My Life as a Dirty Old Man

Like Judy Grahn’s poem, Edward the Dyke, written in 1965, “…my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms.”*

At 74 I’m still often called sir. I’m mistaken for a man because I wear my hair short and usually wear a ball cap. I dress in T-shirts and hiking pants and, often, boots. Hiking is a favorite pastime. When I was younger I was mistaken for a boy, but that can’t be true now, can it? I’m old!

I never cared that people thought me male. On the street it was a defense mechanism. I passed. I stood tall, took big steps, walked fast, balled my hands into fists, and adopted a mean look. Men generally don’t get attacked on the street, especially if they keep to themselves and don’t make eye contact. That could be why I have never been attacked or raped. People don’t see me as female.

In the 1970s I bought all my clothes in the boy’s department at JC Penney. They had flannel shirts in boys’ size 18. I worked as an electrician and wore Carhartts before the brand became fashionable. I got my hair cut by a gay guy who told me my cut was fag cut number three. Sometimes gay men flirted with me. Sometimes I was confronted by men who thought I was a fag. “You idiot, I’m a dyke!” was my comeback, yelled as they drove away, 

There was a time when I tried to signify my femaleness, mainly to ease the discomfort of others. I would wear dangly earrings or women’s clothes. Not dresses. Maybe a scoop neck T-shirt, a bra. But that didn’t always do the trick. People make an immediate decision about gender and changing that first impression is not easy.

I was once nearly thrown out of a women’s dressing room. The authorities have never arrived in time to eject me from the toilets, but I get dirty looks from women there. Often, entering the restroom, they will look at me, then look at the sign on the door, thinking they must have made a mistake. Or implying that I made a big mistake. Their misgendering me has made them mad—at me! How dare I wear male clothes and confuse them!

To these women my response is usually, “I’m one of you.” Once I open my mouth they usually get it. I don’t have a male voice.

But, even after all these years, I was struck dumb recently at a roadside rest stop when a man insisted I should use the men’s toilet. 

“The men’s is around the other side,” he instructed.

Many retorts went through my mind. I wondered if I should just pull up my shirt and show him my tits. 

My wife Holly reminded me that I’ve often responded, “Do I have to show you my tits?” It’s a way to get the idea across without actually having to disrobe.

These days showing tits might not be enough to prove femaleness. After all, any body can have tits—or not—if they want. But here is the reason showing my tits would be all it takes. Nobody would buy tits like mine. Old lady tits.

I ignored him and kept walking. Why should I have to answer to this man I didn’t even know, had never seen before, was likely a tourist from some red state. I could see he had gotten off one of those big day tripping buses.

Apparently thinking I didn’t speak English, he began gesturing with his arms. “Around that way,” he said, slowly mouthing the words as he flung his arms in circles. 

I sized him up. He looked perfectly harmless, rather short, oldish maybe 65. He wore a fisher’s hat, a plaid shirt, shorts and sandals. I was thinking I could take him if necessary. I’d go right for the crotch. 

There was nothing sinister about him and I saw no wisdom there. The old white-skinned guy was just trying to be helpful. His face had a quizzical look, like wondering what this man was trying to do in the women’s restroom.

Does he see me as old, this helpful bathroom monitor? I have no facial hair (ok a little, but I pluck and shave). He must think I’m an old, shaven man. Does he think I’m a dirty old man with bad intentions? Does he think I’m targeting the women’s room to attack women? Gee, getting into this guy’s head is scary.

Finally, I just said, “I’m a woman,” and that was enough.

Later, I kind of wished I’d pulled up my T-shirt and showed him my tits.

*From the lesbian poetry archive: http://www.lesbianpoetryarchive.org/sites/default/files/Grahn_Edward.pdf

Invoking the Travel Goddesses

August 1, 2023 

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post: Lammas

It is the season for traveling in the northern hemisphere and I’ve been traveling along with millions of others, this year freed from covid restrictions. 

The Santa Rosa airport was packed with more people than I’ve ever seen there, and my destination, Seattle, was just as chaotic. I was one of very few folks wearing a mask. On the plane, people sitting around me discovered we are all from the same neighborhood. Two were flight attendants, relieved that they no longer are required to act as mask cops, risking physical confrontations with MAGAs (they wore masks).

My full flight was smooth and on time. At SeaTac I always rush through the baggage claim level to the far south end of the airport where I catch the bus to Kitsap peninsula towns and my destination, Gig Harbor. This time the bus was just boarding and there was an empty seat for me. My luck may have been the result of my friend Barbara Sjoholm’s invocation of (and my introduction to) the two Roman travel goddesses, Abeona and Adeona. The goddesses are often petitioned together to provide safe travels. 

Abeona–in Latin abeo means to depart—also indicates the birth of plant and animal life, including human beings.

Adeona–adeo means to return. “She who returns” is a goddess of plant and animal growth and death.

