What's Goin On

I have been rather dry on ideas for art posts lately and I do apologize to anyone who comes here just for the art images and their accompanying tidbits. The weather is good now and that means that I'm out there enjoying it and taking lots of photos. Those of you who visit regularly know my fondness for my camera and the occasional good photo it sometimes surprises me with.

I do have two art posts in the works right now:  one feature on the work of Georges Seurat and another in the series A Letter from Vincent. The latter is a mixture of excerpts from the letters of Van Gogh to his brother Theo and corresponding images of the paintings he was working on or those by other painters that fueled Vincent's intensity and passion.

 On June 23rd, I'm leaving for Santa Barbara to visit my daughter (SG1) and her wife, whom I call Beloved. I haven't seen SG1 since August of 2009, so I'm very much looking forward to spending time. I'll be back on July 6, which means I'll be celebrating my 51st birthday in sunny Santa Barbara, as well as the 4th festivities. SG1's Americorp stint will be over for the summer (she's enlisted for another year) and Beloved will have a light class load at UCSB, where she finished the master's portion of her degree and will begin work on the phd part in the fall. All is going according to plan for the happy couple, I'm pleased to say.  :-)

A week or so later, WP and I are leaving for the fairy cottage in Nova Scotia until the end of July. I plan on being home all of August to work on some house projects and enjoy my yard, the river and a few day trips here and there. We may even sneak in a visit to New York City, as there are lots of cool things going on at MoMA.

Peace, love and all groovy things,
Pagan Sphinx

For now, here are two images for you to enjoy - one each from Van Gogh and Seurat. 

Georges Seurat

The Seine at Courbevoie  

c1886

Flower Pot with Chives

Marie Osmond's Son Commits Suicide

I'm putting this out quickly and therefore I'll be laying it right on the table. This post on my blog friend libhomo at Godless Liberal Homo site on Marie Osmond's son's suicide really hit home. I believe I have to agree with his opinion on this. Here's why.

You may or may not know that my daughter, now 22, happily married and working her way toward graduate school, is a lesbian who came out as "bi-sexual" at age 16. As if the rejection of several of her peers, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her then boyfriend who become irate and deranged when she told him she thought she might actually be a lesbian and not bi-sexual after all, and a parallel bi-polar episode, weren't enough to make her want to kill herself  -  add to that the what-if of if I were a strict Mormon and added the beliefs of my screwed up church to conservations with my daughter, even while I loved her. I would have lost her to suicide. I know that with every fiber of my body. I know myself and there is no way I would choose a church's doctrine over my child's life and well-being.

 My daughter and daughter-in-law, taken during their college graduation week-end in 2009

Be aware that the Mormon church continues to advocate the use of Electro-Shock Therapy for people who are coersed into "treatment" because of their "problem" which had to be caused by the individual him or herself.


I feel for anyone who loses a child and I encounter the affects of that hurt every time I interact with WP's sister who lost her 25 year-old daughter to suicide in 2005. I know the pain my family and I went through knowing our daughter didn't want to live anymore. What I can't understand is why a person can't wrap their heads around the situation and understand that they have to do everything they can to save their child. If one's child is physically ill and needs many changes in order to live, wouldn't you go to the ends of the earth to try to eliminate or add anything you could possibly think of to save them or even to make them comfortable? Then why not chuck the church and the toxic friends and open lines of communication in order to save your child?

If I were a gay teen living in a strict Mormon household, I'd kill myself too.

What's Going On and Bipolar Article (long post; good article)

 (This is one of those blog award virus images that was floating around. I kind of like it to represent my honest scrap today. Thank you to (I think) Utah Savage for sending it the way of The Pagan Sphinx.)

