Jill Rants and Raves

the dyke march and the designated dog sitter

I guess there were thousands of attractive women at the Dyke March in San Francisco today. I wouldn't know. I was busy entertaining three dogs while their human companions went off girl watching and I stayed home to be the designated dog sitter. Along with my own four. So, while everyone else was off having a fab time being a lesbian, I was home preparing different foods for different dogs and picking up poop in the yard. I coulda left them at home and raced off in my dog dinged 501's and cut off T with my tattoo flirting out from under the shortened sleeve to join the throngs of oversexed bodies in the chill of Dolores Park, but it's Ok, I just stayed home stoically.

Instead, I loaded seven dogs up in my station wagon (yeah, a typical dog owners car, but not a friggin' Subaru) and headed down to the landfill where a gentle breeze and a golden light ebbed into the Bay. The cockapoo, mini poodle, chihuahua mix, corgi mix, papillon mix, pure border collie and the legendary Oscar caroused and ran in the warm air and had no freakin' idea what sacrifice I had made for them. I mumbled and pouted that I was missing out and that everyone else was off having a fab time, and I was stuck - with what? Some fur on a Saturday night in late June. They didn't respond. Truth is, they already knew. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

I am good, there's no doubt about it

I was looking back through the archives of my blog - and there's some good writing in there. Really, some of it is pretty darn good. Funny, poignant, insightful. Some of my blogs have been re-published elsewhere and my blog about how lesbians have sex gets more hits than my others. Except for those which mention white pitbull breeders from the south. I also think I'm a passable photographer. Not great - let's be honest. But I look back at the thousands of images and enough of them catch my eye, if not for their technical brilliance (that has eluded me my whole career) then for their commentary on the world around me. My books - all out of print at this point - are social documents of communities and celebrations of individuality, of political struggle and the importance of activism. I'm Ok with what I've accomplished.

I'm working on new projects: a new play (this is a bit funny, as I have only written one before) and a book of photos and text with the very loose concept of 'butch' and how it looks and feels from here. And I've been writing a novel, which I started 18 months ago, and am not pressuring myself to finish. I think it's some of the best stuff I've ever written. But I don't actually read novels, so I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.

My first play, Any Woman Can, written 34 years ago is being dragged out of the closet at the end of this month for a rehearsed reading, at an arts centre in London (where I used to work and in fact lived in a flat at the top of the building with Julie P who has run the place for decades now). I've had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm really amazed and gratified that Barcy, who is directing the community theatre group which is presenting it, feels that my early 'coming out' agit prop piece still has something to say. On the other hand, there are things in Any Woman Can that I wish I could take back. It's a bit like my blogs - sometimes the writing is delicate, complex and heart-rending. At other times don't you feel like you just got stomped on by a boot?

I've been humbled a lot over the last 5 years - I turn 55 next month - and even Leos feel the effects of aging. The molasses like depression which has clung to me over the last two of those years has lifted, but one of my most forceful internal struggles keeps slicing away at me - why have I steadfastly refused to do anything that might have given me any financial security? This is actually funny, and you are allowed to laugh. I do, in between tearing my hair out at my seeming determination to stay broke. To just squeeze by. Jeez Jill, what the freak is wrong with you? My public image was at odds with not 'making it'. Right? Hey, she's well-known, she must be doing Ok. Or as some thought - she's white, middle class and British - she must be independently wealthy. Excuse me while I choke on my Stella Artois and organic beef hot dog.

So, earlier this year when I was having difficulty paying my mortgage and my debt and my bills and the vet bills and my health insurance... (Ok, so I own a house which puts me in a pretty privileged position. I'm not claiming poverty, just being overloaded)....I talked to a friend who owns a great dog walking business and started walking dogs to help me get some balance back. I love being out on the trails with a pack of dogs - which is something I do with my own guys every day anyway. It's been a physical challenge and I admit it's been hard working for someone else, but it's helped me to stop fixating on how much my photo career has slowed over the last few years.

But this blog really is about what happened the other day up in the glorious East Bay hills, walking a shady trail on a hot day, with 6 dogs happily enjoying sipping from the stream, kicking up dust on the path, each one of them checking with me as they trotted a little way ahead, and me having one of my endless conversations with myself about my new photo book, my play, my novel and about my family and friends and lovers. Life was good.

