Today, January 23, is the first day of No Name-Calling Week 2012, and happily my new No Name- Calling Week wristbands arrived in the mail today as well.

I’ll probably take my own photo of them later, but right now I’m just using the one from the No Name-Calling Week wristbands ordering page. As you can see, these are black wristbands with “Words Can Hurt. End the Name-Calling” and the No Name- Calling Week web site URL printed on them in red, along with the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) logo in white and yellow.

To quote from the No Name-Calling Week “About” page:

No Name-Calling Week was inspired by a young adult novel entitled “The Misfits” by popular author, James Howe. The book tells the story of four best friends trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual orientation/ gender expression. Motivated by the inequities they see around them, the “Gang of Five” (as they are known) creates a new political party during student council elections and run on a platform aimed at wiping out name-calling of all kinds. The No-Name Party in the end, wins the support of the school’s principal for their cause and their idea for a “No Name-Calling Day” at school.

Motivated by this simple, yet powerful, idea, the No Name- Calling Week Coalition created by GLSEN and Simon & Schuster Children’s publishing, consisting of over 40 national partner organizations, organized an actual No Name-Calling Week in schools across the nation. The project seeks to focus national attention on the problem of name-calling in schools, and to provide students and educators with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate name-calling in their communities.

Check out the No Name- Calling Week web site for lesson plans, resources, and other information.

In addition to the No Name- Calling Week wristbands, you can buy No Name-Calling Week buttons, stickers, posters, and even resource kits for your school.

You can also “Like” the Facebook No Name-Calling Week Page to share experiences, artwork, and news with a supportive community.

I’ve already written about some of my experiences with and thoughts about bullying in my “SEE a Bully – STOP a Bully” post, but I wanted to say a little more here specifically about the name-calling aspects of bullying:

I’m sure you’ve heard the line “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”, but basically all bullying starts with name-calling regardless of whether it ever progresses to physical abuse, and as the graphic says, words can hurt!

Here are some of the ways (I’ll add more later) name-calling does serious damage to all of us:

• Name-calling is often used to single people out for public humiliation.
• Name-calling teaches children to use hate speech regardless of whether they even know the meaning of the insults they’ve heard and are repeating.
• Name-calling is often used to terrorize people with threats of physical violence or other future abuse.
• Name-calling perpetuates bigotry by using names for whole classes of people as insults, as if they were less than human.
• Name-calling perpetuates bigotry by being used on people who don’t conform to rigid gender and other stereotypes.
• Name-calling is often used to isolate people by labeling them as fair game for abuse, and making it clear that anyone who objects will likely become a target as well.

More later … I do want to post this while it’s still January 23 :-), but will come back and say more tomorrow.

p.s. If you’re interested in anti-bullying wristbands, check out my posts on the “SEE a Bully – STOP a Bully” wristbands from the American Federation of Teachers and the “End Bullying” wristbands from the Human Rights Campaign as well.

updated January 23, 2012

I got this beautiful bracelet (OK, scrunchie, in a deep rich red with metallic-gold musical notes on a black staff) at the West Coast Queer Contra Dance Camp, where it serves double-duty as an armband — I’ll explain about that a little further down the page.

It was made by Mary of Yellow Cat Bags, and I’m modeling it here while petting my black cat Balor and with the Fender gauntlet watch I usually wear it with — click the picture to see more of both Balor and the watch.

If you’re not familiar with contra dancing, well, to quote from the San Francisco Bay Queer Contra Dance “About” page:

Contra dance is a centuries-old New England folk dance tradition. It’s the rowdy red-headed stepchild of English country dance (the kind of dancing you see in Jane Austen movies). Contra dancing is done to live old-timey music in a variety of styles, from lilting Celtic-inspired tunes to rollicking bluegrass. All dances are taught by a caller, who “calls out” instructions throughout the dance.