I'm currently experiencing a sort of blog frenzy. In a couple of weeks blogging will become a low-priority for me, as I will be starting two new classes that overlap by a few weeks. There will a lot of travel and much to do and then it's the holidays. My mother has let me know that she is seriously considering visiting for the holidays, from Portugal. She has two little great-grandchildren (my brother's grandchildren). The last time she saw her GGD was when Anna was three months old. I have mixed feelings about her coming in winter. She doesn't do well in the cold or cooped up in my brother's suburban mansion. My house is too old and dusty for her. I'm really very afraid she'll get sick here.

My brother, whom I'll call Dr. Phil, is being a selfish jerk as usual by putting the squeeze on our mother to come for the holidays and otherwise laying a guilt trip on her about how her great-grandchildren are growing up and she's missing it. Ugh. He could go visit her. Dr. Phil, my nephew with the little kids and his wife are very well off. They could collectively more than afford to rent a flippin' villa near my mother's house, if they wanted to. My brother just has made no progress in getting beyond is anger at my parents for having moved back to Portugal for their retirement.  I too was saddened that my children would grow up largely without their grandparents' regular guidance. But I have been over that for many years now. In fact, now that my father is gone, especially, I think my mother is much better off living out the rest of her life in Portugal. She has many family and friends within walking distance, so she doesn't need to drive. She takes the bus and train to medical appointments and if she is truly in need of private transportation, those same family and friends are available to drive her and are, in fact, happy to do so. My brother had been putting a lot of pressure on her and on me to support his "position", to move back to the U.S. And I know that is not what my mother wants. She's told me over the course of a lot of conversations over many years, that that is not what she wants. Why my brother can't accep that must be between him and his shrink. I certainly hope he has one, as he is truly in need. And I am dead serious, not a mean-spirited bone or wish in me. I hope only the best for Dr. Phil ( and that nickname does make me smile a bit wryly).  I just wish he would lay off.

If only you could see Dr. Phil in action. He's tempered himself a bit over the years but I've lost count of how many times he hung up the phone on me in conversations we had a couple of years ago, during a particularly troubling period in my life:  SG1, as I wrote about above, was in one of many psych wards and my husband and I were splitting up. He called to demand information about my daughter's "problem", as he put it. He accused me of "killing our parents" (my father was still living then) by telling them about SG's mental illness. I was fit to be tied and I told him the conversation was over and he ended it himself immediately by hanging up.

The other significant time Dr. Phil hung up on me had to do with his preemptive strike against me over how I should quit my summer school job one week into it (and I really needed the income then) to go care for my mother upon her release from the hospital after gastric cancer surgery. I hadn't even had time to digest (pardon) the news when he's on the phone telling me that I had to go and that doing so would become my "defining moment" (that's why I dubbed him Dr. Phil) He was really busy, you see planning his vacation. When I took issue with his confrontational attitude and not so much with what he was wanting me to do, which I naturally ended up doing because it was the right thing to do for my mother, not because he was brow-beating me into it. And I told him so.

My mother asked my opinion last weekend of whether she should make the trans-Atlantic flight to Boston a couple of weeks before Christmas. I told her that was up to her and how she feels physically and emotionally about the trip and insisted that it should be her decision and her decision only. In typical Maria-Style, she kept she kept urging me to elaborate but I stuck to my line. I am not getting in the middle of that one!

They are writing sudden flurry and frenzy of notes in my medical file these days. It is nothing serious but I'm having to jump through some hoops for the medical system so I can be properly treated for chronic UTIs. If don't know the acronym, I'm glad for you. If you know it all too well, I'd be happy to comiserate. ;-)  I have one more appointment with the handsome Spanish urologist (he wears clogs. I have this thing for men in clogs) heheh.) and then I should be set-up with the proper treatment. I have tried every bloody thing under the sun to take care of the UTIs with more holistic approaches. We'll see what my options are.

