Stine Machine!

My buddy Stine has a video blog, a "vlog," or "vibeogl" that is mostly directed toward FTM transgender folks. Manly yes. But, I like it too. I especially like it this week BECAUSE HE INTERVIEWED ME!!! An honor. Thank you Stine!

Stine is also an artist and writer. When we get together, we don't talk very much trans stuff anymore. We mostly talk about projects we are working on. But, for this video, we do talk trans.

FOSS2

I wanted to say more about how firefighters are so much more likely to get cancer than the general population. Likewise, lately, suicide has taken so many of our brothers and sisters. Many have PTSD from the stuff they have to deal with. Having a great crew (and doing all you can to be a great crew member) can really make a difference.

The Return of Foss

If I have to transition then so does the Foss.

Running True Episode 18

Running True Episode 17

Here is a link to get tickets to the play I was talking about! 

Running True Episode 16

Running True Episode 15

Running True Episode 14

Running True Episode 13

Haiku Friday --- March 2nd, 2018

The site.

The words:

False eyelashes on 

before you get to the gym 

two sets of lash curls    Stine

First egg of the year

small, pointy, the softest green.

Thanks, Carol Channing. Stine

                 The great white returns

           Give winter marching orders

                 Let the Spring begin

                                                       Rikosan

Hooked bite of my heart

Chews the pale ghost of regret

Spitting blood and prose  Me

Running True Episode 12

I apologize and will try to do better...

I think I have done this once before, talked about my Facebook addiction problem. I have apologies to make but, I need to present some background first.

I entered the United States Air Force as a Ronald Reagan devotee. I was really, really conservative in my political beliefs. What happened?

What happened was conversation. When I was on alert at Fairchild, it was like being in a forced conversation pit. This was the late 1980s and early 1990s. There were no cell phones. The Internet was in its infancy. We all came from many different backgrounds.

365 days a year, 24 hours a day, six nuclear-weapon-laden B-52s were parked at Fairchild Air Force Base. They were ready to launch in seconds for the big nuclear armageddon scenario.

Staffing these bombers was a crew of six: An aircraft commander (the pilot), the co-pilot, the radar navigator (bombardier), the navigator, the electronic warfare officer and the gunner. So there were six of us for each aircraft with a total of 36 of us in one spot at one time. We worked a seven-day shift, 24 hours each day. There were also crew chiefs assigned to each plane but they were on a different schedule.

We shared some phones (landlines) in the alert facility where we lived. We were cut off from our families, our girlfriends and wives and booze! Our lives rotated around mealtimes at the alert facility chowhall, working out, watching TV and movies and conversation. In a lot of ways, it was one of the best times of my life.

I felt pretty secure in my conservative convictions. But, there were other guys, guys who were smarter than me, who were better educated than me who would challenge me on my beliefs. Debates would rage well into the wee hours. They sometimes would provide me with things to read, books and magazine articles. It took me a while but I slowly evolved on many of my political stances. My last couple years in the USAF, I had a QUESTION AUTHORITY bumper sticker on the back of my camper van. Quite a turn around from where I started.

I did see changes in the aircrew personnel toward the end of my time in the service. I saw guys reading Rush Limbaugh books. I saw their anger. These fresh out of college, privileged few were angry at so many hypotheticals. They were angry at people and problems they would never ever encounter. And sometimes they were unwittingly angry at systems they themselves were joyfully entrenched in. They railed against “socialism,” when in reality, I never saw a bunch enjoy the benefits of military service socialism more in my life. The hypocrisy made me gag.

And so it began.

And now I find myself here with a problem. I long for the days of sitting with someone over long hours and debating our political positions. It is an impossibility. Not only is there no venue for that, I think people have changed. It is a rare thing today for someone to evolve on a position, to take in new facts, evaluate them and discard previously held core beliefs. A lot of this has to do with the silo-ing of oneself with like-minded people and insulating oneself with “facts” that do not challenge a position or a mindset but instead create comfort.

