Fatherly lessons I wish I’d had

This piece originally appeared in print in June 2007. I think it was a wish list of my own really — wishing I’d had a Dad who not only stuck around, but taught me how to stick up for myself from an early age instead of having to learn it all firsthand at the school of hard knocks. Of course, who ever listens to their father!?.

In a confusing world that tells girls to get good grades and “save themselves” for marriage and then shows them they’re nothing without a Pussycat Doll body and a closet full of Jimmy Choos, it’s up to Dads to tell and teach their daughters what they need to know: (more…)

Opening the Kimono — sexy stuff for a stormy Sunday

Sounds sexy, right? And it is. (more on that later)

Opening the Kimono is the name of a book I just finished reading a few minutes ago. Let me set the stage: I woke at 7 am this morning to go outside and tackle my untamed yard. My yard grows rabidly and I’m always behind the eightball when it comes to representing a civilized presence on my street. (more…)

RSVP — French for “I’ve got class”

I just today received my first invitation of the 2008 holiday season. They’re late in coming this year, but they might just be fewer than years past. I think the economy has relegated most parties to the sidelines. The invitation, to which I unfortunately had to send regrets, inspired me to post the following rant against those callow enough to think RSVP means “come if you feel like and don’t have anything better to do.”:
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A French acronym for “Répondez S’il Vous Plaît,” RSVP, when translated, means “Let me know whether you’re coming or not so I can know whether to order an extra truckload of liquor and hide all the jewelry.” (Okay, not quite… but you get the idea.) (more…)

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.”

MC in print in local Pelican Press newspaper

The editors at the Pelican Press — the old stomping grounds for my Reality Chick column — were kind enough to buy an article I freelance wrote on the issue of Amendment Two and the City of Sarasota’s ongoing policy of offering health insurance benefits to employees involved in same-sex relationships.

I support what the City is doing. This piece is not an opinion piece — just a news piece on the potential conundrum the City and a lot of other employers could be facing ….

I hope you take a moment to read the article — you can find it in your local copy of the Pelican Press or check it out at their online presence here: City still offering benefits to same-sex partners

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…)