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Love Lost, Love Laureate: Noel Visitations

December 25, 2018 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Queer Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I woke thinking about Donald Hall, who died last June at the age of 89 after living a very fine life as a poet and a New Englander. There are details of his biography that make me wince, especially his string of very, very young girlfriends. That string included his second wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, who was decades his junior and whom he met while she was still his student.

Though it’s unmodern to think so, Goddess is not always concerned with such details, and in this case Jane and Donald’s love helped them develop as humans and writers. He was wildly proud of his wife’s artistic development, which outstripped his before she succumbed to a voracious cancer a few weeks shy of her 48th birthday. Continue Reading →

Schlemiel, Schlimazel: Penny Lost

December 18, 2018 in Age Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, TV Matters

Penny Marshall’s death hits so close to home. Born the same year as my mother, she offered a different model of adult femalehood–screwball funny, radically unpretentious, and trailblazing. A director, a comedian, a Bronx-born broad with gorgeous legs and unfailing creative vision: I still wear an L on my sweater in homage to her Laverne. She was one of my chosen god-mommies though I met her only once, and I’m bereft to learn she’s no longer on our plane. Gen X ladies: We’re really the grownups now.

The Church of Aretha’s Bridge

December 9, 2018 in Church Matters, Feminist Matters, Music Matters, Spirit Matters

It’s been nearly four months since Aretha died and it’s still hitting me so hard. Today I listened to her “Bridge Over Troubled Water” about 40 times—its slow build, her big sea of sadness and strength, that soaring everything-everything—and it didn’t make me feel any better about her being gone. But it did make me feel her, and that was so much better than I could have hoped. Once again she’s carrying me through a hard time, reminding me that being brave requires a wide-open heart. And of course, a close girlfriend called tonight to talk about much she’s been playing the Queen during her own hard time. Aretha was channeling us both, I think, because she’ll always be the patron saint of strong women who don’t stop feeling. For this I’ll say what I’ll always have cause to say: Thank you for raising me right, Mama. I love you forever.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy