We Do This. We Do That.

May 01

[video]

Apr 13

Like I was saying….

Via MBA@UNC MBA Online & Women 2.0

Mar 29

Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve

—Adrienne Rich

(Source: armenotti, via syeda)

RIP ~ Adrienne Rich -

If you don’t know, you should take the time to read the above link and learn.  Tonight was all candle light, red wine and poetry reading at the Bungalow de la Loba, in honor of this beautiful legend.

Mar 25

This is a long rant on my favorite topic of the week - ie - figuring out my blood lines.  I’ve been, on and off, on something of a genealogical research kick for awhile now.  As someone who grew up knowing nothing about my biological heritage, other than a few supposed legends, I was truly starting with zero knowledge.  Including the challenge of not knowing my grandparents’ names on one side of the tree.

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On and off I’d attempt some research, and hit a dead end.  For some reason, this last week, I decided to try again, but was able to approach the research with a few new skills and suddenly hit some magic.  On one side, I only got as far as great grandparents arriving in the US from Russia, seemingly as a part of the diaspora of German Russians fleeing.  But I can’t crack the story back to their time before hitting US soil, and all the supposed legends on that side and whatever role Catharine The Great played remain a mystery.

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On the other side of that grandparent set, I was able to crack the next few generations, which more or less seems to lead to endless chains back.  I got distracted (by the crazy story below) and so have stopped around the 1500s, with not much real information, other than the fun fact that of course I had a relative who died in prison in Cambridge, MA after being accused of being a witch.

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But then I had the exciting moment of finally finding my father father’s name.  I’ve been trying to locate it for years, so once I found it I basically canceled all my plans for the day and started the obsessive research to figure out who his people were.  (My father’s mother still remains a mystery until I finally get a death certificate to give that answer.)

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My father’s people were mostly dirt poor farmers in Kansas.  And this is a theme for a bit, but it didn’t take much time to get back to when they all were in Scotland.  I had no idea they were Scottish.  And then back a few more years, and suddenly a ton of them were Lords or Ladys or Earls.  Which, who knew?  But then, I hit who was several times back my great grandfather…and he was King James II.  Which led to King James I, of course.  (Note:  I had no idea these kings even existed.)

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They royalty line could have been exciting in its own right, but mostly I was excited because that meant tons of people had already documented the hell out of the prior blood line.  So all I had to do was walk back generation after generation to find the next link.  It started to get crazy.  Lots of other Kings of territories that no longer exist.

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But as I hit the middle of my night, and about 700 ad in my family line, I started to joke that I was going to keep going to see if they possibly recorded this whole lineage back to when Jesus was walking around.

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So I kept going.  I guess the Scots came from France, and mostly about there they hung out, until right around the Jesus time, and then suddenly they were scattered, including newly being recorded in Egypt and Iraq and…um…Jerusalem!

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At this point, I was mostly tying the names to each other, and not pausing to research all the stories behind the names.  Until I got to Jerusalem in the years Jesus was alive, and saw that my whatever times great grandfather at that point was a Joseph alternatively called Saint or Joesph of Arimathea.  I apparently did not pay enough attention in bible study, so I had to google.  Joseph happened to be the fellow who took the body of Jesus and buried him in his own tomb.  With historic and genealogical records showing that was done because he was the Uncle of Mary.  You know, the Virgin.  (The other St. Joseph recorded being Mary’s husband, but died before Jesus did, and so could not bury him.)

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So, I got back not only to Jesus’ time, but….to being related to Jesus through the Virgin Mother.

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But then I notice that Joseph’s daughter Anna, named after his sister/Mary’s mom, has the cool middle name of “Prophetess.”  (That family chain goes back to the high priestess line, which is as far back as I got - as I’ll let the biblical scholars break down that Jesus’ line was descendent of King David, as I got distracted again…)

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So Anna, the Prophetess/Mary’s cousin, ends up marrying some foreign nobility and has some kids.  This is when that family line breaks off from the Holy Land into ruling various countries throughout time.

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All that lead up to get back to the fierce looking lady at the top of this post.  How have I lived my whole life not knowing about the Warrior Queen Boudicca, until finding out that I’m related to her?  (Queen Boudicca = Anna the Prophetess’ daughter.)

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Apparently I missed some history lesson so many other long ago had!  So maybe you already know, but Queen Boudicca was described in historical records as:

 ”possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women”, that she was tall, had hair described as reddish-brown or tawny hanging below her waist, a harsh voice and a piercing glare, and habitually wore a large golden necklace (perhaps a torc), a many-coloured tunic, and a thick cloak fastened by a brooch.^[11]

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Which - oh hay now!

