Ruby Tuesday

Or, Songs in the Key of Ruby, Part Deux: Dream on Me Edition

Last week, we launched a series of posts aimed at "exploring the colorful cultural heritage of the new dog in Roxie's World, the adorable Ms. Ruby, whose name, with its sassy, slutty connotations, has figured into many a crooner's tune. Really -- Lots of them!"

Today, we offer the second installment in the series with a smackdown between the glorious Ray Charles and the (to us) obscure Uncle Walt's Band on the mellifluous "Ruby," the theme from a 1952 film, Ruby Gentry, starring Charlton Heston and Jennifer Jones. The song was composed by Heinz Roemheld, with lyrics by Mitchell Parish. It's a dreamy, haunting sort of song that makes you want to take a pretty woman by the hand and lead her out onto the dance floor for some suave cheek-to-cheek action while a tuxedo-clad waiter brings a couple of fresh dry martinis to your little round table. That is definitely the vibe conjured by Charles' smooth-as-silk version:



Uncle Walt's Band plays it a little more down-homey, but their take on the song is also easy on the ears. It'll make you want to take a pretty woman by the hand and lead her out onto the dance floor while some dude in a tee-shirt brings a couple of longnecks and some fresh peanuts to your table:



Which do you prefer, music lovers? And what are your all-time favorite songs or other pop-cultural tributes to critters named Ruby? It's the first day of summer school, and the new kid in Roxie's World has a lot to learn. Help us teach the young dog some new tricks about herself!

(Many thanks to the devoted but previously unknown reader who de-lurked to send us the Uncle Walt's Band version of "Ruby." We appreciate your dedication and your musical taste. And the Texans among us are delighted to discover a hippy band that recorded a live album at Austin's fabulous Waterloo Ice House. Thanks for reading -- and writing!)

Snapshots of a Mother-OUT-Law

A Message from Mark Twain,
Director of the Office of Persona Management,
Roxie’s World:

The following post was written by Roxie’s amanuensis, Moose. You will notice that in this heartwarming tribute to the recently deceased Mother of the Goosians, she refers to herself and to Goose by non-blogospheric (i.e., “real”) names. This is a clear violation of the identity protocols developed and enforced by my office in order to protect the integrity of the several personae so familiar to and beloved by readers of this blog. After a heated conversation with Moose, I decided to permit this unique exception to the rules, because, well, her heart was set on doing it, and I have learned that once Moose has her heart set on something it’s best to just get out of the way. I suggested that she might want to wait a hundred years or so before publishing this little bit of autobiography, but she was determined to get it out before the blooms were barely off the funeral flowers.

As Roxie would say, Wevs, kids. Take it away, Moose.

* * *

Nothing in our lives quite prepared Mozelle Smith and me for one another. We met in 1985, when Martha and I made our first trip to Texas together. I was 26 years old and didn’t think of that journey as in any way monumental. Martha and I had been living together for less than a year. We didn’t think of ourselves as married, and if you had asked me then if I was planning to spend the rest of my life with her I wouldn’t have known what to say. I was young, and it was a different time. We didn’t think in those terms because in a very real way they weren’t available to us. The lifeworld we were traveling through wasn’t on any of the maps we’d been given. As Adrienne Rich wrote in celebration of the affective, erotic, and political possibilities that were emerging for lesbians in the post-Stonewall period, “[W]e’re out in a country that has no language . . . [W]hatever we do together is pure invention.” Romantic, yes, but it felt that way.

What was true for me and Martha was also true for me and her mother, a West Texas Christian and the wife of a lawyer turned judge. Lacking any guides or pre-formed grids, we had to make up our relationship as we went along. What were we to be to each other? How were we going to fit in one another’s lives? What were we going to call one another?

Fortunately, none of those questions consciously weighed on us in the summer of 1985 when I stumbled into the elegant apartment she and Earl then had in downtown Austin. She was a hostess. I was a houseguest. These were roles we both knew well. Her daughter and I shared a room and a bed, but the only conflict I recall from that trip had to do with coffee. Two days into the visit, I was exhausted, finding it difficult to keep up with Earl and Mozelle on the circuits we made through some mall as part of an indoor fitness routine they were doing. “I feel awful,” I confessed to Martha on one desultory lap past the Foley’s department store. “My head aches. I can’t stay awake. What the heck is the matter with me?” Later, Martha sidled up to her mother and said, “Mom, is there any caffeine in the coffee you’ve been serving us?” Mozelle smiled mischievously and replied, “Oh, a little. We’ve been cutting back, you know.” She pulled a second coffee maker out of the pantry and Martha and I had fully caffeinated coffee for the rest of our stay. And for the next quarter of a century, the story of the strapping young Amazon who needed an extra jolt of joe to keep up with a couple of almost 65-year-olds never failed to get a laugh out of her.

Martha’s family is equal parts Irish and Texan, which means that storytelling is a primary means of bonding and of negotiating one’s place in social and familial structures. I was delighted to enter into family lore with a story about being humbled by the vibrant matriarch of my partner’s colorful clan. Over time, though, Mozelle and I built up a deep relationship less out of big stories than of small moments of intimacy and mutual care. By 1989, when her side of the family staged a massive reunion, our relationship had progressed to the point that she insisted I stand up to be presented with her branch of the family. A few years later, I was thrilled to hear her casually introduce me and Martha to someone as “our daughters.”

Without a doubt, though, the transformative moment in my relationship with my mother-out-law was when Martha had hip replacement surgery in December 1994 and nearly bled to death on the operating table when a vein in her left leg was shredded. What should have been a 2-hour surgery turned into a 9-hour ordeal that I endured alone in a hospital waiting room while Mozelle waited anxiously for news of her youngest child from thousands of miles away. Late in the afternoon, when Martha was safe and stabilized, the surgeon finally emerged to tell me what had happened. As we were talking, the receptionist in the surgical waiting area told me there was a call for me. When I said hello, Mozelle keened into the telephone, “What’s happening to mah ba-a-a-beeee?” As calmly as I could, I relayed to her what the doctor had just told me: Martha had had a difficult time, but she had made it through and was going to be fine. The surgery was successful. She would be spending the night in ICU because they had installed a breathing tube when her blood pressure crashed on the table. I would call her later when Martha was out of recovery.