Queer contra dance takes the traditional division of the dance into “gentlemen” and “ladies” and gives it a queer twist. Instead of gender roles, dancers choose whether or not to wear an armband, which determines their role. (If you’re curious, the “armband” role corresponds to the traditional gentleman’s or leader’s role, but there’s not much difference between the two roles.) The caller uses the term “armbands” or “bands” to refer to the dancers wearing armbands, and “barearms” or “bares” (no, not bears) to indicate those without armbands.

The video below was taken at the first West Coast Queer Contra Dance Camp in April of 2008, and you can both hear the caller’s instructions to both the “bands” and “bares” and see the bands’ red armbands.

The thing about the bands is that they’re just a basket of very basic red-garter elastic things that are kind of ratty due to lots of use, so when I was at the first camp and looking over the bags and other handmade goods at Mary’s Yellow Cat Bags table (she has some kind of association with one of the musicians or callers), I just loved this red scrunchie and bought it to use as my personal band. So I wear it around camp (and elsewhere) as an elegant-looking bracelet with my gauntlet watch, and then when it’s time to dance I push it up over my left T-shirt sleeve if I’m going to dance as a band, or under the sleeve if I’m going to dance as a bare.

I’m not in the above video even though I’ve been to all four West Coast Queer Contra Dance Camps so far — probably at the time I was either in the other hall for a workshop or sitting down cooling off from the previous dance — but I am in the 2010 camp video below. In this video you don’t hear any calls to bares or bands, because it was filmed late enough during that particular dance that the dancers had learned the steps well enough not to need to keep hearing them any more.

I want to say that of the various utopias I find myself in now and then, the West Coast Queer Contra Dance Camp definitely ranks high on the list. For me it’s just a city bus ride away to the beautiful Monte Toyon camp and conference center in a coastal redwood forest, full of friendly and fascinating people who — if you dance both band and bare — by the end of the weekend you’ll have been rapidly twirling in each other’s arms (“swing your partner!”) with every single one of them.

Even if you’ve never done contra dancing before, both the camp and contra dancing in general are super beginner-friendly, with walk-throughs and instruction at the beginning of each dance. In addition to lots of contra dancing to incredible live bands, you’ve got workshops in things like international folk dance, waltzes, singing, English Country Dancing, and playing keyboard for contra dancing.

You’ve got your own cooking staff making all you can eat of wonderful things like stacks of pancakes covered in hot peaches, sandwiches made with slices of just-baked bread still warm from the oven, ice cream sundaes, Chinese food with tofu and vegetables, and even big trays of homemade cookies hot out of the oven.

In addition to a Saturday-night fancy/outrageous-dress dance party there’s also a Saturday-afternoon tea dance with wonderful refreshments like watercress sandwiches and scones with lemon curd, and usually some giant birthday cakes as well.

The camp is welcoming and inclusive to everyone, including having gender-neutral bathrooms with “Trans 101″ posters inside each stall.

If you’re 100% not a dance person then Queer Contra Dance Camp may not be one of your utopias, but it’s definitely a utopia. I miss it when I’m not there, I wish life during the rest of the year had more in common with it, and it’s nice to have this bright red reminder/souvenir/etc. of it to wear on my wrist.

updated October 24, 2011

This is the “I Voted” wristband from Rock the Vote — an organization dedicated to engaging and building political power for young people here in the United States (yes, this will be a very USA-centric posting) at a time when their and others’ voting rights are under attack — being modeled by my son Arthur’s red ’80′s Yamaha SHS-10 Keytar (click the picture to see the rest of the keytar).

I know the above picture makes it look like the wristband just says “VOTE”, but as you can see from this product image from the Rock the Vote store, it actually does say “I VOTED” with a red checkmark after it. These are the type of wristbands that have a taller band more like a cuff bracelet than the standard bangle-sized wristbands, and the text is both embossed and printed with very glossy ink.

Every time there’s an election, for the rest of the day after voting I proudly go around wearing one of the “I Voted” stickers they give out at the polling places (though occasionally having to reattach it to my shirt after detaching it from my hair), so when I saw these wristbands I really liked the idea of having something I could wear all week or all month to celebrate and promote having voted (hopefully accompanied by election results worth celebrating as well).

