My Gender Reassignment & the Media

From my FB post today:
I think it is time I wrote about something ... something that might benefit others: Gender Reassignment & the Media. Seriously.
Since I declared myself a MALE to Pandora the experience is just so, well, more natural. Pleasant. No more cleaning product ads, no more incessant feminine product or hair goo ads. Now my Roxy Music & Janelle Monáe , with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings for soulfull variety, stations are fabulous. There is a flooring sale at Home Depot, some cars sound cool ... brain exercise ads that my maleness would appreciate.
I recommend this switch Highly.
{Please don't take offense if gender reassignmnet is an issue you/your's face. This is meant to be only slightly serious ... and more about how the media markets to genders. Cool?}

U is for Ugh.

I'm back to letter writing... my right elbow has been giving me a lot of grief. After ruling out spin classes and bike riding and funny sleep patterns I realized that it is my computer, how I sit and especially how I use the track pad and not the mouse (too many papers to the right of my computer!). I've taken a break from all things on the computer, blog included. It has helped.

On Thursday, while frantically putting finishing touches on my stuff for the Beehive Bazaar I was listening to KUER, local public radio. There is other public radio in Utah County but not much. The locally produced interview show, Radio West, is notoriously anti-Mormon. The show that day, being polite here, was about how the pioneers were so senseless to have traveled by foot across the country in all kinds of weather. I snapped. I registered to leave a comment, which of course took too long so I just left the computer and got back to work. When I came back everything had cleared up, online and in my head, and I quickly wrote the following:
~~To read the 37 (last I checked) other comments and KUER's reply go here (http://action.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/posts/list/1965810.page).

Once again KUER and Doug Fabrizio are on the attack of anything Mormon, or anything honestly faithful, no matter the religion. This time it is the Mormon pioneers' judgment, core faith and lives.

As I listened I couldn't believe Mr. Roberts' tone. At first I thought I was simply defensive, my ancestors were pioneers and my daughter went on a trek, but then I couldn't believe how this guy could be so pejorative about history and especially the cost of human lives in the pursuit of a better life. I almost expected him to say, "Those imbecilic pioneers, what were they thinking to leave without silk underwear and a GPS?" Doesn't he, and Mr. Fabrizio, realize that 1847 is not a lifetime away from ours, it is a galaxy? At that time there wasn't even plumbing in the White House! The building of the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, using his logic, were nothing more than a waste of human energy. Lives were lost building the Golden Gate Bridge -- they never should have tried before there was the right technology, or 100% faultless judgment.

What is David Roberts' family history? And Doug Fabrizio's? (I'm not interested enough to criticize it. Just wondering if they personally care.) Don't they find ceaselessly finding fault with others' history, faith and experiences tiresome? I agree with the other comment, with hindsight it is easy to criticize the past. It is easy to criticize and difficult to explain.

KUER (a Utah based station) and Doug Fabrizio in particular, seem to delight in Mormon-bashing. Another example of this was days after President Hinkley died Mr. Fabrizio dug deep enough to find fault, when many in this community were mourning. Why not take on the pioneer history so many Utahn's personally revere and have tried to understand?

Also, why wasn't a Mormon historian on the show to shine light on the aspersions Mr. Roberts cast? Please at lease try to be more balanced.

Letter to The Writer's Almanac

I have enjoyed the Writer's Almanac for as long as I could-have. While it was on KBYU I set my alarm to it. Although I was awake I didn't want to miss it. When it was off the local public radio stations for years I wrote to them on your behalf, mine too! Now I enjoy the daily email and listen to the podcasts when I can. Thank you for your great work.

Here's the deal: CHEER UP. It seems that so many of the poems and histories recently chosen are glum. Right now, I am awake contemplating my children's lives... The email from my deaf son's 2nd grade teacher. My beautiful 16 year old. Schedules. Republican (not really "conservative") neighbors and relatives telling me, loudly, what they think about things I quietly disagree with. My house is a mess. The hazelnut birthday cake didn't turn out as planned. There is personal and National debt. And then there is Sarah Hot-babe Palin, mean girl, un-qualified VP?, train-wreck?

Please, oh please, help me out by just throwing out a few funny poems, something light-hearted, now and then. I'm probably not alone in my stress and woe and need for humor. Probably need a few extra doses right now.