We were almost back at the trail-head when two of the dogs, including my own Calvin, went running up to a group of three classic-looking-65-something Berkeley Hills ladies in their REI hiking gear sitting on a bench eating lunch. I called the dogs back - and within seconds they came - but not fast enough for the most vocal of these women. She barked at me ' Are you a licensed dog walker? Where's your permit? You have too many dogs'. I'm not good at being deferential. But I pulled my little permit out of my back pocket and flashed it at her, and began to move away. I heard her muttering to her friends and then out of nowhere her voice reached that Miss Marple crescendo and out of her mouth came:  'Miserable dog-walker' in a sort of booming ball of spit, and as I turned to say 'Excuse me?' in disbelief, she repeated, louder this time, 'Miserable dog-walker'.

And then she said it: 'You're just one step up from a burger flipper'. 

You could have knocked me over with a ...burger flipper ...actually. And I realised it was probably the first time in my life that I have come eye to eye with class hatred and superiority in that way. In the dark days of London's feminist ghetto I had certainly felt it the other direction - as collection jars were thrust into the faces of women (like me) who were identified as middle class. The money was to pay for working class women to go to Spain on vacation. But this was new to me. And it stung. Not because she assumed I was a worker bee - hey what's wrong with that? But that this apparently-middle-class, probably democrat voting Berkeley area denizen could so solidly hate those who are not like her. 'You people', she spat. But by that time I was gathering my canine clan and wondering whether to go eat a burger for dinner and leave a 50% tip.

albany bulb: where's the outrage?

Changes are starting to alter the landscape of the Albany Bulb - the fencing is up for the 8 acre burrowing owl habitat on what is known as the plateau, and they are beginning to 'create' the burrows - which are meant to look like abandoned ground squirrel holes. Of course there are already plenty of ground squirrel holes made by real gophers and not the 'consultants' brought in to 'make' the park. Signs banning people are up round the perimeter and the tell tale symbol of a manufactured environment - the interpretive signs - are being readied. The signs will be needed because apparently the owls may not actually choose to nest here, so it's best we tell them 'hey woo hoo's, this land is your land'. The interpretive sign is a dreadful thing. Tourists stand over a small illustrated laminated potted history of a place and go away with some interpretation. Why bother discovering, when it's all been discovered for you.'This photo shows the entrance to a nearby recently 'created' park. You can see the huge numbers of happy and excited park users.' There - that was your interpretive sign.

But that is at the heart of this passionate struggle for a park which tells its own story at every turn and at every moment and which nobody can seem to leave alone. It is a park in constant organic growth of imagination, of art - from the brilliant to the extremely bad - of plants and teeming with life, including those invasive species: humans and dogs. And if you choose to discover it, do so at your own peril: you will be surprised and amazed, and the only interpretation provided will be within the limits of your own imagination.

On Saturday mornings if you venture as far as you can out onto the Bulb you might meet Osha, working with his aging hands on pieces of found metal and wood which he will sculpt in front of your eyes into a bird, a dog, a man with a fishing pole or a dragon. Take a trail past a wall of rebar and concrete and find Jimbo the Hobo's old home which, when he left, he dedicated as a 'free library'. Books line the shelves and people come and go, adding or subtracting from the reading. Listen to the whoosing sound of the completely unregulated skate park, built by the people who use it and where, even after a raging party, the bottles and the debris are cleared and placed in a garbage can which someone then wheels out to the front of the park half a mile away.

I came upon a fig tree I had never seen before the other day. Finches chattered busily in it's branches and a garter snake slithered by while lizards ran for cover. And in among the concrete blocks, a series of little paintings.

But all this is ending - roads are replacing uneven gravel trails, and building contractors are bringing their trucks and their attitude to our haven. Their first visit to the Landfill is to plan it's conformity to managed parkland. Their earth moving vehicles sweep all before them and paintings crumble into pieces, gravel brought in massive trucks is unloaded over the rocks kids now clamber on. I mean, why let Johnny scrape his knee when you can make it a boring flat trail so that joggers can push their strollers while listening to their voice mail messages. You wouldn't want a litigous Berkeley attorney to sue the parks system because he stubbed his toe on a bridge built by the homeless as a beautiful walkway across a small ravine, right? Reality is that there has never, not once, been a liability claim made against any authority connected to this place.

The wonderful bridge that was built, lovingly (and with some pretty strong engineering know-how) by people who know every inch of these 40 acres, was so thoroughly destroyed by the city of Albany a week ago they even removed every piece of wood - to take where? Well, I guess some landfill somewhere. And the contractors were out looking at the skate park and the sculpture garden yesterday. If you haven't yet visited our urban place of wonderment - don't wait too long.