When the United States Constitution was written, only white male property owners had the right to vote, and every other group has had to fight to win the right to vote. Some groups — for example, prisoners and felons — are still struggling for the right to vote, and the voting rights of other groups are currently under attack. To quote from the Brennan Center for Justice’s Executive Summary of their Voting Law Changes in 2012 publication:

Over the past century, our nation expanded the franchise and knocked down myriad barriers to full electoral participation. In 2011, however, that momentum abruptly shifted.

State governments across the country enacted an array of new laws making it harder to register or to vote. Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.

These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities.

And to focus more on the young voters served by Rock the Vote, here’s a quote from the October 10 2011 New York Times editorial The Myth of Voter Fraud:

Some of the desperate Republican attempts to keep college students from voting are almost comical in their transparent partisanship. No college ID card in Wisconsin meets the state’s new stringent requirements (as lawmakers knew full well), so the elections board proposed that colleges add stickers to the cards with expiration dates and signatures. Republican lawmakers protested that the stickers would lead to — yes, voter fraud.

Other states are beginning to require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, or are finding other ways to make it harder to register. Some are cutting back on programs allowing early voting, or imposing new restrictions on absentee ballots, alarmed that early voting was popular among black voters supporting Barack Obama in 2008. In all cases, they are abusing the trust placed in them by twisting democracy’s machinery to partisan ends.

As a woman who knows how hard our feminist foremothers had to fight for the right to vote during my grandparents’ lifetimes, and who saw the passing of the crucial civil-rights legislation The Voting Rights Act of 1965 during my own lifetime and considers the new voting restrictions to be shameful attacks on both the spirit and letter of the law, I consider it a sacred duty for all of us to vote in every election, to make our voices heard and to work to elect people who will defend our voting rights and other rights.

Getting back to the keytar picture, VOTE! To be corny about it, if even a keytar has buttons to select voice and style, you can certainly go to your polling place (or fill out your absentee ballot) and push the buttons (or the touchscreen, or punch or fill in the selections on your voting card) to vote for people who will make your voice heard and whose style (not talking superficialities here but general philosophy, approach, and actions) best serves us all.

If you’re not registered to vote, you can go to Rock the Vote’s Voter Registration Page for help. They also have helpful information on voting as a student, absentee ballots, finding your polling place, and many other important issues.

Some Related Articles and Web Pages

The Voter Fraud Fraud, by Andrew Rosenthal in the November 7, 2011, New York Times.

This week in the War on Voting: Eric Holder engages, a December 17, 2001, Daily Kos article by Joan McCarter.

A Fraudulent Case: The ugly parallels between Jim Crow and modern vote-suppression laws, an October 20, 2011, Slate article by Risa L. Goluboff and Dahlia Lithwick.

In Memoriam of Those Who Died for the Right to Vote, an NAACP Facebook album of pictures and stories commemorating some of those who were killed for working to protect voting rights in the 1950′s and 1960′s.

Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, an NAACP article and report.

Voter identification laws are discriminatory and should be abolished, a New York Daily News column by Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s December 13, 2011, speech on voting rights, given at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum — “the right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless” – President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

No One in America Should Have to Wait 7 Hours to Vote, by Andrew Cohen, November 5, 2012, on The Atlantic web site.

Problems at the Polls, by David Firestone in the November 6, 2012, New York Times.

The Stand 4 Freedom site has a lot of information and resources about protecting all Americans’ right to vote.

October 2012 Update

Ever since turning 18 I’ve enjoyed fulfilling my civic duty via the ritual of going to my local polling place to vote on Election Day, but this year, considering (1) all the talk I was hearing about early voting, (2) my curiosity about how early voting actually worked, and (3) the fact that early voting started here in Santa Cruz as early as October 9, which would give me almost a whole month to wear my “I Voted” bracelet and talk about early voting and other election issues with people who asked about it :-), I stopped by the Santa Cruz County Building for some early voting on the way to my son Arthur’s improv class.

