My college friend Beth Stroud lost her case on appeal and has been officially defrocked from the United Methodist Church for being gay. I think she's very courageous. And her case has opened some minds, even if the outcome wasn't what she wanted.

About the same time that I learned that George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) came out as gay. And I just shake my head when people wonder why it's a big deal. It's still a big deal to be a gay Asian male. How many do you know who are out? In fact how male celebs do you know who are out who aren't basically retired? I know... um George Michael. And he was always singing about sex.

I can't think of a single female Asian celeb who's out as lesbian or bi. Maybe I'm just not up on my celebs. I'm not exactly a celeb follower. But what I do know is the number of known lesbigay celebs is not anywhere near 10%.

I wish it wasn't such a big deal. But we still live in a world where being queer still has serious negative consquences.

Sixteen years ago, I was at Bryn Mawr College during the Loma Prieta earthquake. A lot of kind people asked if my parents were okay. My parents live 100 miles away, so they were fine. I was touched by people's kindness and also amused by their ignorance of just how big California is.

I sprained my ankle on Saturday night. We were rushing to see Wallace and Gromit. I stepped too quickly off the step to the garage and slipped and fell. I have hyperflexible ankles due to my disability. But mostly I was rushing too much. I also should have asked C to get my ankle brace before going to the movie. He did get me an ice pack. But shoulda-coulda-woulda. I'm trying to let go of useless recriminations. It's a hard habit to break.

My cold has also worn me down. Special K asks every few hours "Mommy, are you still sick?" "Yes, I'm afraid so." I answer. C told me "You've been sick, lame or sleep-deprived for over a year." It made me feel sad at first. Then I realised it's basically true, yet I still carry on. I wrote 300 words yesterday on the Road to Mandalay. I wrote 1200 words today on my non-fiction book, which is now 13,820. Still keeping up with my quota.

I signed up for a writing workshop with James Frey in Berkeley October 28/29.

He wrote How to Write a Damn Good Novel and a sequel How to Write a Damn Good Novel II. I found the latter one of the most useful and entertaining how-to books on novel writing.

My fellow writer and BMC alum Gina attends every year. She has wonderful things to say about him. If you want to know more, please feel free to email me.

I hope those of you who are writers can join me.

Details are here.

Much of my news about Katrina comes from frumiousb who's an American Mawrter now living in Holland. Her post is locked due to content unrelated to Katrina.

I'm very outraged. We pay billions of dollars a year for troops and helicopters and ships. Why aren't they descending on NO to help our own people in their time of need?

An excellent series of lj posts from auryn24 a nurse in a hospital in NO.
In one post, she asks for some clothing and towels and a pillow for herself. It's rather pathetic.

Bush appointed a weak manager to FEMA, because he was busy fighting wars and dealing with Homeland Security and now it's come to bite him hard with these series of awful headlines: FEMA sent fire crews...to hand out flyers, FEMA sent help only after the storm was over, Offers of aid have been held up in FEMA red tape

Or maybe he just lives in the same world as his mother: Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off

Or perhaps Bush just read these uplifting stories about heroes in NO in CounterPunch.org that I never heard of until frumiousb linked to it.

Here's one I found from the BBC: Online gamers lend a hand

And keeping with my pledge to also report on international affairs, here's some outrage about China, Yahoo puts a Chinese dissident in jail

Last but certainly not least, Jed has an excellent post about the Same sex marriage act in California. If you're in California, please go here and follow his instructions.

We had a lovely time at tritone and morrisa's party on Saturday. I hadn't seen them for too long. So long that they'd never met my husband or either of my two children and I'd never meet their child, mirandatime. Miranda talks a lot for her age and we were impressed by her vocabulary. She loved Special K and followed her around and tried to take back her toys. Special K didn't mind. Miranda's very sweet and cute. Here's a photo from their album. They also took some photos of Special K too, which I don't have yet.

I also had fun at the BMC list lunch on Sunday. Special K insisted on coming with me. Then she sat on the other side of this long table with Julia's twins and not even strawberries could entice her away. My little girl is growing up. Time was when she was glued to my hip.

We spent a lovely weekend with alumni from Bryn Mawr College Here's the itinery. On Saturday we drove up to Filoli. The last time we visited Filoli was for a bird watching tour, which was early in the morning. Afterwards we had a picnic lunch in the cafe outside. We didn't see much of the house, and it was a self-guided tour.

This time we had a guided tour of the house. We scrambled to catch up with the later Bryn Mawr tour and missed the introduction. The tour guide gave us lots of details about the house and furniture. Some interesting like the person who donated the furniture was more Eastern oriented than the original owners, but he happened to have the owner's favourite knitting chair. Others like where such and such film was shot, not so interesting to me. About halfway through the tour when we met up with the earlier group, one of the alums said "We really want to see the gardens. This is just a house, but the gardens are lovely." So the tour guide started rushing through the house.

We lagged behind and stayed with the other tour group that was lingering in the kitchen. To me kitchens in great houses are always interesting. The hub of a house is always the kitchen. And in old-fashioned children's books, the children always sneak down to the kitchen, where they have a wonderful time. The tour guide showed us the bell system which was state of the art at the time with circuits instead of a system of levers. He also showed us the enormous drawers in a large table. You could pull out the drawer from either side of the table. I thought that was neat.