Betsy, Barbara and Cousin Gail

A prolific writer, Barbara has just published what I’d call her magnum opus, “From Lapland to Sápmi: Collecting and Returning Sámi Craft and Culture,” about the cultural history of the indigenous Scandinavian people. I know her from the murder mysteries she published in the 1980s and 90s, featuring a lesbian sleuth, Pam Nilsen. During covid she wrote and published two mysteries with an older lesbian protagonist, Cassandra Reilly. My cousin Gail, a student of Native American culture, is a big fan of Barbara’s writing about the Sámi, and I got to introduce them. At lunch in Port Townsend we met Barbara’s wife, Betsy Howell, who works for the US Forest Service and writes about it on her blog: https://betsylhowell.com/. She has a new book coming out in the fall. Mazel tov!

We Watch the Earth Burn

I left Santa Rosa as it was experiencing a heat wave. It was only 86 degrees when I arrived in Gig Harbor, also pretty hot for this time of year. For now, the West has mainly avoided heat domes and smoke from Canadian fires that have affected most of the rest of the country. Phoenix is experiencing nearly a month of temperatures above 110 degrees. July 4 was the hottest day in human history.

At one time I thought I would not live to see the effects of climate change, but the change is coming faster than anyone expected. It’s happening in my lifetime!

In California we worry this time of year about fire as well as heat. As a person with lung issues, I dread fire season and its smoky air, which starts earlier every year. It used to start in the fall with the diablo winds that come from the east. Our usual winds blow from the west, offshore, and while they contain pollution from China, they are not usually smoky.

On this trip I’m reuniting with my three brothers and two cousins. Then I’ll travel to Vancouver BC with my brother Don to commune with him and his husband. It’s gonna be great. 

Siblings Molly, Don, Tim and Terry

Celebrating the Cross Quarter Holiday

In the northern hemisphere, the autumn cross-quarter holiday was celebrated by the Celts as Lughnasa/Lammas on August 1. Astronomically the event occurs around August 6 or 7, the hottest time of the year in much of our hemisphere.

At Lammas we celebrate the harvest of first fruits. In Santa Rosa we’ve been harvesting beans for a while. Our first tomatoes are finally ripe. I look forward to summer BLTs and I ate the first one just before leaving town. The peaches are in the dehydrator. The neighbor’s apple tree that hangs over our fence is full of ripe Gravenstein apples. Holly made pies from the leftover last year’s apples so we’ll have room in the freezer for this year’s. Artichokes were prolific and I ate many but left some to flower. Bees love the purple-blue flowers and I love looking at them, but they are now over and the plants are ready to be cut down. 

At summer solstice I celebrated my mother’s birth day. On August 9 I mark her death day, which is also Nagasaki day, the day in 1945 when we, the Americans, dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. August 6 was Hiroshima. 

Seen from Cousin Gail’s deck. Looking across Colvos Passage at Vashon Island

People all over the world mark the anniversary of the nuclear bombings. Some people fast from August 6 to 9, a nonviolent tradition to pause, reflect and create empathy for those who have suffered from nuclear weapons. Others fold 1,000 origami cranes, a long tradition in Japan, believed to bring a peaceful and healthy life. After the nuclear bombing, origami crane folding became an action for peace and nuclear abolition. It started in response to the story of Sadako Sasaki, a child who contracted leukemia from the radioactive fallout. She tried to make 1,000 cranes but died before she could finish. Her classmates finished the 1,000 cranes, then made crane making their message for peace, starting an international tradition. 

As we face threats of nuclear war and see a new arms race developing, this anniversary must remind us to strive for a nuclear free world.

If you haven’t read Hiroshima, John Hersey’s 1946 piece about the bombing, I recommend it. He personalizes the experience, telling the stories of six survivors. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Sending best wishes for a safe and peaceful Lammas.

Pride at Summer Solstice

My Regular Pagan Holiday Greeting: Litha

Reclaiming Ritual

Can we remake religious rituals into traditions that are free from religion? In her book, The Wonder Paradox, Jennifer Michael Hecht answers with a resounding Yes! And she shows us how. 

Hecht posits that humans need tradition and ritual in our lives, but that there is no reason to attach these practices to church, which she aptly calls “drop by and lie.” I do love that she is a fellow atheist, but anyone, religious or not, can make use of her ritual adaptations that are more appropriate to modern life. She says everything is secular, including religion—a human invention after all. Hecht makes the case for incorporating poetry into newly imagined rituals. Reading this book and listening to an interview with her has renewed my own path to inventing new rituals. 

We humans need ritual to mark births and deaths, but we can make our own or incorporate those of other cultures. My friend Ruth, a new grandmother, told me her Hindu relatives have rituals for everything, including the baby’s first haircut. She is not Hindu but she is invited and delighted to participate in them all.

When the news gets us down or is cause for celebration, we can create our own ceremonies. A friend posted “Happy arraignment eve to all who celebrate” and another commented, “I’m looking forward to the high holy days of conviction and sentencing.” (Me too!)

In these pagan holiday posts, I have been using the Wheel of the Year to think about the wheel of life. A combination of ancient and new tradition, the Wheel of the Year acknowledges the summer and winter solstices, the spring and fall equinoxes and the four cross quarter holidays in between. It’s a good way to notice the changing of the seasons and to feel closer to the earth and all its inhabitants.