Check out my new 'album' of photos of the Landfill -

dachshund dotage and doting

I stumbled a little on the path by the creek in Tilden Park yesterday, and almost dropped my precious cargo. I looked down at the little 10 pound form nestled in my arms, his front legs and long snout draped over my forearm, his back legs dangling slightly. His eyes gazed out at the passing sights and he seemed entirely at peace with the situation. A few minutes before I had looked behind me on the trail and had asked the rhetorical question 'where is Oscar?' to no-one in particular. He had wanted to come on this hike, like he always does, but just a little distance from the trail-head, he had stopped in the shade of a bay tree. And as I reached down to pick him up to carry him the rest of the walk, he did not resist as he often does. In fact sometimes, Oscar will do a little swerve like a receiver avoiding a tackle and gun his little engine to evade my attempt to pick him up. Like 'whoa Jill, no way, there's a smell wafting down this trail, and I'm gonna be right here at floor level when the source of the aroma comes into view'.

Oscar is and has been my visual muse for the last 3 years, since he came to stay for a few days and then pretty much refused to leave. He's 18 now, and I am more sentimental about him, with his belly smelling like basmati rice, than I am about any of my others. He has the worst breath - like a sewer on a hot day - and we've discussed endlessly the pros and cons of dental work, to remove the decaying teeth and treat chronic gum inflammations, but at his age the risks may outweigh the benefits. So, I just turn my head when he yawns. I have photographed him more than any dog I've ever known, and I'm not the only one. People I meet on my walks grab their phones and snap away while Oscar, oblivious to his stardom, ambles towards the small screens to nudge them, as if they were dog treats.

But yesterday, he hung limply in my arms and for a moment I thought his breathing had stopped. These trails that he had once bounded along are becoming hard on him, his back legs are clearly causing him discomfort. So two weeks ago, I started Oscar on an anti inflammatory analgesic which gives him an amazing lift for a couple of days, he virtually leaps from the car and goes stomping up to a dog 8 times his size, barking with the fervor of a younger guy. But this drug will shorten his life, by exacerbating the kidney problems he is already, like many old dogs, beginning to experience.

I am OK with this. And Oscar, I think, is also OK with this. I use the medication very sparingly, at most once a week, and only when I see him struggling like I did on the trail. These are the decisions animal lovers face and when we truly love them as dogs - not as extensions of ourself, not as emotional struts to get us through difficult emotional times - as animals who have no means to make these decisions themselves, then the decisions become easier.

Oscar races to the door each morning and evening for walks, springs from the sofa when I return, eats his food voraciously, poops perfect poops, pisses in the garden and not in the house, growls and barks at anything he chooses to growl and bark at and so far - wakes up every morning with a yawn and a stretch and a small smirk on his face as if to say - 'Fooled ya. Got another day to go'. I'll know when he doesn't want to fool me any more.

obama - with no illusions

I am still not convinced. I don't feel the love, the audacity or the hope. I cannot shake the feeling that the crowning of Barack as the prince of the new dawn in the Democratic party came as a surprise, perhaps even to those who constructed this candidacy. It's an irony that one of the men whose fingerprints are all over Barack's meteoric rise to power is none other than John Kerry who refused to fight back against the Swift Boat attacks, who clearly had no love for Bill Clinton and undermined Hillary early in the race and who shamefully abandoned his own VP choice, John Edwards. Ironic that Barack has similar characteristics to Kerry - cerebral, and lacking the will for a bare knuckle fight.

When Barack gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Convention there was no doubt that he was being positioned as the 'look' and the 'sound' of the future - but was it really envisioned that he would be the last Demo standing right now? Was he making a bid for VP recognition or a possible 2012 bid? The future is here, and it may be early.

Should we give him credit for a phenomenal grassroots campaign which utilized the tools of the new age - Facebook, You Tube and Oprah, do we look back at Bill Clinton's role and wonder whether there was a hope in hell the desperate-to-win-the-White-House Democrats were going to risk a campaign in which Monica Lewinsky's blue dress might flutter into view, do we wonder if the Demo party leaders misjudged the sweep of emotional messianic adoration which became the hallmark of Obama's campaign stops? In short - did Edwards and Hillary get crushed from within? Clinton supporters have every reason to be angry. The Clintons, (in spite of some very questionable history and political moves) were the reason the Democrats enjoyed a resurgence in the 90's. Bill crossed race and gender lines with his easy fluid populism. Now they are being condemned as being 'the past' and 'the same old politics'.