SG1 and The Beloved are doing very well!  SG1 and I talk most days.The Americorps stint was really difficult for the first month or so her position, but she made it through with flying colors and really enjoying it. I'm not sure she wants to follow in her mother's footsteps as a teacher of young children, though her placement is at an elementary school where she is a literacy tutor for kindergarten and first grade. She's expressed a mild interest in perhaps being certified to teach high school. I listen and try to be supportive. SG1 is worried that she will not be able to do what she wants to do for graduate school. She is a brilliant girl and always has to have goals. And right now she is where she is and needs to finish this Americorps endeavor. With the economy the way it is, she may even have to do a second year of the program. She has two years to think about what she wants to pursue in graduate school. She mentioned law school again recently, which she hasn't done in a while. It bothers her not to know what she will doing in two years. It's interesting, because it bothers me to know what I'll be doing in two years. ;-)

SG2 is happy to be in Boston. I don't doubt she will stick around those parts when she is done with her studies. She loves the city and also that it's close enough to home that it's not such a big hassle to make the trip. She's very social and has a huge circle of friends. Funny how this kid was so shy when she was a baby, only coming out of her shell in around middle childhood. She has a new boyfriend, whom I'll  name Crocket. I have not yet met him but they are quite inthralled with one another. I've hinted plainly that he visit.  :-)

WP and I are just plain happy together. I love my dearly crazy, socially-inept loving weirdo almost-husband. 

 And yes, the time for slacking will soon reach its end. 

Meanwhile, I have things to share with you. I just found a mailing from CABF - Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation. I don't trust large organizations like this entirely. One critism I've heard of CABF is that they receive generous contributions from Big Pharma and therefore may be more predisposed to advocating drug treatment for children. Which is still a controversial subject among shrinks, teachers, parents and physicians.

My experiences with CABF all involved using their website for informatin when SG1 had the ultimate teen meltdown six years ago and ended up in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the next two years. (Some of you who have read this blog for a while may recall a bit about that.) I found the website to be very helpful and informative and since the correct drug or drugs was the only way to go for my daughter, I read a lot about medications on the site also. I am, in fact, an advocate of people receiving what they need to get better, regardless of the type of condition. Taking the medication route is a personal/family decision.

I was encouraged today to read this article in the newsletter I receive from CABF, about adolescent bipolar disorder:
Young Adults May Outgrow Bipolar Disorder Source: University of Missouri-Columbia press release

This was a slice of my life. I was inspired by Spadoman Joe at  Round Circle.
Thanks, Joe and Peace

Happy Birthday, Supergirl One!

Remember what your mama told you - there would be days like these. Chin up, darlin' or we can't see your dimple! ;-)

These are the days

These are the days

These are days you'll remember

Never before and never since, I promise

Will the whole world be warm as this

And as you feel it,

You'll know it's true

That you are blessed and lucky

It's true that you

Are touched by something

That will grow and bloom in you


~ Natalie Merchant

Nothing but love,
Mommy

Graduation Photos!

SG1 and Beloved had their graduation this weekend. Graduation at Mt. Holyoke is traditionally a two-day event. On Saturday, Laurel Parade was held. If you're truly interested in the meaning of Laurel Parade at Mt. Holyoke, click this link. Otherwise, in my own words, it's an event that celebrates both the graduating class and Mary Lyon, the college's founder. Ulumi from graduating classes as far back as the 1930's join the graduates in the parade and hold their own reunion events.

Day One
Laurel Parade

The women all wear white and carry what seems to be an endless garland of laurel. Above are SG1 and Beloved that I captured during a lull in the parade, since I wasn't content to sit in one spot, but followed the paraders to their destination...

Mary Lyon's grave.

There are no speeches, just a swarm of young women in white wrapping the laurel garland around the wrought iron fence and their guests looking on and cheering. It was all quite charming.

Below, SG1 and Beloved take a break after the parade to chat and review the rest of the afternoon's agenda for the family.

But not for long, as introducitons needed to be made between their families and some fellow graduates and friends. And so of course, I had to take pictures!

Day Two The Actual Graduation:

Mount Holyoke
One Hundred Seventy-Second Commencement

Empty ampatheater seating, awaiting the graduates.