When we spoke again a few hours later, our moods and roles had switched. Mozelle was calm and listened patiently as I told her how upset I was that the ICU nurses clearly didn’t want me around. Martha had been anxious before the surgery, terrified that something would go wrong, and it had. How could I leave her alone, knowing that her worst fears had nearly been realized? On the other hand, I was exhausted, having gotten up well before the crack of dawn to get to the hospital for a 7:30 a.m. surgery. There was also a young puppy at home who had already spent many hours by herself. “Now, you listen to me, Marilee,” Mozelle interrupted me to say in a kind but firm tone, “you get out of the way and let those nurses do their jobs. Go on home, tend to Roxie, and get some rest. Caretakers have to take care of themselves, too, you know.”

This was a lesson Mozelle knew well from her decades of experience nursing a husband who suffered seven major heart attacks before having a heart transplant in 1991. “Besides,” she slyly deadpanned, “she’s on so many drugs right now she’s not going to remember a single thing you say or do for her tonight, so you might as well go home.”

No one on earth but Martha’s mother could have given me permission to walk away from her that night. That Mozelle did so still strikes me as one of the most loving things anyone has ever done for me. With a few simple words, she powerfully acknowledged my place in her daughter’s life and let me know she trusted me to do right by her. Her faith in me helped to steady me in a profoundly unsteady moment. If Mozelle thought I could handle the situation, then, by golly, I could. I left the hospital with a feeling of immense relief.

A few days later, when Martha faced a second minor surgery to drain and clean the incision to prevent infection, Mozelle became anxious again when she hadn’t heard from me late in the day. (Remember, this was the pre-cell phone era. We didn’t call every person in our life four or five times a day for no particular reason. We waited until we actually had something to say.) When she reached me, I explained that Martha still hadn’t had the surgery yet. It was a weekend. The surgery was low-priority because it wasn’t urgent. In her state of worry, Mo wasn’t convinced. “Now, we are going to be completely honest with each other, Marilee. Don’t sugarcoat it or beat around the bush. Do you swear there is nothing else wrong?” “I swear to you, Mo. Everything is all right. You’ll get nothing but the truth from me.”

In that brief exchange, it seems to me, Mozelle and I fully recognized and embraced the possibilities of our out-law relationship. Parents and children, and perhaps especially mothers and daughters, can’t always tell each other the truth. Their relationships are too fraught with emotion and history, too burdened by psychic need and social expectation. The in-law relationships established through marriage are differently but equally weighed down by convention and structural tension. The mother-in-law is presumed to be a rival to the daughter-in-law, locked in a struggle for the apparently limited attention and affection of the son. The dreadful 2005 film Monster-in-Law, starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda, is hardly an isolated example of the scorn heaped on the figure of the mother-in-law. She is the butt of a million easy, mindlessly misogynistic jokes.

The daughter-in-law doesn’t fare much better in this toxic cultural scenario. She is perpetually insecure, lacking confidence in her ability to sustain her marriage or manage her life. Seeing herself through the harsh eyes of the mother-in-law, her house is always filthy, her meals inedible, her children badly dressed or behaved.

I should probably note at this point that Mozelle enjoyed wonderful relationships with her actual children-in-law. My goal here is not to assert a privileged status in relation to this remarkable woman or to suggest that my relationship with her was any more genuine or honest than anybody else’s. As her obituary noted, Mozelle was a people person, a gregarious and loving soul who saw the good in everyone and never met a stranger. My relationship with her was unusual because I was the long-term partner of her lesbian daughter. Our sexuality was a challenge to the moral precepts of a faith tradition that mattered deeply to her and to a social world that was sexually conventional and highly patriarchal, despite the presence of numerous hard-drinking, gun-toting, multiply married and divorced women in the family. (No, that is not a bit of Texas-style exaggeration. That is a statement of fact. There’s a reason I described Martha’s family as colorful, and her name was Aunt Thelma.)

I should also acknowledge that Mozelle was as far outside my ken as I was hers. In forging a relationship with her, I had my own lessons to learn – and un-learn – about people of faith. I had to realize that she truly wasn’t judging me, that when she told me she was praying for me she didn’t mean she was on her knees hoping I would renounce lesbianism and embrace her system of belief. That was just her way of saying that she loved me, worried about me, and wanted me to be healthy and safe. She knew that my salvation was my problem, not hers.

When I say that Mozelle and I embraced the possibilities of our out-law relationship, what I mean is we both came to appreciate the freedom to say, do, or be whatever the heck we wanted in relation to one another. There were no rules, no external standards to judge ourselves against. We made a pact in that series of phone calls in 1994, and we stuck to it until the day she died. She knew I would be honest with her. I knew she trusted me and had confidence in my judgment. We were women of different generations, different regions, different sexualities, and different positions on the question of God, but we adored the same redheaded girl and that was good enough for both of us. Love doesn’t make such differences disappear. Sometimes, it just makes them easier to reckon with. Sometimes, though, love makes such differences seem downright delightful.

As her blindness deepened, Mozelle became more and more dependent on others for assistance. I was tickled pink when she would turn to me for help. “Marilee, how does my hair look?” she might say, but I also marveled at how quickly she learned to compensate for her loss of vision by taking in information through her ears and fingers. When I walked her through our house after its renovation, she drilled me on the details of colors and furniture as she slid her hands over every unfamiliar surface. She would reach out and touch a new shirt to get a sense of its appearance. “Let me feel of it,” she’d say. Once, when Martha and I had come to town for a nephew’s wedding, I had neglected to pack a bra. It turned out Mo needed one, too, so off we went to a place called, I swear, Petticoat Fair. The salesclerk asked if we would need one dressing room or two. “One will be fine,” I said. “She can’t see me, and I don’t mind seeing her.” Mo laughed, and we settled down to the serious and seriously intimate business of selecting foundation garments.

Late in the evening of the day she died, I found myself moved to say something that had never occurred to me before but which felt and sounded absolutely right in that moment of unexpected sadness: Mozelle was the best of my bonus moms, the one in whose eyes I was always good enough. I will miss her lilting voice, her relentless good sense, her surprisingly steely resolve, her appreciation for a well-set table and all the people gathered around it. I will miss her calling to tell me about a story on NPR that I really ought to hear. I will miss her expressions of mock indignation at some off-color remark, her impatience with any kind of cynicism.

Mostly, though, I will miss her lessons in out-law intimacy. For a judge’s wife, she was one hell of a renegade. Thank you, Mozelle, for being my partner in the crime of love.

* * *

(Mo and Moose at the Broken Spoke, Austin, TX, 6/29/07. Photo Credit: Sister of the Goosians.)

Ceremonious Like Tombs

The Official Death Poet of Roxie's World supplies the title for today's post, which is really a photo essay on the magisterial Texas State Cemetery, where both of the Parents of the Goosians now lie buried. (Goose's father, Earl W. Smith, who ended his career as a judge on the state's Third Court of Appeals, died in 2001; her mother, Mozelle Owens Smith, died last Wednesday.)

