Pingy-Dingy Wednesday — Nancy Lord and The Center for Coastal Studies

Tex and I are both reading a recent novel by Nancy Lord, pH, a lucky find for me browsing the stacks the other day at a local library. Set in and around a university in Fairbanks, Alaska, the characters are all involved in ocean research, especially having to do with deleterious changes caused by human fuckery. At one point, one character says something about how 99% of livable space is in the ocean, which gave us both pause. The devastating effect of our reckless behavior with fossil fuels and other shitty, stupid, thoughtless, selfish grabbing, is incredibly painful to contemplate. This beautiful novel, while not skirting that truth, manages to hold up other human traits that are much more positive and hopeful. I highly recommend it!

Here in Provincetown, MA, where Tex and I are spending our vacation, we are at ground zero. The hype around the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s landing is really heating up. Not being talked about too terribly much, at least not that I’ve seen, is the part about how those lauded founding fathers massacred the people already living here and plundered the land and the creatures of the sea, creating damage that effect us all even now. Today, I want to hold up a local organization working, among other things, to both document and educate about the North Atlantic Right Whale, which faces extinction, despite having been declared an endangered species some time ago. The dire outlook on their survival is a result of our and our ancestors’ actions, and we are responsible, in some deep connected ways, to these animals.

Center for Coastal Studies and Nancy Lorde, you both get a pingy-dingy! Thank you, CCS, for your dedication to the Right Whale and to all the other often-slogging and thankless work that you do. Thank you, Nancy, for helping us think about how to continue on in the face of so much soul-shattering news.

http://coastalstudies.org/right-whale-research/

http://www.writernancylord.com/

I’m a typewriter whompin’, card catalogue lovin’ white girl from back in the day, and I yearn for a time before the covers of trade paperbacks were all squidgy, so you can imagine that I don’t actually understand what a pingback is. I do know that it can in some way be part of spreading the love, and since that’s what I’m all about at The Total Femme… every Wednesday, I pay homage to the laughter, love, and inspiration to be had elsewhere online.

At the Total Femme, my intention is to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday and Femme Friday on Friday. Rather than play catch-up in a stressful fashion on those weeks when life prevents posting, I have decided to just move gaily forward: if I miss a Monday, the next post will be on Wednesday, and so on. Thank you, little bottle of antibiotics for inspiring me in this! (“…if it’s almost time for the next dose, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Don’t take a double dose to make up for a missed one.”)

 

Published in: on December 26, 2018 at 1:35 PM  Comments (1)  
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Meditations for Queer Femmes – FEMME LOVE HEAL WORLD

In honor of the Scandinavian side of my family and to accommodate a custody schedule, here at the Total Femme’s house, we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. This Dec. 24, for the first time in a few years, everyone was front and center, in good health, and capable of enjoying each other’s company. Glorious!

Inspired by my friend Miel’s way with ritual and intent, I rode the good vibes and came up with a family ceremony that I know we’ll do again next year. It was short and sweet and a little last minute, but the power of love was with us, and even my cynical old grump of a father joined in with only one small grumble.

For the ritual, I spoke briefly about the Winter Solstice, and read the poem “Thank You, Fog” by W.H. Auden. Then we went around the circle and each offered up a wish for the world.

We wished that there be more quiet, that communities devastated by drug cartels in Mexico be healed, that the earth be healed by understanding how we’re all connected, by getting rid of pollution, by getting rid of the Trump administration and by rejecting the western notion of progress.

We each said how we would manifest the energy to address those issues in 2018. We promised to do more educating of ourselves and others, to be good role models, to unplug and slow down, to be aware and to help where we can.

We each chose a charity for an end-of-the-year donation and spoke briefly of the work of the organizations and why it’s important to us: Youth on Fire, The Center for Coastal Studies, Animals Asia, Arlington Eats, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network and Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.

The ritual was calming and bonding. It was so lovely!

Below, I offer a femme version of this ritual to you, sweet femme sisters, as we ride out the last bits of 2017 and get gussied up to meet the new year.

We need each other, we must connect and share our wisdom.

I love you.

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FEMME LOVE HEAL WORLD – a femme ritual to be done at the New Year, or any time it’s needed

This can be done by a femme alone, or in a group of femmes, and you can tailor things to meet your own needs.

You can open with a poem, preferably by a queer poet. There are so many to chose from! “To Martha: A New Year” by Audre Lorde is a beautiful one…

On a piece of paper, write down the answer to the question: What is your wish for the world?

If you’re in a group, fold up the paper and put it in a bowl/hat/basket; each femme picks one (switch it up if you pick your own). If you’re alone, just speak your answer out loud, maybe looking into the mirror or up into the sky.

Go around the circle and ask each femme to read the question and respond to it by saying, “I will manifest femme energy to address this issue by _______________________.”

Everyone responds, “So mote it be.”

After all the femmes have spoken, you can burn the paper to release that energy into the world.

You can keep a record of your answers in order to revisit them the next time you do the ritual, or as a reminder to yourself when you’re feeling scattered. You can chose a charity for a donation, and educate the group of femmes about the work of the charity you chose.

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Post here to share your wishes, how you’re manifesting femme energy, and your favorite charities! Share the femme love!!! I can’t wait to hear from you!

Every Monday (or Tuesday), I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

 

Published in: on December 26, 2017 at 2:58 PM  Comments (2)  
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