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She also identified with the Goddess spirit embodied in wolves and ravens, and in Celtic beliefs, many though she was a human representation of the war goddess Andraste, who Boudicca would pray to (“woman to woman”) before leading her army into war against Rome.

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The summary is that her husband died, and willed his territory to his wife and two daughters, but Rome didn’t agree with female inheritance of kingdoms.  So Rome went to Iceni (now Norfolk, UK) and beat Boudicca and raped her two teenage daughters.

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So Boudicca rallied troops and called them into war against Rome, winning three battles and burning down London in the meantime.  With Boudicca leading the charge in a chariot with her two daughters. 

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She was a warrior queen, who would pause between each battle and release a rabbit from her cloak, as she took the direction the rabbit ran as a sign from the goddesses about the pending battle.

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Eventually, in the fourth battle, Rome won and Boudicca died either of sickness of self poisoning. 

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And thus researching my genealogical lineage ends up being a history lesson in European royalty, the Bible and female warrior goddess queens.  (Also, someone then informed me that there’s a Boudicca perfume line, which includes the three Boudicca perfumes Michelle Obama, of course, wears./I am totally adding those scents into my life!)

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I’m more shocked that I was able to find out who my grandfather was, than I necessarily am by the findings of from where he came.  I’ve always claimed a non-biological lineage from fierce leaders, mystical folks and bad ass women in history, but I never paused to think that I actually might be a blood descendent of some of those figures.  

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But when I swagger around now with my hair down my back, my warrior style crazy colored dresses I love, my tattoo of a raven and a phoenix and the crazy jewelry I’m always wearing…well…I can feel like I’m doing Boudicca and the Prophetess right.  And if any right wing person ever again yells at me about the Bible, being a descent of St. Joseph and Mary and Jesus is a pretty good way to shut them down at the start.

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Also, I’m totally taking “Prophetess” as a new middle name.  Obviously.

Mar 22

One of my favorite hoodie photos in support of justice for Trayvon Martin.

Mar 14

When SXSW Comes Face To Face With Austin's Homeless -

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the Homeless HotSpots controversy at this year’s SXSW festival. 

As a woman who was once homeless, and as a woman who’s at SXSW this year, I feel the need to weigh in on the situation and to try to change the focus of the discussion.  Click though for my whole response.

SXSW is a place of privilege. It is also a place where many people try to innovate new ways to do good in the world. But that doesn’t change the dynamic of how hard it can be to come face to face with your own privilege…

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…As much time as has been spent talking about whether or not this short-term program is something that SXSW attendees feel comfortable about, any additional time spent criticizing should be spent innovating. If all the thought and technology leaders gathered in Austin want to pause to talk about homelessness — imagine the great potential of good if they put their smarts, their abilities and their passions into creating new solutions….

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…The power of SXSW is the power of ideas and the ability to turn them into creative outputs. This seems like a perfect time to turn some of that focus into serving the homeless by more than payment for 4G service. Maybe I’m an optimist on this front, but then, SXSW is a gathering of optimists who believe that good ideas can make for a better world. If the Homeless Hotspots project leads to a few people generating income during a time their entire city is doing the same, it will be worth it. If it can also lead to some of the most powerful thought leaders in the country making homelessness an issue they work on, the experiment can have more value than any of us alone could imagine.

Full piece here.  Feel free to comment and share as you feel so moved.

[video]

Mar 08

The best International Women’s Day story, told through GIFs.

Mar 07

The article this image is from is one of the most depressing things I’ve read in a while.

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Click through and check out the visual display of sadness, but I’ll also sum it up for you real quick:  Unsurprisingly, women are less likely to be published in mainstream publications, and their books are less likely to be reviewed.  As unsurprising as that fact is, the degree to which it’s still true shocked me.

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I was sent this link shortly after reading through an email chain among friends.  A number of friends of mine had new books come out last week.  (Congrats, dudes!) And I say dudes because, well, yep, they’re all dudes.  On this email chain, another dude friend of mine - with several books to his name - asked for us lady friends to also hopefully share news of new books.

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Crickets.

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Now, this particular email list is shared by a collection of kick ass peers who all do amazing work with their lives.  But only the dudes have been pausing to write books.  Despite the fact that we’re all somewhat equal in our careers.

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In my own life, I’ve been lucky (?) to repeatedly turn down book deal offers - because I felt the timing wasn’t right, or the exact topic wasn’t right, or a combination of those two factors.  At any given point, I always have “the book idea” of the moment - ie, the book I would write in that moment, were I not doing other things.