SG1 Bachelor of Arts in Politics
magna cum laude & with thesis honors

Beloved Bachelor of Arts in Gender Studies
Cum Laude & with High Thesis Honors


From the graduation we came to my house for a small get-t0gether by the river, which included Beloved's parents and younger brother. It was wonderful to meet them. They're very excellent poeple.

Below are the graduates and to the right L.P., my younge step-daughter and on the far left my SG2.

The graduates/newly weds enjoying some cake...


and poignantly looking out over the river
(poignancy courtesy of the Cunning Runt) ;-)

Related links

Address was given by Irish president Mary McAleese.

Green Commencement at Mount Holyoke College. Every graduating class has a color and the color for the MHC class of 2009 is green.

Maine and D.C. Move Forward & More

Maine Statehouse Votes in Favor of Marriage for Same-Sex Couples

Washington D.C. Recognizes Same-Sex Marriage


This article at the Gay Rights blog @ change. org

Here is Ms. Vienna Teng with City Hall. I wish she would write a song about Massachusetts but that's okay. My daughter was married at this city hall, so I love the song.

And if you never read the post here on this painting...



it was painted by my dear friend Steve Emery, whose inspiration for it were my daughter and daughter-in-law's wedding photographs at taken at San Francisco City Hall last Fall. Every time I try to write about how much this painting means to my family and me, I get a bit chocked up and completely lose the words. But I think you know. Visit Steve's gallery. It is a very uplifting space.

Shadow Shot Sunday & Part Two of my Amherst/Mount Holyoke College Day Trip

See Part One here.

Shadow Shot Sunday is being brought you to by The Pagan Sphinx blog this week, for a change of pace.

I went down to Mount Holyoke to surprise my daughter (SG1) and DIL (The Beloved) with a visit and maybe lunch and stopped several places along the way to take pictures. But there are just too many stops and too many photographs to document them, I'll post these for Tracey's Shadow Shot meme. I eventually meandered my way down to the campus. It was like summer today. Sunny and clear and hot. The First day all week that's been really nice.


During one of my stops, I discovered I'd forgotten my cell phone and couldn't call the girls to tell them I was in the area. So went about getting lunch on North Pleasant Street.

click on all photos to enlarge to a nice size

and ate it on a bench in front of this fountain. After lunch,I continued to travel through downtown traffic and down rt. 116 to my daughter's campus to look for her, sans cell phone. But not before I stopped and snapped these photos.

Mary Lyon Hall

Iron fence shadow in front of Mary Lyon Hall on the Mount Holyoke College campus South Hadley, Massachusetts
I then came upon this festive scene. Nice but it will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack with all these kids spread out over the expansive lawn

But there they were! So I asked them to pose, which they did with ease, dontach think? :)

My girl is radiantly happy. It's spring. She turned in her thesis today and she's in love.

Thanks, Tracey from Melbourne, for hosting Shadow Shot Sunday

What's Goin' On

I'm still quite sick. Fighting off infections with antibiotics, natural remedies and anything else that may work. And the headache continues, though currently abated with the help of lots of Excedrin.

The headaches are a result of an injury due to a fall about five years ago. The fall caused a whiplash type injury that comes back to haunt me through neck and headache pain. Only to be kept under control by neuro-muscular pain relief administered by The Man with the Magic Hands. But it costs; a lot. He's very willing to cut me some slack on the sliding scale right now but I feel guilty because I am in a better place than most. I do have health insurance for me and the Supergirls but it's costing CR and me a small fortune per month, whereas up until two months ago, the girls' coverage was free through his plan, which he no longer has. Lack of a comprehensive single-payer national health plan is killing this country's people -both financially and literaly. I actually have Sicko on hand from Netflix to watch sometime today. Just what I need to perk up my spirits...