As you probably have ascertained by now, I am not so much into comfort.

When I came out as trans, I was ready for a fight. Why? Because, I like to fight. I don’t mind being the “turd in the punchbowl.” And as one friend put it, “You were always like Old Yeller. They loved you but in the end they had to shoot you.” Brilliant. Sad but brilliant. And when I did come out, instead of a fight, I found acceptance. In fact, many of my more conservative friends seemed to take the news easier and were more supportive than my liberal friends. How about that?

The only outlet for discussion, these days, it seems is Facebook. But, it is a poor substitute for real discussion, for real change. In fact, it is probably counter-productive to both. Facebook is an emotional morass which I love to play in, in which I love to fight.

People post things that I disagree with. And I can’t help myself. I want to fight. Lately, the last (as I type this) school shooting has brought forth, to me, some very disturbing ideas: The arming of school teachers, the arming of schoolyard-patrolling disabled vets, the idea that more guns will solve the problem, the premise that laws don’t matter because no one obeys laws they don’t want to obey, the concept that our law enforcement cannot be depended upon, etc. I responded to these positions, from (what I believed was) a practical, pragmatic and moral perspective. But, I should have kept my thoughts to myself.

I realize now that people post these kind of memes to elicit support from their friends, to create a community of like-minded believers. And there I plopped, the turd in their punchbowl.

I knew I was not going to change anyone’s mind, but I felt morally-compelled to not let some things stand. In reality, there is no way what I am saying has an effect on the person who posted this stuff. All I was doing was ruining their party, making them angry. It will never have an effect. But, it made me feel better to challenge, to fight.

For this I am very sorry. I am sorry to you the person who posted their beliefs. I caused you discomfort and distress in a venue where you sought the opposite. I am sorry that I also wasted my time. Time is something which is a precious commodity for me now. I was unwise, even stupid, for doing what I did. Again, I am very sorry.

I have friends who think that the answer to all of our problems lies in the middle someplace. They stress the viewpoint that if we all gave a little we would find common ground and we would move forward. I disagree. I think that there are facts, there is proof, there are policies that will improve our lives and bring us up to the life standards that the rest of the industrialized world enjoys. I believe that we should have debates around this, and that the better ideas should win, no compromises, no “slippery slope” arguments, no “action-movie” mindsets, etc. There are very pressing problems we have and there are solutions. Facebook will never ever be the place where any of this will happen. It’s not built for that.

I don’t believe in apologizing for something without an attempt to improve my behavior. So, here is what I am going to do. I will continue to use Facebook for my Haiku Friday and Running True posts, or some other posts (like this one) from my Spokanarama blog. For now, I will continue to post on my page what I believe, ON MY PAGE.  I will not comment on my friend’s posts that I disagree with. This may require me to quit following you, or to block your posts. I value your friendship and I would rather not see what you have to say than to hurt you or your community of like-minded believers with my arguments. If I can’t live within these bounds than I will probably have to leave Facebook all together. I value your friendship and I value my time.

Again, I am very sorry.

Thanks and I wish you all the best. Thanks for being my friend.

Maeve

Running True Episode 11

Facing my Facebook Addiction...



 Major Tom Video here!

And, of course, the original German version.

This is what I ran in today. Which was a good reflection of how my mind looked, as well.

Here is that Spokesman-Review Article from earlier this month. 

Running True Episode 10...

RUNNING TRUE - Episode Niner!

I think I went a little off the rails here... Here's a link to Spokane's Vagina Monologues 2018.

Running True Episode 8

DO NOT TAKE A SHOT EVERY TIME I SAY "UHM." If you do, you might empty your liquor cabinet.

Just another Haiku Friday...

Running True - Let's make sauerkraut!!!

Running True Confessions Two. Running makes you a stronger person...

This seems like a no-brainer. Running builds your endurance, creates stronger muscles and gives you discipline and resolve. Duh.