We finally went outside to the gardens and the gardens were nice, but to me they were just gardens. The owners had tried to imitate French and Italian gardens of the time, but really it reminded me most of English gardens in smaller great houses. I'd seen a lot of them. But there aren't that many old mansions left in California. We had trouble walking along the gravel paths with the double stroller. Sometimes the path was too narrow, but more often there were steps. It was also incredibly hot and Special K got a bit grumpy and insisted on riding in the stroller and eating Cheerios.

Then we drove to the real treat of the day: Green Gables Estate. Green Gables is a private estate designed by Greene and Greene. Delia '52, a Bryn Mawr alumnae grew up there as a child and it's her summer home. She stays the winter in SF. We ate lunch on the veranda outside the house and had a lovely view of the terrace. At the bottom of the terrace was a view of the Roman Garden. I'll have to put up my photos sometime, but here's one for now


I had an interesting chat with Amy Campbell, the Director of Athletics about the Wellness classes they have. They had a class in my day, but I don't remember it, so I guess it wasn't that useful. The health seminar I went to in 2001 was much more useful. And from talking to her, it sounds like they have improved the class a lot to teach women how to take care of themselves.

D also kindly opened up the entire house to us, so we rambled through the house. K loved it so much or perhaps enjoyed its coolness that she kept asking to go back inside and wandered through the numerous bedrooms. Her favourite room was one of the few rooms covered with wallpaper: a green flowery pattern which was continued to the ceiling. An extremely feminine room. D said that was her room as a child. My favourite was the room entirely designed and furnished by Green & Greene. It had cool tiles and a brown ceiling with brown floral motifs. It was also the coolest room in the house, though the house was a lot cooler than the sweltering outdoors.

The roof had just been recovered with individually hand-pressed cedar shingles. They gleamed blond in the sun. D said they'd darken with age. I enjoyed looking at the cedar store room with cedar closets with glass windows. They were carefully labeled and filled with pink towels and white sheets.

I noticed that the electronics were all pretty ancient. I think I have a bigger tv and we bought ours in the early 90's and they only had VCRs. No DVDs in site. Though there was a laptop computer.

The kids fell asleep on the way to Stanford, so C dropped me off. I walked on a short tour around the campus to view the various sculptures, most of which I'd never seen. My favourite was Timetable by Maya Lin. I'm a sucker for anything with water, especially water you can easily touch. I also liked that you could tell the month as well as the time.

Of course we saw the Burghers of Calais by Rodin, and Gay Liberation by George Segal. I've seen that many times before, and I enjoyed seeing them again.

The Stanford Legacy by Don Yeomans was a Haida totem pole that told the story of Stanford. The top was a little boy who represented Leland Jr who died at age 15. He peeked his head out from the crest of the crow of knowledge who joined tongues with the mystical frog. Below them was a crying woman who cried copper tears, Jane Stanford. Then below that was Stanford himself holding a copper of wealth while a student reached up to take the copper.

After the tour I got a ride home with Anna Cusack '04 (no relation to John or Joan who I think said she's going to join the list) and collapsed on the sofa with a headache. It was very hot outside and I find looking at art, examining it closely and thinking about it really tires me out.

The next day C dropped me off near SBC Park in SF. Well he was supposed to drop just me off, but Special K insisted on coming along on the tour. First stop was the Mission Bay visitor center where a representative of the developer waxed on about all the great development plans they have. K wanted to rush around the large building so I followed her around half listening to the lecture. Then we were driven over to the new UCSF building of Sciences with a magnificent set of arches similar to the ones at Green Gables except of course they were made of modern granite and instead of climbing down stairs to see the view, you climbed up stairs and saw a magnificent view of SF.

We were shown around Mission Bay for a little more then were dropped off at the terraced entrance of Yerba Buena Gardens. As our tour guide advertised, it's the best entrance. We walked up the terraces then up the steps over the top of the MLK fountain and saw another good view of the city. Then we walked to the top of Yerba Buena gardens and back down around to SF MOMA.

K rushed around and chased pigeons. Unfortunately she tripped and fell abrading her lip. Pools of blood gushed out of her mouth and she started screaming. Fortunately I could see that the cut wasn't serious. Lip cuts always bleed terribly. I picked her up and got blood on my cheek, neck and shirt and K got blood on her dress and hands, but after a few minutes she stopped crying. Putting a wet tissue on her lip seemed to help. I wasn't sure if it was the coolness of the tissue that soothed or just having something to do. Her lip swelled up nice and fat. Fortunately a pediatrician was among the party and she suggested ice. Kind alums helped carry my bag and find ice. K made some effort to put ice on her lip, but it was clear she found the request slightly baffling. After another hour her lip looked a lot better.

We met C and Little T at Market Bar where a lunch was served to all the alums. I liked the stuffed eggs topped with crab, and roast chicken. My parents and Saskia also arrived and had lunch at a separate table. Little T loved being dangled on S's knee and laughed and smiled.

Then Kate '75 kindly gave me ride to a tea. K wanted to go too, but she seemed tired and there was the issue of the car seat. The tea was hosted by Emily Murase '87, and Caroline Marks '53 who said her husband had been 30 years in the state senate. She's a grand old lady. She has photos signed by various dignitaries including Bill Clinton. She has a lovely tea set that reminded me of my grandmother. I had a great time talking to alums from '48 down to '04. Then Kate gave me a ride to the Presidio and met up with my parents, my husband and my kids. We walked around a bit. It's a lovely campus with little artificial streams and a huge fountain. Then finally it was time to go home. We took part of the scenic 49 mile drive, so we didn't get home until after 8pm.