Moose is not a big fan of dying, but she loves a pretty cemetery, and this one just blocks east of the state capitol in Austin is exceptionally pretty. It is built into gently rolling hills and has a sweet little pond just perfect for capturing the reflections of the Lone Star state flags lining State Highway 165, which winds through the grounds and, at a half mile long, is the shortest state highway in Texas.

Earl and Mo are buried on Republic Hill, on the left side of the first photo below. Their near neighbors include such sheroes of Texas history as Gov. Ann Richards, whose swirling marble gravestone can be seen in the background of the photo of Earl and Mo's pink granite stone, and Rep. Barbara Jordan, who is further up the hill. Other nearby notables include Old Yeller author Fred Gipson, LBJ ally Sen. Ralph Yarborough, and the father of Texas, Stephen F. Austin. Republic Hill looks down on the Confederate Field (last photo below), where more than 2200 Confederate veterans and their spouses are buried.

As Moose remarked on Facebook, well, if you gotta go, you could do worse than to end up buried at the feet of Ann Richards, right? And is it just us, folks, or does that swirling mass of white marble not look to you like a clever homage to Richards' trademark halo of silver hair? What a fitting tribute to a gutsy feminist trail-blazer who once quipped, “I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house.’ ” We are pleased to report (third and fourth photos below) that is not what her tombstone says. Not at all. Oh, and right next to Gov. Richards is the grave of her friend and companion Edwin A. "Bud" Shrake, which is notable for its unusual inscription: So far, so bueno. No wonder Richards liked to hang out with him.

So far, so bueno. Sounds about right to us, kids. Peace out and thanks again for all the love. We send it right back to you.






(Photo Credits: Moose, on her iPhone, 5/22-23/2010, Austin, TX)

Complete and Great

Sorrow has come to Roxie's World again, my darlings. We are sorry to tell you that the Mother of the Goosians, a fine and feisty Texas sweetheart by the name of Hattie Mozelle Owens Smith, died yesterday morning in Austin. She was a beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and, as Moose put it in an e-mail to friends, the world's greatest mother-out-law, which is how she came to think of this devout Church of Christ member with whom she built a warm and close relationship over the course of a quarter century. (You can access an obituary here.)

Mozelle, as she was known (Mo for short, Mammo to her grandkids), combined her faith with a strong commitment to social justice. She was an LBJ Democrat (indeed, darn near the last one, we fear) who hated war, gave generously to those in need, and thought the Bushes were disastrous for Texas, the nation, and the world. She braved the bizarreness of her state's caucus system to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary campaign and marveled at the possibility that the country might have its first woman president. (She was born in 1919, the year before women got the right to vote. Oh, and she ended up being pretty darn happy the nation elected its first African-American president, by the way.) She lived her faith and saw good in everyone, even heathen lesbians who cussed too much and didn't visit Texas nearly often enough in her opinion.

Mozelle was 90 years old and in reasonably good health until recently, despite having lost her sight to macular degeneration in the last ten years. Her blindness was an inconvenience, but it never impeded her lively curiosity. She was a voracious reader of talking books and made her way through most of the novels of Willa Cather not long after Moose published her study of the Nebraska writer. When she finished Cather's most famous book, My Ántonia, she phoned Moose up and said, "Now, Moose, I've got a stupid question." Moose laughed and said, "Mozelle, there are no stupid questions." "Well, good, then tell me: What is the deal with this male narrator? Why on earth would she tell the story that way?" (Yes, Texas women speak in italics. They have very expressive voices.) Moose threw her head back and laughed again. "Heck, Mo, that is not only not a stupid question -- That's the question literary critics have been trying to answer for more than seventy-five years!" (Apparently non-Texas women lapse into italics when speaking to Texas women. It's contagious.) They spent twenty minutes discussing the joys and the puzzles of this beautiful yet baffling book. Mozelle was a good reader because she had a great capacity for empathy and a razor-sharp b.s. detector. Those were qualities she had in common with Willa Cather and, perhaps, her daughter-out-law.

We will say more on the subject of this late, great woman when we can, but the moms are off to Texas bright and early tomorrow morning to celebrate Mo's life and legacy, so for now we will let Cather have the last few words. They come from that book Moose and Mo had so much fun discussing all those years ago and include the words Cather chose for her own gravestone. The male narrator, Jim Burden, is recalling a moment alone in his grandmother's garden on his first day on the great Nebraska prairie, where he has just arrived as a young orphan from Virginia. Despite the newness of his surroundings, Jim experiences a sense of calm contentment as he lies on the warm earth beneath the immense prairie sky. He eloquently describes his experience of the moment (and the words on Cather's gravestone are in italics):

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Sleep well, sweet Mo. The happiness you gave in such abundance lives on in every heart you touched.

* * *

With love and thanks to friends and family in many places for kind words, gestures, and deeds. You lift us up, again and always.

On the Road Again

(Photo Credit: Moose, on her iPhone [using Toy Camera app.], Austin, TX, 12/11/09)

The moms are off to the Lone Star State this weekend to celebrate the 90th Birthday of the Mother of the Goosians, a fine Christian woman who is blind yet sees all and is cool enough to use the expression "suck up" in casual conversation with her daughters and daughter-out-law, Moose. PAWS UP and a thorough face-licking to one of the sweetest, feistiest old ladies on dog's earth. We love you, Mo, and are so happy to be able to rock you into your tenth decade!

Moose brought her iPhone along to document the festivities and snapped the photo above in the parking lot of a favorite Austin eatery. She is thinking about quitting her day job to see if she can achieve fame and fortune by photographing old cars and trucks using amusing iPhone apps. We think she's off to a good start, though we are slightly concerned about her long-term financial security. Those of you with similar aspirations and obsessions should check out this NYT story on iPhone camera apps (which, strangely, does not mention Toy Camera).

A happy weekend to each and all. May you grow old and feisty surrounded by friends and family and filled up with all the cake you could possibly want. Or maybe drinking salty margaritas with Fernando. Wevs, kids. Age has its privileges, so you do whatever the heck it is you want to do. Peace out.

(Photo Credit: Moose on her iPhone [using Camera Bag app.], Austin, TX, 12/11/09)

Home Again, Home Again

Sincere apologies to those of you who have been sick with worry about the fate of Moose and the Thinking Woman, who, when last heard from, were still 597 miles from home and in rather frightening proximity to a field of corn. Rest assured they made it safely back to Roxie's World Tuesday evening as scheduled. TW is settling in well, as you can see from the photo below. I think I am going to like having a companion statue. It's fun to hang out with someone whose mobility is even more limited than my own.