Basically, after making me cover my chest with a magazine :-) (for both the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential elections, I’ve worn one or another of my Obama shirts every day for the last three or so months leading up to the election), they handed me an absentee ballot (another thing I had had no previous experience with) with my info printed on the envelope, and I went to a voting booth/station out in the hall to fill it out. And then turned it in, and yes, have since then enjoyed wearing my “I Voted” bracelet and sticker and talking with people about early voting and the election.

updated November 6, 2012

My 16-year-old Arthur just started his first class at Cabrillo College, and in honor of that I decided to feature my two Cabrillo-related wristbands — one for the Cabrillo Bookstore and the other for the Affordable Textbooks movement.

Cabrillo’s mascot is the Seahawk, but as the bookstore unfortunately doesn’t carry any plush Seahawks, my Reed College griffin has taken on the modeling duty here (at least they both have beaks and wings — click the above picture to see the full version) in a break from its usual “Wildlife Warriors” collar.

“The mission of Cabrillo College is to enhance the intellectual, cultural, and economic vitality of our diverse community by assisting all students in their quest for lifelong learning and success in an ever-changing world.” – from the Cabrillo College Mission Statement

As a community college, Cabrillo College is a tremendous resource for the whole community, and it seems like pretty much everyone in the Santa Cruz area has taken at least one class there at one time or another, from teen homeschoolers to new high-school graduates to parents and grandparents looking for enrichment or career change. I’ve been taking classes there myself (most often in the form of one music class at a time) off and on since 1983, and have definitely gotten many things from the bookstore over the years, from ordinary things like books and supplies to a stethoscope for listening to my older son’s heart when I was pregnant with him. For decades the bookstore was in a kind of cramped room below the cafeteria, but in 2007 it moved into a large and bright space in the new Student Activities Center. Unfortunately they no longer have the nice purple www.cabrillobooks.net wristbands as shown above (or any other Cabrillo wristbands), but back when the bookstore web site was much newer they were giving them away at the bookstore counter.

Like all college bookstores, the Cabrillo bookstore is now suffering from loss of revenue due to online sales — if, say, the bookstore is selling your Psychology textbook for $100 new or $90 used, but there are so many used copies out there that you can get one online for $8, then not many community college students are going to want to be spending possibly more than their tuition on textbooks, if there’s a way to avoid it. Which brings us to the second wristband:

Back in 2008 some of my children’s friends were making up much of the Cabrillo Student Senate (you can see two of them here), and one of the many worthy projects they were working on was affordable textbooks and textbook alternatives. One time on the bus one of them gave me this wristband with (as shown at the top of this posting) “Affordable Textbooks” on one side, and “Join the Movement” on the other. To quote from a June 2008 Facebook event posting:

As you will know if you have have bought a textbook recently, we are currently in the midst of a textbook crisis.
 
72% of the money students at Cabrillo College put towards their education goes to buying textbooks. Textbook costs are rising at four times the rate of inflation. There are only five main textbook companies in the US and they have a monopoly on the market. The same textbook sold in the US and the UK will cost two times as much in the US. Students are being forced to take classes without purchasing the required textbook.
 
Over the past semester at Cabrillo College Elowyn, Sophia, and I have been working to make textbooks more affordable through various means of alternative textbook distribution.
 
You have probably heard us talking excitedly about POD (Print On Demand), textbook requisitions, IPERs (Independently Published Resources), OERs (Open Educational Resources), longer adoption periods, professor checklists, petitions, customized textbooks, and the math department which has decided to use the same math textbook for all sections of math 152 for a longer adoption period.
 
As you may know, the Textbook Committee has decided that the best way to go about bringing all of these issues forward is to make a short documentary summarizing the problems and solutions to the textbook crisis and starring influential members of Cabrillo College faculty, administration, the board, and the student body.
 
We are now finished with the documentary and would like as many people as possible to watch it.