Summer solstice is a gay holiday

Just as the whole alphabet of queer folks have become pariahs around the world, our invention of Gay Pride Day and Gay Month have become universal markers of summer solstice (winter solstice in the southern hemisphere). For most of my adult life I’ve been celebrating the summer solstice at Gay Pride Day. Taking place in cities and towns around the world, mostly in June, Pride is both a protest and a party. 

In San Francisco, Pride is huge, taking over the whole city for the month. In New York City, activists have split from the old corporate sponsored pride parade to form a new protest march. In LA, the parade turned into a music festival and has also split in two. 

I say it’s all for the good. Why not have Pride celebrations in every town and city and neighborhood. As Sonoma County celebrated its 38th year of Pride, other small towns around the Bay now sponsor their own Pride celebrations.

So Gay Pride Day and gay events like drag queen story hour are proliferating all over the country but at the same time our community is under attack in nearly every state. We are lucky to live in California whose state legislature is not at the moment promoting anti-gay bills (although we have fought against many in the past). But even in Sonoma County and around the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, protesters show up at public libraries and school boards with the aim of censoring books and queer programming. Here in Sonoma County the counterprotesters are vigilant and nonviolent. No events have been shut down by the book burners yet.

Not a Virgin Anymore

June has been a mixed bag this year. In between occasional sunny breakthroughs, Santa Rosa has been experiencing what Santa Barbarans call June Gloom. My wife Holly’s weather guru, Daniel Swain (https://weatherwest.com), predicts hotter-than-ever summer days after the gloom subsides. 

At the spring equinox I opined that the wet cold winter had become suddenly summer. Wrong! Summer lasted just a weekend before the weather turned cool again. I had performed a spring ceremony, kissing my winter gloves and putting them away for the season, but I soon pulled them back out. Now I’m putting them away again. Ok I’ll kiss them again. Our ceremonies and rituals can be repeated as often as we want.

Flags are big during Gay Month. We hung the gay flag on June 1, a ritual repeated every year.

Then Holly and I both got covid, thankfully at the same time so we could isolate together. She brought it home from her mother’s assisted living place. We each took a five-day course of Paxlovid. I’m pretty sure it reduced the severity of our symptoms and now we’ve tested negative. We didn’t practice many rituals while we were sick, unless you count lying in bed all day watching Mrs. Maisel. 

Now I’m back to hiking! I’ve resurrected my daily morning ritual of preparing for the hike—donning boots and hat, filling my water bottle, making a snack, checking the fanny pack. Keys, wallet, phone and bandana felt for in pockets. And I’m off to walk in nature, my favorite pastime.

Have a delightful Summer Solstice and a fabulous Gay Pride Day!

Queers and Allies Stand Up to Bullies

Sonoma County Libraries Under Attack

Education Initiatives Librarian Rachel Icaza (she/her/hers) speaks about partnering with schools at the Sonoma County Library Commission meeting

As LGBTQ people and their families in states like Florida pack their bags to move to nondiscriminatory states like California, those of us who live in the Golden State brace ourselves for an onslaught of anti-queer violence during gay month. Yes, we’re worried about becoming targets of violence, but that hasn’t meant that we’ve gone back into our closets. Gay celebrations here in Sonoma County have been more robust than ever.

On June 3, Santa Rosa hosted its biggest Sonoma County gay pride march ever. This year the haters didn’t show up, but they have been targeting our libraries and drag queen (and drag king!) story hours.

Sonoma county has a large organized gay community and our presence has had an impact on the culture here. The library is a fine example of a community institution successfully reaching out to all its patrons, including queers.

With 13 branches around our far-flung mostly rural county, the library system, in their words, “…makes an effort to be inclusive of all the different ethnic and identity groups in our communities. Programming has included drag story hours, LGBTQI teen groups and activities, Here+Queer the Sonoma County LGBTQI Archives.”

After a recent library commission meeting where vocal detractors made public comments, displayed signs, and stated that they intend to protest queer programming, the library let supporters know how we could help. They made it clear that if we wished to counter-demonstrate, we must practice nonviolence. They also suggested we could write letters to the commission. Here is what I wrote:

Dear Sonoma County Library Commission,

I’m writing to thank you for including queer books and queer programming at our Sonoma County libraries. I see books by and about LGBTQ people prominently displayed, including my own book with queer content, Wonder Woman Electric to the Rescue. 

I’m a lesbian feminist who came of age in an era when books about lesbians and gays were exceedingly hard to find. Publishers and printers refused to print the books we wrote and so we started our own publishing and printing businesses. And we started our own bookstores because our libraries did not have our books.

I now use the library to check out audio books (thank you!), and so I no longer buy many books. But I had to buy Gender Queer by our own Sonoma county writer Maia Kobabe, the most banned book in the country today. I’m proud that my local library carries it.

