BOO, HISS to the First Night Spokane committee for setting up a ghetto called The District to segregate such dangerous entertainment as jazz and belly dancing to an “adults only” area. Other restricted acts are cabaret, a drag show and comedians. These performers may well be insulted by the designation, as well, but I can’t speak for them. But I will address belly dance.

I hang out with belly dancers. I used to be a belly dancer. When I was still dancing in public, I performed at First Night several years ago, along friends who later organized as Baharat!! dance troupe. The largest, and most appreciative, part of our audience was always families with kids. They loved the music, the costumes and the energy that was generated by sheer love of the art form. Now those people will be locked out of the performances in an area where kids are forbidden.

Belly dance is family friendly. My kids grew up with dancing and dancers. For children, moving along with the music is as natural as breathing. They will often stand up to dance themselves, taking pleasure in how the freedom of their bodies and the ability to copy the movements they see. They experience the dance with joy.

Mis-perceptions abound. Belly dance is not “adult entertainment.” Belly dance is not a strip tease. It’s not a come on. Belly dance is an ethnic art form with its roots in an Egyptian folk dance called baladi, which is featured in Baharat’s show, as well as the more stylized Egyptian Cabaret style. Baharat!! also performs dances from the Arabian Gulf States, Lebanon and Turkey and educates its audience about the origins of each dance. It’s a class act.

Chances are, the First Night committee has never even seen belly dance. All they know is some sordid reputation perpetrated by bad movies and locker room jokes. Now they’re passing along these stereotypes about the dance by this segregation.

It’s all tied up in the patriarchal belief that a woman’s body is dangerous. Movement of that body happens only to ignite the libido and tempt men into “sin.” In that twisted version of reality, dancers, by moving their hips and torsos, are the embodiment of sexual availability, free for the taking. They’re breaking The Rules. Women, too, buy into this negative notion. I’ve seen women react with territorial fury toward dancers, trying to keep “their” men from looking, as if the dancer were offering a carnal invitation. I believe it is rooted in an insecurity in their own worth. If they would stop and really look, they’d see there’s no threat there, only beauty. Once they understand that, many want to dance themselves.

In truth, belly dance has nothing to do with men, unless they happen to be doing the dancing. (Yes, there are male belly dancers, and it’s not a drag show.) It’s about embracing the sensual side of ourselves that can glory in the many textures of the music and express it physically.

Sensuality is not sexuality. It’s joy in our bodies, a belief that our physical selves are not evil but beautiful, capable of strength, grace and pleasure. It’s a powerful concept. In women, that’s considered dangerous. Belly dance is the antithesis of the commodification of women — it’s women embracing their own inner selves.

I reject the idea that the female exists to satisfy the male. Relegating belly dance to an “adults only” venue perpetrates this fallacy and I’m disappointed in the First Night Committee for falling for it.

In honor of New Years, I’m renewing my resolutions for another year. This is a reprise post from one year ago.

“Wabi-Sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional”
–Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers Poets & Philosophers

Normally, at this time of year I’d be making all kinds of threats and promises to myself to improve my body and lose X number of pounds in the new year. Not this time. I resolve to treat myself with the respect and care that I would give a piece of art, and to learn to see my body as Wabi-Sabi — imperfect, impermanent, unconventional, and beautiful as it is, on those terms.

I hope you’ll all give yourselves that same respect.

The denial is no longer working–my daughter is really getting married next winter. Julie and I have spent the last few days wedding dress shopping. Bridal shops should really have a bar; Moms need reinforcement for this type of activity.

Seeing her glowingly beautiful in a parade of white dresses had me misty-eyed, but when the sales woman put the veil on her head, I nearly fell apart. The image was just too much. I snapped digital pictures of each dress she tried on, but the first one at the second shop was the winner. It’s uncluttered and elegant, just like she is. She’ll be carrying it back on the airplane when she leaves on Tuesday.

She seems so grown up, yet so young at the same time, the way she looked as a preschooler playing dress up in the fancy clothes I brought home from garage sales for her toy box. It wasn’t that long ago ….

She’s not a child anymore, but she’ll always be my baby.

The furry nose of doom.

Another New Years Eve favorite. Dip pound cake, banana bread or fresh fruit.

Chocolate Fondue

12 oz bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 oz bag milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup cream
8 oz. cream cheese
4 tbs. grenadine

Melt chips, cream and cream cheese in double boiler til smooth. Beat in grenadine shortly before serving. If it’s too thick, add more cream.

I’m not much of a party person, but for the last 10 years I’ve had a fondue and movie party with the kids on New Years Eve. I got 2 fondue sets for $5 a piece at my favorite second hand store, the old fashioned kind that use sterno. Someday I’ll spring for an electric set.