The above was for a public showing of the documentary at Cabrillo College back on June 5, 2008, including a presentation by and Q&A with the Cabrillo Student Senate Textbook Committee, but you can also watch it right here! Educate yourself about this important issue, which has been getting more critical every year!

p.s. The Textbook Committee and friends were also responsible for setting up the Textbooks 4 Change web site, which donates a percentage of online textbook purchases to either The Courage Campaign (online organizing for full LGBT equality) or Special Delivery San Diego (delivering meals to people living with AIDS, cancer, and other critical illnesses), at no added cost to the buyer. You don’t have to be a Cabrillo student to use this site — anyone needing textbooks can buy them through Textbooks 4 Change to help make the world a better place, at again, no additional cost.

updated September 13, 2011

The first post I ever made to this blog was about my “SEE a Bully – STOP a Bully” wristbands, and as according to the blog stats a lot of people seem to be searching for anti- bullying bracelets, I thought I would now feature the other anti-bullying wristbands I have — these “End Bullying” ones from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), here modeled by Éowyn (click the picture to see the full-sized version).

You can get these bright purple (perfect for Spirit Day, among other occasions) wristbands for $3 each from the HRC online store or at various events HRC participates in, for example their table at Santa Cruz Pride featured the wristbands and some of their other products. To quote the HRC store:

“100% OF YOUR PURCHASE of the HRC End Bullying Wristband goes to HRC’s fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.”

As you can see above, with these wristbands the message “END BULLYING” and the HRC logo are printed on rather than embossed like most other wristbands. They’ve been fine for me so far, but I don’t know how well the printing will hold up if you’re wearing them every single day.

I’ve already written about some of my experiences with and thoughts about bullying in my “SEE a Bully – STOP a Bully” post, so I recommend that you go read that as well if you haven’t already.

What I thought I’d mention here are my mixed feelings about HRC:

On one hand, here they are the “largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization“, but as you can see from their logo, the wristbands, the envelopes they’re always sending their membership pitches in, the hats and tote bags and so on you get for joining, etc., they’re also about the most closeted LGBT organization around, slapping an equals sign on everything but with not an LGBT word or acronym to be seen. And I can remember when they pissed a lot of people off by endorsing conservative Republican Al D’Amato over liberal Democrat Chuck Schumer in the 1998 New York Senate race.

But on the other hand, well, they are the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, they do seem to do a fair amount of activism, education, and outreach, and every bit helps!

And the “End Bullying” wristbands are promoting a very good and important cause regardless of anyone’s opinion of HRC.

updated October 20, 2011

At Wordcamp San Francisco last weekend there were piles of one-inch WordPress- logo buttons in ten different colors lying around all over the place. Some people put them on their badge lanyards, backpacks, or bags, but when I noticed that the space between the pin and back of a standard one-inch pinback button is exactly the right size to fit on a silicone/rubber wristband, I took off the black “Strength” wristband I was wearing, and added one button of each color to make this multicolored WordPress bracelet. It was much admired, and an attendee from Miami took a picture of me with it.

Here’s an inside view of how the buttons are attached to the wristband — click either photo for a larger version. As silicone/rubber wristbands and one-inch buttons are both extremely common (some of my children’s friends have camera straps, backpacks, etc. that are seriously covered with one-inch buttons for various causes and rock bands and the like), this is a very easy way to combine them for a eye-catching new look and to make yourself even more kinds of message bracelets. You can pack the buttons tightly like I did, so that the wristband is hardly visible, or if you use a smaller number of buttons with a larger spacing between them, then that looks nice as well.

I should put in a good word for Wordcamp SF (three days of amazing people, presentations, workshops, tips and techniques, ideas, etc. etc. etc., and food, for a very low price), and WordPress (what I used to make this blog) in general, so you’ll see that WordPress is actually a worthy cause and deserving subject to have its own “message” bracelet:

WordPress is a very popular — powering “14.7% of the top million websites in the world” — free and open-source blogging/content-management/publishing platform that anyone can use to quickly and easily create a full-featured and professional-looking blog or web site. You don’t need to know any under-the-hood stuff to do this, but for many people, customizing and tinkering with their WordPress blogs/sites has been their route to learning, enjoying, and profiting from HTML/CSS and coding.