Sincerely and Queerly,

Molly Martin

Queers and our allies are standing up to the bullies and book burners. A recent protest, originally organized by members of a private Facebook group called Sonoma County Parents Stand Up for Our Kids, ballooned when 130 counterprotesters arrived in support of Drag Story Hour. The local newspaper reported that, “Counterprotesters from Amor Para Todos, Petaluma Pride, Unitarian Universalists of Petaluma and others held signs and waved LGBTQ+ Pride flags peacefully next to five protesters from the Facebook group.” There was no threat of violence.

When asked how it felt to be in the midst of the national dialogue, Ray Holley, communications manager for Sonoma County Library said, “Democracy is messy and it’s complicated. And the free public library is such a good example of that. Libraries are for everyone. Not every book in the library is for every patron, but every patron is going to find a book in the library.ʺ

Now we have learned that the church that organized the anti-drag protests, Victory Outreach of Santa Rosa, has been granted $400,000 under the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which “helps places of worship better defend themselves against violent attacks and hate crimes.” Another local grant recipient, Calvary Chapel The Rock, is also accused of anti-LGBTQ sentiments. 

Jason Newman, a Petaluma marriage and family therapist who is gay, says there is no justification for the state helping these churches, which he called hate groups. More deserving recipients of this state money might be the LGBTQ groups being attacked by these religious cults.

Feel the same? Want to let the State know? Here’s what I found online. The state office is the California Office of Emergency Services. This is the best email I found (I don’t think they want emails):  GMD@caloes.ca.gov

The phone number is 916-845-8510. I was able to leave a message.

Remembering the Mother of California Civil Rights

My Regular Pagan Holiday Greeting: Celebrating Beltane May 1

Mary Ellen Pleasant, the mother of California civil rights, is associated with the pagan holiday Beltane because she once owned and lived at Beltane Ranch, here in Sonoma County. It is now recognized as a Black historic site by the National Park Service. Once the richest Black woman in America, her wealth was stolen and she died a pauper in 1904. She is buried in the Tulocay cemetery in Napa.

I wrote about Pleasant last year on Beltane, but I wasn’t finished thinking about her. She is a supremely important person in California history, but one who has been largely forgotten. I’m all about resurrecting her memory.

I refer to her as MEP because that is how she signed the note found in the pocket of John Brown before he was hanged for treason and inciting a slave rebellion in 1859. The note read, “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” MEP had financed Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry with a donation of what today would be a million dollars. Because her initials were read as WEP, she was never caught by Virginia authorities.

MEP was born in the East where she worked to bring slaves up north on the underground railroad until slavers threatened her. Along with a number of fellow abolitionists, she migrated to California in 1850. She sailed first to New Orleans where she continued to help people to flee slavery. During her short time there she connected with the legendary voodoo queen Marie Laveau. She left the city just as she was about to be captured for helping runaway slaves. 

The party landed in San Francisco where abolitionists found plenty of work to do. In California of the 1850s the law allowed any Black person who did not have proper papers to be sold into slavery. Slave catchers and slave owners came west looking for runaways. Slave owners who arrived in California before September, 1850 were allowed to keep their slaves as indentured servants.

My wife’s family traces their ancestry to Peter Burnett, the first elected governor of California, but of this they are not proud. Burnett, a Missouri immigrant, slave owner and white supremacist, promoted some of California’s most racist laws including enabling the enslavement and genocide of American Indians, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and a push for the total exclusion of Blacks from the state. Earlier, as a judge in Oregon territory, he signed the first exclusion laws which required all Blacks to leave the territory or be flogged.

Burnett and MEP were destined to tangle. At the time Blacks were not allowed to testify in court. MEP helped get this law changed, but in the meantime she defended and hid Blacks unfairly captured. She paid the legal bills of young Archy Lee, brought as a slave from Mississippi, a slave state, to California, a free state, in 1857.

In the first case, Lee was declared free, as California allowed only “transient” slave owners to retain their slaves. Then, in an appeal to the state supreme court, Peter Burnett (by this time he was a member of the court) authored and signed the court’s decision to allow the slaveholder to leave the state with Lee as his slave. 

From the court ruling: “It must be concluded that, where slavery exists, the right of property of the master in the slave must follow as a necessary incident. This right of property is recognized by the Constitution of the United States.” 

Californians were outraged, and abolitionists boarded the ship to rescue Lee as it was leaving the state. A federal court overturned the Burnett decision, but then the slaveholder charged that Lee was in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A final trial declared Lee to be a free man. Archy Lee joined an expedition of African Americans who resettled in Canada.

Burnett was only governor for a year, then on the supreme court for less than a year, but he and other Southern whites impressed racist ideology on California in that short time. Reading the history, I’m truly amazed that a failed shop owner who had fled Missouri in debt could leave such a smear on the new state. California citizens have since learned the history and taken Burnett’s name off public buildings.

I wanted to see MEP’s grave so my friend Joan and I made the pilgrimage to Napa this spring. When we visited, the cherry trees surrounding it were in full bloom. Tucolay is a beautiful big cemetery and MEP’s grave is situated in a lovely corner.

