding of this history is imperative to the future of the LGBT movement.

This piece of commentary was previously aired on This Way Out, the LGBTQ news and culture syndicate headquartered in Los Angeles and published in The Huffington Post.

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

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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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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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Loving History and Embracing Who We Want — #LGBTQ #History #amreading

In honor of LGBTQ history month, I wanted to do a blog post — although in my book LGBTQ history is every month. As the saying goes, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

I decided to bring you an Amazon review of my book Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (from Thorned Heart Press)

to honor our shared history — that some of you, like me, may have lived through.

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2023

Endearing, indeed! This captivating story guided me on a historical memory lane of my lifetime. Being just a bit older than Art and Grace would be, this was a nostalgic journey for me. Beyond that, I loved the way Janet Mason wove the MCs lives through the contemporary events of their lives. Putting them in context with that history was extremely meaningful for me, helping me to reflect back on my own path to today. Low-key and powerful in its own special way.

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

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Saying Goodbye to a Friend–Anita Cornwell; #pioneer #LGBTQicon #amreading

It’s hard to say goodbye to a friend and mentor. I said a few words at the memorial service of Anita Cornwell, the pioneering writer who wrote Black Lesbian in White America and thought I would repost them here. I also included some photos from the service and a link to my article about Anita that was originally published by the journal Sinister Wisdom and reposted after her death.

When I first thought back to knowing Anita, I thought well she was always there because I don’t remember a time of not knowing her.

But then I remembered the time when I met her – I was in my mid-twenties and a new lesbian and Anita was reading with Becky Birtha at the old gay and lesbian center on Camac Street. I was wearing purple neon socks and Anita commented that she liked my socks when we were chatting after the reading.

I remember reviewing her book, Black Lesbian in White America, and recommending it to people. As I recall my ahead of her time, feminist mother loved Anita’s unique and authentic voice.

I was later part of a writing group that Anita was in, but she left after a short while because the group didn’t fit into her schedule of writing all night and sleeping during the day.

But Anita was still part of my life. At a writing conference, she commented to me that agents change often so it’s important to keep sending things out.  She also remarked that the state of publishing was depressing. Perhaps most of all, she modeled persistence to me, to keep on going on even when things are difficult. I remember my late writer friend Toni Brown and I going to visit Anita shortly before she got sick and had to move to Stapley which our mutual friend Sharon Hurley smartly arranged for her.

In one of our last visits, my partner Barbara and I found Anita laying down in her bed at Stapley.  My helpful partner asked Anita if she could get her anything. “You can get me a million bucks,” said the still-sly Anita. Curious, Barbara asked her what she would do with the money. “First of all,” said Anita, “I would buy a car.”

Anita was laying down because she had forgotten how to walk.

It’s hard to say goodbye to a friend but that is what I am doing now.

Thank you.

My article on Anita Cornwell that was originally published by the journal Sinister Wisdom and reposted by them after her death.

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Dancing The Polka — #memoir excerpt; #fathersanddaughters #amreading #LGBTQ

I’m delighted that Thimble Literary Magazine published my memoir excerpt “Dancing The Polka.” This is a piece for my memoir that I am currently shopping around, titled LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong.

Dancing The Polka

BY JANET MASON

“It’s beautiful out here! Watch the ground—it’s bumpy,” I cautioned as I walked over the lawn—which I suddenly realized was a hazard—with my hand in the warm, pliant crook of my ninety-seven-year-old father’s arm as I steered him into the day. It was late summer in the year before he died. Usually, my father sat quietly in his trash-picked chair in Jean’s living room which was decorated in a way my father described as “artistic.” Years after my mother had died, my father met his lady friend Jean.

We came to Jean’s house that afternoon, like most afternoons, after we ate breakfast at the Diner. Jean’s house sat on a large lot where she had planted ivy on the front lawn. Also in her nineties, a few years younger than my father, Jean loved to garden. Since it was a corner lot, there were only neighbors on two sides, and they divided her yard from theirs with chain-link fences. She had planted flowers on both sides next to her side of the fences. Magenta chrysanthemums were about to burst into bloom. In the back left of the yard, behind the clumps of flowers lining the fence, she also had a well-tended vegetable garden behind a homemade wire fence (“to keep the bunny out”). My father usually sat in the living room, but he came out to the garden with me this one time.

We were in Levittown, the land of working-class suburban conformity where I came from. I, along with my partner Barbara, was on one of my weekly visits to see my father. My father still lived in the same house where I grew up, around the corner from Jean. I grew up feeling different—and I was—and it wasn’t a place that was easy on people who were different, so I got out as soon as I could. When I was there, I felt like I never belonged. But I never would have questioned my place in the world when I was with my father.

My father died when he was ninety-eight, so he was elderly for a long time. When I was with my father, his well-being was my only concern. I didn’t think of it then but looking back I see I belonged then. I belonged to my father. I see now, in my single-minded focus on him, I also belonged to myself also.

I first started holding his arm, years after my mother died, when he was about seventy-five years old. He was resistant at first, insisting he could do everything by himself, without any help.

‘You’re pushing me. You’re pushing me,” he said loudly once when I was holding his arm on a ramp in a crowded community theater. He was in his late eighties at the time. Since I was larger than him, I was concerned people would think I was committing elder abuse. Over the years though, I kept holding my father’s arm and helping him. Eventually, he began tolerating my help. In his nineties, he would hold his elbow out so I could take his arm.