WordPress is a part of the open-source software movement that emphasizes cooperation, community, and support instead of dueling egos, and that has a particularly- large number of women involved with it. I recommend to anyone who participates in any kind of online activities that they give WordPress a try — before you know it you too may be putting up a web site for your business or an organization you volunteer with, a blog about one of your interests, and so on. Learn new skills! Promote your writing, music, art, or other creative works! Publicize causes you believe in! Help your community! Make friends and build or join more communities! Make $$$ as a web developer or by running Google Adsense or other ads! It’s easy with WordPress.

I also recommend that anyone interested in or curious about WordPress go to Meetup.com and do a search for a WordPress Meetup in or near your city. At these monthly meetings you can ask questions in person and watch people demonstrating just how they did this or that with their blog or web site. I go to the Santa Cruz WordPress Meetup myself.

updated August 20, 2011

To celebrate President Obama having just reached the same milestone birthday as myself, I decided to feature my Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign wristbands. When I was walking around the house looking for something to photograph them with, I noticed that an empty jam jar in the cupboard was basically exactly the same size as the wristbands, and then once I had the jam jar I needed something to put in it, and so I added some red tea roses, white jasmine, and blue borage flowers from my backyard, and then returning to the kitchen added one birthday candle for each decade. Happy birthday, President Obama!

During the months leading up to the 2008 primary elections I had donated money to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but once Obama became the Democratic candidate, among other things I did my usual walking-billboard thing of getting multiple kinds of Obama 2008 T-shirts (including this “Obama Pride” one) and wearing one or another of them every single day until election day (plus the day after, to celebrate his victory).

And I got two each of the three kinds of official Obama 2008 wristbands (or bracelets, as they were billed) from http://store.barackobama.com/ (though as you can imagine it’s now selling 2012 wristbands rather than 2008 — more about that down below). As you can see on this page, each color of wristband is imprinted with “OBAMA ’08″ on one side, with “YES WE CAN” on the other side of the royal blue ones, and “HOPE” (with the Obama “O” logo for the “O”) on the other sides of the black and the white ones.

I wore the wristbands all over the place, and got many compliments on them, and conversations sparked by both the wristbands and my T-shirt collection. I remember talking with a school speech therapist who also had some of the wristbands but wasn’t able to wear them on the job due to a no-campaigning rule — then after the election she proudly wore them to work and showed them to me.

This is kind of an odd point to bring up considering that wristbands in general, and election-year ones like these in particular, are intended to be cheap, colorful expressions of a message and a moment, not some kind of lasting heirlooms, but these are just about the best wristbands ever, in terms of material and printing quality. Some wristbands crack, fade, or become discolored over the years, or are kind of crudely printed, but these ones are really high-quality in terms of material, colorfastness, and the detail of the imprinting. Post-2008-election, I’ve continued to wear them now and then, sometimes to political events and sometimes just for the colors.

Obama 2012 wristbands update

I had been looking forward to the Obama store getting Obama 2012 wristbands as we got closer to the election, but now (February, 2012) that they just did, I don’t really think that much of them: Instead of being obvious campaign wristbands like the 2008 ones with their “2008″ and election slogans, as shown above these new ones just say “Obama Biden” and “Greater Together” in a small, generic-looking font. OK, so maybe Obama and Biden are greater together, or we and they are greater together, but they could at least say “2012″! Anyway, you can get the set of three shown above for $10, or an individual black, blue, or white wristband for $5.

If you’d like some non- silicone/rubber Obama bracelets, take a look at the red leather and metal Obama-Biden bracelet shown here, and these engraved metal Obama-Biden bangle bracelets. (The Obama store seriously has a ton of Obama 2012 stuff — check it out!)

Obama Store Coupons

The Obama Store always has free shipping and some items on sale, but to make your money go even further, there are usually some discount codes you can use. Here are the current coupon codes I know about:

Being as the election is just weeks away at this point, use the coupon code LASTCALL for 30% off all purchases of $10 or more.