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that we got home safely and that despite my various ailments, I'm actually fine, overall. WP's mother is in intensive care but doing well, so we'll be visiting her today and then I'm going down to see SG1 for a tiny bit to deliver some goodies. She and The Beloved are in the throws of thesis writing and have little time for anything else. The good news is that The Beloved is being heavily courted by UC Santa Barbara, who are paying her flight and accomodations to go visit the university. They really want her, so hopefully that means a good package for her there.

Do you want to see a couple of pictures from New York? I leave you with these.

Judy Chicago's place for Emily Dickinson at The Dinner Party
(more on this exhibit at The Brooklyn Museam, in a future post)


Rodin sculpture, in the foyer of The Brooklyn Museaum

A Brief History of The Pagan Sphinx

It's been a year since I started The Pagan Sphinx and I've never truly discussed how I arrived at the name. So, what exactly, do Emily Dickinson and William Bouguereau have in common?

I've long thought of myself as a sort of pagan, in the sense that I tend by nature to be a person who doubts the existence of god but who does not discount it altogether. An agnostic you say? Perhaps. But that sounds sort of cold to me for some reason.

I have also long been a fan of Emily Dickinson. Not only of her poetry but of the woman herself; so much of whom is shrouded in mystery; with the exception of her poems and letters. One day, as I was doing a search on her poems and letters on the net, I came upon this article by Gary Sloan, from which I've copied the following passage:

Dickinson's enigmatic nature shrouds her evolution from Christian manqué to pagan. She had histrionic propensities that obscure the line between her true beliefs and those she feigned. Intermittently in her 1,775 poems and nearly 1,100 extant letters (many poems were incorporated into the letters), she struck poses and adopted personas. "When I state myself as the Representative of my verse," she told Higginson, "it does not mean me but a supposed person." In early professions of impiety, she had a penchant for hyperbole and self-dramatization that render her claims hard to evaluate. Later, an authentic infidel, she accommodated orthodox sensibilities. Long after she had chucked belief in a hereafter, she continued to quote promissory biblical verses to assure bereaved relatives and neighbors they would be reunited with their deceased loved ones. When she was herself bereaved, she accepted the ministrations of clergymen. She even solicited platitudes on immortality, plucking at a twig of evidence.

In essence, Emily doubted, as I do; as many of us do. And Professor Sloan: if you ever read this, I would like you to know how much I enjoyed your article and how what you wrote about Emily Dickinson has helped to enrich my appreciation of her. Because Emily Dickinson lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is practically my backyard, I have an even more special reverence for her persona(s), her work and her life. Visiting the Dickinson museum has become an annual Spring pilgrimage for me. I eargerly await April when the tulips in Emiy's garden (or so I like to pretend it's still her garden) are in full bloom.

That's the history of the title of The Pagan Sphinx. Then there is the matter of the blog header. I think of this painting by Beaugereau on several levels. Firstly, it's a beautiful painting. It's also playful, pagan-like and the all-time favorite of a once five year old SG1, who upon her second or so visit to its home, the Clark Art Institute, begged for the refrigerator magnet of the painting and insisted on taking it to school for show and tell one week. And that event, of course, was only slightly marred by the ridicicule of the other kindergartners. My very loving and lovely daughter recently said to me: "See, Mommy, I had a thing for curvy women, even back then!".


And this painting is huge. See the photo of the room where it hangs in the museaum; taken by yours truly. It is with regret that I never took pictures of my children on all the family visits we made there. But it's not too late. I am planning such a trip this summer, when both girls are done with school. In fact, SG1 will be a college graduate and spending time with her parents and sister before she heads off to Santa Barbara with her Beloved. Lots of pictures, I promise myself!

I've thought a few times of changing the blog header but I'm not ready. Just like SG1's inevitable moving on to a new life, I'm still hanging on. One day, when the time feels right, I may change it. Meanwhile, I'm still very much attached to it.

That, my friends, is a brief history of The Pagan Sphinx and those nude ladies dragging the naughty satyr into the pond. I swear, I could make up so many stories about that painting, were it not for the permanent writer's block...