When Jean came along, I welcomed her presence. Many daughters might have been threatened when a potential love interest showed up for their widowed father. But I loved my father and wanted him to be happy. In the beginning, my father was happy. Later, they began to argue-Jean was very critical—and my father pointedly told me they were “just friends.”

Jean was very different from my mother. For starters, she was tiny. My mother, who died more than two decades before my father did, was the same height as my father. Both of my parents were almost six feet tall, a few inches shorter than the height I grew into. My mother was broad-minded and intellectual. Jean was conventional but inquisitive.

My partner, Barbara, usually came along on our visits. She had a close bond with Jean because she reminded Barbara of her late mother. Like Barbara’s late mother, Carmella, Jean loved to garden. Like Carmella, Jean also loved to get gussied up and go out. Jean, who was Polish American, also loved the polka, something Barbara’s mother didn’t relate to. Jean recognized a kindred spirit in Barbara, though.

“You’re Polish, aren’t you?” Jean kept asking Barbara even though Barbara had told Jean repeatedly that her mother was Italian American. This may have been early dementia. Jean developed dementia and died in a nursing home a few years after my father passed.

We couldn’t go to the home to see her because this was in 2020 during the pandemic when things were in lockdown. But Barbara commented that Jean might have dementia but “she would probably still remember the polka.”

Since Barbara is a musician, she recognized how important dancing to the polka was to Jean. Jean remembered dancing at the Polish festivals in her youth and was disappointed my father couldn’t dance with her. He was blind in one eye and had glaucoma in the other. Since he couldn’t see that well, dancing with her could have been dangerous. He might have fallen over and broken something. But Jean didn’t think about that. She just kept saying how disappointed she was.

That’s how Barbara ended up dancing the polka with Jean in the afternoons. As a drummer, Barbara also had experience dancing since her stern drum teacher had required her students to take African dance classes. Although, she still was taller, Barbara was closer in height to diminutive Jean. They both had long flowing white hair and were both enjoying themselves—especially Jean!—as they went round and round until the afternoons spun away.

Janet Mason’s book, Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters waspublished by Bella Books in 2012. Her novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders was published by Adelaide Books (New York and Lisbon), also the publisher of her novel The Unicorn, The Mystery late in 2020. Her novel Loving Artemis. an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage was published by Thorned Heart Press in August of 2022. Her work has been widely anthologized and has been published in numerous journals, including the Brooklyn Review and Sinister Wisdom. “Dancing the Polka” is her first piece in Thimble.

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

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Mental Health!? — What’s it all about? #amreading #MentalHealthAwareness

As part of a larger annual Unitarian Universalist service on Rosh Hashanah and mental health, I talked about how I have been taking care of my mental health lately. The talk is on YouTube and below the video is the text.

Lately, I’ve been consciously taking care of my mental health. Perhaps this is because we are increasingly living in a toxic society—so it seems to me.

Perhaps it is because I am a writer and the flip side of having the muse come to me and insisting that I write a novel in a few months, leaves a huge swirling void inside of me, where negative emotions can and do linger.

This past summer was a particularly good one (for my writing) and a bad one for me personally as the result of going so much deeper in my work was that I felt myself to be physically depleted when I was done, which was an unusual feeling for me.  I felt empty, numb, and uncharacteristically angry. The lingering effects were that I felt myself being a bit depressed or more than a bit, also unusual for me. At this point, I felt myself as being outside of my life. I felt disconnected.

Fortunately, I was able to get back on track through my routine of self-care which includes a daily walk for at least twenty minutes, avoiding all animal products, and doing a regular yoga practice. Perhaps it was my new little cat Peanut who brought me back to myself. For who can stay depressed with a morning routine of a rapidly growing young adult cat pouncing onto your chest and licking your face?

In my mid-sixties, I have come to the conclusion that I must consciously work on myself not only to survive but to thrive. All of this caring for my physical body also helps my mental health because everything is connected. After a medical scare about four years ago, I am still thankful and relieved to be healthy and to be here.

The I Am affirmations are similar to Buddhist affirmations, such as “May I be peaceful.” Except that by using the words “I Am,” the speaker and the hearer are placing themselves in the present and using positive thoughts to create what is already in them.

Now, thanks to the I Am affirmations I have found on YouTube, I have also been able to consciously raise my vibration. I can feel myself getting lighter and happier as I listen to the words.

It is thought that the I Am philosophy dates back to teachings described in sacred texts.  I learned that the first recorded use of the term “affirmation” was in 1843 by the philosopher, writer, and Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson wrote: “Every man is an affirmation of himself.”

In some of the I Am affirmations that I listen to, the announcer says, “I am patience; I am tolerance; I am good enough; I am pure love.”

I listen to the meditations some mornings; sometimes when I am doing my yoga practice; and several times I found I am meditations that lasted all night long. The words entered my subconscious and came back to me when I needed them.

Another meditation focuses on gratitude and says, “I am grateful for the air in my lungs.”

Would you all say that with me now?

“I am grateful for the air in my lungs” …

Thank you!

This is a good reminder that I am indeed grateful for the air in my lungs.

On this Jewish New Year – as always – I am also grateful to be here with you.

–Namaste–

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

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