Meanwhile, Moose is trying to negotiate a soft landing back in the real world, which seems to have gone bat-$hit crazy in her absence. (That is a professional comment, not a personal one. We will have more to say on the subject soon, if we can figure out a diplomatic way to write about the intensifying crisis of higher ed right here in our own ridiculously large back yard. Meantime, read this, this, and this. Go, students!)

Advice to travelers from Moose on the Loose now Back on the Leash: The world to which you return will not be precisely the one you left. Do not be deceived by appearances. Remember that similarity is not sameness. Time has passed -- changed even -- and contents may have shifted in transit.

Memo to Texas from Moose on the Loose now Back on the Leash: We regret to inform you that the ginormous roadside cross conveniently located on the edge of I40 eastbound on the outskirts of Amarillo, TX (top photo below) is not, contrary to my earlier impression, the most spectacularly ginormous roadside cross on the face of dog's earth. A second view and evidence obtained from my iPhone camera indicates that that honor goes to the remote kingdom of Illinois, which has a super spectacularly ginormous cross (bottom photo below) looming over I70 eastbound on the outskirts of, um, nowhere, dwarfing trees and even the billboard for Denny's. Sorry, Texas, but you have been outdone in the category of Truly Ridiculous Public Displays of Affection (Jesus Division). Better luck next time!



Memo to Drivers from the Division of Highway Safety, RW Enterprises, LLC: Roxie's World does NOT condone the taking of photographs by drivers operating vehicles at high speeds -- unless, of course, the driver is alone and unwilling to stop the vehicle, and the photo is the only way to secure evidence necessary to make a snarky point about unseemly spectacles of religiosity in American culture. Some things are, you know, worth dying for.

All the bitches are back in the pack, kids, and all is right in Roxie's World. A happy weekend to you and yours.

God Bless Texas

(Photo Credit: Moose, on her iPhone, Amarillo, TX, 9/16/09)

Moose, as you know, is on the loose, but we caught up with her this evening through the miracle of Roxie Cam (trademark RW Enterprises, LLC) and found her tucking into a nice filet and an ice cold bottle of Lone Star to reward herself for 544 miles on the road today, putting her just 280 easy miles short of her undisclosed destination. Livin' on the road, my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean . . . .

Day 3 finds her relaxed and happy and still sporting her 1969 tee-shirt. She hesitated about wearing it to dinner, thinking it might not go over well with the good old boys of west Texas, especially after she drove by the most spectacularly gynormous roadside cross she had ever seen on the outskirts of town. (Technically, she saw a very similar cross yesterday in Missouri, but they are tied in her mind as the most spectacularly gynormous roadside crosses ever seen.) She knew, however, that she couldn't disappoint me and my legions of loyal fans who are eagerly following the adventures of her and her provocative tee-shirt as they make their way across America, 2009. I mean, hell, she said to herself, what if Julie Powell had just decided to skip the execrable aspics in Mastering the Art of French Cooking? You don't cheat on a blog project, and you don't bail out on your readers!

She wore the shirt to the spectacularly gynormous Texas steak house down the road from the close-to-the-interstate Holiday Inn Express where she is staying. (Unsolicited commercial endorsement: Holiday Inn Express is clean, comfy, and affordable. Free breakfast and a small but well-equipped fitness room for working out those post-drive kinks.) She is pleased to report that she was exceptionally well-treated by everyone she encountered, including the trio of Texas musicians who wandered through the restaurant taking requests and chatting up the patrons. They came to Moose's table and stood right behind her, staring, she imagined, at "The Year of Gay Liberation" on the back of her shirt while doing a commendable "Orange Blossom Special" and "Rocky Top" for the couple from Tennessee seated next to her. Moose bounced her head along in time to the music as she ate her salad, being constitutionally incapable of not doing something in time to music. She wondered if they would stop and talk to her. To her delight, they did. Asked what she would like to hear, she immediately replied, "Some Bob Wills?" hoping it would up her Texas cred. "Sure!" the guitarist said, seemingly impressed. "Anything in particular?" Busted, Moose thought, unable to come up with a title. "You pick," she said, and the band launched into "Take Me Back to Tulsa." Moose sang along on the chorus, between bites of salad. When she confessed to being from Washington in the post-song chat, they jokingly asked if she was a politician. "No, no," she replied, "a teacher." (Which is really just a concise way of saying, "tenured radical and full-time lesbo indoctrinating America's children in the evils of heteropatriarchy," dontcha know.) The bass player asked what she taught. "English," she said, which usually elicits howls of, "Oh, my grammar is terrible!" Happily, though, the bass player said that he had actually minored in English and majored in journalism at the school formerly known as West Texas State. "Wonderful!" Moose replied, as the band moved on to the next table.

Newsflash: People are being nice to a middle-aged woman driving across the country in a shirt that promotes GAY LIBERATION! Does this mean:

a) that people don't read tee-shirts,
b) that people are too polite to say anything but are silently consigning her to hell,
c) that the idea of gay liberation is now wholly unremarkable, or
d) that the large group of motorcyclists in the restaurant wearing odd green caps that made Moose think they were a bunch of extremely butch leprechauns was just vastly more fascinating than one boring old broad in a shirt?

Whaddyathink, kids? We report. You decide. Peace out, and happy trails.

Big Gay Holiday News Roundup

Hoping for Change Edition

Gay Number of the Day:




Cranky Old Gay Dude Standing on the Front Porch Shaking His Fist at Neighborhood Kids While Declaiming Long, Incoherent Passages from The Big Book of Transhistorical Gayness: Larry Kramer (again). (H/T: qta.)

Cute Young Gay Dude Steps Aside as Mayor of Gayest Town on Earth -- Goose's Home Town of San Angelo, Texas! -- Because Discriminatory Policies on Marriage and Immigration Force Him to Choose Between Love for his Mexican Boyfriend and the $600 a Year He Earned as Mayor: J. W. Lown. (H/T: Geoffrey.) Yes, Goose has local sources deep in the heart of San Angelo investigating this heartwarming yet somewhat baffling story. We will update you the moment we hear anything!

Middle-Aged Gay Dude Who Believed the Silver-Tongued Black Guy with the Nice Pecs Would Usher in a Big Queer Era of Harmony, Equality, and Elegance and Now Faces the Threat of Separation from His American Boyfriend Because of Discriminatory Policies on Marriage and Immigration that Obama Is Clearly in No Hurry to Change: Andrew Sullivan. Oh, how it hurts when the big gay scales fall from the eyes, eh, Andrew?