All that said - there can be no question that every person who voted for Clinton or Edwards must now do everything they can to ensure an Obama victory in November. If for no other reason than there needs to be a statement that the years of Cheney/Bush are done, finis, for good. And the Republicans have done their part - serving up a candidate who is quite possibly the worst nominee in recent memory. Ancient McCain cannot win in November unless the Democrats trip up over their own hype.

And another reason to register democratic voters as fast and as many as you can - the hatred oozing....no... gushing from the conservative airwaves is despicable and only complete failure in November will do. But it isn't just Obama they revile. Brush the Limbog has said quite clearly that a McCain victory is no victory at all. Others less polite than he are fueling a storm of anger and fear with talk of 'Obama's Marxism', of 'Islamo Fascists', 'the threat to our borders, language and culture' and yesterday an attack by one of San Francisco's right wing radio stations on Barack's family. "Even his mother was liberal" spat the man who always sounds as if he is holding his nose clenched shut, and who interchanges the words liberal, socialist, marxist and extremist without so much as a blink. The only stench he might need to avoid is the one coming from his own mouth.

Vote Obama - with no illusions.

mingling in the internet chapel of love

If you've ever read my blog before you have an inkling of what I think of online dating,  Shake it off, shake it off. I'm happy to report that at least one (of the tiny number of women I went on a first date with) took from the experience a funny story to tell future dates. A funny story about me. I just hope she got good dinners out of it. Look, I'm not complicated. A first date with me involves a dog walk, probably getting muddy, coffee or dinner (if at the end of the walk we think we still have anything to say that wasn't said on the hike), and then a sort of 'yeah, hey, that was fun. Good luck.' The only woman I met online who might have become more in my life had a husband in law enforcement. 'Yeah, hey, that was really fun. Good luck'.

The woman who hiked and told tales later dated the woman who my dearly beloved Susie left me for and then left 6 years later for the woman she had been involved with years before me. This is known as the lesbian degrees of separation.

And honestly, I'm glad that she has a story to tell - that on the hike with me in the Oakland Hills, my whacko Corgi/Aussie mix Calvin had suddenly taken off through the brush and leaped over an electric fence to scare the weed eating goats which are shipped in and enclosed in areas of the hills to do so much better what men with weed whackers don't like to do. Problem is - once Cowboy Cal was in the enclosure, getting him out was a helluva lot harder than him getting in. Goats were running in all directions, my other dogs were feverishly running up and down the outside of the fence barking, and I had to climb in and extricate Cal from goat torture.

I guess the laugh line in the story is - there was Jill Posener chasing her dog chasing goats in a mud drenched weed covered gully in the hills. To me, that's just an average hike.

When I finally corralled him, I had to lift him up and over the electric fence, while said hiking companion kept the fence down with a block of wood, mud was spattering everywhere, and brambles attached themselves to all. She laughed. I'll give her that. But when we finally reached our cars we sort of looked at each other with a sort of 'yeah, hey,that was fun. Good luck' look and off we sped, in my case swearing off online dating for ever. And I did.

So I'm curious to see the recent explosion in dating sites that try to ensure that you will never be challenged by uncomfortable things - like differences in political views, religious views, or race. 'Democratic Match', 'Republican People Meet', 'Black Singles', 'Classy Black Singles', and my current fave 'Christian Mingle'. The Democratic site chooses a photo of two donkeys as their unfortunate promo pic with the attempted laugh line 'date your own species', and there is an advisory site which warns which christian dating services also offer (shock) 'g a y  and  l e s b i a n'  listings. And I swear they write it double spaced like that.

The much hyped melting pot of America has become the place where you can choose to date an almost mirror image of yourself. Which brings me neatly to the number of lesbians - who declare themselves to be femme, and hang a conspicuous 'No Butches" sign at the front door of their portal. Hey, I agree with laying it right out there - I like girls who are absolutely nothing like me - but it's the hostility of the 'No' that niggles. If we have any concern that our communities are shrinking, like gravy reducing in a pan, that we are becoming more and not less obsessed with identity politics, perhaps we should start there - at the moment we meet another human being for the first time, even if it's only online.