When my friend Bill had visited last year, the gravestone was covered with voodoo icons like skulls with a vase of black roses. Icons had been glued right onto the stone, obscuring the inscription. Was it the work of a modern voodoo cult that surrounds her because of her association with Madame Leveau? At my visit the skulls had been removed, but traces of glue remained.

MEP said, “Before I pass away, I wish to clear the identity of the party who furnished John Brown with most of his money to start the fight at Harpers Ferry and who signed the letter found on him when he was arrested.” 

She said it was the most important and significant act of her life, a life spent working to end human slavery.

On Beltane we celebrate the life and work of MEP and we also devise our own rituals to acknowledge the changing of the seasons. Our winter was cold and wet—about twice as rainy as normal. There was no spring; we graduated into summer on easter weekend. The sun came out with a vengeance and all the buds and flowers that had been patiently waiting for it burst forth in profusion. Grass of every variety grew tall. Lawn mowers revved. Fence lizards emerged. Ants vacated the kitchen. Bees and pollinators are waking up.

On Easter, instead of hunting for eggs, we concocted a ritual with friends who periodically drink Prosecco with us. It’s Linda’s job to pop the corks, and they can travel far into the garden. We hunted for corks instead of eggs. This, we expect, will become an annual custom.

I’ve just picked the last of the oranges and am about to start harvesting artichokes. We planted flowers and vegetables. I put away my warm slippers and took out my flip flops. I kissed the gloves I’d worn all winter, thanked them for warming my hands on many chilly hikes and tucked them into a drawer.

Goodbye winter. Hello summer!

Here is the link to last year’s story about MEP: https://mollymartin.blog/2022/05/01/beltane-and-a-black-heroine/

Blue Krishna Worried About Color

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post: Ostara

Dear Friends,

The Hindu god Krishna, who was blue, worried that his love Radha, who was not blue, might not appreciate his color. His mother suggested that he ask Radha to paint his face any color she wanted. And, according to legend, that’s how the Hindu holiday Holi was born. At the spring equinox people gather to throw colored powders on each other, and lovers paint each other’s faces. The holiday is big in India and it’s also becoming popular in the U.S.

I love the idea of getting together with a big group to throw colors on each other. What fun! But then I started wondering about what is in that powder. And also thinking, as someone with lung issues, what might be the consequence of breathing it in. We all know that breathing dust and smoke is not good for us. There’s farmer’s lung and carpenter’s lung and smoker’s lung. Now there’s probably Holi lung!

So while I’m always looking for new and old ways to celebrate the turning of the seasons, Holi is not a spring equinox tradition I intend to adopt. Instead I’m sending colorful flowers to our household to remind us that the cold wet winter is over. Which right now in Santa Rosa is more of a hope than reality. It’s raining now and it’s not very warm by our standards. Two more atmospheric rivers are threatening in the next week. The whole state of California worries about where all the water from the Sierra snow melt will go.

We see some signs of spring. Plum, peach and pear trees are blooming and the magnolias are magnificent. Poppies are starting to bloom. Birds are frisky. Oaks are leafing out. Is it fair to say spring is here but winter is still hanging on? 

My boots are muddy and the trails wet but, along with my hiking buddies, I go out every day that it’s not raining. Being outdoors is what has kept me sane through covid. Masks have kept us healthy. One or both of us usually gets sick sometime during the winter with a virus that lands in the chest and hangs on, but Holly and I have avoided air-borne diseases for three years now. Very often these days I’m the only one in a group wearing one, but I feel saved by the mask! 

May you be well and (soon) warm!

The Cop and the Communist

Dating Negotiations in the 90s

I met her as part of a couple, Anne + Judy. They were both in the first class of women to break into the San Francisco Police Department after several years of pressure from the feminist community to integrate women.

There were two sides to this story. Some feminists thought cops were unredeemable and that women should never be cops. They said women would take on the racist and repressive world view of the police; they would be sullied by the job. I was an electrician and one of those working to get more women into nontraditional jobs. I thought women deserved access to those jobs and I even suspected that women might change the culture in the PD if given the chance.

Kissing lesbians was a thing I did in June–Gay Month

Work life was tough for those first women, and they were on the front lines of the feminist movement to desegregate the workplace. They took the most shit from their male coworkers and bosses, who were almost all white back then in the 1970s. Men of color had been kept out too and the efforts of us activists to enforce affirmative action laws included all minority classes.

San Francisco 1979

Being in a relationship with another woman navigating the same sexist workplace was probably a main reason Judy and Anne both stayed in the PD and made good careers. My lovers, too, were women in the trades, the only people who really understood what I was going through at work. They provided the support I needed to survive on the construction site. 

I knew Judy better than Anne. She was a feminist and out on the job as a lesbian. One time when I ran into her working the gay parade, I threw my arms around her and planted a big kiss on her lips. Yeah, you’re not supposed to do that to cops when they’re working. But kissing lesbians was a thing I always did in June–gay month. I was just so happy to be out in San Francisco, I had to pass around my good cheer.