Further Proof that Being For Same-Sex Marriage Is Much Funnier than Being Against It:



Roxie's World wishes you and yours an early happy Memorial Day. May the skies in your part of the world be clear and the steaks be sizzling. (Apologies to our vegetarian readers. May the tofu be . . . as steak-like as it is possible for tofu to be.) Congratulations to all the grads out there who are celebrating the beginning of the next stage of their lives, especially all the wonderful kids from QTU who became fully certified queers yesterday at Lavender Graduation. PAWS UP and a thousand face licks to you as head out to face, embrace, and change the world armed with your big gay degrees and your awesome, beautiful hearts. Dogspeed to each and all.

Peace out.

Texas Is In No Way a Pig State

(Photo Credit: Tony Gutierrez, AP; members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints arrive in court in San Angelo, Texas, 4/17/08)

We love it when life imitates one of our favorite TV shows, especially when the imitation involves the colorful home state of one of the moms of Roxie’s World.

This one is for Goose, born and raised in San Angelo, Texas, where a no-nonsense district court judge is now trying to figure out what to do with 416 children found living in a compound of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints that was raided by the state’s Department of Child Protective Services earlier this week. The Tom Green County courthouse, where Judge Barbara Walther has ordered DNA tests to try to sort out the complicated web of family relationships that had developed on the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, is where Goose’s late father Earl got his start as a judge back in the early 70s. He held the very same position – 51st District Court Judge – that Walther holds today.

We’re calling it Big Love, Texas-Style, or just Bigger Love, which comes down to pretty much the same thing, but our post title is taken from a comment on the web site of the San Angelo Standard Times, which is exhaustively covering the FLDS story, where a lively debate has broken out about which is ickier: polygamy or government intrusion on the sovereignty of the individual. It’s a fascinating discussion, punctuated by such illuminating exchanges as this comment by an entirely reasonable fellow who calls himself Anasazi:

You women in San Angelo are being fooled. Yes, [incarcerated polygamist prophet Warren] Jeffs is a punk. Any moron can figure that out. Jeffs is in jail. I'd be more concerned about the pig state that runs your life and keeps you a slave at $7.00 an hour. Can you proud women of San Angelo make a living there at the min. wage of $7.00 an hour?

To which RJ sweetly replies:

I am a woman in San Angelo and I assure you that I make WAY more than $7 an hour. Texas is in no way a pig state -- it is the only state that can stand alone without the other 49 if it chooses to. The other states would be in a world of hurt if they had to survive without Texas.

Oh, how we love the internets for letting us tune in to the voices of ordinary men and women exchanging their opinions on the issues of the day! Here’s to the democratization of thought! Here’s to everything being on sale in the marketplace of ideas!

Question 1: How big do you think RJ’s big hair is?

Question 2: Do you notice how easy it is to tap into that deep vein of Texas pride and resentment regarding the brief period of Texas independence (1836-1846)? Moose has chuckled for years over this particular quirk of the Texas character. She thinks it explains all kinds of things, from Goose’s impressive self-confidence to the tendency of women in her family to show up at reunions with guns in their purses. Small guns, but still, guns. The women in Moose’s family stuff their purses with the more usual accoutrements of middle-class femininity: Kleenexes, small flasks, an assortment of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, maybe a tampon or three.

We digress. We agree with RJ, of course, that Texas is in no way a pig state. Texas is a lovely and sophisticated state which we heart greatly for giving us Molly Ivins, some of the finest live music in all the world, and the concept of the drive-through breakfast taco. It may shine an unflattering light on the Lone Star State, but the FLDS story provides a valuable opportunity to ruminate upon that deep tension at the heart not just of Texas but of all fifty of these goofy United States between the belief in the sovereignty of the individual and the desire to police, control, and limit religious, sexual, and other differences. We are not big fans of religiously motivated polygamy here in Roxie’s World, and we are strongly opposed to teenage girls being forced to have sex and bear children with creepy older men. We’re not wild about the deeply unflattering fashion styles favored on the compound either, but as fans of Big Love we understand the sect’s commitment to the look of Little House on the Prairie.

We are still digressing, aren’t we? That’s because we are wrestling with the temptation to posit an analogy between Mormons and queers as we think through the issues of sovereignty v. state control that the colloquy between Anasazi and RJ brings to the fore. Big Love traffics continually in this analogy, as the Henrickson family negotiates the daily risks and challenges of polygamy in the suburbs. Metaphors of the closet abound, and subplots are driven by conflicts between the need for secrecy and the desire for openness, especially as the older children of Bill and first wife Barb, who were not born into polygamy, grapple with friendships, sexuality, and their relationship to their changed and changing family. On the show, the analogy works as a way of understanding the affable yet besieged Henricksons, who come across as clean-scrubbed sexual utopianists committed to a non-normative relational order. Polygamy for them seems motivated less by religion than by a social ethic of caretaking and shared responsibility. (In the show’s back-story, Bill and Barb became polygamous when Barb was stricken with cancer. An extra wife or two comes in handy during times of crisis, it seems.) Moose calls Big Love the queerest show on television because it challenges audiences to re-imagine intimacy and candidly portrays the complex circulations of desire within families, particularly between and among the “sister-wives” in the Henrickson household. If we were writers of slash fiction, we would pen a steamy scene between Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Barb and Chloë Sevigny’s Nicki.

On the show and in the real-world drama unfolding in West Texas, however, the analogy between Mormons and queers breaks down around issues of coercion and consent. Adamantly as we support sexual freedom as an aspect of free expression and committed as we are to diversification of family and relational structures, we have never thought hetero-polygamy was a great deal for women or children, especially female children. We can’t join in Anasazi’s outrage toward the pig state that storms in and pulls 416 kids out of a situation in which girls as young as 13 are alleged to have been raped, beaten, and impregnated by men in their fifties. The right to free expression doesn’t include the right to victimize those who are too young to make free, informed choices. The state has a right and, indeed, a responsibility to try to protect children and others with a limited capacity to consent. (Should we debate age-of-consent laws and the sexual rights of children? Nah, not here, not today.)

The challenge in any case that pits the sovereignty of the individual against the state’s responsibility to prevent harm is to know when the state is acting rationally and legitimately and when it is acting out of bias against persons or practices that it finds objectionable when no real threat of harm exists. That is why it is not inconsistent, in our judgment, to feel relieved that 416 kids have been removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch and yet feel outraged that states and the federal government continue to deny consenting adults the right to marry a person of the same sex. In that sense, we regretfully conclude, Texas is a pig state after all – and so are all of the others, with the brave exception of Massachusetts.