In the same vein, Obamavolunteers.com has marked down all of their Obama shirts, signs, buttons, and bumper stickers to only a dollar a piece.

Well, now that the calendar has advanced to my birthday (January 9), and the election is over, in addition to the Obama Store you can check out the Inauguration Store — all sorts of commemorative items, from buttons and shirts to more offbeat things like a ruler and a wooden toy limousine to more pricey choices like medals and framed posters. Enter the code 2013 to get %15 off your purchases of $10 or more.

Why I’m voting for Obama in 2012

Some of you might be wondering why I would continue to support President Obama, considering that the economy is a wreck and that many of his campaign promises have yet to be carried out.

Well, on one hand carrying out his campaign promises has been a tremendous uphill battle considering that a large number of the Republicans in congress are committed to trying to block anything Obama supports, even if it’s some of the same things recent Republican presidents had supported, or that they themselves had very publicly supported in previous years. Some of these Republicans in congress have even come right out and said that their number-one priority is not to represent their constituents or serve their country but rather to make Obama a one-term president.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

But on the other hand, even in the face of such bullheaded opposition just for the sake of opposition, Obama actually has accomplished quite a lot in his first term, both in substance/ quantity and in comparison to the number of things that many other presidents had accomplished in their first terms. People have created many web sites/pages/articles (some more up to date than others) to list Obama’s accomplishments so far, for example:

• Obama Administration’s Achievements (Thus Far)
• What the heck has Obama done so far?
• Obama’s Accomplishments
• A LONG List of President Obama’s Accomplishments – With Citations
• Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments, from the March/ April 2012 issue of The Washington Monthly
• 188 Fact-Checked Promises President Obama Has Kept
• I am NOT Disappointed in President Obama
• How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics, the January 16, 2012 Newsweek Magazine cover story, written by Andrew Sullivan
• 8 Reasons To Support President Obama, a March 5, 2012 MoveOn.org posting
• 90 Days, 90 Reasons, featuring a new essay each day by “a wide range of cultural figures to explain why they’re voting for Obama in 2012″
• The Obama store even has a new “CHANGE IS” T-shirt with a picture of President Obama on the front and a timeline of some of his accomplishments on the back, plus sets of “Accomplishment Cards” listing “information about many of President Obama’s key accomplishments so far”.

I want Obama to have a second term so he will be able to continue to build on these accomplishments, and to fill any Supreme Court vacancies with justices who will defend the rights of the people rather than the money of the corporations. Therefore I continue to support President Obama, and encourage others to do so as well.

updated January 12, 2013

Here you can see my “LOVE YOUR BODY!” wristbands from the Love Your Body! Wristband Project, being modeled by the headstock of my Liberty ‘shooting stars’ resonator guitar out by the plum tree. These wristbands come in a dark purple, hot pink, and turquoise (even if my photo makes the latter look more surf green, it really is a solid teal/turquoise color), and in three different sizes — 8″, 8.5″, and 9.5″ — to fit almost all wrists. (And if Love Your Body! is out of your size, VoluptuArt also sells them.)

Although as shown above the Love Your Body! Wristband Project is specifically intended to address size diversity/activism, and although I strongly support this cause, at the same time loving our bodies/ourselves is a vital message and concept for all people. Pretty much all of us have had the experience of being told that our bodies are too big, too small, too young, too old, too dark, too queer, too poor, too disabled, too out of style — the list goes on and so. Some of this is bigotry, scapegoating, divide and conquer; some of it is advertisers trying to make us feel bad about ourselves so we’ll think we need to buy their products, but all of it needs to be resisted with a healthy dose of love for ourselves and working for a better future where all people’s bodies are valued.

In my SEE a Bully – STOP a Bully posting I had written a little about the devastating effects of bullying, well, this is a flip side of that — it’s also extremely important that you not bully yourself by internalizing the bullies’ and bullying culture’s messages of hatred and shame, but instead stick up for yourself and your right to be treated with respect and to pursue a full and happy life.