I got to know Anne better in the early 90s after she and Judy had broken up. We had a mutual friend, a mystery writer, who used us both for expert background. (What kind of electric shock will kill a person? How would a killer behave in this situation?) I think the mystery writer was hoping there would be a spark of attraction when she introduced us. She confided to me that Anne was in a secret ongoing affair with a closeted columnist who wrote for the local paper. The columnist was also in a long-term relationship with a lover who did not know about Anne.

Are you following me here?

Lesbian relationships were tangled in that era as we thrilled to new freedoms and experimented with new models. Anne was the Other Woman and I was admonished not to tell anyone. I had practiced nonmonogamy zealously but eventually came to see that being the other woman, especially if you’re in love, spells heartache. I sympathized mutely. It can’t have been easy for her.

I had never tried to romance a cop

We bonded over the internet. I had a new 512K Mac and I wanted to learn to use email. Anne, who used the internet to research crimes and criminals, set me up on AOL. It was dial up. You had to understand acronyms like POP, HTTP and some other things like hardware and software. They all confused the hell out of me, never a tech wizard. I remember receiving my very first email message from Anne. She didn’t say anything sexy, but it was exciting, world changing! 

Was there an attraction? Well, sure. Anne was handsome, with shoulder-length dark hair and a muscular physique. She was handy. She had remodeled the Victorian house she owned in the Dogpatch neighborhood. I was impressed, and horny. But I had never romanced a cop. A veteran of protest marches, anti-war and anti-racism campaigns, I had been on the other side of many police barricades. I did not believe all cops were pigs as many did, but my generation of activists will never forget COINTELPRO, the police killing of Fred Hampton and so many others. Not to mention the attacks by the SFPD on our gay and lesbian bars and gathering places. 

I was thinking about how I would undress her when she saw the stack of mail on my desk.

By that time I knew Anne well enough to know that we disagreed politically on just about everything. I figured she was one of those women who find it easier to not rock the boat and who identify with their male coworkers in order to survive on the job. Or maybe she’d been brought up in the 50s during the McCarthy era to hate communists. But, I reasoned, we didn’t have to talk politics. Maybe we could just have sex.

I managed to get Anne over to my house to help with AOL and I made lunch. An opening salvo. I imagined us moving into the bedroom after lunch. 

I was thinking about how I would undress her when she saw the stack of mail on my desk. Right on top was a newsletter from the Committees of Correspondence, a democratic socialist group I was a member of.

“Are you a communist?” she asked, looking up.

She seemed surprised, but at that time I thought that most lesbians were leftists at least, if not communists. My friends and I were activists trying to rid the world of imperialism, racism and police violence. It wasn’t that weird.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Communist with a small c.”

“I could never be with a communist,” she sputtered.

“But,” I said, “you wouldn’t have to BE with me. We could just have sex.”

The look of horror on her face conjured the pain of the long-term other-woman relationship that I wasn’t supposed to know about. And probably she really did hate communists. She was a cop first and a lesbian second.

My disappointment didn’t last long. It never would have worked out. I hoped Anne would find the right woman, and I wondered if she would tell that woman about her own secret affair with the columnist. I never found out. 

Good Imbolc, Happy New Year!

My Regular Pagan Holiday Greeting: Imbolc

Posted on Solstices, Equinoxes and Cross Quarter Holidays

Dear Friends,

Imbolc, the Celtic pagan holiday on February 1, and the time of the Lunar New Year really mark the advent of spring in California, at least here in Sonoma County. The daffodils I planted in November are in full bloom. Just before a series of atmospheric rivers dumped 18 inches of rain (about three times the normal rainfall), we installed a water catchment system with swales in the front yard and three 1000-gallon tanks. Our system worked well to save water for future irrigation and to direct it away from the house. The January rains filled creeks to overflowing and greened the grass, although storms also felled many trees and resulted in flooding and some deaths. 

The earth is turning and the light is returning, but it’s still dark at 5 AM when I go out to look for the comet called ZTF. I haven’t been able to see it yet, but skies have been clear lately and I keep trying. The comet can be found in the north sky between the north star and the big dipper. It will be closest to Earth on February 2. It’s green! Perhaps a sign? 

A bit of angst seizes me whenever I look up for the comet. I can’t help thinking about the movie Don’t Look Up. We watched it again recently and it was just as hilarious and sobering as the first time. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you must! It’s a metaphor for climate change that hits us over the head hard, but lately I’m thinking nothing can be too un-subtle for us humans. (My friends, I’m not talking about you. I know you are aware and doing all you can do to avert the predicted climate disaster).

Every day, as the green comet comes closer, I’ve looked for it with binoculars, but it keeps eluding me. So we bought a telescope. I found two telescopes in town–an inexpensive one at a sporting goods store and a more expensive one at a camera store. I’m new at this so figured the cheaper one would be just fine. We brought it home and tried to figure out how to use it. It seemed so simple. We followed the spare directions but failed to make it work. We tried and tried. The manufacturer didn’t have decent assembly instructions. So we looked online for videos and found one in Spanish, but as neither of us understands the language (a failing I’ve always regretted) we didn’t really get it. Plus, to set the focus each time you have to bend over in a way that my old neck will no longer allow. 