Big love to all of you, kids. We’ve missed you and are happy to be back here in the ‘sphere where we belong. Peace out.

Bird -- and Goose

(Photo Credit: Austin American-Statesman)

Today's post is in memory of Lady Bird Johnson, who died yesterday at her home in Austin, Texas at the ripe old age of 94. Following the deaths within the past year of Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, there is some concern that the world's supply of feisty old Texas women may be approaching dangerously low levels, but the moms can attest from their recent trip to the Lone Star state that this glorious species faces no threat of extinction. Their proof? Goose's very own mother, who is 87 and suffers, as Lady Bird did, from macular degeneration, brought her best pal Miriam with her to my Uncle Bobby's gig at the Broken Spoke, and they rocked out until 12:30 in the morning. Dog bless Texas women, I say. Paws up for the good old girls!

(For Roxie's World's tributes to Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, click on their names.)

• Wa Po coverage of Mrs. Johnson's life and death focuses chiefly on her time as First Lady but also on her stalwart environmentalism and her courageous work for civil rights. "Style" has a special appreciation of her efforts to beautify the nation's capital. Forty years after she left town, Washingtonians are grateful to Lady Bird every time the flowers bloom in the spring.
• The Austin American-Statesman offers Texas-size coverage of the story, as is appropriate. Access it here. Roxie's World officially endorses the idea of naming Town Lake in Austin, which Mrs. Johnson helped to reclaim in the late 60s, after her. The moms have walked off many an enchilada while strolling on the ten miles of trails that wind around Town Lake, and I think "Lady Bird Lake" sounds really pretty, don't you?

Roxie's World offers a personal tribute to Mrs. Johnson by passing along one of our very favorite stories from Goose's Texas girlhood. Some of you have heard it, but I know you won't mind hearing it again. It is, I promise, a true story and not a Texas tall tale, though you might be tempted to suppose it contains a stretcher or two. Moose used to think that about a lot of Goose's Texas stories, but after twenty-three years she has come to recognize that, in Texas, "larger than life" is often just the scale of life itself.

Goose says this incident must have happened in about 1965. She was 11 or 12, and LBJ had won his own term in the White House in a landslide in 1964. Her parents were yellow-dog Democrats in the west Texas town of San Angelo, where her father was a prominent attorney, so when Lady Bird came to town for a luncheon of women Democrats, Goose's mother was invited to attend. Goose desperately wanted to go along, but her mother resisted the idea. Years earlier, she had already gotten into a nasty battle with the gender fascists on Romper Room over whether her youngest child should be allowed to appear on the show wearing her PF Flyers rather than the Mary Janes all the other girls were wearing. She had fought -- and won -- the battle for her daughter's right to comfortable footwear (see photo below; Goose is on the far right), but she wasn't sure her irrepressible red-headed tomboy could be counted on to behave at a proper ladies' luncheon. Goose's father entered the fray in support of her cause, arguing they couldn't deny the child the opportunity to meet the First Lady of the United States, especially a First Lady from Texas! (The Texas card wins every time in Goose's family.) Her mother reluctantly agreed that Goose could come, but only on two conditions: 1) that she would be quiet and 2) that she would eat everything -- everything -- on her plate. Goose instantly agreed to both conditions. She has never been a picky eater, and she figured she could keep quiet for an hour or so, somehow.

The day of the luncheon arrived. Goose was dressed in her Sunday best, including her Mary Janes, and was determined to be on her best behavior. She was seated across the table from her mother. Lady Bird was on the same side of the table as her mother and a couple of places down. At first everything went beautifully. Goose stayed quiet by eating bread and butter and closely observing the women at the table, trying to catch the drift of their conversations about family, politics, men, the war. She was starting to feel like quite the little lady, when suddenly a salad plate appeared on the table before her. Goose, as I said, is not a picky eater, and she has always been good about eating her vegetables. Her mother's family survived the Depression by selling produce, so children were never allowed to turn up their noses at vegetables. When Goose looked down at this salad, however, she saw to her horror that it was covered with one of the all-time ickiest, most disgusting, foul-smelling, and as far as she was concerned inedible things on earth: ANCHOVIES! Goose shot a panic-stricken look in her mother's direction. "Mom!" she whispered, trying to sound both polite and urgent. "Mom," she repeated. "There are anchovies on this salad!" Her mother, engrossed in conversation, ignored her entreaties. Goose, growing increasingly concerned that she would not be able to satisfy condition #2 without becoming physically ill, started kicking her mother under the table and continued to call attention to the small stinky fish on top of her salad. She now admits it is possible her voice rose above the level of a whisper, but her mother continued to ignore her.

Suddenly, just as she thought she would explode from the pressure of trying to be good, Goose felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, and there stood Lady Bird, gazing down at her like some great Texas goddess of wisdom. "Darlin'," she said in a voice that was equal parts sugar and steel, "don't you like anchovies?" "No, ma'am, I don't," said Goose. "I promised Mama I'd eat everything on my plate, but I can't stand anchovies. They stink." "Well, don't you worry, darlin'," she cooed. "I love anchovies," and with that she reached down, plucked the offending fish off Goose's plate, popped it into her mouth, and walked away with a smile. Goose's mother glared at her from across the table, but her eyes softened as Goose picked up her fork and ate her salad like the good little girl she was determined to be. The rest of the luncheon went off without a hitch, and Lady Bird Johnson had earned a fan for life.

Peace be with you, Lady Bird. Wherever you go, may there always be bluebonnets and long stretches of billboard-free highways. And anchovies if you really, really want them.

Scenes from an Airport

(Image Credit: U.S. News & World Report, July 2, 2007)

Quiet, kids, the moms are asleep. They fell in the door about 4 this afternoon, after being held hostage for 8 hours yesterday in Austin's Bergstrom International Airport and then having to hoist their weary selves back there at 6:30 this morning to try to figure out how to get home to your favorite dog blogger. We'll have a happier post in the next couple of days on their wonderful trip and their visit to the last true honky-tonk joint in America. For now, I offer a couple of timely links to reports on the nightmares of this summer's travel season from U.S. News and the New York Times as well a transcription of the strange notes I sniffed out of Moose's backpack after they stumbled off to bed. Fortunately, she had her laptop with her, so the notes were typed. All I had to do was cut-and-paste them into Blogger. Any errors likely resulted from keys that got stuck because of the plastic cheesy sauce on Moose's fingertips. Or beer. Or coffee. Or enchiladas. Or beer. Or breakfast tacos. Or beer.