Crab and Cheese Fondue
1 (5 ounce) jar Kraft Old English sharp pasteurized process cheese spread
8 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 (8 1/2 ounce) can crabmeat, drained and flaked
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

In top of double boiler, combine cheese until melted and smooth. Add remaining ingredients. Stir well. If it thickens, add more wine.

Yields about 2 1/2 cups.

Running a pc and don’t have anyone to test drive your design on Mac Safari? There’s now a website that will give you a screenshot of how your site appears on that browser. Very cool.

Check your site.

A hilarious list of predictions for next year from Blake Ross, one of the Firefox creators.

A sample:
In retaliation for Gore’s bold foray onto the Internet, George W. Bush will be the latest to come under fire for editing his own Wikipedia biography. Although Wikipedia will have implemented the most sophisticated algorithms to deter this kind of behavior, Bush will be caught because he will change all instances of “George” to “I”.

Read the whole thing.

I was 14 when I heard “Piece Of My Heart” on the radio and decided I wanted to be Janis Joplin. I was crushed and furious when I discovered she’d been dead for 4 years; I’d finally found “my” music and there would be no more of it. While David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman hung on my friends’ bedroom walls, the cover of Pearl adorned mine. I bought a guitar and taught myself to play. I grew my hair long, wet-braided it to make it wild and bought oversized pink-lensed sunglasses. I drank Southern Comfort. I snuck into the Crest Show Lounge late at night and hung out in the back with the bouncer, listening to the bands and dreaming of being on stage.

Through it all, I played those Janis albums over and over and read every biography of her I could get my hands on. The more I read, the deeper my identification grew. Always the ugly, awkward one, the freak, the oddity who couldn’t fit into her small hometown, the outcast who, no matter what she did, couldn’t believe anyone would ever want her. Always wearing a mask and living down to her family’s expectations. Every insecurity I had, she manifested in technicolor.

When I was 19, I got a little taste of the passion that drove her when my boss’s husband heard me singing in the backroom after work and took me for an audition with Rosy, the band he played with on weekends. I sang “Me and Bobby McGee” and got the job. For 2 years Shane, Larry, Scooter, Clyde and I gigged in cheap bars, in the beginning playing one night stands for drinks and “pass the hat” and by the end were making enough to pay for gas and the occasional motel room instead of sleeping in the truck. I came to understand just how the stage makes you feel more alive than you’ve ever been and how empty the night is when the lights go off and you leave alone. But the music made it worth it. I finally had my little piece of the world, just like Janis did.

I wish I could say I was smart enough to walk away when I started getting self-destructive, but I wasn’t medicated at that point and was no good at moderation. Instead, I burned out, cracked up and ended up quitting college with one semester remaining on my music degree. The arrest, and later on the death, of our rhythm guitar player closed the book on that chapter of my life and I filed it all away as having happened to someone else. That life could never be mine again. I made other choices and moved on.

All this ancient history is at the front of my memory this week. At the library, I found a new biography of Janis, “Scars Of Sweet Paradise; The Life and Times of Janis Joplin,” by Alice Echols. It’s a sociological study of the 60s as much as it is a biography. Unlike all the other books I’ve read about her, this one doesn’t focus on her pathologies but instead portrays her in the context of the late 50s/early 60s, at the intersection of race, gender, politics and music. It’s extensively researched–the footnotes at the end of the book run 65 pages–and tells the story of her life as much as her career, without judgment. It explores the radical nature of a white women singing black blues and how despite the public perception of her as the ultimate “hippie chick,” she began her career as a self-identified beatnik. She broke the accepted folk music and rock gender lines by being “one of the boys” but in that assumed role, never found validation of herself as a woman. Her legendary addictions to booze, drugs and sex were just a symptom of the no man’s land she inhabited. She was a product of her times just as much as she was a revolutionary against them.

She tried to be a good girl; it didn’t work. So she threw herself into her music and created a persona to give the people–both strangers and intimates–what they wanted. In the end, that didn’t work, either. But she created great beauty out of her pain, and left a legacy in her music that is still evident in rock today.

She tried to quit singing several times, but always came back to the music, despite everything it cost her. It must have been worth it to her. I hope it was.

Merry Christmas, everyone! It’s a beautiful, peaceful holiday here as I relax, drinking my coffee and wearing the new loungie pants the kids gave me.

Church last night was lovely and this morning a replay of happy years past, with all my children home and within hugging distance. I’m thankful for each one of them. Best of all, I’ll have another whole week with them before the girls return to college and Tony goes back to school.

Not to worry — Edgar wasn’t forgotten this Christmas, even though he looks forlorn here. He received a “What The Duck?!” stuffed mallard, and a stuffed hedgehog of which he is very proud. Later this afternoon, he’ll be feasting on a prime rib bones while we have dinner.

I hope your holidays are filled with love.