LIX - Newsletter

Hey LIX Chicks,

It’s the merry month of May! Mother’s Day is fast approaching! Aaaaaagh…what is that unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach? Lesbians and our moms…is there a relationship in our lives that’s more complex? Darn good thing that I spent all those years (not to mention thousands of dollars) in therapy working through my ‘mom issues’.

My mother…better known as Saint Josephine…is 87 and lives in Hamilton. I love her very much. She’s a tiny Polish woman who would give anyone the shirt off her back. When I was about 8, I gave my red leather shoes to a friend from school because she didn’t have any proper footwear. When I told my mother what I had done, she was surprised for about five seconds and then commended me. To this day, she tells people this story.

On Mother’s Day, I’ll call her and we’ll have a lovely chat. But I’ll have to repeat everything I say two or three times because, don’t you know, she doesn’t have a hearing problem…I’m just not speaking loudly enough. She will give me updates on people who I don’t know all the while insisting that I DO know them. “You know…Mrs. Trumble…you were in the same grade four class as her son Frank.” Right. That was 46 years ago. I left Hamilton when I was 18. Clearly I should have maintained contact with Frank Trumble so I’d be able to contribute to these conversations!

I remember reading My Mother Myself in the 70’s and being absolutely horrified at the many ways that I’m just like my mom. In my rebellious teens and twenties, I didn’t want to be like her. It took me a long time to be able to accept her as an individual who made choices for herself that didn’t always make sense to me. It took both of us a long time to understand and respect each other.

And now here I am...a mother myself. Sometimes the universe has interesting ways of teaching us life’s lessons. The first time I heard myself say to our seven-year old, “Because I said so!” my hand immediately shot up to cover my mouth! Oh my God, Josephine used to say that! And when I was a kid, I threw some pretty mean tantrums! As I enter my third year of motherhood, my respect and admiration for my mother continues to grow. Perhaps I’ll tell her that when we talk on the 13th.

So where are you going to be on Mothers’ Day? This Mothers' Day, women from all over the world are 'standing to save the world'...standing silently for five minutes at exactly 1:00 p.m. local time. Think about joining the millions of women who will be part of this grass roots event! Think about joining Lucy & Ana & me. We will be standing at the Women's Monument in Minto Park at Elgin & Gilmour at 1:00 pm. Read more about ‘Standing Women’ below…it’s Upcoming Event #7. I think our mothers would approve.

And now for May’s coffee meeting report. This month’s five-minute infomercial was given by Karen Molson who, along with her partner, Joanie Flynt, has created the Paradise Found Lecture Series. Karen talked about their upcoming lecture, “Virginia, Vita & Sissinghurst” which is being presented May 9th and 10th (see details below…Event #5). This is not your dry, snooze-promoting lecture. What Karen and Joanie offer is a ‘live documentary’ about the lesbian love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Virginia and Vita were members of London, England’s famous Bloomsbury Group at the beginning of the 20th century. Their fascinating relationship is presented against a backdrop of beautiful gardens, including Sissinghurst, England’s most visited garden. The amazing images are digitally projected onto a double-screen that measures 40 feet by 12 feet. This moving live-photo-documentary received rave reviews when it was last in Ottawa. Thanks to LIX Chick Karen for a wonderful infomercial. I hope to see many of you at “Virginia, Vita & Sissinghurst” next week!

The LIX Steering Committee has made two decisions that we want to tell you about. First of all, to try to eliminate some of the junk mail filter problems that we’ve been having with some of your servers, and to give us more room to include provocative images of lesbians, we are no longer emailing the entire e-newsletter (as you, no doubt, noticed). From now on, you will get a short email with a link directly to the latest e-newsletter on the LIX web site. Goodbye to finicky government servers! Goodbye to narrow-minded American software companies who have problems with nipples!

The second decision that we’ve made is to set aside some of the proceeds from this summer’s Proud Chicks’ Dance Party in order to create an operating budget for LIX. Some of you may not realize it but it costs us close to $4000 to put on the dance. And most of that money needs to be spent up front for things like hall rental, bar inventory, deposit for the DJ, and advertising. What we’ve been doing so far is putting these expenses on our credit cards and getting reimbursed later. And frankly, we’ve sometimes been putting ourselves in tricky cash flow situations. We need an operating budget.

We looked at other ways to build some funds…things like charging for membership in LIX, or increasing the cost of our events…and we decided that we didn’t want to pursue any of them. We want LIX membership to continue to be free and we want to stay as accessible as possible in terms of the costs of our events. So we brought this issue up at the May coffee meeting and, overwhelmingly, women supported and encouraged us to create an operating budget out of this summer’s dance proceeds. Our hope is that those of you who weren’t at the meeting will be as comfortable with our decision.

So gals…enjoy the warm weather. Hope to see some of you at Minto Park on May 13th. And read on…there are some fun events happening in Ottawa this month!

Special Interest Groups and Activities:

1. Women's Beach Volleyball. Elizabeth is trying to get together a team of about nine women for the Women's Beach Volleyball Games held at Mooney's Bay. The league is run by the city. Games are Monday evenings between 6:00 - 9:00 and run from May 28th until August 13th. The cost is $76.00 per player. Deadline is May 23rd. If you're interested in joining, please contact Elizabeth at elizabeth.youngman@ottawa.ca.