Scene One: 11 p.m., July 1

We've been here since 3 p.m. Our flight was supposed to take off at 4:15, but when we checked in its departure had already been bumped to 6. We looked into re-arranging our flights, but weather in Dallas was complicating things, so we decided to hunker down and enjoy the amenities of Austin's cool airport -- cold beer, T-Mobile internet connections, and the best darn canned music you ever heard. (Seriously, we heard most of our favorite Texas musicians over the course of our long day's journey into night.) We're usually pretty good at making the best of trying situations, but as the hours wore on and the delays pushed our arrival home further and further into the middle of the night, we began to lose patience. We had gone through the post-mortem that follows any visit with family and moved on to speculating about recent developments in a friend's personal life, but we agreed we needed fresh evidence to make that line of conversation any fun. We had read snarky reviews of the super-hyped iPhone and agreed we could safely hold off on spending $1200 for new toys we don't really need, however sleek and adorable they may be. Desperately bored, I took to re-loading the American Airlines web site every 15 seconds or so to check on the status of our flight, while Goose kept an eye on the monitors in the airport, replenished the beer, and phoned American to try to get clearer answers than we were getting on the ground.

(By the way, we'd like to emphasize that every single American Airlines employee we dealt with by phone or in person was polite, efficient, and eager to be of assistance. The real problem in this situation was that the folks who were dealing with customers didn't have clear information to communicate in a timely way. We all understand the "act of god" elements involved in air travel, but airlines really need to do a better job of managing information when things go wrong. Their employees deserve better, and lord knows their customers do.)

Anyway, having waited all those hours for a plane to arrive and then waiting for that plane to unload, we were then told the pilots had just "gone illegal" and so could not fly us to St. Louis after all. The flight wouldn't leave until 8 the next morning, and it wasn't clear whether it would continue on to Washington or not. I was puzzled by the strange phrase "gone illegal,"which I had never heard before. I wondered if they had some sort of visa problem, but that didn't seem right, given that Texas has not been an independent nation since 1845, much to the chagrin of Texans. Before I got too far in my musing, I noticed that Goose had a frozen look on her face that seemed connected to the realization that "gone illegal" meant that we were, for the time being, going nowhere. "Snap out of it," I wanted to say. "You have to figure out what we're going to do. Call your brother and tell him we may be in need of a bed."

(Editorial aside: Regular readers know Goose has a knack for figuring out what to do in such situations, while Moose is adept at long-term planning. That's why Goose handles most travel-related emergencies [unless they require proficiency in French], while Moose takes charge of massive home-renovation projects and invasions of small countries. It's a division of labor that generally works well in our household.)

Fortunately, Goose quickly snapped out of her coma and did what she does best: Flipped open the cell phone and punched in the number for American Airlines, again. I have to confess this move baffled and annoyed me, because I was focused on the not insignificant issue of where we were going to sleep and how we were going to get there and because we were standing in a long line of tired people who could hear every word of her conversation.

(Editorial aside: Goose is one of those people who talks on her cell phone in an unnaturally loud voice. This is acutely embarrassing to Moose, despite the fact that no one has ever accused her of being, um, soft-spoken.)

While the gate agent for American distributed $10 food vouchers to the weary masses, I kept shooting Goose my "what the hell are you doing?" look while she persisted in torturing the poor soul stuck with the job of answering phones on a lousy night for the airline industry. She ignored me and executed her strategy with the calm precision of a master. "You've been lovely, Rae -- it is 'Rae,' isn't it? -- and I realize that none of this is your fault, but I have been an American customer for more than 20 years, and I am very unhappy. We have not been served well by American tonight, Rae. Isn't there something you can do to make me happier?" The brilliance of Goose's strategy is to have the nerve to repeat this same basic speech in an absolutely even voice (no sarcasm or vulgarity allowed, which is why I am not the one who makes these calls) until the person on the other end of the line finally capitulates and gives her something -- anything! -- to get her off the phone. My impatience gives way to amazement as I hear Goose say, "Why, yes, Rae, I do think an upgrade to first class would make me feel a little better. Thank you, Rae, and have a pleasant evening."

There were thousands of unhappy American customers stranded all over the state of Texas on Sunday evening, but somehow Goose managed to score first-class upgrades for our return trip! I bow down in awe before her genius. We rented a car and headed back to brother Bobby's for a few hours of sleep. We had no luggage and no reason to believe the next day would go smoothly, but we had the satisfaction of a moral victory, which for the moment was sufficient.

(Editorial aside: For a previous example of Goose's deft handling of customer service agents, click here.)

Scene Two: 6:30 a.m., July 2

The American ticket counter is a zoo by the time we get there, despite our flying trip through the nearly empty streets of a sticky Austin morning. We look with pity upon the long line of people assembled before the "Main Cabin" signs and make a bee-line for the much, much shorter "First Class" line. Within moments, we are at the counter talking to our new best friend Leslie, who appreciates the suffering of the sad refugees of flight 1536 and vows to get us home as quickly as possible. Feeling a little punchy and perhaps a little ornery, I ask Leslie how her night was. "Good," she replies. "Short, but good." "Yeah," I counter, "but at least you got to change your underwear." To her credit, Leslie laughed and acknowledged that, indeed, she had gotten to change her underwear. With that, I decided I could trust her and Goose to come up with an itinerary and went off in search of our luggage. By the time I returned, they had found our flights, but Leslie noted that we wouldn't be able to sit together on the Austin to Dallas leg of the trip. "Hey, that's okay," I said. "Remember that underwear thing? It's probably best that we not sit too close together." With that, we were off with a smile for the long trip home.

Many hours and 1500 miles later, we were still cracking up every time somebody said the word "underwear." And one of us kept saying it over and over and over again, because we drank champagne on the flight and one of us has a nasty habit of being inordinately amused by her own crude jokes.

(Editorial aside: And that, dear readers, is all you need to know to solve the enduring mystery of what ties Moose to Goose and vice versa.)

Sweet dreams, tired moms. Sweet dreams.

In Praise of Cranky Old White Guys

Moose is proud this morning of her home state senator, Dick Lugar (R-IN), for coming out in favor of sanity on the war in Iraq. In a Senate floor speech Monday night (which was turned into an op-ed piece for today's Wa Po), the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee makes a powerful, thoughtful case for changing course sooner rather than later. The crux of his position is stated as a risk/benefits calculation that we find a little cold, yet it's language that his audience in the diplo-politico-militarico establishment is far more likely to heed than our shrieking Code Pinko cries of "let's just bring them the hell HOME." Here's Lugar:

I believe that the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved by doing so. Persisting with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our interests over the long term. I do not come to this conclusion lightly, particularly given that Gen. David Petraeus will deliver a formal report in September on his efforts to improve security. I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been progress in security. But three factors -- the political fragmentation in Iraq, the growing stress on our military and the constraints of our domestic political process -- are converging to make it almost impossible for the United States to engineer a stable, multi-sectarian government in Iraq in a reasonable time.