Thanks for listening!
Your fan,
H

X is for my LETTER to X96.

For those of you not in Utah, X96 is a radio station with a cool morning show. The rest of their programming is alternative music. I just wrote this letter and thought I'd post it.

Years ago my friend Elizabeth Pfau asked me if I was going to be one of those "letter writing Moms?" YEP. One (more) reason for the name of the blog.

Hi Bill, (and Kerry and Gina),

I listened to your show on Thursday. I had been looking forward to it for the week before, then Thursday morning I was stuck forgetting about it while writing an email to my son's teacher, and ccing his audiologist. My 10th grade daughter reminded me. (Its hep that we can both listen to your station.)

Anyway... to attempt to be brief:

• We have 5 children, our 2 youngest are deaf, both have cochlear implants. They are 7 and 3 years old. Our 7 year old is in 1st grade and is mainstreamed. Everyone is amazed at how well our children hear and speak. We are too!

• Our son heard with hearing aids and then lost the rest of his hearing around his 5th birthday. That is a recipe for frustration. Although we signed with him he knew how much he was missing. He was a miserable kid to be around. The CI has completely helped him emotionally and with communication. We had to fight our insurance company to cover it. (Our cost would have been $80K!) He still needs speech therapy but that story is kinda long...

• Cochlear implants are miracles, not "satellite dishes" on heads. Is a diabetic pump on a child, or adult, something to disparage? Also, children born with hearing loss into hearing families are no longer sent to "residential" schools, isolated from their families, since they can learn to hear and speak so much more easily than in the past. Cochlear implants are the future for deaf children and adults.

• Deaf people who can speak, statistically, have MANY more options to them. They are autonomous people. From my vantage point I can't imagine saddling my children with a lifetime of being accompanied by an interpreter and never spending time with grandparents, cousins and other extended family and friends because the rest of the world doesn't sign. We sign some and don't have a problem with it, but I don't expect the rest of the world to. If our family only spoke French wouldn't it be odd to demand that everyone around us learn French? Yeah, yeah, we should then move to a French speaking county... again, AWAY from everything we call "home."

• The bit about "dating a deaf" girl kinda freaked me out. For many sick and wrong reasons deaf children are sexually abused more than other children. I don't care how hot the deaf girl was in the studio, it just didn't sound right to me. How to get to know a deaf girl or boy? Say hello and wave. I can't clarify my thoughts here... fear for my kids? or the memory of the weird friend of friends that told me that he always wanted to have sex with blind girl? --just because, he said. Girl? Blind? Again, I'm not at all articulate here, but it's just not something to encourage, at all.

• The bit about deaf education was right on. There is an excellent new program that just started in Logan called Sound Beginnings. http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=15151 It would be cool if you talked to Karl White from that school about what is going on for the Future of deaf children. USDB is a fairly whacked out place. Funny thing is they just don't listen. In Utah County I am involved with a foundation that is trying to get off the ground called Journey to Hear, to create a great preschool that is not in +20 year old trailers...

Thanks for paying attention, which is what I tell my children to do, since listening, whether hearing or not, is tricky.
Keep being original. Your show is great.

H ...
...Utah

p.s. Good luck to Gina. And good luck finding a sub. My daughter wanted me to enter... would've been cool. There is a spin teacher at Gold's Gym in Utah County... RONA! She would be fantastic! Even for a guest spot. She has a large devoted following. Amazing teacher.

C is for Consumerism.

This morning on the Marketplace Morning Report they announced the theme for the week: CONSUMERISM

This is the issue that I am working on within the walls of my home. I have never enjoyed shopping and yet I have a odd talent to find things. This talent was developed in bulk by my folks interest in buying in bulk, wholesale, "for the business." Also working for a spell in NYC as a stylist/assistant honed those skills. The result: my home is wallowing in crap. I take stuff to DI (local charity/Goodwill) and the designated DI basket magically refills. My friend June, a very sensible friend, with grown children, just told me the same thing happens at her house.

The Marketplace site has a lot of cool games to play, articles to read, shows to listen to (Why so many?) -- and leave behind. It might be good to check out with children.

Game: Consumer Consequences/What if everyone lived like me?