Whether you’re as curvy as a guitar body or as skinny as a guitar neck, or whether you favor a different instrument altogether, love your body and love yourself! Both people and guitars come in all shapes and sizes and ages and colors and places of origin and what have you, and all have their unique voices and contributions to make.

To continue with the musical theme, here’s a much-loved quote from Woody Guthrie:

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”

I’m sure you can think of just no end of occasions when I find these wristbands just the thing to remind me to stick up for myself, as well as times when I just want to let my purple, hot pink, and/or teal/turquoise shine out!

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

updated November 17, 2011

This “I Read Banned Books” bracelet was designed by Carolyn Forsman for the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, and in addition to the “I Read Banned Books” panel/charm features very shiny and pleasantly-smooth-to-the-touch reproductions of familiar covers of these seven frequently banned and challenged books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Annie on my Mind, The Color Purple, Go Ask Alice, Howl, Huckleberry Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

I got it at the notable independent bookstore Kepler’s Books when we were there to see John Green (one of my son Arthur’s favorite authors, as well as yet another author whose books have been banned and challenged) reading from his book Paper Towns.

Kepler’s doesn’t sell the bracelet on their web site, but you can buy it on many other sites including Carolyn Forsman’s — she also makes a necklace version of it. There’s also a children’s-titles version — featuring The Adventures of Captain Underpants, Annie on My Mind, Athletic Shorts, Blubber, In the Night Kitchen, King & King, and To Kill A Mockingbird — available in both child and adult wrist sizes.

As with my Harry Potter Hogwarts House wristbands from the Deathly Hallows book release, I wear this bracelet to library, book, bookstore, and other literary events, plus for Banned Books Week.

The bracelet picture at the top of this blog entry features a little Hermione statue I had gotten many years ago (and painted her hair purple to match my own), sitting in the sunlight on a fancy mirror I use as a serving tray for bread. As shown here I also used her to make a “Books not Bombs” image that I use as my user/profile icon/picture on some social-networking web sites. And if you’ve read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows you know that Hermione does read banned books — Harry and friends wouldn’t have been able to defeat Voldemort if Hermione hadn’t “borrowed” and read the Horcrux books Dumbledore had removed from the library and stored in his office.

updated July 12, 2011

Once upon a time, there was a little Diversity Center that could.

Every day, the little Diversity Center that could worked hard “building a diverse community, promoting health and well-being, and advancing social justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning individuals and their allies in Santa Cruz County”.

But one day, the little Diversity Center that could received a $75,000 grant from the California Department of Public Health — probably larger than any other grant or donation they had ever received — to assess and create programs to combat smoking in the LGBT population of Santa Cruz County.

And because of that, the little Diversity Center that could, yes, embarked on a multitude of campaigns to educate people about the dangers of tobacco use and help smokers to quit smoking.

Until finally, the little Diversity Center that could was even giving out free rainbow wristbands printed with “DIVERSITY CENTER” on one side and “I LIVE SMOKE FREE” on the other side.

And ever since then, you can find the little Diversity Center that could’s rainbow wristbands/bracelets and anti-smoking literature laying around free on tables at the Santa Cruz Pride Festival and various other political/artistic/cultural events in Santa Cruz County.

(By the way, if you know why I structured the above paragraphs the way I did, you win a No-Prize! Or for that matter, if you know what a No-Prize is, you win a No-Prize!)

And actually, the “ever since then” above is no longer correct — although it was true for a while that the wristbands would turn up at a variety of events, the anti-smoking grant happened back in 2005, and eventually the money was all spent and the wristbands all given out and so on.

Anyway, I would say that this is my second-most-frequently-worn bracelet (following my black “Strength” wristband). Of course I wear a lot of Pride shirts and other multi-colored outfits that it coordinates well with, but it also represents Santa Cruz and home and valuing diversity to me, so if I’m going to some event or place that celebrates these things, or where I feel I need to represent these things, or that IMHO is woefully in need of these things (or where I likewise feel woefully out of place), then it helps me to keep an appropriate mindset.

updated July 4, 2011