MC in print in the Bradenton Herald

Happy day after Thanksgiving! Hope you all enjoyed a fabulous day with friends, family, critters, nature, football, and food!

A slightly different version of a blog posting I made earlier this month was picked up by the Op/Ed editor at the Bradenton Herald. If you’re interested you can link to that commentary by clicking here: Thanksgiving is Really All About Love.

I haven’t appeared in the Bradenton Herald before and I really appreciate the editor there giving me a shot in his pages. If you care to leave a comment at the paper’s site, they offer a place for comment at the end of my piece.

Wake up, MC, there really is a Santa Claus!

After yesterday’s blog posting, It’s About Love, a reader wrote to me and encouraged me to find some way to do my annual fundraising drive for All Faiths Food Bank despite the fact that I don’t have an in-print column.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me, really, and I’m really thankful (in the spirit of the season!) that this reader took the time to read my blog and then encourage me to look for an alternative way to do good for others. I think I thought I couldn’t help All Faiths this year — because I don’t have a print column and perhaps because I’ve got so many struggles of my own right now, that I truly thought I didn’t have the resources to help others.

Luckily, this reader woke me up! He encouraged me to not give up quite so easily as I had. And … he was willing to put his money where his mouth was – by offering up a sizeable donation to get things rolling. Beyond his generosity in offering to make a donation, his gentle kick in the butt is even more important to me — and it proves something I’ve been thinking about ever since Obama was elected. (more…)

It’s about love

When you share what you have with someone else, no matter what word you throw at it – charity, compassion, philanthropy, kindness, generosity – really, it’s all about love. (more…)

The not-so-rhetorical question

This above all: To thine own self be true,
and it must follow as the night the day,
thou canst not then be false to any man. — Hamlet Act I, Scene iii

“Just who the hell do you think you are?” my high school choir director demanded. That was years ago, but it might not surprise you to hear my then seventeen-year-old response: “Is that a rhetorical question,” I queried, “or do you expect me to answer it?”

If my fate had been in question before, it was sealed then. (more…)

City still offering same-sex benefits despite Amendment Two

(This piece ran in the Pelican Press newspaper November 19, 2008.)

Despite the success of Amendment Two in the Nov. 4 election, the City of Sarasota is continuing to offer a domestic-partner plan that would provide health insurance benefits, similar to those offered to spouses, to the live-in partners of city employees.

The amendment states that “no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized” in the State of Florida, but that’s not stopping the City of Sarasota.

Given the ambiguity of the “substantial equivalent thereof” portion of the amendment, City Commissioner Ken Shelin acknowledges that potential problems could ensue.

“I suppose we won’t really know until somebody attempts to file a lawsuit to prevent some public entity from providing those benefits,” Shelin told the Pelican Press.

But, he said a week after the election, the city “is in the open season for signing up for health care benefits right now, and we’re going to move forward with it until somebody stops us.”

Shelin, who championed the domestic-partner benefit plan when it was up for vote before the city commissioners in September, says he does not think domestic partnerships qualify as “substantial equivalents” to marriages.

“I think they are something less than marriage,” he explained;

therefore, he doesn’t feel the city is violating any aspect of the new amendment. “I’m hoping [the amendment] doesn’t have any impact,” Shelin said. “The proponents have repeatedly said it wouldn’t … so I’m hoping they’re right.”

City Attorney Robert Fournier acknowledges that that the passing of Amendment Two may eventually affect the city’s ability to continue to offer health benefits to domestic partners.

“I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion or an absolute certainty,” he said, but referring to the language about substantial equivalents to marriage, he predicts, “That’s going to be the part that the courts are probably going to be called upon to interpret.”

In the meantime, Fournier says, the city will continue to offer health benefits to employees with qualifying domestic partnerships. However, he added, “We may take a second look” at the wording in the current Declaration of Domestic Partnership the city requires of unmarried employees seeking benefits.

According to Kurt Hoverter, the city’s Human Resources director, the benefit plan is available to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples who live together in a committed relationship but aren’t married. To be eligible for the benefit, Hoverter says the couple must provide a signed and notarized Declaration of Domestic Partnership, attesting to, among other things, that they:

• “have mutually agreed to be in a committed, serious, long-term relationship indefinitely with each other”;

• “are jointly responsible for each other’s basic food, shelter, common necessities of life and welfare”;

• “share our primary residence with each other”;

• “share and coordinate financial responsibilities”;

• “consider ourselves to be a member of the immediate family of each other.”

Hoverter says that though the city has had a number of employees inquire about the domestic partner benefits, few have actually signed up. “People were waiting to see what happened with Amendment Two,” Hoverter said, adding, “We still don’t know how this is going to play out.”

Animal attraction

I pretty much love anything that walks, swims, paddles, or flies. (Things that crawl? — they’re called creepy crawlies for a reason.)

So, I love animals, but what I don’t understand is why I’m so infinitely patient with animals, and so impatient – at least by comparison — with humans? (more…)

Must love cats

A few nights ago, I broke my pledge to not go on a date for the rest of 2008 (after a particularly dispiriting dating experience in January). Don’t know why, but I decided to accept an invitation for drinks and so on the night of the full Harvest moon, I took the dating plunge once again. Since I’m in the process of loading all my previously published columns online, it seemed as good a time as any to load this column about a date I had in September 2006.
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“You’re not one of those crazy cat ladies, are you?” Oh, great. A first date, and he’s already got me pegged as a cat-carrying member of the dreaded single-woman-with-cats cartel. He’s waiting for a reply; a smirk on his face and a forkful of pasta Bolognese paused on a one-way trip to his mouth. I take a sip of wine and think. (more…)

Redemption Song

After the week I’ve had, this column from July 2006 rings all too-familiar. If you have my book, Sideways in Sarasota, you’ve read it, but hopefully it will be fresh goods for the rest of you. Read it while you’ve got some Bob Marley in the background.

Nobody likes to go down for the count. None of us want to be so beaten we can’t get back up.

But one of the uncomfortable truths about life is that if you’re not seriously messing up at least every now and again, you’re probably not living your life as fully as you could.

If you’re not getting a little battered and bruised along the way, you’re probably not taking enough chances. (more…)

In defense of SCGs

So here’s what I’ve got against strip clubs: They degrade an entire gender. And, I, for one, think men deserve a lot better than to be degraded.

I know, you’re out there thinking, ‘Sweetie, men can defend themselves. They don’t have to go to strip clubs. None of us wives or girlfriends are out here holding guns to our partner’s heads saying, ‘Go on, honey, have a good time.’”

Well, gosh darnit, guys who go to strip clubs do too need to be defended. They get maligned every day just for hankering to see a little unfamiliar flesh. (more…)

Reality … in the age of chickness

This column first appeared in print in October 2007.

Chick-ness is in the eye of the beholder, right?

That’s all I can say in answer to the deluge (okay, the trickle) of readers who want to know one thing above all else:

“How old are ya, Reality Chick?” (more…)