I have used running to strengthen myself for many transitions in my life: Starting college, Before USAF OTS, Starting a graduate degree, A new job in advertising and in The Fire Academy when I was hired by the Spokane Fire Department at age 39. I upped my mileage or became more intense in my running for all of these transitions. But, I kind of forgot about it when I started my transition from male to female. My bad.

Last week, I ran 11.5 miles in a slushy snowstorm. Yesterday I ran 13 miles. It was a bitch. But, if I keep this up, my endurance will increase and my muscles will becomes stronger. Whatever happens to me at work and in my private life will certainly also benefit from the effects of increasing my discipline and resolve.

But here’s the thing, in order to get truly stronger, I have to become weaker. There’s no way around it.  After the 13 mile run, my legs were spent, my wind was gone, my brain fried by the time I finished this slog. If you had hit me with a snowball on my last hundred yards, I would have went down, and I might still be laying there.

So, it’s a bit of a paradox and it reminds me of the adage of my old employer - Strategic Air Command - “Peace is our profession,” and the philosophy of "Peace through strength." I would revamp this a little to now say “Peace through Strength through Weakness.” And to get to the heart of why I say this, I would like to share something a little personal with you.

I have been going to counseling for the transgender stuff for almost two years now. I really like my shrink. Her methodology reminds me of what I was taught in my pastoral counseling classes. Don’t lead the patient. Let them discover what they might discover on their own. Be a reflective listener. All this she does and she does it well. She never pushed me one way or the other in any of the decisions I have made. And I think that this has let me own what I already knew - that I am a transgender female.

One day, I really wanted a little more direction from her. I had been telling her how someone who is very close to me said something hurtful to me and my reply was “OK.” I also told her how people at work will often say “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want to offend you.” My reply is always “F@#K you. Go ahead and try to offend me. You can’t.” Toward the end of the session I asked her if there was anything that I should be thinking about until our next visit. She said that she found it interesting that I didn’t have any feelings about the mean thing that was said to me and that I actually seemed to invite offense from my brother and sister firefighters, just in order to ignore it. She asked why that was. My response was “Because I want to win. I will never let anyone ever control my emotions. I would never give them the satisfaction.”

I related how in firefighter culture there is a low disregard for someone who has buttons to push. And if you do have a button to push, it will get pushed continually. I gave her an example of when someone had tried to egg me on by saying something atrocious and very offensive years ago. My response to them was to not get angry but take it to the most extreme level of offensiveness. I grossed them out with my words and they had wished that they had never started anything. In other words, I won. It wasn’t lost on me that, in my younger days, I was a B-52 bombardier and was quite adept at dropping nukes. My counselor thought about this and concluded our session with an “I would spend some time thinking about this.”

I did. And in response, I began a conscious and methodical process of letting down some shields, of breaching a few walls. I have allowed myself (at times) the ability to feel hurt. In doing so, I look back to childhood to see that I have always embraced stoicism. My mom is and was pretty stoic, pretty cool. It was my dad who was the emotional one and usually not in a good way. I had always vowed not to be like that. And it served me well. It made me strong. Or so I thought.

My new fledgling ability to feel hurt, to feel slighted, to feel embarrassed, to feel sad, etc. has not been easy for those closest to me. I am no longer a cement sounding-board, or well-disciplined whipping girl. If something seems like it should hurt me, I let it in (except for at work ‘cuz that ain’t gonna happen). I now try to feel the impact and to be honest about how that feels. This is as hard for me as it is for the one to whom I now say, “That was mean. You hurt my feelings.” Even typing this right now was hard, and makes me feel vulnerable to attack.

Running to become weak to become strong to know peace has made me think a lot about this. Is there more strength that will come to me if I honestly deal with how I feel about something, by first allowing myself to feel something? Running long distances says that there is. I guess in order to be emotionally strong, you have to do the work, and part of doing the work is feeling every step of every uphill mile when someone puts them in front of you.  That’s my theory anyway. We will see.

Running makes you truthful and strong.

Running True Episode 7

Running True - Episode Six

Running True Episode 5