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Recently, when I mention my latest, present “book idea” I’ve been getting serious push back.  My excuses for not doing it aren’t working to get people off my back.  To the point where I’ve agreed to publish a lengthy article on the subject….sometime this year, just to appease the folks pushing for it.

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But what I notice in my own life, and in the lives of the other power ladies I know who didn’t chime in about the books they are not publishing, is that we’re opting for a different road.  When we’ve reached a certain point in our careers, where our male buddies pause to write a book, increasingly - I mean, serious trend here - us ladies are starting our own companies or organizations, rather than writing books.

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I think the impetus is the same.  We have something we believe.  We have a certain amount of skills and connections.  There’s something we think that needs to be in the world that isn’t yet there and likely might not happen if we don’t do it.  And so we launch something.  We don’t write about it, thinking that our opinions are enough - we go out and tackle the project and further prove ourselves through our leadership in the entrepreneur field. (Relatedly, my start-up/biz adviser likes to tell me fairly often, “stop doing (that) like a girl!”  Note: my biz adviser is a woman, but rightly calls out when my vision or strategy isn’t as balls-to-the-wall as it might be, were I dude who thought what I was doing was the best thing to ever be done.  It’s a fascinating check to have thrown at me repeatedly.  And, even with all my badass sense of fierceness and gender awareness, said biz adviser is often right that I was thinking too timid or too small. Ugh but a damn good learning process to go through!)

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Maybe what’s most interesting to me about this is that - the entrepreneur route definitely isn’t an easy one for ladies at this point.  Overwhelmingly - esp in tech, as well as in politics and media - women heads of businesses and organizations are a minority.  But here so many of us are now, choosing that route, finding power and ability to do good via that road, rather than writing books.

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One of the many reasons this blog is basically a graveyard of what it once was is because I spend a lot of time writing and thinking and talking about and working on the launch of my first start-up.  And it is thrilling and so fun and also crazy and challenging, but mostly just incredibly fulfilling and one of the most exciting decisions I’ve ever made in my life.  But, as a lady, I’ve been programmed to do the hard work, do it damn well, and only then put it out there.  I know that a good idea I have could easily be claimed by someone else, and that the ‘race to market’ is somewhat a real thing.

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I’ve also learned how wonderful and empowering and sexy it feels when I reach my hand out to shake someone’s and introduce myself as the founder of (**awesomecompanyname**). There’s something so energy-creating when you put yourself out there, to truly take your ideas and your abilities and to transform them into a real life amazing vision turned reality.  And to run the fuck up a learning curve, and to pull together the wild and crazy pieces needed to make such a thing succeed.  Let alone the high of stating the idea of your venture, and watching various people - funders, collaborators, supporters, etc - light up and think it’s brilliant and necessary, and demand that I continue doing this crazy thing, because it’s a thing I need to do and a thing that needs to be done.

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And so, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to that book.  Or the several others I know I want to publish at some point.

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I’m also not sure when my other lady friends are going to get around to the books they should write.  But, in the meantime, we trade regular stories over drinks and/or on Skype about the processes we’re going through around creating our different and uniquely fitting ventures.

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The problem of women being less likely to be published, and less likely to be reviewed is a long standing one.  And that fact that the stats are so abysmal is appalling. But I think there’s also this something new going on.  This recent phenomenon of women looking up at the glass ceiling and seeing their way of breaking it by starting their own enterprise.  I don’t believe it should be an either/or.  We should have both avenues increasingly equal.  And Lordisa knows that it still is also so far from equal in the start-up world. 

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But I am excited to realize - if so many of the women friends I think should be writing books are actually busy starting their own social ventures - well something new and exciting is going on.  And it’s thrilling in my own way to be a part of it.  To see things as limitless as far as potential, only dependent on how hard I can hustle to make visions reality - and doing it outside of the confines of traditional or already existing structures.

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But still, for the ladies with the opportunity and time on their hands - write those damn books!  I’ll read them, and I’ll do what I can to help push that they get reviewed.  The demographic make-up of this country is about to shift so powerfully over the next few decades.  It’s damn time that we have more voices and visions shaping the national conversation of how we view what’s going on.  Which, coincidentally, happens to be a main premise behind my own start-up.  Eventually I’ll share more about that here.  But, in the meantime, a cheesy thanks to the readers of this blog, and all you other wonderful writers I follow, for at least, online, reshaping the form of whose voices are in the debate.