So I boxed the telescope back up and returned it. Then we bought the expensive one. This thoroughly modern telescope was made in France and must be connected to wifi and a computerized device. Directions say we can have as many as ten devices so we imagine we can host star watching parties where all the guests could see the comet, or the moon, or planets on their ipads. That’s the fantasy anyway. Still is. 

We were directed to connect to the manufacturer’s wifi network, which didn’t come up on my phone. Later I was able to log on but couldn’t figure out the next step. Instructions are not terribly helpful. Are they translated? Or are we just too old to understand? Normally this tech breakdown would have me throwing up my hands in despair. But my wife Holly is kind of a tech wizard (witch?) and I depend on her to solve these problems. She couldn’t, but she is sanguine and so I haven’t lost hope that we can figure it out. Maybe I’ll see the green comet yet. It won’t be back around again for 50,000 years. I just can’t wait that long.

Aside from my unfulfilled obsession with the comet, life is good for us in Santa Rosa. We are thankful for our good fortune, but at the same time we are anguished by the growing wealth gap and the failure of our society to care for those more needy than we. The capitalist system values nothing as much as making (or stealing) money, assigning those with other priorities to the losers column.

My angst is multiplied by the recent explosion of gun violence especially in the past couple of weeks. California, with the strictest gun laws in the country, experienced some of the worst violence. We lesbian feminists laugh (and cry) about testosterone poisoning, and I do think that simple theory has some truth to it. Systems breakdowns and our society’s failure to prioritize the common good contribute. Gun violence has worsened with the proliferation of guns, but it has been going on for a long time. January 30 is the 75thanniversary of the shooting death of Mahatma Ghandi.

I support taking away the guns. That’s what Cheryl Wheeler sang. Her song, If It Were Up to Me, was written after the Stockton school shooting in 1989 and it still applies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op7agdIFOGY

If you don’t know Cheryl Wheeler, check her out. She writes funny songs too. My Cat’s Birthday comes to mind. We lesbians do love our cats.

Sending wishes for peace in the new year.

Love, Molly and Holly (MoHo)

The T-Shirt

Feeling a little sexy? Go fuck yourself

I first encountered Dar on a job site. The contractor had moved me there so he could meet affirmative action requirements for females on the job. This was a popular practice. Rather than just hiring more women, the company would hire one woman and move her around from job to job so monitors would count the same woman repeatedly. The job, a low-income housing project in Chinatown, received federal funding and so had to meet federal affirmative action goals for women and minorities. This was in 1980 when some regulators actually took affirmative action laws seriously and monitored job sites. Those days are long gone.*

Art by Victoria Hamlin

In those days women would often ignore each other when we were dispatched to the same job. We tried to be invisible and often, when there was only one of us, we got away with it. But as soon as two women started talking or working together, an undercurrent of anxiety rippled among the men. For a brief period on one job I got to work with a female apprentice.

“What do you two talk about?” asked one of the electricians. “Are you talking about the size of our dicks?”

This hadn’t occurred to me. Women might talk about the harassment we endured on the job or, more likely, how to work together to complete the job at hand. Dicks, drawn in profusion on the walls of the porta potties, did seem to hold a prominent place in the imaginations of some of our coworkers.

Kathryn (Kathy) Goodwin Photo Victoria Hamlin

Women knew that if we spoke to each other our male coworkers would notice. Straight women didn’t want to be painted with the dyke brush, and most lesbians were still in the closet and didn’t want the brush either. Dar didn’t worry about such implications. She was a big mouthy white woman with buck teeth and a head of bleached blond hair. On the job site you couldn’t miss her. She did not melt into the woodwork. My first day on that job, the Chinatown low-income housing project, she introduced herself as we passed each other on the deck.

“So you’re the affirmative action hire,” she said. “I guess they needed another chick.”

I wasn’t wild about being called a chick, but she had a point. Federal affirmative action regulations were the only reason I was on that job. Our short conversation made me think Dar didn’t like women any more than the men on the job did. She didn’t seem like a feminist sister.

Jake Calabro sewage treatment plant utility plumber. Photo Victoria Hamlin

For a couple of days I was pulling Romex through holes punched in metal framing. Then they pulled me off that job and put me on another where the regulations said they needed a woman. Fine with me. It all paid the same—a good wage previously reserved for men only. Dar was likely in the same boat. The plumbing contractors had a reputation for hiring even fewer women than the electrical guys. After they could check off the number of female hours worked, they could lay us off.

A couple of years later after a couple more layoffs, I scored a full-time maintenance job with the San Francisco Water Department. I worked out of a corporation yard in the southeast industrial area of the city, looking after all the motors that ran pumps that supplied water to the city. That’s when I ran into Dar again. She had been hired for a job in the plumbing division. The crews of plumbers worked installing new services all over the city, usually in big holes in the street. Or they might be required to repair a main break. The job was wet and muddy.