It Breaks My Heart

I'm still on vacation! When I'm on vacation, my Lovely Man, WP always makes sure to indulge me in one way or another. Perhaps I'm easy to please, but when it's around 1:00 a.m. and I can't sleep, he senses that and invites me to watch a movie with him. I just love him so. Hold on a minute, I'm now going to interrupt his conference call to give him a hug. :-)

That was early this morning. We watched Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us. I must've been content after seeing Shelly Duval, one of my favorite actresses of that era, because I conked right out until about a half-hour ago. Bliss. To sleep until just after nine when ordinarily The Adorables (my little students) are sitting bleary-eyed before me as I tell them what day it is and what sorts of torture we have in store for them. For some reason, they keep coming back every day anyway. ;-)

This is supposed to be a post-Valentine's Day sort of tribute or ramble, or something. I'm really losing my way here. May I just put it plainly?

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired of those mean-spirited, narrow-minded, fear-mongering, twisted people who are the force behind trying to brutally beat into the ground marriage equality in California. They won't do it here in Massachusetts because they wouldn't dare. We'd kick them out on their collective, pointy little ear.

Look at the happy face on my beautiful kid! How can anyone have the cruel heart to try to take that bond away from my daughter and daughter-in-law? For those of you who do not already know, they were married at San Francisco City Hall back in October, in the hope that Prop 8 would not pass. They currently live at college in Massachusetts, where marriage is legal. The couple, however, plan to move to California for graduate school, so it made sense for them to marry in California. After the passage of Prop 8, however, their union is uncertain. They're preparing themselves for inevitably seeking a domestic partnership instead.

I want to encourage you to visit Thorne's World, where I saw and borrowed this video to share with you. Thorne and her wife are dealing with the same issue as my daughter and daughter-in-law. And please meet Thorne - she'll make you laugh and cry and shake your fists; and you'll love every moment of it. I promise.


And to those people who have taken to wearing such huge boots to trample on the happiness of others: I'm Sick of You. (There's also an Iggy Pop song with the same title, but it was Lou Reed's song I was really thinkin' about.)

Supreme Court Hears Prop 8 Case Thursday

California Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments
in Prop 8 Legal Challenge on March 5

The California Supreme Court announced today that it will hear oral arguments on Thursday, March 5, 2009 in the Proposition 8 legal challenge.

On November 19, 2008, the California Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenges to Proposition 8 and set an expedited schedule. Briefing in the case was completed on January 21, 2009.

The California Supreme Court must issue its decisions within 90 days of oral argument.

On January 15, 2009, 43 friend-of-the-court briefs urging the Court to invalidate Prop 8 were filed, arguing that Proposition 8 drastically alters the equal protection guarantee in California’s Constitution and that the rights of a minority cannot be eliminated by a simple majority vote. The supporters represent the full gamut of California’s and the nation’s civil rights organizations and legal scholars, as well as California legislators, local governments, bar associations, business interests, labor unions, and religious groups.

In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court held that laws that treat people differently based on their sexual orientation violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and that same-sex couples have the same fundamental right to marry as other Californians. Proposition 8 eliminated this fundamental right only for same-sex couples. No other initiative has ever successfully changed the California Constitution to take away a right only from a targeted minority group. Proposition 8 passed by a bare majority of 52 percent on November 4.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU filed this challenge on November 5, representing Equality California, whose members include many same-sex couples who married between June 16 and November 4, 2008, and six same-sex couples who want to marry in California. The California Supreme Court has also agreed to hear two other challenges filed on the same day: one filed by the City and County of San Francisco (joined by Santa Clara County and the City of Los Angeles, and subsequently by Los Angeles County and other local governments); and another filed by a private attorney.

Serving as co-counsel on the case with NCLR, Lambda Legal, and the ACLU are the Law Office of David C. Codell, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

The case is Strauss et al. v. Horton et al. (#S168047). Click here for more information.