In other words, LET'S JUST BRING THEM THE HELL HOME! Moose is creeped out by the appeal to national interests and the assumption that the failure to "engineer" a stable government in Iraq is due more to a problem of time than to a flaw in the conception of the whole fiasco of U. S. involvement there. Nonetheless, what is really striking in this paragraph is the role played by the reiterated "I": "I believe that the costs and risks. . . ," "I do not come to this conclusion lightly. . . .," "I do not doubt the assessments. . . ." Lugar's "I" is a slender, modest figure, a cautious man who has come to his decision after great deliberation and with some reluctance. One would call him self-effacing, except that Lugar's slender "I" keeps asserting himself into the paragraph and shoulders the heavy moral burden of publicly breaking with his party and his president on a matter of considerable urgency and import.

Americans -- and especially, perhaps, Midwesterners -- love this particular "I": cautious yet courageous, humble yet forceful, plain-spoken but not crude. (Yes, it's true, Lugar reminds Moose of her own late mild-mannered Midwestern dad, who spoke softly yet always managed to make her listen.) Lugar's "I" is no maverick on some self-promoting "Straight Talk Express." He is a team player, a company man, comfortable sitting at the table. When he bucks the tide, the other guys at the table can't dismiss him as a renegade or a loon. He is one of them, and he has broken the thick silence that had taken over the room.

So, fellas, are you listening yet? Will you tune in to a reasonable man who tells you that your "vital interests" are no longer being served by this disastrously misguided policy? Or will you close your eyes and pretend that Lugar is a wild-eyed woman in a pink tee-shirt?

(Wa Po has a piece today suggesting Lugar may not be alone in his party in his skepticism toward Bush's war policies. It's here.)

Another cranky old white guy deserving of praise this week is 87-year old Justice John Paul Stevens, whose continued good health you should pray for every day of your lives. Stevens dissented in the ridiculous "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, which pretty much eviscerated the First Amendment rights of high school students, and he did so by comparing the current ban on marijuana to Prohibition and suggesting that marijuana should be legalized, taxed, and regulated instead of prohibited. In his dissent, Stevens writes:

[T]he current dominant opinion supporting the war on drugs in general, and our anti-marijuana laws in particular, is reminiscent of the opinion that supported the nationwide ban on alcohol consumption when I was a student. While alcoholic beverages are now regarded as ordinary articles of commerce, their use was then condemned with the same moral fervor that now supports the war on drugs.

Goose wept when she read these words and insists that Roxie's World declare the Honorable Justice Stevens our first Official Righteous Dude of the Week. It is so ordered.

Meanwhile, Tom Toles brilliantly skewers the unrighteous dudes on the Supreme Court who comprised the majority in the "Bong Hits" case, so we'll let him have the last word today:

Or maybe not quite the last word: You may not hear from your favorite dog blogger for a few days, kids. The moms are off on another little summer jaunt, this time to Texas for my Uncle Bobby's "When I'm 64" birthday party, which will include a gig at Austin's amazing Broken Spoke. Happy birthday, Bobby, and please, please, please, try to keep my moms off the stage!

What Would Molly Say?

(Photo Credit: Carolyn Mary Bauman, Forth Worth Star-Telegram via AP)

From this day on Roxie's World has an official motto, a motto that nicely captures this blog's spirit of dogged dedication to the cause of justice and comic skewering of the high-falutin' and the high and mighty, not to mention people who are mean to animals or who fail to clean up dog-doo in the park. Our motto, What Would Molly Say?, is a tribute to the late, great, and too soon gone Molly Ivins, Texas populist and rabble-rouser who never met an ego she couldn't knock down to size with a well-turned phrase and who never stopped believing that this wacky, messed-up nation could and would live up to its promises of liberty and justice for all.

I solemnly swear to my legions of loyal fans that Molly's keen eye and irrepressible spirit will live on in some humble way right here in Roxie's World. With every beat of my leaky heart and every tap of Moose's clumsy fingers on the keyboard, I dedicate myself to facing every fresh outrage with a Molly-esque mixture of ferocity and laughter. I call upon you, my loyal fans, to make the same vow, to wake up every morning with Molly's immortal words echoing in your own frail yet fearless hearts:

Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

Every time you turn on the news and see that the Bush-leaguers are cranking up the scary talk to justify some new assault on civil liberty, ask yourself: What would Molly say?

Every time you see a reference to intelligence reports purporting to show Iranian involvement in attacks on U. S. soldiers in Iraq or evidence of weapons development, ask yourself: What would Molly say?

Every time you think about the government's massive failure first to protect and then to re-build the areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina, ask yourself: What would Molly say?

Every time Karl Rove or Dick Cheney or George Bush opens his mouth and some new lie pops out, ask yourself: What would Molly say?

And then, dammit, say it, because it needs saying--over and over, every day, for how ever many days you have left on this sweet, fragile earth. Say it, because you're here and she's not. Say it, because not saying it will pinch your spirit and threaten your sanity. Say it, with a smile on your face and the fire of determination burning in your belly. Say it, and then get up tomorrow and say it again.

Here are some wonderful tributes to Molly, from columnist E. J. Dionne, author Maya Angelou, and her good friends and co-conspirators from The Nation. Read them. Weep, laugh, and then get up off your butt and do something. Molly wouldn't have it any other way.

Update: Moose and Goose are still taking Molly's death pretty hard, so they wanted me to add in a few more tribute links. Here's one to Molly's second-to-the-last column, in which she vows to write against the war in every single column until we find a way to end it. Here is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's piece that documents Molly's prescience about the disasters that would likely follow a U. S. invasion of Iraq. (We like this one because part of Krugman's point is to show that Molly wasn't merely funny. She was also damn smart.) Finally, here is the virtual memorial service being hosted by Molly's friends and colleagues at the Texas Observer. You'll need a hankie or three to make it through this one, but it's worth the effort.

Peace out, friends.

Beautiful People

In loving memory of Governor Ann Richards (1933-2006) and for my Goose, my favorite Beautiful Person who is also a Texan. (Photo by Bobby Earl Smith, taken at a reception at the governor's mansion in Austin, 1993.)