Molly Martin and Kathy Goodwin Photo Victoria Hamlin

I didn’t see much of Dar, as the plumbers were out of the yard working in the street all day. But I heard about her. A story in the grapevine told of Dar punching out a coworker who had harassed her while they worked in a trench. I never heard what was said. That was before the rule was imposed that fighting on the job would get you fired immediately. Dar was not the first plumber to make use of fists to manage a dispute, but she was the last to do so and avoid getting fired. 

The day I saw the T-shirt was a maintenance nightmare for the water department. One of the big pump stations that housed 100 HP motors flooded. The motors sat in wells in the concrete floor and so were vulnerable to being overtaken by the quickly rising water. I could see it wouldn’t be long until the motors were under water. The team of plumbers worked fast to staunch the leak.

Carole Lee Photo Victoria Hamlin

My only job as electrician was to cut the power to the motors and that was just a matter of disconnecting circuit breakers in a huge panel on a higher level, though if the water rose high enough that panel, too, would be in peril.

That’s when I spotted Dar, down in the pit with a cluster of men. She wore a T-shirt with a message in big print:

Feeling a little sexy?

Go fuck yourself

No one said anything aloud about the message on Dar’s shirt, but it shocked me. I couldn’t imagine wearing it myself, as much as I agreed with the sentiment. I didn’t have the guts to wear that shirt.

I had to give Dar credit. Maybe she wasn’t my kind of feminist, but she was some kind of feminist.

Amy Gray Schlink Photo Victoria Hamlin

*Affirmative action in the construction industry really only lasted a short time before Reagan killed it. In California the death knell was dealt in 1996 when Ward Connerly put affirmative action on the ballot. In the meantime some of us were able to get a foot in the door and advocate for the hiring of more women. But women still make up only about three percent of the construction workforce. We were the forgotten recipients of affirmative action and we could benefit from a renewed commitment to it now as the Supreme Court threatens to end it entirely.

Don’t Bleed in the Shark Pool

Book review

Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood by Hilary Peach, Anvil Press, 2022

A woman navigating the challenges of the male workplace makes a good story and Hilary Peach does the genre proud in her new book, Thick Skin. A Canadian from BC, Peach writes of working for twenty years as a boilermaker on big projects in Canada and the U.S. She has worked at coal fired power plants, the tar sands in Alberta, pulp mills, gas plants, shipyards—big industrial power generating companies of all kinds, often staying in their company towns. 

I enjoy reading about the work people do, especially hard dirty jobs like construction. In this book Peach tells us about the world of boilermakers, a subculture all its own. She describes the often difficult working conditions while she schools the reader about the intricacies and art of welding. 

Most stories center on the men she works with, the psychopaths as well as the nice guys. 

She encounters sexism and discrimination regularly as might be expected as the only woman among hundreds of men. But Peach always finds humor in the stories and often had me laughing out loud. Tradeswomen who go through the same challenges in our workplaces will delight in her creative comebacks and her various inventive ways of responding to harassment.

“How do we know it’s sexual harassment?” asks an apprentice.

“Just stop talking about your penises. That’s 80 percent of it,” say the women in the break room.

I loved this book. It’s well written and an engaging read with truly general appeal. And, of course, it reminds me of my own experience working construction.

Electricians, too, have a subculture of travelers, boomers, tramps, journeyworkers—those who travel around to different jobs—and my sisters and I used to dream of traveling. We thought it would be the greatest thing—that is until we heard from others who were on the road, mostly because they couldn’t get work in their own union locals. Sandy said she had to wear so many layers of clothes working in the Boston winter that her arms stuck straight out at her sides. Barbara of NYC told about burning refuse in high rises to keep warm and to help the concrete set, risking the hazards of smoke inhalation. Betsy complained of the Texas heat and miles of smelly porty potties.

Maybe we didn’t want to travel after all. 

Hilary Peach does it for two decades—driving hundreds of miles, often in the driving rain or snow, to get to a job. Staying in work camps whose last century accommodations have been condemned and then reopened without remodel. Working 12 hour shifts happy for the overtime, working nights, working in cramped quarters in the freezing cold and boiling hot.

As the hard hat sticker says, “If you can’t stand the heat get the fuck out of the boiler.”

Peach does indeed develop a thick skin. A favorite maxim, repeated often:

“You don’t bleed in the shark pool.”

Later, as more women begin to come on to the jobs, they tell her conditions have improved. She writes, “When other women were on the job it made a remarkable difference. One other woman and you are no longer the freak, the anomaly. You have an ally. Three or more, and everything changes. We can no longer be isolated and targeted in the same way…Someone has to organize a second bathroom.”

Thank you Hilary Peach for making women look good out there and for paving the way for more women to enter this industry. A published poet, she’s now working on a novel. As boilermakers say at the end of a job, “See you on the next one.”

Molly Martin is a retired electrician whose latest book, Wonder Woman Electric to the Rescue, is available on Amazon and Kindle.

To order Thick Skin: https://www.anvilpress.com/books/thick-skin-field-notes-from-a-sister-in-the-brotherhood